SD delegation bolts from LATI graduation after Obama speech; Thune's a liar

In his speech to Lake Area Technical Institute President Obama talked about tapping a loophole for the richest Americans that shines light for those seeking a path to the middle class through technical education. South Dakota's GOP legislature blocks education funding.

The KSFY teevee live feed shows Obama turning away in disgust after hearing something South Dakota's lone US Representative said to him at the airport. The state's GOP governor was shown squirming on the dais as the president blasted Republican obstructionism.

One GOP US senator from South Dakota wants to eliminate the US Department of Education. DoE provided the template for LATI's tuition calculator.

In making his pitch to repeal the estate tax, Sen. John Thune grossly inflated an out-of-date statistic about the percentage of businesses forced to liquidate because of the tax. Thune claimed that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office “said a third of businesses who owe the death tax owe more in taxes than what their assets are worth.” But Thune botched the statistic, leaving out several crucial qualifiers. In fact, the same CBO report that Thune cited concluded the “vast majority of estates, including those of farmers and small-business owners, had enough liquid assets to pay the estate taxes they owed.” According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, only roughly 20 small business and small farm estates nationwide owed any estate tax in 2013.

Read it here.

Repeal of the estate tax would benefit about twenty SDGOP donors.

Hypocrisy still greases SDGOP politics.

House Republicans are expected to bring their proposal to repeal the federal estate tax to a vote in the week of April 13. Repeal would reduce revenues by $269 billion over the next decade and worsen inequality because it would benefit only a small number of the nation’s wealthiest estates. How small? See the table below, which estimates how many estates in each state would benefit from repeal in 2016. (The note explains our methodology, based on IRS and Joint Committee on Taxation [JCT] data.) [Off the Charts Blog]

S/o to @johnthune, @RepKristiNoem, and @SenatorRounds for disrespectfully leaving OUR graduation AFTER Pres. Obama left. #classy #NoSupport

— Tanner Flack (@tittybuck) May 9, 2015