Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist has long held a tight grip on the marionette strings of the GOP. Wielding undue influence as the head of the Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist ensures that Republican lawmakers sign his anti-tax pledge and threatens them with electoral defeat should they even think of deviating from it. Norquist has marked a successful few years, killing the deficit super committee agreement, batting down a tax increase on millionaires, and, of course, ensuring the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Pleased with his headway, Norquist is now mapping out how he can ensure further anti-tax victories by securing Republican majorities. In an interview with the National Journal, he mused that a GOP mandate would obviously enact an extension of the Bush tax cuts, work to maintain a repatriation holiday for corporate profits, and even pass House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan that jeopardizes Medicare. But when asked what Republicans should do if faced with a Democratic majority that won’t keep the tax cuts, Norquist had a simple answer: “impeach” Obama.

NJ: What if the Democrats still have control? What’s your scenario then?

NORQUIST: Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress.

Norquist certainly revels in his power, but suggesting Republicans impeach the president over tax cuts is wildly outlandish. According to the constitution, the president, vice president, or public officials can only be impeached for “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Preserving a tax cut that gives more to the top 1 percent than the average income of the 99 percent hardly qualifies. But if Norquist’s only goal is to “crush the other team,” it seems he’ll stop at nothing to do so.

The state of Nebraska already has a regressive tax code that asks lower-income families to pay more than the state’s wealthiest residents. According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, the poorest 20 percent of Nebraskans pay an average of 11.1 percent of their annual income in state and local taxes, while the richest 1 percent pay just 6.1 percent of theirs, thanks to the state’s heavy reliance on regressive property taxes.

Gov. Dave Heinemen (R), however, seems to believe that the poor aren’t doing their part in his state. Despite saying his “highest priority” was “tax relief for Nebraska’s hard-working, middle class taxpayer,” Heinemen used his State of the State speech to unveil a tax proposal that would do next to nothing to help Nebraska’s poorest residents while providing sizable tax breaks to the rich, Citizens for Tax Justice found:

In his recent State of the State speech, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman unveiled his three-pronged tax reduction proposal: income tax rate reductions and broadening of income tax brackets, a reduction in the corporate income tax rate, and complete elimination of the inheritance tax. [...]

Nebraska’s tax structure is already regressive and asks more of lower income families than better off families…The Governor’s proposal does nothing to reduce property taxes, does little to assist the lowest income Nebraskans, and would actually make this disparity worse.

As CTJ notes, Heinemen’s proposal wouldn’t replace the $40 million generated by the inheritance tax, just a year after his last budget eliminated state aid to local governments. In Omaha, the county board passed a resolution opposing Heinemen’s plan because it would “force” them to raise property taxes, thereby increasing the tax burden on lower- and middle-class Nebraskans.

Reducing the income tax rate, meanwhile, would have a similar effect, forcing the state to rely even more heavily on regressive property taxes instead of the more progressive income tax structure.

When President Obama announced his latest vision for the so called “Buffett rule” — a 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires — during his State of the Union address this week, Republicans were quick to criticize it. For instance, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) derided the proposal as a “political gimmick.” “It’s a smokescreen,” added Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).

However, as a new analysis from Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out, the Buffett rule as laid out in the speech could raise up to $50 billion per year to pay down the deficit, while affecting just 0.08 percent of taxpayers:

Citizens for Tax Justice has calculated that President Obama’s “Buffett Rule” would, if in effect this year, raise $50 billion in a single year and affect only the richest 0.08 percent of taxpayers — that’s just eight percent of the richest one percent of taxpayers. [...]

To calculate the $50 billion figure, we assumed that there would be a minimum tax that applies to adjusted gross income (AGI) minus charitable deductions. (We’ll call this modified AGI.)

We assumed that a taxpayer with modified AGI greater than $1 million would face a minimum tax of 30 percent of modified AGI. The taxpayer would pay whichever is greater, their personal income tax under the existing rules or this minimum tax.

Obviously, $50 billion by itself won’t balance the budget, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. At the same time, the Buffett rule will aid in correcting some of the problems in the tax code — like one quarter of millionaires paying lower rates than millions of middle class families and some millionaires paying no income tax at all — that have helped drive income inequality up to a level not seen in the U.S. since the 1920s.

Our guest blogger is Adam Hersh, an economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Four years since the start of the Great Recession, the U.S. economy is picking up speed. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported this morning that gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 2.8 percent in the last quarter of 2011. This marks the 10th consecutive quarter of economic expansion and the best growth performance for the US economy since the height of the Recovery Act in early 2010.

But beneath the headline growth figure, today’s report reveals that the nature of the Great Recession and current recovery departs markedly from historical experience. The difference: a debt hangover after years of bubble-driven investment that has left the economy much more fragile than it seems on the surface. This recovery is unlike previous ones experienced by your parents and grandparents, and it will require sustained policy action to ensure that a fragile recovery develops into strong and broadly shared economic growth.

Comparing the economy’s recent trajectory of consumption and investment with the experience on average of all other previous business cycles in the post-World War II economy shows the unusual depths to which the 2000s economy sank us and why recovery remains sluggish.

It’s true that consumer spending by households, the single-largest component of the U.S. economy, increased 2 percent in the past quarter. It’s now up 1.5 percent over pre-recession levels. But compared to previous recessions, the recovery of household consumption looks markedly weak. At this point in past business cycles, consumption on average had increased nearly 14 percent.

And the slow growth of consumption actually understates the financial stress faced by households: Despite growing in aggregate, personal consumption is actually 1.4 percent lower on a per capita basis than four years ago. Without critical social safety net programs, it would be even lower.

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American homes have lost $7 trillion in value over the last five years and four million homeowners are either behind on their payments or in foreclosure, but thus far, the Republican Party’s leading presidential candidates have offered little in the way of solutions for the housing crisis that is holding back the economic recovery. Few states have been hit harder than Florida, where prices have dropped 45 percent since 2006, half of recently-sold homes are in default, and 23 percent of of homes are delinquent or in foreclosure.

That made last night’s debate, which was held in Jacksonville, the appropriate place to ask the remaining Republican candidates how they would address the crisis. Voters, in fact, were waiting to hear the candidates’ answers.

Unfortunately, the debate’s moderator, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, bungled his opportunity, turning to a submitted question that couldn’t have possibly led to substantive answers from the candidates. And then, after Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney gave answers littered with falsehoods and turned the discussion toward each others’ investment portfolios, Blitzer failed to press them for actual plans to deal with housing:

BLITZER: We have a very important subject: housing. Not only here in Florida, foreclosures really, really bad, but all over the country. A lot of people are wondering if the federal government contributed to the housing collapse in recent years. We got a question that came into us. Let me put it up there and I’ll read it to you: How would you phase out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Does the private mortgage industry need additional regulation?

Watch it:

Blitzer’s original question focused on what the candidates would do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage firms that have been targets of Republican ire since the crisis began. But it was private industry, not Fannie and Freddie, that sparked the crisis. More than 84 percent of the subprime loans in 2006 were issued by private lenders, including 83 percent of the loans that went to low- and moderate-income borrowers.

Blitzer could have asked Republicans to address the misconception that Fannie and Freddie sparked the housing crisis. He could have pressed Romney on what seemed like a change of position on housing in Florida. He could have asked where the candidates stood on the plan President Obama put forward in his State of the Union address to refinance mortgages, or asked what the candidates would do about the rampant fraud and abuse that private lenders perpetuated during both the housing boom and its subsequent bust. And yes, he could have pressed Romney to find out how much he knew about his investments into funds that profited off of Florida foreclosures.

But he didn’t. The result, as Reuters noted today, were soft outlines of policies that “could prolong the pain for years,” aren’t supported by market data, and showed little understanding of how the crisis happened in the first place. The Republican candidates continue to dodge questions about what, specifically, they plan to do about the housing crisis. Unfortunately for voters, questions like Blitzer’s only make it easier for those dodges to continue.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress’ Tanya Somanader noted that Apple Inc. is breaking its profit record and sitting on nearly $100 billion in cash, while its Chinese laborers toil in unsafe and even deadly conditions. Here on the other side of the Atlantic, another huge company has decided to lock out its Canadian workers in an attempt to force them to accept pay cuts, even as it pulls in its own record profits:

Caterpillar reported a 36 per cent increase in after-tax profit for both the fourth quarter of 2011 and the full year 2011. Revenues for the year increased four per cent to $2.65 billion.

Despite the record profits, the company is pressuring its employees at the London [Ontario] locomotive plant to accept a pay cut from $32 per hour to $16.50. Caterpillar locked out the workers on Jan. 1 after union members rejected the pay cut.

While certainly not in the same league with Apple’s abuses, Caterpillar is just the latest company attempting to force workers to accept wage cuts at the same time its hauling in huge profits and paying its CEO millions. AT&T, Navistar, John Deere, and Wellpoint have all pulled the same trick in the last few years, laying off hundreds of workers. Caterpillar’s CEO, Doug Oberhelman, made $10.5 million in 2010.

“This is all about greed,” says Bob Scott, union chairman at the plant. “How are workers supposed to go back to earning wages last paid nearly 25 years ago, while the company is richer than ever?” CEOs today make about 343 times the amount earned by the typical worker.

ThinkProgress reported Wednesday that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has profited from thousands of Florida foreclosures through a Goldman Sachs investment fund. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) blasted Romney on the trail today for those investments, and re-upped those attacks in tonight’s CNN debate.

Romney attempted to explain away the investments, saying he didn’t control them because they were part of a blind trust:

GINGRICH: Governor Romney has investments in Goldman Sachs, which is today foreclosing on Floridians. So maybe Governor Romney, in the spirit of openness, should tell us how much money he’s made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments.

ROMNEY: First of all, my investments are not made by me. My investments for the last 10 years have been in a blind trust, managed by a trustee. Secondly, the investments they’ve made, we’ve learned about this as we made our financial disclosure, have been made in mutual funds and bonds. I don’t own stock in either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. There are bonds the investor has held through mutual funds. And Mr. Speaker, I know that sounds like an enormous revelation, but have you checked your own investments? You also have investments through mutual funds that also invest in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Watch it:

Notably, Romney never denied the charge that he made money off of foreclosures. Later in the debate, Romney was asked about the $3 million he kept in a Swiss bank account before it was closed in 2010. Again, Romney attempted to brush aside the question, saying, “I have a trustee” who manages a blind trust.

Romney’s reliance on blind trusts is interesting, considering it was he who called them “a ruse” when running against former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) in 1994. And as ABC News noted, the trusts are “not so blind,” since they have been noted on his financial disclosure forms. The trusts are also maintained by Romney’s personal lawyer and don’t meet federal standards for elected officials. Romney’s original investments into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, meanwhile, were never in a blind trust.

Since Mitt Romney revealed his 13.9 percent tax rate this week, attention has been focused on the preferential tax treatment of money made from investments and capital gains rather than wages and earnings, which lets many wealthy Americans pay lower taxes than middle class families. In the State of the Union address this week, President Obama called a minimum tax for millionaires in order to do away with this problem.

As the New York Times noted today, however, plans to raise tax rates are unlikely to move through Congress before the 2012 elections. What that conventional wisdom ignores, however, is that Congress doesn’t have to do anything to raise the tax rate on capital gains. Doing absolutely nothing, in fact, would raise Romney’s taxes by a significant amount.

This is because the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are scheduled to expire January 1, 2013, bumping the capital gains tax back to 20 percent. An obscure provision that limits deductions for high-income earners is set to return on the same day. The Affordable Care Act also enacted a tax on high-income taxpayers that will raise the rate on capital gains. Those changes require no Congressional action — rather, they require Congressional inaction — and would raise the capital gains rate significantly, as the Tax Policy Center pointed out:

Put it all together, and the top tax rate on capital gains is scheduled to increase from 15% today to 25% on January 1.

Romney, meanwhile, would ask Congress to pass a tax cut that would cut his tax bill by millions of dollars. As ThinkProgress has noted, Congress could actually wipe out most of the country’s deficit by doing nothing.

After resisting for months, Mitt Romney finally released one year of his tax returns this week. Here’s what we learned (click to enlarge):

Mitt Romney’s father George released 12 years of his taxes when he ran for president in 1968, stating, “One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.” Please sign our petition and help us put the pressure on Romney to follow his father’s example.

Apple, Inc. is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and profitable companies worldwide. Last quarter, Apple made $13.1 billion, it’s highest profits yet and a 117 percent jump from last year. Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook has increased his salary by six-fold and could very well be the highest paid CEO of 2011.

But as TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo notes, that profit is earned on the backs of Chinese workers who “continue to toil in tough conditions.” Apple contracts with companies in China to ensure swift and cheap production of a new product. But rather than put a percentage of those billions into improving working conditions for the people who make the iPad and iPhone, the company sits by and allows its manufacturers to maintain disastrous working conditions.

In fact, as the New York Times reported, according to employees, advocates, and Apple itself, these suppliers force workers — including child laborers — to toil in hazardous working environments:

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

One of these suppliers, Foxconn, saw so many workers committing suicide at its factories that it instituted a no-suicide pact for employment and installed nets on factory roofs to prevent workers from jumping to their death. A former management employee at this company said, “Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost.” “Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he added.

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said a former Apple executive who spoke to the New York Times on the condition of anonymity. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

With total cash holdings of $97.6 billion, Apple could cover Greece’s debt repayments for two years or buy 2,000 tons of gold. Or, Apple could simply put a portion of that profit towards enforcing its supplier code of conduct or finding manufacturers that will abide by it. Instead, Apple allows suppliers to subordinate their workers’ welfare for the sake of a cheaper iPad.

In late 2010, Arizona launched an investigation into Bank of America, alleging that the bank misled homeowners who were seeking mortgage modifications. Arizona’s attorney general claims that Bank of America “repeatedly has deceived” borrowers looking to lower their monthly payments.

According to BusinessWeek, Bank of America is fighting back by giving loan modifications to borrowers who have made complaints. The catch is that, in return for the modification, the borrower must agree to stay silent and expunge any previous criticisms of the bank from his or her public record:

Bank of America Corp. is impeding an investigation of its loan modification practices by negotiating settlements with borrowers who must agree to keep them secret and not criticize the bank in exchange for cash payments and loan relief, Arizona officials say. [...]

One 2011 accord involving a borrower facing foreclosure who defaulted on a $253,142 mortgage included a $5,000 payment, plus $7,500 for legal fees, and the defaulted payments were waived and the loan was modified to a 40-year term with a 2 percent interest rate, court documents show. The terms of the original loan and the borrower’s complaint about the lender weren’t described in the documents.

The borrower “will remove and delete any online statements regarding this dispute, including, without limitation, postings on Facebook, Twitter and similar websites,” and not make any statements “that defame, disparage or in any way criticize” the bank’s reputation, practices or conduct, according to documents filed in state court in Phoenix.

This isn’t the first time that Bank of America has been accused of obstructing an investigation into its mortgage practices. Back in June of 2011, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general claimed that the bank was blocking access to employees and data in order to slow down an investigation into its alleged misdeeds. “Our review was significantly hindered by Bank of America’s reluctance to allow us to interview employees or provide data and information in a timely manner,” said HUD’s William Nixon.

Now, if the Arizona officials’ claims are true, Bank of America has gone from obstruction to explicit payoffs in order to keep its mortgage mess under wraps. (HT: Naked Capitalism)

In an exclusive report published yesterday morning, ThinkProgress revealed that Mitt Romney is profiting from thousands of Florida foreclosures through a Goldman Sachs investment fund.

This morning, Newt Gingrich seized on the report, blasting Romney for “owning lots of stock in a part of Goldman Sachs that was explicitly foreclosing on Floridians.” Watch it:

The ThinkProgress report revealed that Romney and his wife Ann own millions in Goldman Sachs Strategic Income Fund. That fund holds mortgage backed securities from many of the nation’s most prominent subprime lenders, including Countrywide and Washington Mutual. In 2010, the fund was connected to more than 5,000 foreclosure actions in Miami-Dade county alone.

In October, Romney said that the United States should not “try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” a proposition that may have benefited his bottom line.