Fixing The IRS Mistake

Wisdom is what you get when you make mistakes and learn from them; punishment is what you get when you make mistakes and don’t learn from them. Over the course of our history, America has made some pretty big mistakes and some of them are now competing for headlines in our news media.

 

Some of those mistakes are making headlines in the form of our current IRS scandal (a sandal which White House spokesman Beltway Jay Blarney claims doesn’t exist). Among the several mistakes that are embodied in this scandal is that of electing a man to the office of President who views the Constitution as an impediment rather than a document deserving respect. Being very forgiving I could say that electing him once was a mistake, but doing so twice means we get what we deserve. Our punishment has only just started, and I fear it will continue for quite some time. His term in office will eventually end however, and if we have learned from this mistake, perhaps we will then have the wisdom to elect someone who will repair the damage he has done.

 

 

 

The most egregious of these mistakes however, predated the current administration by several decades and will be a bit more difficult to put behind us. The mistake to which I refer is the establishment of the income tax. The first such tax was passed in 1862 to fund the Civil War, but was repealed ten years later. Another income tax was implemented in 1894, but the Supreme Court soon declared it unconstitutional. In 1913 the 16^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, eliminating the Constitutional barrier to a direct tax on individuals without apportionment and opening the door to the monstrosity that now terrorizes American citizens with impunity.

 

Aside from the many fiscal reasons to not impose a tax on personal income, there are more important issues of freedom which should have precluded its adoption. In order to levy a tax on personal income, it is necessary for the federal government, unquestionably the most powerful man-made organization on the face of the earth, to collect information from private citizens regarding their personal finances; information which few of us are willing to share with our best friends or our next door neighbors. Who do you trust more, your best friend or the federal government?

 

Additionally, to make such a tax “fair” to lower income earners, even more personal financial details are required to be reported on an annual basis. Such requirements empower the federal government to collect and store an inordinate amount of very private information on virtually every citizen of this country.

 

Because the application of tax laws has such a profound effect on business and commerce, Congress found itself (quite innocently, I’m sure) in a position of great power and influence. Naturally, it became necessary for Washington to adjust what started as a relatively simple tax code in order to please businesses and their campaign contributors. As a result, the tax code has now grown so large and unwieldy that not even the IRS can understand it.  As a result, it is nearly impossible for a taxpayer to be absolutely certain that they are in compliance with the law, which leaves us in an extremely vulnerable position. This is why most of us live in fear of that Internal Revenue Service letter in our mailboxes informing us that we are to be the subject of an IRS audit.

 

Enforcement of these tax laws has become so difficult that a massive agency, the Internal Revenue Service, has become necessary. In order to be sufficiently effective at collecting the taxes needed to run the country, its agents have been given wide latitude and an enormous amount of power not even afforded those law enforcement agencies that serve to protect our homes and lives from criminals.

 

What we are now left with is a massive tax code that no one understands, enforced by a massive collection agency that no one seems to control, financing a massive federal government controlled by politicians bent on advancing their own self-interests rather than those of the nation they are supposed to serve.  To make matters worse, this same massive collection agency is now in charge of our medical care, and privy to our most private medical information.

 

Does anyone see a problem with this situation?

 

Given the current news coming out of Washington, it is undeniable that such an agency can be weaponized to be used against political opponents by whatever politician happens to be in charge and it is just as undeniable that we have politicians who are quite willing and able to do so.

 

Will we gain wisdom from these mistakes, or will we continue to be punished for them?

 

So far two IRS officials have announced their resignations, some obscure, low level employees face scapegoating by their superiors, and there has even been mention of jail time thrown about, but there has been no real discussion of substantive steps to prevent future abuses of power.

 

Certainly at some point some member of Congress will offer up legislation that will bring about increased oversight of the agency, and a huge cost to taxpayers of course; but that legislation might make abuses of power a bit more difficult, it will almost certainly do nothing to prevent them. As long as we have a massive and rapidly growing federal government, empowered with the ability to monitor and control the minutest details of our lives, granted with virtually unlimited powers of enforcement, and controlled by career politicians with career advancement and their own self-interests at heart, this type of abuse will be not only possible but inevitable.

 

To stop this abuse of power, the power must be limited. Since it is absolutely true that knowledge is power, we must limit the knowledge that the federal government has regarding our private lives, medical records, and financial information. This will require some pretty big changes in the law, and in the way our nation operates. Obviously Obamacare must be fully repealed, and I would suggest replacing it with the healthcare reform plan I outlined quite some time ago. Additionally, it is time to totally eliminate the IRS by repealing the income tax and replacing it with the FairTax.

 

These are big steps, but we have big problems and they won’t go away without bold action. We have complained about big government and the IRS long enough, it is time to do something about it.   

 

 

 

Look Out Hillary, Here Comes the Benghazi Bus

The world of politics occasionally takes some surprising turns. One such turn that is taking place this week is the fact that the mainstream media seems to have finally realized that something wrong happened in Benghazi, that it had nothing to do with a spontaneous protest over a video no one ever saw, and that members of the Obama administration lied about their response to the attack. One would get the impression that a sudden outbreak of journalism had infected the Washington press corps, but I suspect that is not the case.

The first thing that makes me suspicious about the new revelations that are coming out is the press conference in which Ed Henry of Fox News asked the President about claims that witnesses were being threatened. Did anyone notice that Obama called on Ed Henry from Fox News for the first question? Okay, that’s not earth shattering, but it gave Ed Henry the opportunity to pose the question regarding the Benghazi witness intimidation, and it gave Obama a perfect opportunity to deny any knowledge of it.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, when asked about the allegations, responded by asserting that the attacks happened “a long time ago” and stumbled over a weak excuse that the Republicans were just playing politics. While I am not a fan of Jay Carney, it did surprise me to hear how poorly he handled the issue.

Now it seems that as the witnesses are coming forward, members of the news media have awakened from their Obama induced trances and are actually reporting their testimony. It is surprising and refreshing to see them actually reporting news that appears to cast a negative light on the Obama administration. Unless you knew otherwise, you might get the impression that the media has finally turned on Obama and is willing to report the news and let the chips fall where they may.

Or maybe not.

We really need to look at the big picture. If you will remember, this attack took place on September 11, 2012 during the presidential election. Had this story been thoroughly investigated and reported on at the time it may well have changed the election’s outcome, so needless to say there was no chance that would happen. The election is over now, and the details are beginning to come out, but the willingness of the media to report on it is still surprising. It is my belief that they know these revelations will not implicate Obama, but others are not going to be so fortunate.

One very important thing to consider in this is that there are currently two Democrats who have indicated they might run for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. As it stands, Clinton appears to be in the best position to win the nomination. It is no secret however, that there is little love lost between Clinton and Obama. This brings up the possibility that some old-fashioned Chicago style politics is at hand.

I have my doubts that Barack Obama is very excited at the prospect of Hillary Clinton taking over the reins at the end of his second term. He knows her well enough to know that she has her own agenda and isn’t likely to make it a priority to continue with his. Joe Biden, on the other hand, isn’t bright enough to develop his own agenda and would be more than happy to continue on the current path. After eight years of training under Obama, he would most certainly be Obama’s choice. I could be completely off-base, but it looks to me that Obama is preparing to throw Hillary under the bus to clear the way for Biden in 2016.

The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle

The Great Sequester of 2013 has been with us for two months now, and surprisingly enough there are no masses of starving people living in the streets, nor has there been a sudden rash of Granny laden wheelchairs falling over the cliff. While it is certainly true that many school children have had their dreams of touring the White House dashed, they are still attending school just as they were before the budget cuts went into effect. The dire warnings of impending doom from President Obama have given him a permanent membership in the Mayan Calendar Makers’ Hall of Fame.

Contrary to the picture painted by many in Washington, the sequestration did no actual cutting of the budget; rather, it simply reduced the growth in spending over each of the next 10 years. The legislation that created these cuts was deliberately written to make the cuts more painful by making the cuts indiscriminately across-the-board, giving little or no leeway on how those cuts were to be administered. The idea was to pressure lawmakers into actually working out a budget deal, but as we know that did not happen. Even with Obama’s covert policy of making sure the cuts were implemented in such a way as to make them hurt as much as possible, the predicted disasters have not happened. When the cuts did begin to make air travel a bit more difficult, Congress immediately went into action passing a bill to fix the problem in a most bi-partisan way, conveniently before they all rushed to the airport to fly home.

This brings us to the point where we can make a few very interesting observations.



For decades, Republicans have been proposing spending cuts, or rather cuts in the rate of growth of federal spending, and each of those proposals was met by Democrat opposition and warnings of the terrible consequences of cutting a single penny from the budget. Predictions of starving school children and old ladies being pushed over the cliff became standard fare for Democrat campaign ads. When the sequestration was looming, the Democrats trotted out the same warnings, but this time they were not enough to prevent the cuts from taking place.

Guess what? School children are still eating and becoming obese, and Granny is still alive and kicking. If indiscriminant across-the-board budget cuts can be made without a great deal of pain, would it not be logical to assume that we could make additional cuts allowing department heads to have discretion on how where those cuts take place without destroying life as we know it?

Ah yes, the genie is out of the bottle. This is exactly why President Obama wanted to avoid the sequester, and why he went out of his way to make sure the effects of the cuts were as visible and as painful as possible. The last thing the Democrats wanted was for the American people to finally realize that common sense budget cuts could easily be made. They knew that such a revelation would expose the lies they have been feeding us, take away their excuses for not controlling spending, and give their constituents reason to question why they have been so unwilling to be fiscally responsible with our money.

The truth is even with the sequester our federal budget is severely bloated with unnecessary and wasteful spending. Despite what most politicians will tell you we can make actual cuts, not just cuts in the rate of growth without causing any great calamity. Naturally, as is usually the case when budgets are cut, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we have to inject some fiscal responsibility into Washington. People will have to get used to the idea that not every good idea should become a federal program, and that some things just aren’t worth borrowing money from China to pay for.