The Smallest Minority

When reality and the way liberals think the world is conflict, it is always reality that is out of whack.

The sick thing is that this woman pays taxes so people can sit on their ass and collect the "benefits" she is determined to stay off of.

Someone stop the ride, I want to get off.

Keep your powder dry, folks.

We had the IRS come to our house to do an full audit. They wanted to see everything, marriage license, car titles ... It was triggered because of a payment that we got from my father-in-laws estate when he died. The next year we did not get another payment, (he did not die for a second time,) and our return got red flagged. The guy said that he normally did businesses but they were slow ??? At one point we took several thousand dollars cash out of our account for a vacation. The IRS agent asked us what we did with the money. I had to say to him: "It is our money right? We get to spend our own money don't we? We don't have to tell you how we spend our own money."

Sounds ridiculous at first, but hairdressers and others that have a lot of cash transactions are notorious for not reporting income. Back when I had enough hair to worry about, my barber got audited and according to him, the IRS noticed he had deposited 3 times as much as his reported income in his checking account.

No way any decent hairstylist only makes 350 bucks a week. My wife's friend that cuts her hair makes that by 10am on a saturday morning.

When reality and the way liberals think the world is conflict, it is always reality that is out of whack.

If you RTFA, you'd have learned it was your saintly conservatives who iniated this particular series of events.

Maybe the natives aren't restless enough. Things are changing quickly, and once things start rolling, there won't be any turning back.

I get the distinct impression that is exactly what the current administration wants.

Keep the powder dry, Ears open and one eye covered to preserve your night vision. We are going to need it.

I DID "RTFA" Stormy, and it's still chickenshit regardless of who initiated it. This woman gets audited, and has to pay money she doesn't have to the IRS, but half of the members of Obama's cabinet cheat on their taxes and get off without penalty? Including the guy who heads the IRS?

You forget, the readership of this blog is mostly libertarian, and would consign the majority of the GOP to a circle of Hell only slightly higher than that to which we'd like to cast the Democrats.

Yeah, doesn't matter who initiated it, its horrible. And so what that she doesn't report all of her income? Its not like she has enough by doing that to live on her own. Jeez.

"Liberals" did initiate this by creating "tax credits" (instead of exemptions and deductions) and then setting them up to be easily abused. The fact that "conservatives" tried to do something to stop the waste in a poor manner (by trusting government to fix a government problem - stupid) doesn't absolve the idiot liberals who set up the system.

The root of the problem isn't a particular example of a government agency abusing a citizen.

The problem is the existence of the means of abusing a citizen.

Not only is the current form of our tax and tax administration system unconscionable, but the magnitude of the taxes are driven by things for which Constitutional authority is dubious.

As long as the spiked club exists, someone is going to whack somebody with it.

If you RTFA, you'd have learned it was your saintly conservatives who iniated this particular series of events.

Who here believes in that catechism Stormy? Name some names or admit that you are just another fecal-flinging howler monkey. [Oh, dear, does that make me a racist?]

Just wait until they run your heALTHCARE.

Truth: if the IRS tries that crap with me, i'll shoot them. that's a promise. the revolution will start in my yard.

And the scary part is that the only people who hate the tax code more than people who get audited...

...Are the ones who get stuck enforcing that crap.

Speaking as the son of an IRS agent, I can tell you ladies and gentlemen that the system is so screwed up it would make Alexander reach for his sword. Congress has screwed around with it so much so that (a) they get more money and (b) their buddies get loopholes, it's a contradictory morass.

I feel for this woman; she should never have been audited. And I can guess WHY she was audited: some supervisor, applying pressure to agents, insisting they needed 'more cases'. It happens.

I don't always agree with my old man, but he commented last night that Congress wouldn't get in near so many problems if they didn't have as much money to play with.

Hard to argue that one.

I have ponied up for Audit Defense with TurboTax the last two years. I'll be in for a third year.

What makes me violently and copiously ill about many of those comments are the chuckleheads that insist she "owes" the gov this or that.

To say this woman--or any of us--"owe" the government money is along the same lines as saying someone "owes" sex to a rapist.

I don't always agree with my old man, but he commented last night that Congress wouldn't get in near so many problems if they didn't have as much money to play with.

Haven't you noticed? They've run out, so they're just printing some more.

To the tune of $1,840,000,000,000 (yes, that's $1.84 trillion) in 2009.

Ergo, they don't care where it comes from anymore (if they ever did.)

Who here believes in that catechism Stormy?

Well, Britt for one, who immediately assumed that liberals must be behind it.

Name some names or admit that you are just another fecal-flinging howler monkey.

Actually, I'm a Northern Pig-tailed Macaque. You can tell because I lack a prehensile tail.

"Liberals" did initiate this by creating "tax credits"

Yeah, the EITC, brainchild of such evil "liberals" as Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman. Those socialist bastards.

It doesn't matter which political class set this extortion up, it matters which political classes are not tearing it down.

There is our enemy.

Ever read the Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell, Stormy?

This is classic. It's the same kind of thinking that lead the left to declare people were starving because there were people eligible for food stamps not applying for them.

You brought up Reagan, let me quote him

"They've just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed."

See when people, such as yourself, hear the shrill cries of "peace, land and bread" wafting in from overseas, you are sad that you live in a country where the biggest health problem the poor face is obesity. You love the idea of class struggle, you love the idea of standing up for the trampled masses.

So you, and others like you, invent pinched and pining single mothers struggling to get by. Why look, there happens to be one asking the President a question, it must be true! When in fact this is the most prosperous, most well fed nation in the history of humanity. I want you to stop sputtering and just think about that for a second. I see homeless people with huge guts, I've spooned out food at soup kitchens and had the indigent turn it down. The most poverty stricken parts of America have shoes and warm clothes, they have enough to eat, and free medical care for the last 50 years, and I am sick and fucking tired of hearing about how bad things are here. The default state of humanity has been huddling in the dark with an empty belly, fearing predators animal or human, not knowing what the next day or month or year would bring. Billions of human beings still go to bed at night without food, they still fear what army will come over the hill next to take their crops, rape their women, and impress their sons. Yet half of the people in this country seem to think that the third generation of fat, worthless, pigs at the trough are the sainted "working poor" to be showered with benefits.

I see people buying food with the food stamp debit card, and beer with cash. I see people with TVs and computers paid for with welfare checks. There is a government program that gives out cell phones on the taxpayer's dime. It is madness, simple lunacy.

Look, I'm a fierce limited government guy. 98% of the population is to my left, and 80% or so are statists of one stripe or another. Still, if I were granted dictatorial powers, this is what I'd do.

One: the immediate end of all entitlement programs. No checks, no food cards, no "no interest loans", no grants, not one damn dime. No TARP, no FHA, no Medicare or Medicaid, no Social Security. No taking money from the taxpayers and giving it back to the state governments for education or highway repair.

Two: The immediate repeal of the US tax code. Revenue for the government will be provided for by a national sales tax of 12%. After the debt is paid off, tax will be dropped to 10%. Any surplus will be placed into a rainy day fund to be accessed during time of declared war only. No other federal taxation will be legal. If the government goes over budget, Congress is to be decimated by drawn lots. 44 Congressmen and 10 Senators will be shot at dawn, July 4th of the year after the budget overrun, in front of the Jefferson memorial. A large oak tree is be planted at the spot.

Three: The immediate abolition of all federal departments, offices, and agencies save for the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of the Treasury. ICE and Border Patrol to join to form the Border Security Agency.

Four: The loser of a civil suit will pay damages and legal costs for the winner. The defense may choose to go to trial at any time following the filing of the suit. If the plaintiff is not ready to go to trial, the plaintiff forfeits their claim and must pay legal costs to the defendant.

Well, it's a pleasant dream of mine at least.

I'd vote for Britt as dictator... except that these things never work out.

Too bad really. I like his jib, the cut thereof, so to speak (badly).

It doesn't matter which political class set this extortion up, it matters which political classes are not tearing it down.

Agreed. The problem is people like Britt who still see everything through their left tribe/right tribe lens. Anyone who criticized their beloved GOP must be a left wing cook, because no one on the right could possibly fail to love them.

Which is why things never get better. Everyone bitches about the politicians, but only "their" politicians. They'll fight to the death to defend the honor of "our" politicians.

You have no idea who I am, and you have no idea how I feel and what I think about the current Republican Party. So let me enlighten you. We're gonna go into some colorful, impolite language, so be warned.

The Democrats are whores with AIDS and three kinds of clap. The Republicans are whores with three kinds of clap. You can cure the clap with wide spectrum antibiotics. There ain't nothing you can do about AIDS but keep well back.

The question, continuing to riff on the analogy, is whether or not the whore is worth curing. Personally, looking at the history of the GOP, I think the party of Lincoln, Coolidge, Eisenhower, Goldwater, and Reagan is worth rescuing from the current crop. On a practical level, it's a lot easier to move the needles back toward freedom with an existing political infrastructure. The socialists didn't start a new party, they took over Jefferson's. If the libertarians want to get organized and take over one of the major parties, the GOP is the one to take.

The Republican Party can be saved, because it has a core ethos in line with the values of freedom. The Democratic Party's core ethos is control, has been for 80 years now. No matter how they try to paint over it, the fundamental instinct of all Democratic politicians is to get the government involved. Some "Republicans" will immediately consider government intervention, but every single Democrat will. Think about it. When's the last time you saw a Democrat talk about freedom? Not FDR style "freedom from X", but real, honest to God, less government in my life freedom?

No one here, and me least of all, is denying that there are more then enough Republicans who love the State like Democrats. However, the fact remains that 95% of the time I see a politicians saying something I agree with, there is an R next to his name. The world, all of life, is a choice between the best of a range of imperfect choices. You can choose to gripe about the GOP, and there is much to gripe about. Or you can fix it, make it what you want it to be. People who agree with you about some things are much easier to persuade then people who don't agree with you about anything. The idea that the Democratic Party, who doesn't have a single libertarian plank in its platform, is somehow the equal of the GOP, who have about 80% commonality with a libertarian philosophy is absolutely ridiculous. Especially when neither party is currently looking to adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy or end the War on Drugs, or make drastic cuts to government in line with the Constitution. Or return to sound money, for that matter.

You can educate the Stupid Party, but you sure as hell can't make the Evil Party a force for good.

I vote for Britt for dictator.

That's why I used quotation marks, Stormy; to try to indicate I don't buy into a right/left dichotomy. If Reagan did things that were statist (he did, OCB of '86 comes to mind, war on drugs, etc.), then that was modern liberalism at work, even if the specific agent is generally seen as "right wing."

Along that line, I still maintain that Reagan's greatest contribution to our society is his rhetoric, even if he didn't always follow it to the letter.

Trade that 12% consumption tax for an across the board 10% tarrif and I'd support Britt for dictator myself.

It's kind of like the Constitution, sure, it's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than what we have now.

"Perfect" is the enemy of "good".

As mad as this makes me, I'm almost as upset that H&R block charged a woman with no house, no car, no business, and $19K in income "a few hundred dollars" to do her taxes. It must have taken all of 10 minutes for idiot behind the computer to complete the form. I bet they screwed her with one of those quick refund loans, too. If she's going to make it, she's going to have to start making better decisions than that. I hope she doesn't buy her furniture at rent-a-center.