Common Sense with Paul Jacob

DOGE Does the IRS

DOGE, dog, meme, watch dog, who watches the watchers?

A note of caution going into today’s subject: let us try to bite our tongues; no expressions of schadenfreude; no sarcastic “Boo-hoos” or the like.

The IRS has been grossly inefficient for a very long time, as now uncovered in a Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] investigation.

Courtesy of Laura Ingraham, we learn that the Internal Revenue Service is “35 years behind” in its scheduled upgrades, and “already $15 billion over budget.”

“You’ve heard the sob stories,” says Ms. Ingraham. “And they are quite entertaining at times. But the [presumably non-Fox legacy news] media — they continue to spread this story: ‘DOGE is some dark and mysterious organization; you know, embedding itself into departments like some jack-booted thugs, just intimidating staff, threatening those that don’t comply.’ OK. We’re asking, what is the truth?”

So she interviewed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant and Treasury’s DOGE adviser, Sam Corcos.

“We,” Corcos said, including himself in the IRS’s very “they” themness, “process about the same amount of data as a midsize bank. A midsize bank has 100 to 200 people in IT and a $20 million budget. The IRS? It has 8,000 IT employees and a $3.5 billion operations and maintenance budget. I don’t really know why yet.” But he does notice that 80 percent of that budget goes to “contractors and software licenses.”

“DOGE advisers have found billions in waste just by asking questions,” explains Ingraham’s report. Secretary Bessant blames the power of special “entrenched interests” that “keep constricting themselves around the power, the money, and the systems. Nobody cares.”

“Inertia” is also a word often heard on this subject.

Democrats have been complaining about the president’s cutting of the IRS budget, and number of employees. But if most of the force is just spinning gears, the cuts could hardly be said to hurt the “service.”

And you’d think that the most pro-government party in our political system would want this key function of government — everything rests on taxes, they admit — to be efficient, do the assigned jobs well.

But for some reason that does not seem to be the case.

Shocking, I know.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags dog, DOGE, meme, watch dog, who watches the watchers?

Thought

George Mason

There is a Passion natural to the Mind of man, especially a free Man, which renders him impatient of Restraint.
George Mason, Letter to the Committee of Merchants in London (June 6, 1766).

Today

Prohibition Begins to End

Post author By Redactor
Post date April 7, 2025
No Comments on Prohibition Begins to End

On April 7, 1933, Prohibition in the United States was repealed for beer of no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight — eight months before the ratification of the 21st amendment, which repealed the 18th (or Prohibition) Amendment.

The enabling legislation was the Cullen-Harrison Act, which figured the low alcohol content as the excuse to get around the 18th Amendment’s prohibition of intoxicating beverages. The act passed Congress on March 21, 1933, and was signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt the next day.

Update

Vietnam Goes No Tariffs?

News editors sometimes choose odd titles: “First country to cut tariffs down for US and awaits deal — Trump.” That is for a brief Oleh Velhan article from RBC Ukraine. OK: maybe something got lost in translation. But the article follows a theme from this week’s Common Sense commentary and yesterday’s update: Trump’s goofy schedules of tariffs and what to do about them.

Vietnam is ready to completely scrap tariffs for the United States. This may become possible after an agreement between the two countries, according to US leader Donald Trump and his statement via Truth Social.

Trump reported that he had held talks with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, To Lam. According to him, Lam stated that Vietnam is ready to reduce its tariffs to zero.

“Vietnam wants to cut their tariffs down to zero if they are able to make an agreement with the US. I thanked him on behalf of our country, and said that I look forward to a meeting in the near future,” said the US president.
Oleh Velhan, Saturday April 5, 2025.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom and other countries are going the proverbial other direction, responding with a “list of 8,000 US products that could be subject to tariffs. This list includes various items, ‘from binoculars to bourbon whiskey.’”

Is that Trump wants? Retaliatory tariffs? That happened under Smoot-Hawley.

That is what economists fear: Like the McKinley Tariff of 1890 (which President Trump has praised), the Smoot-Hawley tax hike on goods coming into the country (which is what a tariff is, an international trade tax) to a whopping amount — higher than the nearly 50 percent tariff duty level of the 1890 effort. The Smoot-Hawley hikes have long been known to have factored in the Great Depression, with economist Thomas Rustici (see Lessons of the Great Depression, 2005) arguing that the influence was far more significant than previously thought.

An international war of tariffs, with each nation responding to others’ tariffs with tariffs of their own, is just not good for business. But as wars go, it is an extremely foolish one. A tariff chiefly harms consumers (economists like Milton Friedman tell us) in the national economy of the state that erects them: a tariff war is where each nation shoots itself in the foot, and retaliates for others’ self-harm by further harming themselves.

This was made clear by Frederic Bastiat, whom no one in power appears to have read.

But there is still the inscrutable Trump. If he likes tariffs so much, why does he want them for America but for no one else? That is the implication — right until he praises To Lam and Javier Milei for responding to his tariffs not as Britain is retaliating, or as the EU prepares to. If Trump is really after free trade, apparently he demands a special form of it: not unilateral but multilateral.

So why not just honestly aim for that?

Because it is not popular?

Still, his current strategy seems a bit like Cleavon Little’s strategy when a town turns guns on him: he points his own gun at his own head. But with Trump’s tariff hike policy, there’s less provocation.

Thought

George Mason

Mr. Chairman — A worthy member has asked, who are the militia, if they be not the people, of this country, and if we are not to be protected from the fate of the Germans, Prussians, &c. by our representation? I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.
George Mason, June 16, 1788, speech to the Virginia convention held to ratify the Constitution of the United States.

Today

Salt Rebel

On April 6, 1930, Mohandas K. Gandhi raised a lump of mud and salt, declaring, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.”

Thus began the Salt Satyagraha.

Update

Milei’s Gold

Trump’s momentous tariff schedule, legal only by reason of Congress’s dereliction of duty, came up with a multitude of negative reactions this week — with one exception: Argentina President Javier Milei’s.

Milei’s ratline disclosure was the subject of yesterday’s commentary by Paul Jacob, and Trump’s peculiar ambiguities regarding tariffs was tackled Tuesday. But the big story, now, is Argentine . . . free trade:

Speaking at an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort in Florida, Milei delivered a brief speech as he received an award for his defence of free markets and conservative values.

Declaring he is ready to work side-by-side with the United States and Trump, Milei praised the US president and ruled out retaliatory measures.

“Argentina is going to move forward to readjust the regulations so that we meet the requirements of the reciprocal tariffs proposal developed” by Trump, Milei said, according to remarks briefed by his office.

“We have already met nine of the 16 necessary requirements , and I have instructed my country’s Foreign Ministry and Commerce Secretariat to move forward with the remaining requirements,” he said, speaking a day after Trump slapped 10-percent tariffs on Argentine goods entering the United States.
“Milei says he will change Argentina’s laws to mitigate Trump’s tariffs,” Buenos Aires Times (April 4, 2025).

Milei’s reaction to Trump’s outrageous “Liberation” tariffs is so far unique. Argentina’s “libertarian” president appears to bend over backwards to get along with the U.S.

In March, Trump said he was open to discussing the possibility of a free-trade deal with Argentina.

Milei, whom Trump calls a “great leader,” has said he is willing to pull Argentina out of Mercosur regional trade bloc if necessary.
Ibid.

The American president, in defiance of the consensus of political economy, has made much of concern with balance of trade — and Argentina, under Milei’s leadership, sported, this year, a positive balance of trade with the United States for the first time in many moons. So how does one square this circle?

If Milei succeeds, think of it as political alchemy, turning Trump’s leaden protectionism into golden free trade. We still wonder, has this been Trump’s goal all along? Based on his rhetoric, it seems a No; but if Milei’s reaction spreads, maybe then Yes.

Thought

Sam Adams

It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.
Samuel Adams, in Essay published in The Advertiser (1748) and later reprinted in The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams (1865)

Today

One of Two Washington Vetos

Post author By Redactor
Post date April 5, 2025
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On April 5, 1792, George Washington exercised the first presidential veto of a congressional bill, a new plan for dividing seats in the House of Representatives, which would have increased the number of seats for northern states.

Washington vetoed only one other bill during his two terms in office, an act that would have reduced the number of cavalry units in the army.

Accountability government transparency international affairs

The Argentine Ratline

In less than one month, the 80th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s death may be celebrated — unless President Javier Milei’s formal disclosure of the Argentine “ratline” shows what a lot of people believe: that Hitler didn’t kill himself in that bunker.

Ratlines are what the human smuggling routes of Nazis out of falling Germany in 1945 were called.

And yes, Argentina was the chief receiver of Nazis. This is known. Confirmed. Not controversial.

But did the South American country accept Nazis higher up than Dr. Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann?

Well, the FBI was searching for Hitler in South America for decades, into the 1960s. And rumors of Hitler’s escape to Argentina have been bandied about for years and years.

But the official story, of Hitler’s suicide in the Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, has been stuck to, its skeptics frequently “debunked,” and “experts” have been mocking “conspiracy theorists” on this matter for a very long time.

Now, however, Javier Milei — perhaps inspired by Donald Trump’s disclosure attempts regarding the JFK assassination and Jeffrey Epstein’s honeypot scheme — has set in motion the release of Argentina’s “ratline files.”

The Argentine government has committed to declassifying and releasing all government-sequestered information related to Nazi war criminals who sought refuge in the country after World War II. Formally announced by Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos on March 24, the documents are said to include financial details and relevant records held by Argentina’s Defense Ministry.

What will we learn?

If we learn that Hitler lived long after 1945, what would be the repercussions?

Maybe it depends: who exactly — and in which government — arranged the escape?

Whatever the revelations, whatever the ultimate result, the Age of Deference is over; the Age of Disclosure has begun.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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