Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will see scattered thundershowers with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 19m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the nine hundred forty-ninth day.
On this day in 1215, King John of England accedes to the Magna Carta:
Recommended for reading in full:
Brian Faler reports Big businesses paying even less than expected under GOP tax law:
The U.S. Treasury saw a 31 percent drop in corporate tax revenues last year, almost twice the decline official budget forecasters had predicted. Receipts were projected to rebound sharply this year, but so far they’ve only continued to fall, down by almost 9 percent or $11 billion.
Though business profits remain healthy and the economy is strong, total corporate taxes are at the lowest levels seen in more than 50 years.
At the same time, overall taxes paid by individuals under the new tax law are up so far this year by 3 percent, thanks to higher wages and salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Last year tax payments by individuals went up 4 percent.
The drop comes even as some Republicans, such as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, have claimed, dubiously, that the law will pay for itself.
(There’s no smaller government to be had from a system of deficit spending through tax redistribution that benefits the few.)
Carol D. Leonnig, Katie Zezima, and Tom Hamburger report Inside the NRA’s finances: Deepening debt, increased spending on legal fees — and cuts to gun training:
The National Rifle Association spent growing sums on overhead in 2018 even as it cut money for core activities such as gun training and political efforts, ending the year deeper in debt, new financial documents show.
The gun rights group’s 2018 financial report, which was obtained by The Washington Post, portrays the longtime political powerhouse as spending faster than its revenue rose.
The records show that the NRA froze its pension plan for employees at the end of last year, a move that saved it close to $13 million, and obtained a $28 million line of credit by borrowing against its Virginia headquarters.
Despite that, the nonprofit group, four affiliated charities and its political committee together ended the year $10.8 million in the red. In 2017, the six groups ended the year with a $1.1 million shortfall.
Brian Mittendorf, an Ohio State University accounting professor who has studied nonprofits, including the NRA, and examined the 2018 report for The Post, said it depicted “a bad year for them financially.” He compared the NRA to a person living paycheck to paycheck, leaning on credit cards with very little cushion.
(There’s no legitimate Second Amendment defense from wasting money and aligning with the ambitions of Putin’s Russia. See Investigators Are Zeroing in on Top NRA Leaders’ Russia Ties—and Challenging the Gun Group’s Story.)