If our Money be gone, thank God, our Eyes are left; Sharpened by Experience and Adversities, we can see through Disguises, and will be no more amused with Moon-shine.
Categories
Categories
Lysander Spooner
[T]he only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.
We were initially told that the IRS had apologized to Tea Party and patriot groups for blocking them from non-profit tax status.
But there has been no apology.
Instead, last Friday, Lois Lerner, the head of the tax-exempt division of the Internal Revenue Service, confided to a group of tax attorneys at an American Bar Association conference in Washington. She admitted that the IRS had indeed been guilty of unfairly delaying and blocking Tea Party and conservative groups from establishing tax-exempt organizations, as these dissident groups had been complaining about for years.
Who was to blame? Only mere “low-level employees” — no senior management, heaven forfend.
Then it was disclosed that senior IRS muckety-mucks actually knew in 2011 — well before the IRS commissioner assured Congress that the agency wasn’t doing precisely what it was doing. Now, latest disclosures put the beginning of the political bias policy all the way back to 2010.
Of course, the IRS vehemently denies that politics played any role.
And what about Barack “buck-stops-here” Obama?
“I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this,” the president said in response to a question, adding, “I think it was on Friday.”
In denial, the president spun, “If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that had been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups” and “if you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way, then . . . it is contrary to our traditions.”
Well, if these ifs weren’t so (traditionally?) evasive, we might take the prez seriously.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Norma Anderson is one of the politician-plaintiffs challenging Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights in federal court. The former Republican state senator claims the citizen-enacted measure, requiring a vote of the people to raise taxes, is unconstitutional. Why? It violates the legislature’s divine right to raise taxes without having to bother to obtain voter approval.
“We should eliminate the initiative to change the constitution,” she wrote in the bimonthly magazine of the Colorado Municipal League, “but continue the process for the statutes.”
Then, only the legislature would have the power to propose amendments — or, I should say, not propose amendments — like term limits or tax-and-spending limits.
Plus, legislators can repeal any statutory initiative they don’t like. That happened with campaign finance reform.
Anderson complains that Colorado’s “constitution has been amended repeatedly by initiative” and that all those amendments “have made it the wordiest and longest in the nation.”
True?
No. Colorado doesn’t have the longest state constitution. Or the second longest. Or third or fourth or the fifth longest. Colorado’s ranks seventh in word count.
Moreover, the campaign finance measure noted above accounts for nearly 10 percent of the constitution’s verbiage.
Besides, most of the amendments to Colorado’s constitution have come from legislators, not through citizen-initiated petitions. Since voter initiatives began, roughly two-thirds, 63 percent, have come from the legislature.
Forget the facts, though, Anderson and her fellow politicians have had enough of popular government.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Salvador Dali
It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.
Categories
Ortega y Gasset
[T]he direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilisation. Not of this or that civilisation but — from what we can judge to-day — of any civilisation.
This weekend’s Common Sense column over at Townhall.com is about those awful Nixonian reactionaries who use government to suppress opposition and help establish fascist right-wing government here in America.
Oops. No, it isn’t. It’s about those awful Obamanian “progressives” using government to suppress opposition and help establish etc. etc.
Click on over to Townhall for the scoop. Come back here for a few extra scoops.
- BREAKING NEWS: Politico reports “IRS knew Tea Party targeted in 2011“
- Transcript of Lois Lerner’s Remarks at Tax Meeting Sparking IRS Controversy
- CBS: IRS apologizes for targeting tea party organization
- New York Times: I.R.S. Apologizes to Tea Party Groups Over Audits of Applications for Tax Exemption
- New York Times: Scrutiny of Political Nonprofits Sets Off Claim of Harassment
- The Blaze: IRS Admits To Targeting Conservative Groups During 2012 Election, Apologizes
- NPR: IRS Apologizes For Singling Out Conservative Groups
Categories
Video: Benghazi and partisanship
What difference does the Benghazi disaster make?
Bill Maher doesn’t understand, but Greg Greenwald does?
Categories
Ortega y Gasset
Life is fired at us point blank.
Categories
Ortega y Gasset
Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.