Pro IRS Propaganda

The current wave of slanted media hype to try to drum up support for more IRS power is underway. These two stories are fairly typical of the lies that the media tell in order to make the public feel good about an even more powerful IRS. Besides their love of big government, which obviously needs as much money as possible, my only guess for the motivation for these puff pieces is a desire to avoid IRS audits. I can only assume that it is working because, if one of these people is ever subjected to the same kind of torture IRS inflicts on millions of regular people each year, they would be sure to bitch about it plenty.

Cheating

The media love to portray everyone as a tax cheater, with a big powerful IRS the only way to prevent that, such as this piece that claims 24% of people don’t consider cheating on taxes to be a mortal sin, based on some idiotic non-scientific survey. This is just pure crap. As I see every single day, rather than pervasive cheating, most people overpay their taxes because of ignorance of readily available tax savings breaks and/or sloppy bookkeeping.

Hamstrung IRS

This sob story for the poor IRS cracks me up. Supposedly, they were the innocent victims of a witch hunt in the 1990s and have been unable to do their job effectively ever since. This is another big fat steaming load of crapola. The big congressional hearings about IRS abuses only scratched the surface and, just like every disclosure of government waste, everyone has a big laugh and then it’s back to business as usual. Have the Feds stopped paying $600 for toilet seats after that came out in a hearing? Not a chance. IRS is still operating in the exact same abusive and incompetent manner as when those hearings were held.

KMK

Bigger Government

It’s often difficult to tell the two big parties apart, especially when Bush’s solution for fighting terrorism is adding yet another big expensive bureaucracy. More Federal employees. Much higher costs and taxes to pay for them. Less effectiveness. How is this any different from what Gore would have done?

KMK

Simon’s Tax Shelter

Some of the details on the kind of controversial tax shelter PRC gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon has allegedly used have been published. Note the tone of the article; that the shelter is an illegal fraud. The truth is that it has not yet been determined to be illegal. IRS is claiming that it is fraudulent, as they like to do with almost anything that can help people hold onto their own money.

I am not defending this particular shelter, and I have no hands-on experience with it. However, it is not right to automatically take the side of the IRS in disputes such as this. Unfortunately, that is the standard template for the media. With them, IRS is always right and anyone who tries to reduce his/her taxes is an evil scum sucking pig.

I’m still waiting to hear how the IRS personnel who illegally released the protected private information about Simon’s tax returns will be punished. I’m not holding my breath. Of course, if an IRS employee had released private details about the liberals’ man, Gray Doofus, the feces storm calling for the head of the IRS employee would be swift and loud.

KMK

Who’s Better For Society?

This is an interesting look at the benefits of capitalism vs charity. It sounds a lot like the teaching to fish metaphor. Charity only helps a few people for a short time, while capitalism builds a structure to help others for a lifetime.

KMK

Cushy Retirement

Just as with the hypocrisy of our rulers in DC condemning the creative accounting done by some big corporations, while they themselves preside over the most corrupt accounting systems known to mankind, comes this similar contrast with expensive retirement perks. There has been a lot of press in the past few weeks over the former Chairman of General Electric, Jack Welch’s very lucrative retirement package as recently revealed in a nasty publicized divorce battle.

I’m not about to defend such a lucrative corporate retirement plan for the top dogs. What has always frosted me is the misapplication of the concept of proper compensation for performance. A corporate executive who runs the company into the ground shouldn’t be rewarded for that. He should be fired and never paid a dime more. The golden parachutes taken by the top guys from such failed companies as Enron and WorldCom are indefensible.

Likewise, it should be the same with our elected rulers. If they make things worse for their subjects, they shouldn’t be rewarded with very expensive retirement benefits, paid for by the same subjects who were already screwed over when they were in office. However, life isn’t fair, especially when the crooks themselves control the purse-strings of the treasury. Their retirement benefits are much more bountiful than most corporate executives can even dream of, including a much more generous payment plan than the Social Security Ponzi Scheme that the rest of us mere mortals are forced to participate in. This brings up the long running peeve of our rulers always exempting themselves from the laws they force the rest of us to abide by. Remember this when our rulers hold hearings in their efforts to dictate how private corporations should structure retirement plans for their executives.

KMK

PRC Third Parties

Things are getting even more exciting in the race for PRC Governor since I mentioned voting for a third party candidate. The Libertarian Party’s candidate has been a bad little boy, spitting at a radio talk show host, and has had his official Party support removed. However, there are still some other choices available other than having to choose between Simon & Doofus.

KMK

Tainted Donations

Charities that benefited from donations of pumped up stocks do have a bit of a dilemma. My take is that the idiots who paid such outlandishly high prices for dot-com & other fictitious businesses deserved what they got. Hopefully, the charities were wise enough to sell off those inflated shares as soon as they came in

KMK

Senators No Tax Pledge

While it is nice to see that some of the US Senators running for reelection, including our own Tim Hutchinson, are pledging to fight any tax increase, I have my doubts as to whether we can believe them. Doesn’t anyone remember George H.W. Bush’s famous pledge? As much as it pains me to say so, I think the Dems who refuse to make the no tax hike pledge are the more honest of the bunch on this issue.

KMK

Not Everyone Is Scared

The GOP may be backing away from the idea of allowing people to control how some of their retirement money is invested; but there is a new coalition of business groups that is planning to fight for that choice. I couldn’t find a website for this group, COMPASS. If anyone comes across it, please let me know.

KMK

Keeping Them Stupid

Continuing its erosion of personal freedoms, they are actually trying to make it a crime to home school kids in the PRC. They don’t want to take a chance that some kiddies may reach adulthood without the proper indoctrination from the government brainwashers. If the PRC rulers get their way, any parents who actually want their children to receive a decent education will lose custody of those children. If this doesn’t sound like Communist countries, I don’t know what does.

In the small world category, the power mad California Superintendent of Public Instruction, Delaine Eastin, actually started her left-wing political career on the City Council of Union City, CA while I was living there in the 1980s. She was originally an analyst with Pacific Bell; but fell in love with running the lives of other people and controlling what all children are allowed & forced to learn.

KMK