Tag Archives: politics

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.

Freed Hostages

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Israeli forces—the IDF, Shin Bet, and a police counterterrorism unit—successfully raided a specific target in the Gaza Strip southern edge city of Rafah and rescued two hostages that were being held by the terrorist Hamas.

This came while Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden stepped up his pressure on the Israelis to not go into Rafah, unless they have a plan to protect the civilians, even though Biden has no evidence that the Israelis aren’t already taking extreme measures to protect civilians, measures that include telling civilians where the Israelis intend to strike next and when—measures that also give the terrorists time to leave the target zone. Nor does Biden have any evidence that the Israelis haven’t been taking such measures all along in this war that the terrorists have inflicted on Israel.

This is the level of the brilliance in the Biden White House.

Don’t Destabilize the Alliance

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That’s NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s request of Republican Presidential Primary candidate Donald Trump over Trump’s continued, bluntly phrased, pressure on NATO members to meet their spending commitment of 2% of GDP to NATO.

It isn’t Trump’s rhetoric that risks NATO destabilization, though. When Trump was President, he threatened US withdrawal from the alliance if the other member nations didn’t start meeting that commitment. At the time, only a handful aside from the US were meeting the commitment, and after his threat, a few more stepped up and met theirs. This after 50 years of “pretty please” had fallen on deaf freeloading ears.

Now, with renewed pressure from likely Republican Presidential candidate Trump, more are meeting their commitment. According to Stoltenberg, 18 of the 31 members are “on track” to meet their commitment (meaning they still haven’t, but now are saying the right words in their respective legislatures).

That leaves 13 members who are shirking their duty. That leaves 13 members who are betraying their fellow members by rendering themselves incapable of meeting their Article V commitment to those members in any concrete way. That leaves 13 members who are imposing risks on their fellow members by rendering themselves so plainly incapable of resisting an attack on themselves that they tacitly invite one, requiring their fellow members to spend their blood and their treasure to rescue them.

That leaves 13 members who are the ones risking destabilizing the NATO alliance.

A Progressive-Democrat is Offended

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Just before Sunday’s Super Bowl kickoff, Andra Day sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, then Post Malone sang America the Beautiful, and then Reba McEntire sang our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.

A Progressive-Democrat Congressman from Tennessee, Steve Cohen, took umbrage that fans stood only for our national anthem and not for Day’s performance.

Very very few stood for “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The Negro National Anthem. Not a pretty picture of Super Bowl crowd.

It’s entirely appropriate, though, that folks stand only for our national anthem (one exception: it’s traditional for folks to stand for the Hallelujah Chorus from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah). Our anthem, after all, stands for our nation as a whole and symbolizes our national aspirations for unity, our liberty, and our equality of opportunity.

Lift Every Voice and Sing is a very fine song and appropriate in a wide variety of milieus, but its use in this context can only be divisive, singling out one group of Americans as deserving national respect, rather than all of us.

Oh, and no one stood for Malone’s performance, either.

Progressive-Democrats’ faux outrage over every thing that doesn’t suit their veriest whim is getting elderly and tired.

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.