The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.
George Orwell, letter to Malcolm Muggeridge, December 4, 1948.
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George Orwell
As Tax Day approaches, you can bet the Internal Revenue Service has readied itself to help taxpayers file their returns.
No?
“It’s abysmal,” admits IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, discussing his agency’s help for Americans trying to decipher a byzantine, ever-changing tax code.
It seems only four of ten citizens ever succeed in getting through to the IRS on the phone, even after waiting multiple hours. Over days. There have been over 5 million “courtesy disconnects” — that’s IRS lingo for its phone system hanging up on you.
To boot, once you get to a real person, that employee can’t tell you much.
The problem? According to the Washington Post, the poor agency lacks the necessary funds because “Republicans on Capitol Hill have slashed the IRS budget.”
Actually, the IRS budget has gone up every year . . . in nominal dollars. When adjusted for inflation? Well, there has been some decline.
Bemoaning this supposed “era of shrinking government,” the Post assails conservatives in Congress, citing the “cuts” as “punishment for a string of missteps: an extravagant conference for employees in Anaheim, Calif., the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exemptions, $1 million in bonuses given to agency employees who didn’t pay their federal taxes.”
Punishment seems in order.
But another story puts in perspective this crocodile cry for more money. The Daily Caller recently reported: “The Obama administration has quietly killed an IRS tax preparation program designed to help low-income and disadvantaged citizens, choosing instead to give millions of dollars to liberal groups for the same purpose.”
Look on the bright side, a review of these help-groups found their advice to have a mere 49 percent error rate.
This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“This country is worth dying for.”—Edward Snowden
“I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendshipis recorded.” —Edward Snowden
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Paul Jacob has been on Ed Snowden’s side — and on the side of the Bill of Rights and citizen-controlled government — from the beginning. Help in Paul’s effort to promote our shared American ideas and show your appreciation by contributing to This Is Common Sense today. And for $10 show your appreciation for Ed Snowden with this simple and eloquent poster:
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Good Friday
On the hundredth day of 1998, the Northern Ireland peace talks ended with an historic agreement, dubbed the Good Friday Agreement. The accord was reached after nearly two years of talks and 30 years of conflict.
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Mohandas K. Gandhi
Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between the two communities in South Africa can be removed.
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian Opinion, October 1, 1903.
“Why did Rolling Stone . . . so massively screw up” in “falsely accusing a University of Virginia frat of gang-raping a freshman girl?” asks Alex Griswold of The Daily Caller. “[I]f you work for liberal magazine The New Republic, the answer is that they were too right-wing.”
Most of my online friends are with Griswold, excoriating and ridiculing TNR’s Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig’s questionable analysis of the piece in question. Before I pile on, let me just say what is right about her analysis in “Rolling Stone’s Rape Article Failed Because It Used Rightwing Tactics to Make a Leftist Point…”
She ably summarizes a world view.
“The left tends to view oppression as something that operates within systems, sometimes in clearly identifiable structural biases” while the “right,” she insists, “tends to understand politics on the individual level,” which she imputes to “a general obsession with the capital-i Individual.”
That, she thinks, is why “the right” pokes at “specific details of high-profile cases like those of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.” If the leftist critique doesn’t apply there, she thinks “rightwingers” hope, they thereby disprove the left’s systemic oppression thesis.
Note how she just assumes the accuracy of the left’s approach; she just ignores how often lefty journalists get actual “big-picture” stats wrong. For example, on the subject of “rape culture,” they routinely suppress discussion of accurate stats on false rape charges by women against men.
Worse yet, she honestly does not see how her “leftwing” media comrades have prejudged coverage of recent race-based and rape-involved cases, doing injustice to individuals.
Is this mere media bias?
No. It’s the very definition of prejudice. It’s bigotry.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Mohandas K. Gandhi
“Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means ‘good conduct.’”
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, 1908
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Victory, Independence
Despite being outnumbered 16 to 1, forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy proved victorious over the Archduchy of Austria in the Battle of Näfels, April 9, 1388.
On this date in 1991, Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
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The “Give Away”
Has the mugger given you a present of your stuff by not taking it? Sneaky tax logic…
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Standing with Rand, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced yesterday his candidacy for the U.S. Presidency? A banner: “Defeat the Washington Machine — Unleash the American Dream.”
I know and like Rand, both personally and politically. I love that message.
Yet, today, I come not to praise Dr. Paul but to use him as an example about political reality, nuts and bolts.
Like Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, Dr. Paul inherited a tremendous leg up in politics. All three have access to extensive networks of supporters and funding. But, “they didn’t build” those networks, not in toto. They are standing on the efforts of family members — a husband in Hillary’s case; parents for Paul and Bush, plus a Bush brother president.
The Kentucky senator’s father, Dr. Ron Paul, served 23 years representing a Houston, Texas, U.S. House district and ran for president three times.
I’m not whining. And I’m certainly not proposing a new area for the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to police. I’m glad, frankly, for Rand’s parental good fortune. (Mother, too.)
I am simply identifying the built-in advantages that come with holding political power . . . and the potential danger it unleashes: an entrenched, unaccountable, unrepresentative government.
Like we have.
The solution to powerful political dynasties? More competition. More participation. More activity and organizing, more money raised and spent and more messages expressed. Fewer limits and regulations blocking fundraising.
Easier entry into the political marketplace of ideas.
Is that what the IRS and the FEC have been working toward? Facilitating our opportunity to “Defeat the Washington Machine”?
Be that the case, or no, I’m happy to note that Rand Paul, in his kick-off, endorsed term limits.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
