BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR – Ryan Closes Out A Truly Toxic Career Aimed at Widening The Income Gap, Promoting Social Inequality, And Destroying the Safety Net That Most Americans Depend On In One Way Or Another! – “Boy Wonder” From Wisconsin (Who Betrayed His Working Class Home Town & Was Re-elected Only Because Of Massive Gerrymandering) Was One Of America’s Worst Politicos

Since the day he developed what would become a lifelong, unremitting, probably-actually-really-awkward-for-his-wife crush on Ayn Rand, House Speaker Paul Ryan has dreamed about two things: cutting taxes on the wealthy and destroying the social safety net. (Three things if you count convincing his wife to style her hair in a side-swept bob, which he’s been told time after time is never gonna happen, so stop asking.) So devoted was he to the hallowed principle of redistributing wealth to the people at the top that, for the past year and a half, he’s put up with just about everything that’s come out of the White House, be it the firing of the F.B.I. director, a refusal to condemn white supremacists, an alleged affair with a porn star, hush money, the attacking of his colleagues via Twitter, and the strong suggestion that special counsel Robert Mueller may be next to get the ax. Because in Donald Trump, Wisconsin’s first son saw the potential for a payoff that outweighed having to align himself with a born swindler who’s made a mockery of the White House and sought to destroy America’s standing in the world: a historic transfer of wealth thinly disguised as tax “reform.” With the bill once known as the “Cut Cut Cut Act” safely signed into law—a moment Ryan cited as one of the proudest of his career—the speaker announced to rank-and-file Republicans on Wednesday that he would retire at the end of the year, ducking out at a crucial crossroads for his party.

So what gives? Aside from facing political headwinds at home, and a pre-emptive battle for his job on the Hill, Ryan likely looked into the future and saw little hope of carrying out the rest of his agenda, even under a Republican president. For a brief moment after the tax legislation was passed, Ryan was lustily eyeing the opportunity to embark on welfare “reform,” positioning it, basically seconds after ushering in a historic giveaway to corporate America and the ultra-wealthy, as the reason the country’s finances were in total disarray. But sadly for Ryan, Mitch McConnell almost immediately put the kibosh on those plans, realizing how politically unfeasible they were. And so, as New York’s Ed Kilgore put it, Ryan likely “look[ed] ahead to a straitened G.O.P. margin in the House . . . and the prospect of having to wait until 2021 at the earliest to resume the fight against the welfare state [and] decided to go home to Wisconsin and regroup.”

By bowing out, Ryan will also be well clear of Washington by the time his tax bill really starts to bear fruit. We speak, of course, of the report released by the Congressional Budget Office just two days before Ryan announced he was throwing in the towel. Among other things, the report estimates that, thanks in large part to December’s tax bill, the U.S. deficit will top $1 trillion annually starting in 2020, with the national debt soaring past $33 trillion by 2028, a situation that increases the likelihood of a fiscal crisis. Which, come to think of it, is something Ryan used to care about when tax cuts weren’t so close he could taste ’em. (Under Barack Obama, Ryan absolutely railed against deficits, turning them into the right’s monster in the closet, and winning a hilariously named “Fiscy” award in 2011 for “being the first [congressman] in several years to step forward with a specific scorable budget plan that would actually solve the nation’s long-term structural deficits.”)

Five years later, however, he can take credit for setting the U.S. on a path to run trillion-dollar deficits from now to eternity, beginning in 2020. Because, as his supply-side brother from another mother Larry Kudlow explained Monday night, deficits are fine when they’re for tax cuts or the type of spending that will line the private sector’s pockets, but for things like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? Well, then they’re a total scourge on society that must be stopped at all costs. Luckily, at roughly half the age at which he wants Americans to work until they can retire, Ryan has plenty of years left to collect checks from the Brothers Koch and other corporate donors, who coincidentally just came into a large amount of money.

The Trump organization finds a new way to lower its tax bill

You would think, what with the historic tax law passed in December that was particularly kind to real-estate enterprises like the Trump Organization, that the president’s family business would be content to pay whatever taxes the I.R.S. decides it owes. But, given who we’re dealing with here, you would of course think wrong:

Across the country, the Trump Organization is suing local governments, claiming it owes much less in property taxes than government assessors say because its properties are worth much less than they’ve been valued at. In just one example, the company has asserted that its gleaming waterfront skyscraper in Chicago is worth less than than its assessed value, in part because its retail space is failing and worth less than nothing.

No president in modern times has owned a business involved in legal battles with local governments. “The idea that the president would have these interests and then those companies would sue localities is really a dangerous precedent,” says Larry Noble, of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. The dynamic between local and federal governments is impossible to ignore in these cases, says Noble. Municipalities “rely on resources from the federal government and the federal government can make your life easier or much more difficult.” The concern arises because the president did not fully separate from his businesses, he says.

For its part, the Trump Organization has naturally claimed that there’s nothing to see here and that, in fact, anyone suggesting otherwise should be ashamed of him or herself. In a statement, a spokesperson for the firm told ProPublica: “Like any other business or property owner when property taxes become inflated it is not uncommon to challenge the process to ensure fair treatment. This is a routine practice and any suggestion otherwise is simply ridiculous.”

The gun industry can’t believe Bank of America is being so rude

As part of corporate America’s decision, in the wake of the Parkland massacre, to step back and assess whether or not associating with mass murder is a good look, Bank of America has decided to stop lending money to companies that produce assault-style weapons for non-military purposes. And the new policy is not sitting very well with those companies.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry lobby, puts the economic impact of the gun and ammunition industry at $51.1 billion nationwide in 2017. That organization criticized the bank’s move on Tuesday, saying it’s wrong to deem semiautomatic rifles long available to civilians to be military-style weapons.

“We as an industry would welcome the opportunity to sit down with Bank of America executives and explain our industry’s perspective to discuss what really would work to keep firearms out of the hands of those who should not have them,” Michael Bazinet, a spokesman for the N.S.S.F., told Bloomberg. “We should be part of the discussion.” (Bazinet did not get into specifics, re: what would “really” work to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, but presumably it falls under the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” umbrella.)

John Paulson’s gonna need a bigger check

The billionaire hedge-fund manager, for whom the last several years have amounted to basically being kicked in the ribs and then kneed in the balls while coughing up blood, apparently owes a large amount of money to the I.R.S.:

By April 17, the hedge-fund manager must make federal and state tax payments of about $1 billion, on top of roughly $500 million in taxes he paid late last year, said people close to the firm. That sum is so big it dwarfs the maximum amount the Internal Revenue Service will allow any single taxpayer to pay with a single check. (That’s $99,999,999, in case you’re wondering.)

Mr. Paulson, 62, isn’t exactly struggling to pay the $1.5 billion bill. But he’s also not as flush as the heady days of 2008. In fact, after a string of poor results, a bad bet on pharmaceutical stocks and client defections, Mr. Paulson has been selling various investments to cover the bill. He’s also in the process of cutting costs and shrinking his firm, including laying off senior traders.

“It is safe to say it is one of the largest tax bills on earned income in history,” Henry Bregstein, co–global head of the financial-services group at the law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, told The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Zuckerman.

And speaking of taxes . . .

Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, whose house, hotel room, and office were raided by the F.B.I. on Monday, reportedly owes $54,000 in taxi-medallion back taxes, which sounds about right.

Scott Pruitt contains multitudes

Time was, we thought E.P.A. administrator was simply all about the cause of destroying the Earth for the benefit of his buddies in the private sector. But according to a new report from The New York Times, he’s actually also a complete and total megalomaniac:

When Scott Pruitt wanted to refashion the Environmental Protection Agency’s “challenge coin”—a type of souvenir medallion with military origins that has become a status symbol among civilians—he proposed an unusual design: Make it bigger, and delete the E.P.A. logo.

Mr. Pruitt instead wanted the coin to feature some combination of symbols more reflective of himself and the Trump administration. Among the possibilities: a buffalo, to evoke Mr. Pruitt’s native Oklahoma, and a Bible verse to reflect his faith. Other ideas included using the Great Seal of the United States—a design similar to the presidential seal—and putting Mr. Pruitt’s name around the rim in large letters, according to Ronald Slotkin, a career E.P.A. employee who retired this year, and two people familiar with the proposals who asked to remain anonymous because they said they feared retribution.

“These coins represent the agency,” Slotkin, a former director of the E.P.A.’s multimedia office, told the Times. “But Pruitt wanted his coin to be bigger than everyone else’s and he wanted it in a way that represented him.”

Elsewhere!

Dow closes more than 200 points lower after Trump taunts Russia (CNBC)

China Talks Stalled Over Trump’s Demands on High-Tech Industries, Source Says (Bloomberg)

Larry Kudlow: Tariffs might come before negotiations with China (CNBC)

Elon Musk is stressed, says he’s sleeping on Tesla factory floor and has no time to go home and shower (CNBC)

It Turns Out $25 Million Won’t Buy Schwarzman His Name on a High School (Bloomberg)

Wynn’s Boston Casino Is Rising on Land Tied to a Mobster (Bloomberg)

Zuckerberg tangles with Congress on control of Facebook data (Reuters)

Federal Reserve policymakers all saw strengthening economy, inflation (Reuters)

Escaped tortoise traveled a five-minute walk in three days (UPI)