“He needs to be shot”

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That’s the threat [skip ahead to ~3:30] the Progressive-Democratic Party’s US Virgin Islands Delegate to the House of Representatives, Stacey Plaskett, said on MSNBC Sunday about Party’s political opponent, former President Donald Trump (R).

She changed her phrasing right away and then followed her threat with her pro forma claim that Trump “should have his day in court,” but that’s just her claim that Trump should have his fast trial and prompt firing squad. What concrete, publicly accessible action has Plaskett taken since to indicate that she didn’t really mean her statement that Trump should be murdered?

This is the stuff of lower tier third world countries where political opponents routinely are murdered, when they’re not simply thrown in jail. And then murdered.

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to inflict on their political opponents here in our nation. Wait—she’s not typical of Party? It’s been three days since Plaskett made her threat. How many Party politicians have spoken publicly in repudiation or rejection of her threat? Their silence is their roaring approval.

IRS Misbehavior

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The IRS wants to be the one to figure the taxes owed by us average Americans, and the IRS wants to do the figuring based on the data the IRS claims to have collected on each of us average Americans.

The Inflation Reduction Act, that travesty that too many Republicans actually voted for and that is a source of the present inflationary environment (among a number of economic problems inflicted by the IRA), authorized the IRS to explore the concept of a mechanism that would have the IRS figure our taxes for us.

Specifically, the legislation required a study by an independent third party examining the idea’s feasibility, as well as a report by the IRS for Congress assessing the study, the cost of such a system, and taxpayer opinions based on surveys.

In no way did the IRA authorize the IRS to go ahead and build such a facility. IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel assured the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee that the IRS that he runs, in fact, was not building such a facility.

No decision has been made on moving forward with direct file solution[.]

And

I don’t know yet whether the direct file solution is the right additional menu item to put in place so that taxpayers that prefer to engage that way can do it. What I’d like to do is have the report issued. And then engage in a conversation with the right set of stakeholders and then figure out what the go-forward is.

Aside: No one on the House committee—to whom that last quote was directed—asked Werfel who he thought were the right stakeholders.

It turns out, though, that the IRS has gone ahead and developed precisely that “We’ll Figure Your Taxes For You; Don’t You Worry Your Little Heads About It” facility.

[T]he IRS had been quietly building an actual prototype of direct file before submitting the report to Congress, as The Washington Post first reported in May. The IRS announced its final report one day after the Post‘s revelation. The IRS system will reportedly be available through a pilot program for a small group of taxpayers by January, when the 2024 filing season begins.

The IRS offered this in response to queries:

[T]he IRS told Fox News Digital that the prototype was built only to help with survey data to gauge the opinions of taxpayers on a direct file system.

Sure. Maybe folks might be interested in some beachfront property north of Santa Fe, too.

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R, ID) had this:

This suggests a pre-determined outcome and flies in the face of previous commitments Commissioner Werfel made to publicly consult Congress on a potential free-file solution, and for the IRS to not act without explicit legal authority[.]

What he said. Congress needs to drastically reduce IRS funding to little more than its payroll needs (which do not include the $80 billion (only somewhat reduced by the debt limit deal) appropriated for all those extraneous new IRS “auditor” hires). Since the IRS—with Werfel’s acquiescence, if not active permission—is going to misuse the funds it’s allocated, those funds need to be cut off.

Also: Did Werfel lie to Congress when he said no such a thing was in progress? Or was he merely incompetently oblivious to what was going on in his IRS?

Stockpiling Workers?

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Hiring is up, apparently, and hours worked by employee is down.

[E]ven as employers cut hours, they are also adding workers—something they don’t usually do when contraction looms. Payrolls rose by 339,000 in May and by nearly 1.6 million for the year to date. Layoffs were nearly 13% lower in April than in the average month in 2019, according to the Labor Department.

How does that work, exactly? This is how.

The expense and trauma of hiring have left employers unusually eager to avoid shedding staff they will need when business picks up again, according to [Managing Director and Senior Economist at Nomura, Aichi] Amemiya.

Companies this time around are stockpiling workers against the turnaround and rise of the underlying economy. This is an expense more and more employers are willing to bear during the current slowdown and potential recession in order to be ahead of the curve on the other side, rather than chasing the recovery as has been the case in past slowdowns/recessions.

It Won’t Limit Much of Anything

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The Biden administration is about to release billions of dollars to the Iranian government on the hope and promise that Iran will pause its nuclear weapons program and in ransom for some Americans held in Iranian prisons. The arrangement

reportedly limits the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in exchange for freeing Americans imprisoned and easing sanctions.

And

The United States’ goal is purportedly to come to an informal, unwritten agreement with Iran to prevent hostile relations between the two nations from further escalating—as Iran cracks down on internal protesters, stockpiles highly enriched uranium, and gives drones to Russia to use in Ukraine. The deal would also ease sanctions on Iran.

Informal—on what basis does this administration think the Iranian government would honor any sort of agreement with an infidel, much less an off-the-record unwritten one?

This move, if it’s allowed to run to completion, won’t limit anything but the safety of Americans and of the citizens of our friends and allies.

More Political-Centric Racism

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San Francisco’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor, London Breed, may finally be beginning to see the light regarding police, at least regarding their role in drug enforcement.

Breed recently committed to cracking down on open-air drug markets in San Francisco, and announced during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday that police made 38 arrests in about one week.

Or not. She promptly threw it all away, and with that any supposition that her claimed crackdown is anything other than street theater. In response to Board of Supervisor (the BoS is San Francisco’s city legislature) member Dean Preston’s objection to the crackdown, Breed loosed her racist trope:

Here we go. Another White man who’s talking about Black and Brown people as if you’re the savior of those people and you speak for them.

Here we go. Another Politician playing the race card against someone who disagrees with her policies as if she is the arbiter elegantiarum [sic] of Truth and Justice. Despite there being many possible serious and logical arguments for and against police involvement in a drug crackdown, or for and against any sort of drug crackdown, what Breed has spouted is this trash.

Breed is just another racist Progressive-Democratic Party politician crying racism in place of making rational, reasoned argument.