IRS commissioner tells Congress the agency owes no apologies

Really? Not even just a little bit, just to say, “Sorry about the whole not-retaining-our-records-when-we-demand-that-you-do” sort of thing? IRS Commissioner John Koskinen asserted that the IRS owes no apologies for the curious epidemic of hard-drive failures among officials involved in the targeting scheme, whose e-mails Congress has spent the last year-plus demanding from the IRS:

Note well that smirk on Koskinen’s face as he proclaims this, too. We’ll get back to the qualifier Koskinen uses in a moment. Katie Pavlich followed the hearing and reported the exchange on Twitter:

Read Noah’s post for a litany of reasons why the IRS owes the American public an apology. They may owe one to Orrin Hatch as well. He met with Koskinen on Monday to discuss the sudden revelation of the hard-drive crash in Lois Lerner’s computer, and now says that Koskinen never mentioned during that conversation that six other drives had been similarly destroyed:

Translation: We’ve dutifully saved everything that we, er, saved. Does that fly in a tax audit? I’d bet that smirk wouldn’t. Don’t be surprised if this declaration becomes a hot topic in Monday’s Oversight hearing.

Here's an incentive for the K-man.

In an audit one is presumed to be guilty until proven innocent, right?

Perhaps the Committee can just consider All participants in this scheme guilty until they can prove they are innocent. Just consider them all convicted and....

(1) Ineligible for compensation, bonuses, or retirement of any kind.

(2) Incarcerate them all until such a time as they can be proven innocent. Make them share space with illegals at a de-commissioned military base - or there's always Club Gitmo (I understand there are 5 cells there that have just become available recently.)

Coughing up their "lost" emails would be a real fine place to start if they hope for acquittal.

Gazing up from that metal slab that passes for a bed in the klink, one would at least think they'd be incentivized to look for those emails don't you think?

FReegards!

Sorry, my FRiend, but, while you are absolutely correct in your usage of 'decimated', it is not the proper word for the remedy for this problem. Decimation would perforce include the firings of some number of low-level flunkies, which, aside from likely being unjust to the flunky, would very distinctly be a pointless exercise; flunkies are infinitely replaceable.

The correct word is 'decapitated'. Not in the sense of the literal cutting off of heads, but rather in the sense of removal of ALL the top bureaucrats, however many that may be. Decapitation, here, has several particular advantages.

First, decapitation guarantees, effectively, that ALL the malefactors with any decision-making power in an organisation will be removed.

Second, post-decapitation, some number of underlings, now no longer under threat of retaliation from their bosses, will step forward -- even voluntarily, I should imagine -- and provide information necessary to the further cleaning up of the organisation in question.

Third, with a proper offer, to wit, "Hey, you fired a&&hole, want your job back?. Okay, come forward under oath and spill your guts.", even more information necessary to further clean-up will be garnered.

Fourth, other senior bureaucrats throughout the goobermint will unquestionably get the message more or less immediately that their, er, 'improved' behaviour is now imperatively important to their careers.

Fifth, the gross reduction of personnel accomplished by decapitation cannot but reduce overall goobermint spending. If accompanied by other measures, this reduction might become quite sizeable.

Sixth, decapitation will require some number of Senate confirmations, wherein (presumably, but certainly not a given considering the GOPe) proper and detailed vetting of nominees will be performed. No guarantee of success in keeping out new scumbags here, but at least it is a legitimate shot, and a net improvement in lowering the level of general scumbaggery in the organisation can hardly be avoided.

FReegards!

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