Tea Party Randy Travis Arrested for DWI While Naked

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UPDATE: Randy Travis is scheduled to be going to Tampa Florida this year for the Republican National Convention.

Tea Party Randy Travis Crashes Car

The Washington Post reported Randy Travis was arrested while naked and drunk when driving after he crashed his black Pontiac Trans Am and became combative with officers at the scene.

The country superstar Randy Travis, who gave a concert to draw Tea Party fans to an Iowa Straw Poll banquet for Michele Bachmann, was arrested again, this time for DWI and for threatening the highway patrolmen who arrested him.

READ MORE: Michele Bachmann hires Randy Travis

Earlier this year Travis was arrested for public intoxication. Last February CBS News reported that an officer arrested the 52-year-old singer and took him to a jail at 1:30 a.m, according to Denton County (Texas) Sheriff's Office spokesman. Authorities received a call about a suspicious vehicle parked outside a Baptist church in Sanger, about 20 miles from Tioga where the entertainer lives. Travis was found inside his car with an open bottle of wine and smelling of alcohol.

Tea Party Randy Travis visits FOX & Friends at FOX Studios on June 7, 2011 in New York City.

Tea Party Randy Travis Threatened Police

According to Fox News, "When police arrived at the scene around midnight, Travis was lying naked in the street, with his busted up 1998 Trans Am off on the side of the road in a pile of construction debris. Then, when police tried to get him into the squad car, he threatened to kill the troopers"

Records show Travis was booked in just before 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday on charges of DUI as well as Retaliation.

The Police Report

According to Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown, Travis's bond was set by a judge at the jail so there will not be an initial hearing yet. Brown says the case will probably end up in front of a grand jury and a hearing could be set in a couple of weeks.

The Grayson County Sheriff's Office released the following information:

"On August 7, 2012 the Grayson County Sheriff's Office (Sherman, Tx) received a 911 at call 11:18 p.m. The caller stated there was a man lying in the roadway on F.M. 922 at Clover Road just outside of Tioga, Texas.

Texas Department of Public Safety Troopers responded to the scene. Randy Bruce Travis was arrested for Driving While Intoxicated (misdemeanor) and Retaliation (felony).

According to the book-in sheet, Randy Travis was involved in a one vehicle accident. Travis had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath and several signs of intoxication. Travis refused a blood and breath test; a search warrant was granted by a judge for a blood specimen, which was taken at a local hospital.

While Travis was being transported Travis made threats to shoot and kill the Troopers working the case. (Thus the Retaliation charge)

Randy Bruce Travis' was arrested for: Driving While Intoxicated – Bond set at $1,500.00, and Retaliation – Bond for that charge was set at $20,000.00"

According to the Sheriff's Office, Travis is expected to be released later today when his bond is made.

* READ: Randy Travis collapses on stage...drugs blamed!

* READ: Randy Davis sued his wife for ruining his career.

* Randy Davis at the Republican National Convention.

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Massive Tax Evasion: Blame Politicians & Banks

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John Boehner and the Republicans are constantly saying, "We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem."

That is patently false, and they all know this. We have a huge revenue problem for two reasons: an unfair tax code and massive tax evasion.

The tax laws were written by the rich - specifically for the rich. The politicians in congress wrote all the tax loopholes that allow rich people to legally dodge taxes; the rest of us have our federal income taxes automatically deducted from our paychecks.

Remember Charlie Rangel? Mitt Romney isn't the only politician dodging taxes. For decades corporations and the top 1% have been dodging evading avoiding taxes all along. (They say "avoiding" taxes is legal and "evading" taxes is illegal. Mitt Romney "dodges" taxes and the military draft.)

One big tax advantage for the wealthy was the invention of the capital gains tax back in 1921 when the top marginal tax rates were much higher, allowing the rich among us to pay a lower tax rate than everyone else did on regular income --- investment income as opposed to hourly wages or weekly salaries. Today taxes for the rich and large corporations are now historically low, and tax evasion is at record highs.

The bottom 99% doesn't use foreign bank accounts, and neither do small mom-and-pop businesses. The top 1% and large corporations make up the bulk of those who evade income taxes.

Luxembourg is one of many tax havens, and Apple funnels more than a billion dollars worth of iTunes sales through that tiny country to avoid paying higher taxes.

The Cayman Islands requires a hard copy of the ownership and directorship of every account. It's American tax laws that Congress writes that allows American corporations to defer taxation by reinvesting overseas. With 217,000 registered offices located in one building in Delaware, international financial transactions tend to locate the domicile of the corporation in the jurisdiction with the most effective corporate legislation... like Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands.

People like Mitt Romney may be hiding his tax returns because he just doesn't want to verify what we already know...tax laws that are favorable to the rich were lobbied for by the rich. The bottom 99% can't afford to hire lobbyists to bribe people in congress.

These overseas "tax strategies" that Romney and others use are nothing new — and, no doubt, Apple has taken full advantage of tax rules that legally allow them to. The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 2008 estimated that at least $5 trillion to $7 trillion was sheltered in offshore jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Gibraltar, Bermuda and the Bahamas. These jurisdictions have little or no income tax.

Now some of the world’s largest wealth-management firms are saying "Go away!" ahead of Washington’s implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as Fatca, which seeks to prevent tax evasion by Americans with offshore accounts. (Maybe that's another reason Romney closed his Swiss account, but where did he move that money? It's like a shell game for the super-rich.)

Some rich Americans are even evading taxes through the Holy Land.

Democrats are in full assault mode against Mitt Romney for his fancy accounting tricks, which include Swiss bank accounts and financial instruments in places like the Cayman Islands. But he's got a champion in South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. The Republican senator says Mitt Romney is welcome to avoid paying taxes, as long as it's legal. (In other words, so long as we make it legal for Romney to do so.)

So don't blame the IRS, Congress writes the tax laws. The IRS just enforces them (or tries to with a limited budget that's been cut by Congress). But how can Romney have millions in an IRA account? Does Romney have ties to another private equity guy (Doug Shulman) who happens to be the current Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service?

And tax evasion is not just rampant among the wealthy in the U.S., globally, the super rich hold $32 trillion in offshore tax havens.

Tax evasion is a national pastime afflicting southern Europe too, and is also blamed for helping to sink the Greek economy.

France and Germany have launched a series of raids on the offices and homes of bank officials and their wealthy customers in an ongoing inquiry aimed at cracking down on those who evade taxes by using Swiss banks. Tax evasion is also eating into the Italian GDP. More than a quarter of the Italian economy eludes taxation.

But despite efforts to crack down on international tax evasion, the practice is still rampant around the world.

Almost three years after UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, paid a tiny $780 million fine for helping Americans evade taxes and agreed to hand over the names of more than 4,500 American account holders, the Swiss banking industry refuses to exit the business of tax evasion.

Human traffickers, illegal arms dealers, and drug kingpins use the offshore banking system to launder money and evade taxes too.

Prosecutors from the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan indicted Wegelin & Company, Switzerland’s oldest bank, accusing it and three of its employees of helping American taxpayers hide money.

Democratic senators proposed a tax evasion bill that would target expatriates like Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

It's bad enough that every year $1 trillion in personal income is not taxed at all for Social Security or Medicare, but we also have billions of dollars every year lost to tax evasion in the U.S.

Yet congress refuses to fund the IRS for more tax auditors. Instead, the GOP is saying that 50% of the workforce (who earns less than $25,000 a year) should "put more skin in the game". And the GOP always says that raising taxes only increases tax evasion. I guess they have a point. The tax laws were always written for rich people to dodge taxes.

Mitt Romney and the Republicans also want the banks less regulated.

So who does the IRS have left to go after? A 92-year-old retired school teacher owing $25,000 in back taxes.

The Heat is On for Over-paid and Under-taxed CEOs

Tax Evasion and Tax Amnesty

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"Mister Romney, We have a revenue problem, not a spending problem."

Audit rates of millionaires nearly double - By Blake Ellis @CNNMoney March 23, 2012

The more money you have, the more the IRS wants you.

Millionaires were nearly twice as likely to receive a tax audit last year as they were the previous year, according to data released by the IRS this week.

Overall 1.1% of taxpayers were audited last year; that's about the same as in 2010. But for taxpayers with income between $1 million and $5 million, the number jumped to 12% -- up from about 7%.

The IRS audited 21% of taxpayers with income between $5 million and $10 million, up from 12% in 2010. And 30% of the nation's highest earners -- reporting income of $10 million or more -- were dealt audits. That's up from about 18% in the previous year.

The IRS said its recent offshore tax evasion initiatives have contributed to the jump in audits of millionaires, since many offshore tax evaders are high-income earners. This year, the agency is offering taxpayers a reduction in penalties and no jail time for a limited window of time if they fess up to having offshore accounts.

But part of the crackdown on millionaires is likely political as well, said Timothy Gagnon, assistant academic specialist of Accounting at Northeastern University.

"There's so much controversy about Romney's low tax bracket and a lot more attention in the press about the millionaires being favored," he said. "It seems like the IRS is trying to show that it's paying more attention to millionaires and that their chance of an audit is higher than the average person."

Plus, the agency is trying to boost its own revenue, and there's typically a lot more money to recoup from auditing millionaires versus middle- or low- income earners, said Gagnon.

Tax returns also tend to become increasingly complicated as income rises, because there is more to report when your money is spread out across different items like real estate, foreign accounts and businesses -- increasing the chance of error.

Even if you haven't quite hit the $1 million income mark, you were still at a slightly higher risk of an audit last year. The IRS audited about 5% of taxpayers with income between $500,000 and $1 million last year -- up from 3% in 2010.

Audit rates for income levels below $500,000, however, remained relatively steady. If you reported income between $100,000 and $200,000 last year, you had about a 1% chance of an audit. If your income was between $25,000 and $100,000, your odds of getting audited were less than 1%.

But taxpayers on the other end of the spectrum -- reporting the least amount of income -- were at a higher risk of getting audited than taxpayers in the middle. If you reported income of less than $25,000 but more than $1, your chance of an audit was a little over 1%. And if you reported no income, you had about a 3% chance of being audited last year.

USA TODAY writes that the IRS audits may dip this year because of staffing shifts. "The IRS processed more than 234 million tax returns in fiscal year 2011, bringing in more than $2.4 trillion to fund the federal government. Huge? Sure. Yet the IRS' latest estimate of the net tax gap — the difference between what taxpayers owe in a year and what's not paid on time because of mistakes or fraud — totals $385 billion."

And because of the tax laws congress writes, every year $1 trillion in personal income from high-income earners is not taxed at all for Social Security or Medicare .

Tax cheats: Fess up without going to jail - By Blake Ellis @CNNMoney February 9, 2011

Tax cheats hiding money offshore have until the end of August to fess up if they want Uncle Sam to take it easy on them.

The IRS announced on Tuesday that it would give taxpayers a reduction in penalties -- and no jail time -- if they fess up to any undisclosed overseas accounts by Aug. 31.

"This new effort gives those hiding money in foreign accounts a tough, fair way to resolve their tax problems once and for all," said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman in a prepared statement. "And it gives people a chance to come in before we find them."

Tax evaders will face a penalty of up to 25% of the highest annual account balance going back to 2003, though some taxpayers will be able to receive a penalty of as little as 5% depending on the size of the account.

The program also requires tax evaders to fork over back taxes, interest and late charges for up to eight years.
IRS: Itemizers can file on Feb. 14

This is the IRS's second voluntary attempt at this program. In 2009 it reeled in 15,000 taxpayers with undisclosed overseas accounts at banks in more than 60 countries.

Penalties under the new initiative are higher than they were during the 2009 program so that people who waited to fess up aren't rewarded. However, Schulman said that as the IRS continues to invest more resources in cracking down on these illegal offshore accounts, this is the time to come forward.

"The situation will just get worse in the months ahead for those hiding assets and income offshore," he said. "This new disclosure initiative is the last, best chance for people to get back into the system."

The lessons of Mitt Romney's tax returns

GOOGLE Bud Meyers tax evasion

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Paul Ryan is Mitt Romney's VP Pick

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“Romney will announce his choice for Vice President in Norfolk, Virginia at 8:45am EST,” Romney campaign spokesman Lenny Alcivar told reporters in an email this evening.

The announcement is being made at the USS Wisconsin.

It’s still unclear whom he will choose, but the odds that it is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), seemed to increase when National Review’s Robert Costa noted that a charter plane flew from Boston to Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis. today.

Three sources at NBC also confirms that it is indeed Paul Ryan, the man who wants to kill Medicare as we know it. The man who used Social Security death benefits to fund his college education , but wants to end Social Security for the disabled and elderly...calling them "entitlements".

My Posts on Paul Ryan:

• Saint Paul Ryan
• Paul Ryan and GOP Promotes Class Envy
• Paul Ryan and the GOP has Waged Class War with Food Stamps
• Paul Ryan Hates the Unemployed and Poor
• Paul Ryan's 'New and Improved' Path to Austerity
• Paul Ryan's Holy Bible

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Mitt Romney and Marriott "Son of Boss" Tax Scam

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The Marriott hotel chain was founded by the Mormon missionary J. Willard Marriott in 1927. Mitt Romney has had a close, long-standing, personal and business connection with Marriott International and its founders for decades; and Romney served as a member of the Marriott board of directors for many years.

From 1993 to 1998, Romney was the head of the audit committee of the Marriott board. During that period, Marriott engaged in a series of complex and high-profile maneuvers, including "Son of Boss," a notoriously abusive prepackaged tax shelter that investment banks and accounting firms marketed to corporations such as Marriott. In this respect, Marriott was in the vanguard of a then-emerging corporate tax shelter bubble that substantially undermined the entire corporate tax system. More here at CNN...

From Wiki: Son of BOSS is the informal name for a type of tax shelter used in the United States, one that was designed and promoted by tax advisors in the 1990s to reduce federal tax obligations on capital gains from the sale of a business or other appreciated asset. "BOSS" is an acronym for "bond and option sales strategy", an earlier tax shelter that Son of BOSS resembled.

We are taxed on income, not gross receipts. That means that when you sell something you get to deduct your basis (initial investment). In its simplest manifestation, basis is the amount of money that you paid for something. You buy something for five dollars and sell it for six, your income is one dollar. That could be done with stocks, real estate, or by investing in SWAG (silver, wine, art, and gold)

EXAMPLE: A dime made in 1873 was recently sold for $1.6 million (plus a 15% buyer's fee) at an auction to an anonymous bidder. If the unidentified buyer later sells the dime for a profit, they should be subjected to a 15% capital gains tax on the profit. If they sell it for less than what they paid for it, it might be considered a realized capital loss.

It can be more complicated if you acquire assets in other ways, such as by gift or inheritance. The important point though is that when you sell something, the higher your basis the less your gain or the greater your loss.

The way that the designers of Marriott's "Son of Boss" tax scheme came up involved combining two things – "short sales" and the formation of a partnership. The important tax principle is that the proceeds of a short sale are not gross income. You recognize gain or loss when you close the short sale. Details for the tax scam can also be found at Forbes Magazine: Romney, Marriott And Son Of Boss ---- For Dummies

Because of the tax laws congress writes, every year $1 trillion in personal income from capital gains by high-income earners like Mitt Romney is not taxed at all for Social Security or Medicare, and it is taxed at a lower rate for federal income taxes than Warren Buffett's secretary.

In a campaign advertisement released on August 9, 2012, incumbent President, Barack Obama made specific reference to his GOP opponent Mitt Romney and his involvement in Son of BOSS tax avoidance as a Marriott International board member.

www.barackobama.com - Four ways Romney helped Marriott avoid paying taxes - August 8, 2012

"Son of Boss" tax shelter: Marriott executed a Son of Boss trade in mid-1994—a scheme that manufactures “a gigantic tax loss out of thin air” to offset actual gains “without any economic risk, cost, or loss.” Marriott later filed a return claiming an artificial loss to lower the company’s taxable income. Son of Boss schemes were notorious, involving about 1,800 people and costing the IRS an estimated $6 billion, and was described as “perhaps the largest tax avoidance scheme in history.”

“Spray and pray”: Marriott purchased four synthetic fuel plants in 2001 in order to benefit from federal tax credits for synthetic fuels, a strategy which was dubbed “spray and pray”. In 2002, the company legally claimed $159 million of those credits, reducing their effective tax rate to just 6.8 percent—far below the normal corporate rate of 35%. Even Sen. John McCain criticized Marriott’s behavior: “One of the greatest beneficiaries of this tax shelter—and that is all that it is, a tax shelter—is a very profitable hotel chain: Marriott.’’

"Profit-shifting" to Luxembourg: In 2009, Marriott collected $229 million in revenue—primarily from royalty, licensing and franchising fees—at its Luxembourg subsidiary, Global Hospitality Licensing. The subsidiary reported having only one employee. By the end of 2011, the company $451 million in offshore earnings that it left overseas to delay paying US income taxes. Under Romney’s proposed corporate tax plan, Marriott would never have to pay U.S. taxes on those earnings.

Questionable deductions: The IRS challenged $1 billion in deductions Marriott took related to an employee stock ownership program from 2000 to 2002. The company eventually agreed to pay about $220 million of what it owed in income taxes, excise taxes, and interest to the IRS and a number of states.

Marriott ultimately had to pay over a $220 million fine for using this "Son of Boss" tax sham. As usual, no one went to prison for ripping off the U.S. government -- the government that Romney wants to lead. This "Son of Boss" tax scheme is but just one of thousands of tax "avoidance" tools that the top 1% uses to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

On February 2012, Marriott International announced the construction of tallest hotel in the world...in Dubai.

Below: One of my first political ads I created and posted to YouTube last week.

GOOGLE: Bud Meyers tax evasion