"I'll break you in half, like a boy"

Stay classy, Republicans.

Republicans near, far (and increasingly far-out) seem to be losing it.

Locally, state Sen. Bill Rabon's delivered a profane, arrogant, and condescending tirade against his constituents, General Assembly "colleagues," the Governor, and the state's first lady--basically everyone except state Sen. Bill Rabon.

In Washington (we think), Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) re-appeared on Monday after a mysterious and unexplained absence, claiming that part of it was a game of hide-and-seek with the media.

Last night, just prior to the President's state of the union speech, Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) tweeted,

On floor of house waitin on "Kommandant-In-Chef"...the Socialistic dictator who's been feeding US a line or is it "A-Lying?"

And following the speech, Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) menaced a reporter, yelling

Let me be clear to you: If you ever do that to me again, I'll throw you off this f***ing balcony.

After the reporter attempted to reply, the aptly-named Rep. Grimm continued

No, no. You're not man enough, you're not man enough. I'll break you in half, like a boy.

At least they're not threatening to blow up the economy...this week.

Not exactly data-driven people

Quote of the day: "Among some of the most critical Republicans, let me say politely that they are not exactly data-driven people--” Jared Bernstein, commenting on Republicans' unfailingly failed predictions regarding the effects of Fed stimulus policies.

Politico has more

Republicans will use the expected vote this month on the nomination of Janet Yellen to chair the Federal Reserve as one more chance to slam the Fed’s easy money policies.

But there’s one big rub to their argument: Their predictions about the impact of these policies since they first began in late 2008 have been wrong so far.

Inflation has not spiked, and the value of the dollar has not collapsed. At this point, in fact, there are more worries about deflation than inflation.

But thanks to the tea party influence in the GOP — in particular the Fed-bashing Rand and Ron Paul wing of the party — ripping the Fed and the bigger role it is playing in the economy has become more a litmus test for party loyalty, regardless of whether the dire predictions have come true.

It's hard to tell with this crowd whether they're kooks, pandering to kooks, or both. Either way, their policy prescription--restricting the money supply--would be disastrous.

Naturally, this is the same crowd that believes that extended unemployment benefits are a "disservice" to the unemployed and that defaulting on the debt is a worthwhile colonic for the economy.

Lesson learned?

You would think that after nominating a host of too-extreme-for-prime-time candidates that failed to knock off vulnerable, "damaged-goods" Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid, Sen. Claire McCaskill, and now Va. Gov.-Elect Terry McAuliffe, Republicans would wise up.

You would be wrong. National Review's Maggie Gallagher explains

Would another $3 million have swung 50,000 votes? The Republicans, starting with Bill Bolling, who undercut Cuccinelli as unelectable have egg all over their faces.

This was a winnable election. How did we give this away to Terry McAuliffe? Some serious soul-searching should be taking place among the anti-tea-party faction.

The implied prescription--doubling down on bad Tea Party bets--is music to Democrats' ears.

"Good fight?" Good grief

In the end, the Republicans accomplished nothing, and to hear House Speaker John Boehner describe it, the Republicans learned even less.

In a radio interview yesterday following his and his party's capitulation on their latest extortion attempt, Speaker Boehner said that he was "doing good" because "we fought the good fight; we just didn't win."

Give him credit for recognizing orange-tinted failure when he looks in the mirror. The "good fight" part, however, is delusional.

While Speaker Boehner's "good fight" accomplished nothing, it cost Americans a whole bunch.

The needless government shutdown hurt the economy. Bloomberg reports

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services yesterday said the shutdown has shaved at least 0.6 percent off of fourth-quarter 2013 gross domestic product growth, or taken $24 billion out of the economy.

IHS Inc. of Lexington, Massachusetts, reduced its fourth-quarter GDP growth estimate to 1.6 percent, from 2.2 percent in September.

That $24 billion works out to about $200 per American household.

And that's not all, the latest damage to the economy can be added to the costs from previous extortion efforts.

Macroeconomic Advisers LLC said in a report prepared this week for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation that the recurring budget battles in Washington have lowered U.S. economic growth by about 0.3 percentage points a year since 2009. It has also added more than a half-point to this year’s unemployment rate, or the equivalent of about 900,000 jobs, the report said.

Republicans' extortion strategy and default nihilism are also damaging America's credit rating and will increase our borrowing costs going forward. Their "good fight" is the gift that keeps on giving.

The shutdown was also wasteful. Although the furloughed government employees will be repaid and made whole, taxpayers won't be compensated for the work that couldn't be performed while the workers were idled (as well as the needless work that was required to prepare contingencies for the shutdown). The GOP rails against waste and abuse yet singlehandedly caused billions in foregone government production.

Worse, the Speaker has promised that "the fight will continue."

Games but not so much fun with Speaker Boehner

Referring to the government shutdown that he caused, House Speaker John Boehner petulantly cried, "This isn't some damn game"--an odd statment given all of the games that Speaker Boehner has played leading up to and during the shutdown.

Here are just a few of the games.

Games with the shutdown. The first and biggest game was loading a temporary, short-term continuing resolution for spending with a poison-pill amendment to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This only 11 months after promising that he would stop with these games.

Asked whether he will make another attempt to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act, Boehner said "the election changes that" and "Obamacare is the law of the land."

Games with lawmaker subsidies. After the Senate approved the continuing resolution but rejected the defunding amendment (and another delaying the ACA), Speaker Boehner insisted on including an amendment that removed an "exemption" that would have provided subsidies to Senators, Representatives, and their staffs to help cover the costs of mandated health insurance.

However, as Politico reports, Speaker Boehner had earlier worked to provide the same subsidies.

Yet behind-the-scenes, Boehner and his aides worked for months with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and others, to save these very same, long-standing subsidies, according to documents and e-mails provided to POLITICO.

Games with the conference committee. When Speaker Boehner lost that game, he next moved a resolution with an amendment calling for a conference committee to "negotiate" the terms of the House's extortion.

However, over the previous seven months, Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected 18 requests for conference committees for the Senate-passed budget.

Games with piecemeal legislation. When that gambit also failed, Speaker Boehner moved on to a new game. Instead of his original ploy of passing a single continuing resolution that omitted funding for the ACA, he pushed for a series of piecemeal funding bills. Taken together, these bills would have accomplished exactly what his original legislation proposed--funded what the Tea Party liked but dropped the funding for the ACA and other things that it didn't.

Games with an up-or-down vote. And Speaker Boehner continues to block the House from voting up-or-down vote on any of the versions of the continuing resolution that the Senate has passed, saying "That's not going to happen." A so-called "clean" continuing resolution appears to enjoy the support of a majority of House members, not to mention a majority of Americans and plurality of Republicans.

Sadly, the Speaker's games have had real consequences for the 800,000 idled federal workers, for citizens who depend on or enjoy government services, and for the economy as a whole.

As my parents used to say, "it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt."

The country is hurting, Mr. Speaker, and it's long past time to end your games.

Update (10-4-13, 4:25 p.m.): More games: Roll Call retrieves a previous Republican plan from the memory hole.

Senior Republicans were for “clean” CRs before they were against them.

Conservative Republicans have been pushing “automatic” continuing resolutions going back at least to the 1995-96 government shutdown era. The idea was popular on the right because an automatic freeze of government spending would take a shutdown off the table, lessening the leverage appropriators had to increase spending or include extraneous items.

So you have a job

The Great Recession has taken a toll on the labor market. Unemployment remains stubbornly high; job creation and job-holding rates have been tepid. As if this isn't enough terrible news, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has released a new report on poverty among workers up through 2011. The results are sobering.

In 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 46.2 million people, or 15.0 percent of the nation’s population, lived below the official poverty level. Although the poor were primarily children and adults who had not participated in the labor force during the year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10.4 million individuals were among the “working poor” in 2011; this measure was little changed from 2010.

The BLS definition of working poor includes all adults 16 and over who were working or looking for work for at least half the year. Thus, the total is affected by the number of unemployed. However, 40 percent of the working poor were adults who usually worked full-time and were in the labor force for the entire year.

As with other poverty statistics, poverty rates among the working poor are higher for blacks, Hispanics, women, and people with less education.

A primary culprit in poverty among workers is extremely low wage rates. The BLS defines "low earnings" as weekly earnings that are less than what a person working 40 hours per week at the average inflation-adjusted minimum wage from 1967-1987; in 2011, the threshold was $331 per week. The BLS found that two-thirds of full-time working poor adults had wages that were lower than this.

Sadly, these are exactly the people and families that North Carolina's Republican legislature have targeted in their spending plans. Starting in July, workers who lose their jobs will see the amounts and duration of their unemployment compensation cut. Low-income workers in NC will also see a reduced earned income tax credit this year. And the Republicans have decided to turn down federal funds to extend Medicaid benefits to these families. Republicans may also soon shift more of the tax burden toward the working poor.

Outcomes for many workers have been miserable for the last few years. Shamefully, NC's legislature and governor are compounding that misery.

Deflation

My dad used to tell a story about how one day as a very young boy he suffered some monumental slight at the hands of my grandmother. Concluding that this slight was one too many, he stomped his foot and yelled, "I'M RUNNING AWAY, AND I'M NOT COMING BACK!"

My grandmother's response was, "We'll miss you."

My dad sulked out of the house, made it around the corner, and sat on the curb. Utterly deflated, he was back home within half an hour.

House Republicans must be feeling similarly deflated.

After stomping their collective feet and threatening to bring down the U.S. economy through a debt default, Republicans have decided to approve a small expansion of the debt ceiling that will push the issue off for three months.

Entire NC Republican delegation opposes storm relief

The second part of the Sandy relief legislation--a $50 billion package to help New York, New Jersey, and other northeast states rebuild and prepare for future storms--passed the House of Representatives last night despite overwhelming Republican opposition--including "no" votes from every single member of North Carolina's Republican delegation.

Representatives Foxx, Holding, Hudson, and Meadows, who had already voted against borrowing to allow the National Flood Insurance Program to pay its obligations to victims, were joined in the latest vote by Representatives Coble, Ellmers, Jones, McHenry, and Pittenger.

All four NC Democratic representatives voted for the measures.

A closely-related measure that combined both parts of the House bill passed the Senate late last term with a bipartisan 62-32 vote. Democratic Senator Hagan voted for that measure; Republican Senator Burr voted against.

I can't predict the weather. But I can predict that the "attaboys" the Republican delegation are getting from its Tea Party supporters will be replaced with cries for federal relief when a big storm eventually hits Hurricane-prone NC.

Four NC Tea-Party Reps. vote against Hurricane Sandy relief

North Carolina Tea Party Reps. Virginia Foxx (NC-5), Richard Hudson (NC-8), Mark Meadows (NC-11), and George Holding (NC-13) joined 63 other Republicans in voting against H.R. 41 to allow the National Flood Insurance Program to borrow $9.7 billion to assist victims of Hurricane Sandy who had paid their flood insurance to receive benefits.

Apparently, North Carolinians are never in need of this help. Oh wait, they are!

Death by dysfunction

As nauseating and potentially damaging as the current stalemate over the fiscal cliff is, it's only one of several important pieces of legislation to run afoul of the dysfunctional Republican House of Representatives.

Farm Bill. In June, the Farm Bill, which sets the country's agricultural policy, authorizes U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, and funds food and farm disaster assistance programs passed the Senate (S. 3240) with a bipartisan 64-35 majority. The bill includes several tough reforms; the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would cut $23.1 billion in expenditures over the next ten years

The House Committee on Agriculture marked up a version of the bill and passed it with an overwhelming and bipartisan 35-11 vote. However, there it stopped, as House leaders, under pressure from extreme conservatives, refused to allow a general vote. Foreshadowing the shrewd strategy that he would later adopt for the fiscal cliff, House Speaker Boehner substituted a one-year "plan B" bill but then pulled that when the radical right wouldn't go along.

As the year ends, $23.1 billion in program cuts along with five-year certainty for farm policy languish without an up or down vote because the cuts aren't extreme enough for a portion of the radical right. Worse, several provisions of the current farm bill are set to expire on January 1, including the dairy cliff.

More from the House Science? Committee

Apparently, it takes a special kind of crazy to earn a Republican seat on the House Science Committee.

Previously, we were treated to Rep. Todd Akin's (R-MO and indefatigable Senate candidate) ruminations on women's magical abilities to ward off pregnancy when "legitimately" raped--"The female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down."

Now we hear from Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA and a doctor no less), who sees the hand of Satan in the theory of evolution. TPM reports Rep. Broun sermonizing

All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.

You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.

Another colleague, Rep. Sandy Allen (R-FL), also discounts evolution in favor of "biblical terms of how we came about," while another, Rep. Dana Rohrabacker (R-CA) has mused about "clearing the rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases."

It's hard to imagine a stronger refutation of the notion of intelligent design than these four.

Tea Party champion blocking Camp Lejeune water bill

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, champion of the extremist Tea Party, has turned his venom toward North Carolina military families who were poisoned by their own government. The News and Observer reports

Thousands of sick Marine veterans and their families may be on the verge of taking a giant leap toward receiving health care for illnesses they suffered from decades of water contamination at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Legislation that has languished for years was expected to be voted on in the full Senate this week under an across-the-aisle deal between the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. But a South Carolina senator has blocked the bill, saying he worries about fraud.

The Senator is using a procedural tactic called a "hold," which allows any senator to unilaterally block a bill or other action, such as a nomination. In this case, a bill with widespread, bipartisan support is being blocked by a single ideological crank.

The most immediate consequence of Sen. DeMint's stunt is that it slows much-needed assistance for victims of the government's negligence. However, the Senator's unilateral action also keeps the Senate from considering other business. The types of holds have figured into the larger Republican strategy to slow everything in the Senate.

Step one for the Senate should be to pass this bill to help military families.

Step two should be to remove the undemocratic power of individual Senators to obstruct the nation's business.

If it makes you happy...

What had Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) screaming like a Banshee yesterday?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oh right, the false initial report that some 30 million or so of her fellow citizens, including millions with pre-existing medical conditions, would continue to go without health insurance coverage.

(Rumor has it that Rep. Schmidt later gave Meg Ryan a good run for her money with her reaction to the House's contemptible contempt vote against Attorney General Holder).

Imagine what could be accomplished if Rep. Schmidt and her colleagues put half as much enthusiasm into finding common-ground solutions to problems like health care, the budget, entitlement reform, and the economy instead of gainsaying everything that Democrats propose and manufacturing crises.

NC taxpayers give Tillis' philanderers nearly $20K

Wow, talk about an entitlement mentality.

NC House Speaker Thom Tillis has dipped into taxpayers wallets to provide $19,333 in going away gifts for two disgraced staffers, who resigned because of affairs with lobbyists. The News and Observer reports

State House Speaker Thom Tillis authorized payments equal to a month’s salary for two high-level staffers after they resigned because of inappropriate relationships with lobbyists.

The payments total a combined $19,333 to Tillis’ former chief of staff and his former policy adviser. Tillis said Wednesday the payments were made to help each staffer after they were no longer working for the state.

Tillis’ office also offered a justification for the payments that is an entry from the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, which in turn cites an employment law from the United Kingdom. The U.K. law, passed in 1996, says that workers are owed “pay in lieu of notice” if an employee is terminated without being given a minimum notice of one week.

Under North Carolina law and rules, however, high-ranking legislative employees are exempt from state personnel laws and generally work “at will,” meaning they can be dismissed for no reason and without severance.

Rep. Tillis' concern for the unemployed is touching, a concern that stretches far enough to adopt English employment protections even though we're no longer a colony and not subject to those laws.

However, that concern was absent last winter when Rep. Tillis and the Republican leadership allowed federally-funded unemployment benefits for 47,000 long-term jobless North Carolinians to lapse. He subsequently criticized Gov. Perdue when she restored those benefits through an executive order.

Similarly back in February, Rep. Tillis appointed a task force to examine unemployment insurance fraud. Maybe the task force should start by looking at Rep. Tillis' office.

Meanwhile, Rep. Tillis uses taxpayers' money to take care of his own, and the rest of us are left to muse over how a champion of the Tea Party gets away with citing English rather than American laws.

Another paranoid NC birther outed

North Carolina's 8th Congressional District is now a disgraceful two-for-two: two birthers out of two Republicans still in the race. The Charlotte Observer reports

As his competition endured criticism for questioning President Barack Obama’s birthplace, congressional candidate Scott Keadle of North Carolina took the high road last week and said he hadn’t spent “two seconds of my life thinking” about Obama’s birthplace.

But that’s not what Keadle told a tea party group last month in Rowan County, N.C., during a heated primary race for the Republican nomination for North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District.

Keadle, who’s now in a two-man runoff July 17 with former congressional chief of staff Richard Hudson, told the Rowan County Tea Party Patriots in April that he’d demand an investigation into the president’s eligibility, whatever the personal costs.

“If you’ll elect me to Congress, I will absolutely make sure that I don’t shut up until there is an investigation to find out if the president is eligible to be the president,” Keadle told the group, according to a video of the event. “That’s the end of that. And, they can do whatever they want to me.”

You can watch Mr. Keadle's remarks, which begin at the 3:30 point in this clip. You'll see that his paranoia goes well beyond the non-issue of the President's citizenship.



When caught red-handed in the lie, Mr. Keadle claimed that it was all a mistake and that he believes that the President was born in the U.S.

But then he blew the dog whistle one more time, saying "If I had the ability to revise and extend my remarks it would have been that if this continues to be a subject of debate and somebody wants me to look into it, then I will look into the process."

The instructions to NC Republican candidates this cycle seem to be: spout birther nonsense; lie about it; rinse; repeat.

Tea-Party Darling and 'Anchor Baby' Critic a Dual Citizen since 1978

So it turns out that, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, the darling of the Tea Party movement, a prominent birther-enabler, and a critic of so-called "anchor babies," has held dual Swiss citizenship since 1978.

Poltico reports

Rep. Michele Bachmann tried to downplay her dual U.S.-Swiss citizenship Wednesday, releasing a statement that asserts she has actually been a dual citizen since 1978.

“I automatically became a dual citizen of the United States and Switzerland in 1978 when I married my husband, Marcus. Marcus is a dual American and Swiss citizen because he is the son of Swiss immigrants. As a family, we just recently updated our documents,” the Minnesota Republican and former presidential candidate said in a statement. “This is a non-story.”

Rep. Bachmann's dual citizenship came to light when she and her husband used a birthright technicality in Swiss citizenship law to obtain dual citizenship for their children.

Hypocritically, Rep. Bachmann has criticized the citizenship granted to children of foreign-born parents in the U.S., derisively referring to those children as "anchor babies," and she has sponsored legislation to restrict birthright citizenship in this country.

However, having Swiss "anchor in-laws" seems to be another matter altogether.

Health insurance mandates...Washington is and was the problem

Logical consistency has never been a strong suit of the Tea Party movement, what with signs saying "Government, Keep Your Hands off Medicare." Now it turns out that the Tea Party is historically inconsistent as well.

A pillar of the Tea Party movement is that the U.S. should return to a limited, originalist federal system that strictly adheres to the Constitutional principles of the founding fathers. In particular, the founders would never impose national mandates to purchase health insurance or other goods.

Except that they did.

Last month, historian Einer Elhauge wrote a fascinating piece in the New Republic, listing several purchase mandates, including health insurance mandates, that our first Congresses passed and that Presidents Washington and Adams signed.

In making the legal case against Obamacare’s individual mandate, challengers have argued that the framers of our Constitution would certainly have found such a measure to be unconstitutional. Nevermind that nothing in the text or history of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause indicates that Congress cannot mandate commercial purchases. The framers, challengers have claimed, thought a constitutional ban on purchase mandates was too “obvious” to mention. Their core basis for this claim is that purchase mandates are unprecedented, which they say would not be the case if it was understood this power existed.

But there’s a major problem with this line of argument: It just isn’t true. The founding fathers, it turns out, passed several mandates of their own. In 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington.

...That’s not all. In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms. Yes, we used to have not only a right to bear arms, but a federal duty to buy them. Four framers voted against this bill, but the others did not, and it was also signed by Washington. Some tried to repeal this gun purchase mandate on the grounds it was too onerous, but only one framer voted to repeal it.

Six years later, in 1798, Congress addressed the problem that the employer mandate to buy medical insurance for seamen covered drugs and physician services but not hospital stays. And you know what this Congress, with five framers serving in it, did? It enacted a federal law requiring the seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. ...And this act was signed by another founder, President John Adams.

Ayn Rand was not a founding father; George Washington, John Adams and many members of the first Congresses were.

If purchase mandates passed muster with those actual founding fathers, can the originalist underpinnings of these policies really be questioned?

Tea Party members are right to blame Washington for health insurance mandates; they've just got the wrong Washington.

Republicans think there is too much coverage of the Trayvon Martin tragedy

The Pew Research Center has released a poll in which 56 percent of surveyed Republicans say that the press is providing too much coverage of the homicide of Trayvon Martin.

Republicans are a funny bunch when it comes to what should and shouldn't be covered.

In August 2009, when Pew asked people about the coverage of the "debate" over President Obama's citizenship, an identical fraction of Republicans, 56 percent, said that there was the "right amount" or "too little" coverage; only 26 percent of Republicans indicated that that there was "too much" of that issue.

To recap, a utterly phony and wholly disproved smear against a black politician deserves a lot of press coverage to 56 percent of Republicans, while the actual tragic death of an unarmed, innocent black teenager generates too much.

One issue at a time?

In it's Pledge to America, the incoming Tea-Party Republicans pledged that they would

end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with “must-pass” legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.

The extension of the payroll tax cut would seem to qualify as "major legislation," but the House Republican's bill definitely does not qualify as "one issue at a time." The bill's description "to provide incentives for the creation of jobs, and for other purposes" says it all.

The bill has six major sections (Titles), only the first purports to deal with job creation, and the second actually contains the extension of the payroll tax break. So what's in the bill?

• Title I -- requires that the Obama administration act on the Keystone XL pipeline application, suspends several regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, and gives depreciation tax breaks to businesses.
• Title II -- extends the payroll tax break and emergency Unemployment Insurance (UI) payments through 2012 but also makes other changes to the UI program, applies the "doc fix" and other changes to Medicare, requires offsets for the costs of the "doc fix," and extends and modifies the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF or cash welfare) program.
• Title III -- covers the Flood Insurance Program.
• Title IV -- covers auctioning of the broadband spectrum and public safety communications.
• Title V -- lists funding offsets, including increasing the fees that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge borrowers, changing federal retirements, freezing the pay of federal workers, and and increasing Medicare premiums for high-income people.
• Title IV -- contains "miscellaneous provisions.

That's a lot of issues at one time. That's also a broken pledge.

Funding a Republican near you

In a development that would make Ronald Reagan proud, it turns out that some of the wealth that has bankrolled the Tea Party and other conservative causes comes from sales of petrochemical capital to Iran. Bloomberg reports

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.

From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments. In December 1999, a civil jury found that Koch Industries had taken oil it didn’t pay for from federal land by mismeasuring the amount of crude it was extracting. Koch paid a $25 million settlement to the U.S.

The Bloomberg article goes on to describe how Koch industries has stolen, lied, polluted, bribed and killed. One of Koch's employees called it, "the Koch method."

KochPAC has been a major contributor to Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, and other Republicans. Don't hold your breath, however, waiting for any of them to give any of that money back.