Lawmakers of both parties are desperately trying to stop the Internal Revenue Service from interfering with the most powerful political invention that ever fell into their laps: the use of non-profit groups as a source of unlimited and anonymous campaign money. If you want to understand why, consider an investigation now unfolding in Utah, which exposes in remarkable detail how profoundly the non-profit system can be corrupted for the benefit of a single industry and a single politician.

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The politician involved was John Swallow, a former lobbyist for an empire of payday-loan and check-cashing companies (the kind of places known for their exploitation of the poor). When Mr. Swallow ran for Utah Attorney General as a Republican in 2012, his strategist established several social-welfare groups, which don’t have to name their donors, so that the payday-loan industry could support him financially without anyone knowing.

Mr. Swallow didn’t want the connection to the industry exposed, because of the poor reputation of the lenders. But he had no problem promising to protect the industry from greater federal regulation if he were elected. The groups collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret donations from the industry, and the money was used to run attack ads against Mr. Swallow’s opponent, who wanted to crack down on payday lenders. The ads worked, and Mr. Swallow was elected.

When the I.R.S. started looking into the non-profit groups and demanding documentation, his strategist changed the group’s records, which investigators described as a falsification. But the I.R.S. investigation was weakened when Congressional Republicans accused the agency (falsely) of singling out conservative non-profit groups. Eventually, a parallel state investigation drove Mr. Swallow from office; he resigned last fall, and last week a state legislative panel accused him of breaching the public trust by hanging “a veritable ‘for sale’ sign on the office door that invited moneyed interests to seek special treatment and favors.”

Ryan's comments, widely percieved as racist, did not hurt the Republican Party, Priebus said. And Priebus went further, defending Ryan as a model for other rich, white, Republican men who may have felt too shy to weigh in on the moral failings of poor people and the hazards of providing them with benefits like unemployment insurance and food stamps.

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Whether he is voting for job-killing free trade deals that devastate his home town, or opposing the extension of unemployment benefits, school lunches, and food stamps that serve as a lifeline for his hard-hit constituents, Ryan has made his reputation as the brains behind the Republicans' most divisive, live-and-let-die economic policy proposals.

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The biggest lie in Ryan's poverty report is that federal antipoverty programs actually create poverty. This is an old line of argument, and fits in with Ryan's invocation, in that same controversial radio interview, of Charles Murray, the Bell Curve author who delighted conservatives in the 1980s and 1990s by lending intellectual heft to their political arguments that the poor are lazy, that there may be a genetic explanation for racial inequality, and that heaping shame and punishment on single mothers, including by cutting off their food stamps, might help alleviate poverty by discouraging out-of-wedlock births. The notion that poverty is an attitude problem, and that inequality is perhaps linked to innate, genetic factors, is suddenly popular again, as the staggeringly rich suck up more of our nation's wealth than ever before.

Ryan and other Ayn Rand acolytes in the Republican Party are pressing home their efforts to repeal not just the Great Society and its anti-poverty programs, not just the New Deal safety net, but the Progressive Era itself and the foundational notion that the public must be protected from rapacious corporate greed.

Mary Burke retreats from former statewide voucher support

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke said Tuesday if elected she would eliminate the new statewide voucher program and private school tax deduction in the next budget.

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In response to a question at a Wispolitics.com luncheon at the Madison Club about what she would cut in the next state budget, Burke went further, calling statewide vouchers “a new entitlement program we frankly don’t need.” She also identified the private school tax deduction as something she would cut. Note that she isn’t interested in rolling back anything in Racine and Milwaukee.

Burke said she does not support ending the Milwaukee voucher program, which was created in 1990 and has expanded to more than 25,000 students. Her spokesman also clarified that she would not cut the Racine program, which Walker and the Legislature created in 2011.

This is a major departure from where Burke stood in October of 2013. Back then Jud Lounsbury wrote, “…when Mary Burke finally made a promise and told the Wisconsin State Journal that, although she opposed Walker’s statewide expansion of vouchers, she nonetheless would do nothing to remove the statewide voucher program, jaws dropped throughout Wisconsin’s progressive community.”

MADISON, Wis. — Somewhere in a Wisconsin basketball media guide or highlight DVD is a photo that made coach Bo Ryan especially proud this past week. Ryan remembers it well. He’s there with then-assistants Rob Jeter, Tony Bennett and Saul Phillips celebrating a big Badgers victory. Now they’re all in the NCAA tournament together as head coaches. “Everybody that’s in that huddle is in the NCAA tournament,” Ryan said. “It’s always nice to be dancing.”

Second-seeded Wisconsin opens the tournament Thursday against 15th-seeded American in Milwaukee. Ho-hum, just a 16th straight year in the NCAAs for the Badgers. Bennett, a Wisconsin assistant for Ryan’s Badgers debut season in 2001, has Virginia one better as the top seed in the East region after winning the ACC. The Cavaliers face Coastal Carolina on Friday in Raleigh, N.C.

Phillips, an assistant under Ryan at Wisconsin-Milwaukee before following Ryan to the Badgers for a few years, is now head coach of Summit League champion North Dakota State. His team plays Oklahoma on Thursday in Spokane, Wash.

Jeter, the current coach at Milwaukee, had the toughest road after leading a team picked last in the Horizon League preseason poll to the conference tournament title and an automatic NCAA bid. Milwaukee is a No. 15 seed in the East and plays Villanova on Thursday in Buffalo, N.Y.

Ryan’s comments are especially demeaning to the overwhelmingly white First District he represents in southeastern Wisconsin. Much of the district is composed of factory towns whose economic hearts have been ripped out by deindustrialization and globalization, fed by the “free trade” agreements which Ryan has championed. These once-bustling industrial centers include Racine, Kenosha, and Ryan’s hometown of Janesville. The city of Beloit, just outside Janesville and formerly in Ryan’s district, has also been languishing.

Janesville became famous, briefly, after Ryan’s false claim in 2012 that President Obama promised to keep open a General Motors plant which closed just before Christmas in 2008. That city, more than any other, has borne the brunt of Ryan's contempt for workers and the poor in his own district. Ryan’s Janesville, a community of about 62,000, has barely stayed afloat after losing an estimated 11,000 jobs directly and indirectly wiped out by the GM closing (meanwhile GM has kept channeling hundreds of millions into a plant it built in Silao Mexico to duplicate Janesville’s production lines).

After the GM plant closed, Janesville experienced a surge in human misery of all kinds--women seeking shelter from abuse, as well as suicide, food shortages, unmet health needs, and homelessness. Everyone Cooperating to Help Others Inc., a local faith-based organization, experienced nearly a 15-fold increase in demand for food from 2003 to 2009. Another indicator of the city’s plight is the percentage of children who qualify for those free and reduced-cost lunches that Ryan disparaged. The percentage of children eligible for these lunches soared from 34% in 2007 to 52.8% by the fall 2012.

Paul Ryan is Janesville's own Marie Antoinette. The Congressman has repeatedly and consistently opposed extending unemployment benefits (again during the recent budget negotiations with Sen. Patty Murray) and funding for food stamps and foreclosure assistance (although desperately needed in his birthplace, where the county saw foreclosures nearly quadruple 2000-2009).

6.) Elimination of four year old kindergarten-- even though Wisconsin is one of only two states that has a constitution that specifically calls for educating children in a public school at age four.

5.) Calls for having elementary school teachers to carry loaded firearms with them at school. Kindergartners and loaded handguns-- what could go wrong?

4.) Calls for completely eliminating taxes on corporate dividends-- the main money-maker for Wisconsin's wealthiest citizens.

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2.) That all birth control pills are really abortificients and should be banned. And it goes without saying that the Wisconsin GOP has written into their platform that their are no exceptions where a woman gets a choice of whether or not to have an abortion-- including when she's been the victim of rape and incest.

6.) Elimination of four year old kindergarten-- even though Wisconsin is one of only two states that has a constitution that specifically calls for educating children in a public school at age four.

5.) Calls for having elementary school teachers to carry loaded firearms with them at school. Kindergartners and loaded handguns-- what could go wrong?

4.) Calls for completely eliminating taxes on corporate dividends-- the main money-maker for Wisconsin's wealthiest citizens.

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2.) That all birth control pills are really abortificients and should be banned. And it goes without saying that the Wisconsin GOP has written into their platform that their are no exceptions where a woman gets a choice of whether or not to have an abortion-- including when she's been the victim of rape and incest.

Sarah Palin wasn't that far off when she talked about death panels-- except she failed to grasp that they already exist: They're called health insurance companies. Every day, people who have spent decades paying into a health insurance policy, find themselves severely injured or sick and then have to deal with an insurance company that is failing to follow through on their end of the bargain: Paying for the necessary medical care.

One example is oral chemotherapy for cancer patients. In many cases, it's more effective than other forms of chemotherapy in fighting cancer, but because it's more expensive, many insurance companies don't define it as a form of chemotherapy and, therefore, don't cover it. What the Cancer Treatment Fairness Act would simply do is require health insurance companies that already cover chemotherapy, to include "oral chemotherapy."

This bill was supported by a majority of Wisconsin's state senators-- including six Republican state senators. However, because a majority of Republican senators don't support it, Senate Majority Scott Fitzerald refused to even allow it to go up for a vote.

As State Senator Jon Erpenbach pointed out, "the reality is many advocates of this bill will die between now and the next session" because the Wisconsin legislature failed to hold health insurance companies accountable.