Big Red Car here. Sticky and warm here in the ATX. Already in the low 70s and likely headed to needing A/C for the mugginess before the day is over. Bit cloudy.
So The Boss is talking to one of his politico pals and they get on the subject of the IRS. The Big Red Car eavesdrops. [Haha, the Big Red Car is worse than the damn NSA!]
The IRS has become a political organization
Let’s start at the beginning. Nobody really likes the tax man. It is a necessary evil in a civilized society. Let’s not kid ourselves, no Mom woke up this morning hoping her first born would become a tax man. Sorry. Truth.
The tax man has a tough job — to fairly enforce the laws made by Congress and approved by the President to generate revenue to fund the US Treasury and ultimately to operate the country. Almost noble, no? Reality dissipates a bit of that nobility and recent development expose the lie of it.
Part of that enforcement obligation is the necessity to identify, confront and prosecute tax cheats. The Courts will set the sentence. Not the IRS.
The IRS is part of the executive branch of our 3-branch government. It acts upon the laws written by the legislative branch. When folks break the law, the judicial branch metes out the punishment. We have three branches to ensure that neither the President nor any individual branch acquires too much power.
Nowhere in this discussion thus far is there any indication that the IRS legislates or makes rules or singularly interprets laws. These are all the exclusive domain of the Congress. IRS can’t quite figure out what a specific law means? They query the Congress for its original legislative intent. Alternatively they may find it necessary to ask a court of competent jurisdiction to provide them with guidance.
What has happened now is that the IRS has become an organization that takes its direction from the political leanings of the President. This basic flaw is what has colored the IRS as a wing of the Democratic party . [If it were the Nixon presidency, it would be perfectly fair to say the IRS was a wing of the Republican party. The Big Red Car doesn’t care which party. Both are perfectly capable of extensive abuse. Know that.]
The IRS has adopted a stance that absent action from the Congress they have some innate authority to pursue folks who in their exclusive judgment are coloring outside the lines even if no such lines exist. A recent NY Sun editorial was breathtaking in its commentary suggesting the IRS had such authority and urging them to use it.
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/supremacy-of-the-irs/88593/
The editorial suggests that if the Congress fails to pass laws which meet with the highly politicized IRS’s desires, the IRS has some specious authority to act on their own initiative. This is absurd.
This witches brew is made fatally toxic because of the obvious objective of deconstructing any organization which would not be a political ally of the Democrats and our President. Of 84 501(c)(4) organizations audited in 2013, one hundred percent — 100% — were conservative organizations. The statistically improbability of this outcome is persuasive and compelling evidence of exactly what is happening. Or maybe not?
Not a “smidgen” of corruption
The President recently indicated that the IRS scandal was much ado about nothing. A phony scandal. A political farce.
This in the face of IRS employees invoking their Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify about matters which might incriminate them to say nothing of an FBI investigation which is still embryonic.
One does not invoke the Fifth Amendment before the Congress unless the sworn testimony sought would place the individual and the organization in legal peril. Real, not imagined, jeopardy.
These actions speak for themselves. We are ill advised to ignore them.
The minefield
The matter only gets worse as one delves a bit deeper.
1. The IRS employees are members of a union — The National Treasury Employees Union — which is left leaning and supports Democrat candidates through a political action committee — TEPAC. The IRS allows the union to solicit donations to its PAC through payroll deduction. It is not possible to divorce the union’s political leanings, the individual IRS employee’s political leanings and the political functions of TEPAC from the operations of the IRS itself.
2. The IRS scandal — contrary to the President’s assurances — has uncovered corruption and continues. No reasonable person would agree that not a “smidgen” of corruption has been uncovered. When senior employees are invoking their Fifth Amendment protection, reasonable folks will be concerned.
3. This same IRS will be enforcing OBAMAcare — if they can figure it out.
The IRS’s duties are serious enough absent this obvious political pressure.
It is time to face the reality of the situation and defang the IRS and its stormtroopers. They will be at your door next, my friend.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Be nice to someone you are not terribly fond of. It will really confound them and you will enjoy it.
