“He needs to be shot”

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

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?

More Political-Centric Racism

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.

Another Government Shutdown?

That’s what the Progressive-Democratic Party Representatives and Senators are threatening if they can’t continue their spendthrift ways in the upcoming budget negotiations.

[House] appropriators are expected to propose federal spending levels lower than the threshold in the Biden-McCarthy deal….

Two things about this: the spending level limit agreed in the debt limit deal is a ceiling, not a floor; it’s entirely legitimate for any budget to come in with even lower spending. The other thing is that cuts in spending (not merely reductions in spending growth) are critical to our nation’s weal.

Nevertheless, the Progressive-Democrats are playing their threats and lies game. House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D, CT) has made Party’s threats explicit:

This moves us in the direction of, you could say a CR [continuing resolution], but in October, we’re looking toward a shutdown[.]

Nice little government you got here, says the Congresswoman, be too bad if somethin’ was to happen to it.

HAC member Pete Aguilar (D, CA) demonstrated Party’s lack of integrity:

This is an agreement that the speaker made directly, and he took pains—remember?—to get everybody else out of the room and to get to a deal with just him and the president. And now he’s walking away from that deal[.]

Aguilar is lying. There’s no other way to put a claim that a budget proposal that’s entirely within the limit agreed in the debt ceiling deal breaks that deal. His claim is cynically and deliberately false. Then he assured us that the [Progressive-]Democratic-led Senate would ignore any appropriations bills that come[s] in under the caps set in the debt limit agreement.

The Progressive-Democrats want to shut down our government if they can’t have their way? I’m down with that.

Joe Biden and Women

And no, I’m not writing about the Progressive-Democrat President’s penchant for sniffing women’s and little girl’s hair. This is much more general than that.

Biden tweeted out his congratulations for a Las Vegas National Hockey League Stanley Cup victory, tweeting that the team’s win last week was

the first major professional franchise in such a proud American city.

Never mind that the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA won the league championship last year.

It’s clear that Biden disdains women and women’s sports so thoroughly that he doesn’t even recognize women’s teams exist. Which may be why he’s so enthusiastic about allowing men to play in women’s sports.