Tag Archives: government

This IRS Needs to Go

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First, it was the Internal Revenue Service targeting Conservative organizations that were applying for tax-exempt status by slow-walking approvals or outright denying approval on purely political grounds. Then it was the IRS “leaking” of a plethora of Conservative and Republican Americans’ personal tax information. There were, too, a host of similar IRS failures between those and since.

Now we get the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration report that shows that this IRS misbehavior is longstanding and a feature of the agency. Here are a few of the things TIGTA found.

  • 19 contractors’ most recent background investigations were not favorable as of July 13, 2023. However, these contractors still retained their access to one or more sensitive systems because the IRS did not take action to suspend or disable the contractors from the IRS’s systems, as required
  • 279 contractors and employees no longer with the agency still had access to at least one sensitive computer system. “Actions were not always taken to timely remove users once they separated from the IRS”
  • For some sensitive systems, the IRS does not have adequate controls to detect or prevent the unauthorized removal of data by users

The IRS managers don’t even know what systems they have in operation.

  • the IRS struggled to come up with a complete list of sensitive computer systems, eventually identifying 319.
    To perform this evaluation, we [TIGTA] requested information from the IRS that identifies all sensitive systems. However, our ability to obtain a complete and reliable inventory of its sensitive systems was an ongoing challenge throughout this evaluation.

In fine, as TIGTA put it,

The fact remains that for some sensitive systems, the IRS does not have adequate controls to detect or prevent the unauthorized removal of data by users[.]

Plainly, the IRS’ managers aren’t even pretending to try to install controls.

We need a Federal Revenue facility to oversee Federal tax collection and collected revenue handling, even under a vastly simplified Federal tax code. But this agency is beyond repair. It must be disbanded entirely with its personnel returned to the private sector—most especially not reassigned elsewhere in the Federal government—and replaced with a new, streamlined Federal Revenue facility.

TIGTA’s report can be read here.

Not All It Can Do

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Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams’ New York City government has a new way to spy on American citizens resident in that city, or even just visiting.

New York City drivers buckle up because Big Brother (aka the MTA) is keeping a watchful eye on you by installing cameras along New York City streets to track you. But why? Well, it all boils down to money, of course. The MTA is rolling out a controversial $15 per day congestion fee for all drivers venturing south of 60th Street. They’ve even given this area of Manhattan a snazzy name: the toll congestion zone.

That’s its publicly stated—look, a squirrel—purpose.

Another purpose, one Adams and his city government don’t want to mention, is to track those drivers to see where they go; where they park and shut down, presumably getting out of their cars; what shops they go to, at least identifying the shops within walking distance; and how long they’re there.

Because inquiring Government minds want to know.

Wrong Reasons

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Canada’s reigning government, led by the Liberal Party’s [there’s a misnomer] Justin Trudeau, has “delayed” its plan to kill euthanize its mentally ill population.

[H]ealth officials are slow-walking plans to expand the program, stating there are not enough doctors, specifically psychiatrists, in Canada to evaluate mentally ill people who wish to die, according to the announcement made by Health Minister Mark Holland and Justice Minister Arif Virani.

This is the wrong reason for slowing down the march to killing off the inconveniently mentally ill. The goal remains in place.

Holland went on:

The system needs to be ready, and we need to get it right. It’s clear from the conversations we’ve had that the system is not ready, and we need more time.

There is no right way to kill off the mentally ill. Suicide, assisted or otherwise, may or may not be the right answer for those with the mental capacity to decide that for themselves.  Those who are that mentally ill don’t have the capacity to decide, though, and having third parties decide whether a person should live or die is just state-sanctioned execution by reason of those persons being inconvenient for the state to support or to assist the person’s family to support.

So much for Canada’s erstwhile reputation for being…nice.

A Letter Writer Asks

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In Thursday’s Letters section of The Wall Street Journal, a correspondent asked What Does Democracy Mean to the Lincoln Project?

He then offered three examples of the Lincoln Project‘s apparent ideology that underlie his question:

  1. It has been acceptable throughout American history for advocates outside the two-party system to obtain qualifying voter signatures to get on the ballot. But for No Labels to employ that method now should offend our sense of fairness.
  2. Even though the two parties have arcane rules for candidate selection that restrict voter autonomy, adding qualified competitors to the general-election ballot will limit voter choice.
  3. Anyone with the temerity to view Presidents Biden and Trump as sufficiently inadequate choices to propose a third option is a “threat to American democracy” and beneath contempt.

For that, I suggest an answer: All within the Project, nothing outside the Project, nothing against the Project.

Only Because They Got Caught

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The Biden administration’s National Park Service had intended to remove from Philadelphia, PA’s, Welcome Park a statue of Pennsylvania founder William Penn. Because…well because he offended Leftist snowflakes, being an old, dead, white guy and all. Oh, and he was an atypical 17th century slaveholder; he had his emancipated upon his death.

After the hooraw over the plan, the NPS now is saying in their bad Emily Litella impression, “Never mind.”

It was only a preliminary draft, a carefully unsigned NPS statement claims.

The preliminary draft proposal, which was released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review, is being retracted.

Sure it was. It became preliminary and a draft after they got caught. The internal review was incomplete because that they hadn’t yet installed a means of keeping the statue’s removal quiet.

There’s this red flag in the statement, too:

The National Park Service (NPS) remains committed to rehabilitating Welcome Park….

The park itself is named for the ship that brought Penn to the colonies in 1682. The Biden administration, the NPS, will have to rehabilitate the name of the park—that hateful ship—before tearing down that statue. Maybe also tear down the Slate Roof House, or rehabilitate it into an abortion center.