Posted on 09/22/2014 7:04:44 PM PDT by markomalley
This week the IRS conservative targeting scandal turned 500 days old. It’s been 500 days since we learned that Lois Lerner’s former agency targeted right-leaning groups applying for nonprofit status and audited ones that already exist. And it has been 500 days since I righteously decided to stop paying my taxes.
500 days later, the IRS still hasn’t produced emails from Lerner and the more than 20 other IRS employees whose computers allegedly crashed, whose Blackberries were thrown away and “upgraded,” and, in Lerner’s case, whose hard drive was “scratched” and destroyed. But we know that Lerner exchanged confidential taxpayer information on conservatives with top White House adviser Jeanne Lambrew during the 2012 election cycle. We know that Lerner and her White House-visiting underling Nikole Flax were involved in a “secret research project” involving conservative donor information that was approved by then-IRS commissioner Steven T. Miller. President Barack Obama first called the whole thing “outrageous.” Then he said there’s “not a smidgen of corruption.”
How much longer will this go on? New IRS chief John Koskinen said that “hard drive crashes continue as we speak.” Lerner is giving softball interviews with Politico about how conservatives (who she once called “assholes”) are trying to ruin her life. The White House has yet to be subpoenaed for the emails it exchanged with Lerner. Same goes for the Department of Justice.
What has happened in these last 500 days, since I first started covering the “phony” IRS scandal and decided that these faceless bureaucrats harassing the president’s political enemies were not worthy of my hard-earned $619 that they claimed I owe to them in 2014? What happened in America in these 500 aggravating days?
The government shut down because of Obamacare and Republicans got blamed. The Obamacare website was screwed up. ISIS beheaded three Western journalists. The “knockout” game ravaged pedestrians in major cities. Vladimir Putin seized Crimea. Guatemalan children poured across the border. John Kerry let Iran keep having nuclear power plants. War raged between Israel and Hamas. Armed federal agents stole a rancher’s cattle and then it was all okay because the rancher said something racist. Ebola broke out. A Malaysian plane got lost. Racial tensions spilled over in Ferguson. Obama’s Gallup rating dropped six points, from 49 to 43.
Robin Williams died. So did Joan Rivers. Top-rated Jay Leno was forced off The Tonight Show and replaced by lame, unfunny overachiever Jimmy Fallon. David Letterman announced his retirement and CBS picked Stephen Colbert to replace him. “Big Brother” became the highest-rated entertainment program even though nobody knew it’s still on. Tucker Carlson fell asleep on television. Jon Stewart directed a movie. Tyler Perry created three TV shows.
Professional football got roasted for violence, domestic violence and having an Indian team name. ESPN turned into MSNBC. My favorite writer got convicted of a campaign finance felony. My favorite radio host got slammed for saying something he didn’t say. Rick Perry got indicted for nothing. California changed for legal purposes the words “husband” and “wife” to “spouse” and “spouse.” Its schoolchildren now get to pick which gendered bathroom they use.
500 days ago, I lived alone in a crappy apartment in the depressing Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., six Metro stops from work. Now I live with a roommate I’d never met before in a crappier apartment in the even more depressing neighborhood of [redacted], seven Metro stops away.
I got into some fights, verbally: on Twitter, with my landlord, with my bank manager, with people who work for the Washington Area Metro Authority, with a guy on the street who said he was going to beat my ass for wearing a sportcoat. I got mugged. My glasses got broken. I had to go to the free community health clinic. I found out that my lungs are all screwed up due to smoking. I refused to quit smoking. PNC Bank frequently fined me for not having any money. I was the victim of identity theft. My computer and phone were repeatedly hacked into (and they’re still in there….I’m on to you, Holder).
The Democratic National Committee led a boycott against me. Many journalists tried to get me fired. Someone named Dave Weigel called me “impotent.” My friend, former Caller editor Will Rahn, left to go join a lame liberal mainstream publication called “The Daily Beast.” I don’t know how to create viral content like college kids can, which is going to end up being pretty bad for me in journalism. Truth-challenged flack Jay Carney, meanwhile, got a job at CNN.
These have not been a good 500 days. The country slogged through it, confused, unhappy, looking for others to blame. I was one of them.
Was the IRS scandal responsible for all of these terrible things happening in our country, the world and my downmarket Washington neighborhoods? No. But it didn’t help.
500 days ago, we learned that the most powerful tax-collecting agency in the United States has been turned into a political weapon and their enemy is average hardworking American citizens. When people find out such a thing, it tends to lead to feelings of hopelessness. It makes people cynical. Important institutions have been corrupted and there’s nothing we can do about it because they claim that the computers crashed and that’s the end of it? And 500 days later, we still don’t have the emails?
This 500-day mark should be the point where we as Americans decide we’re not going to take it anymore, when we demand answers, when we try to get basic information out of our government so we can have just one tiny fragment of justice and decency and common sense back in our lives. But it doesn’t feel like it. It feels instead like the force of 315 million people shrugging. It feels like a country accepting that we’re circling the drain as a free-market democracy, putting their headphones in and going back to looking down at their not-at-all-private cell phones. 500 days of this. 500 days.
I did not pay my taxes this year. I will not pay my taxes until every single Lois Lerner email is released and the people who planned and carried out this governmental travesty are held accountable. So start watching that clock, John Koskinen, if you think you’re going to get my overdue money, and every day this goes on is another day I’m not giving you a dime (soon it will hit 619 days, one for every hard-earned dollar I “owe.”)
Go ahead and take me to court, federal government. I’m not giving you $619 I need so I can subsidize a fraction of a new salary bonus for some unethical bureaucrat who audited my friends and fellow countrymen. Your corruption cast a hopeless pall over this great but troubled country and its great but jaded people.
I will not pay, IRS. Because America already did.
I applaud this guy
A more legal option is for conservatives to simply up their donations to private charity so that they do not owe any tax.
Wish a few hundred thousand individuals had that sort of go-nads.
IMHO I think the reason for this HUGE coverup is that the emails went to the Whitehouse.
Patrick, you can’t win against these thieving goons.
They will estimate your taxes based on previous years and remove the funds from your bank account.
AFAIK, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
You have a great attitude. If 100,000 other people would adopt the same attitude we might see some change in Washington.
A “more legal/moral” option for conservatives is to claim many more dependents, so the feds don't get “their money” up-front, from confiscated wages in the first place!
After all, Lois was in charge of all those IRS approved charities for well over a decade.
I would be very leary of any of them....
Of more importance is WHO in the WH did the emails go to ? That is what is being covered up. It's probably not who we think, either.
I know a few people who don’t pay “income taxes” to the federal government based on on what may be reasonable conclusions that the money they earn in exchange for their labors is not “income” as defined by statute.
The IRS pretty much leaves these people alone as long as they don’t publicize what they are doing.
There have been a few criminal prosecutions for failure to pay “income taxes” where the defendant was found not guilty; but you better know what you are doing and have a clear understanding of the laws and their history. The basic argument is, wages are not income under the statutes, and a demand that the prosecution cite the specific statute which requires them to pay in their circumstances. The fact is, there is no statute. There are lots of IRS rules and regulations, but rules and regulations are for the implementation of a law. I have yet to hear of a prosecutor being able to actually cite a statute.
Without going to court and getting a judgment, they can no longer do that.
Okay. The IRS will go to court and get a judgement, then they’ll do the stuff I outlined. The judgement is a minor irritation for them.
Interesting.
Another thing to consider is that Fast and Furious is technically state-sponsored terrorism... and there’s federal law prohibiting providing finances to such.
Yet another, is that the NSA (and DOJ/FBI) are ignoring the 4th (and 5th, and possibly 6th) amendment; by rejecting the constraints that the Constitution places on the government, they reject the authority of the Constitution, and in so doing they also reject the very authority that gives them the power tax at all — IOW, there is some legal justification to saying “F—— Y—” when the government refuses to abide by the Constitution.
Courts? Judgements? (laws?!) Pffft. That’s so 2007.
They’re watching (Insert creepy music).
Just as I suspected, no one is taking this seriously.
IMHO I think the reason for this HUGE coverup is that the emails went to the Whitehouse.
Well of course. We all know that. The problem is, no one
is really going to do anything about it. This whole thing
is slowly going to fade away, just like Benghazi. Just
like a Balanced budget. When was the last time you heard
of one of those? Nothing is, has been or ever will be
done about that either. The constitution’s dead we are
living under dictates and intimidation.
I guess he’s still single too...
Hope someone who reads this can help him out. He needs a booster club.
I have hard drives dating back to 1995 that still work.
Only have had one that actually crashed. The data was recovered.
The hard drives they buy must be IRS specials that automatically crash on investigation.
They are liars.
The IRS is not going to take anyone to court who simply keeps their mouths shut unless a large amount of money is involved.
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