The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is Not the Problem

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is not the problem. 

Over the last two decades (at least) whenever Republicans have had the opportunity they have cut the operating budget of the IRS. This elicits cheers from a lot of people; I mean, who likes to pay taxes? But the IRS doesn't make the rules, Congress, abetted by the President, makes the rules. And those rules, despite regular pledges by people running for office to simplify the rules, just get more convoluted and Byzantine all the time. And the IRS has fewer and fewer resources to keep track of all the rules and to be able to track down those who avoid their legally due tax bill. 

Something you'll hear from time to time is that it's the ultra-rich who are the ones who are sliding out from under their full tax burden, while it's the lower income people who get hit with interest and penalties. Part of the problem is that for lower to middle income people the ways to avoid taxes are few and straightforward. Someone gets a second job and is paid off the books, or takes an occasional cash gig. About twenty years ago I was delivering newspapers in the early morning and didn't report the income. The newspaper, however, sent copies of the 1099 to the IRS and I got caught. The interest and penalties added up to close to half of the added gross income that I had earned at that second job since this extra money was added on to what I was already earning at my regular job. I didn't have a leg to stand on since it was without question taxable income. Someone who has earnings in the millions or billions has more tax avoidance options than simply not reporting income from a second job, and those options are usually more complex.

One popular way for the super wealthy to avoid taxes is to have access without actual earnings. Billionaires routinely finance their lifestyles by taking out loans with their stock holdings as collateral. Since unrealized stock gains are not taxable until the stock is actually sold, they are living off loan proceeds, which are paid back with the profits from appreciated stock value (that's taxed, but a small portion of what they're living off). The very rich often own a web of interlocking limited liability companies (LLCs) which, if you have a smart accountant, can have a paper loss. LLCs are what's known as "flow-through entities", whereby the profit or loss "flows through" to the owners. The loss is often borrowed money anyway, but the loss that flows through reduces the owner's tax bill. Then there's deductions and credits for various reasons that may or not be legitimate, but with not enough staff to sift through it all, and definitely not enough staff competent enough to decipher the complicated accounting, the billionaires are rolling the dice that they won't get caught. So, not only do the Daddy Warbuckses of the world have more options to shelter their wealth from taxation, they are less likely to get caught when they cheat. 

One thing that gets reported as sort of a scam, but really isn't, is depreciation. In a business, taxes are paid on the profit, which is gross revenue minus expenses. With large asset purchases, however, business are required to spread that expense over the useful life of the asset. The useful life varies from 39 years for buildings, down to 5 years for laptop computers. The simplest type of depreciation splits the expense into equal amounts over the life of the asset. It's not a way to get out of paying taxes, and it doesn't equate to getting your asset for free, it's just a way to spread out the tax benefit of a large purchase. 

Part of the recent large bill passed by the Senate Democrats was to increase the IRS budget by $80 billion over 10 years. The Republicans are screaming that this will mean 87,000 new auditors who will target middle income Americans and small businesses. While the 87,000 number of employees is mentioned in a recent Treasury Department report, the increased budget will not only go toward hiring, which will include not only auditors and other enforcement agents, but IT and customer service positions, and also toward technology upgrades, which are sorely needed and it's slated to be spread over 10 years, when around half the current 72,000 IRS employees will be eligible to retire. 

The IRS is not the problem. They are merely the agency tasked with carrying out the laws that Congress has passed and the President has signed. 

Time to Make the Sausages

The great architect of German unification once compared legislating to sausage-making, commenting that you really wouldn't want to watch either one being made. Politics is not pretty. Politics is not simple. Politics is more complex than everybody "just doing the right thing"...whatever that is. 

Somehow we have gotten to the point where the populace assumes that everybody in one party is going to agree on everything and everyone in the other party is also going to agree, but on different things. There's also a misapprehension that the President, by virtue of being the titular leader of his party, has the power to dictate policy to the Congressional members of his party. (I'm consistently using the male pronoun mainly because we haven't [yet] seen any women elected President) Part of this confusion comes from the term "Commander in Chief". The President is not the Commander in Chief of the United States, but according to the Constitution, the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the militia of the several states when called into actual Service of the United States. In other words, he sits atop the chain of command of the U.S. military. And the Constitution gives the President this authority in order to avoid military control of the government, giving a civilian ultimate military authority. The members of Congress are in no sense in that chain of command, or in any way subordinate to the President, and as a matter of fact, as a body, the Congress is the equal constitutionally, to the President. 

The two party system of government is to be found nowhere in the Constitution, but it has evolved to become the de facto system nonetheless. Because real power is concentrated in this dyarchy, effectively shutting out additional parties, the two main parties function as "big tent" entities, home to a variety of ideologies that coexist, often uncomfortably. Since the election of Joe Biden and the attendant Democratic Party majorities in Congress, there has been an expectation among progressive Democratic voters that "things would get done", presumably a wide-ranging progressive agenda. The problem is twofold: (1) The filibuster in the Senate and (2) Multiple factions within the Democratic Party. 

A few months ago I was "laugh emojied" for suggesting that the Republicans were united in opposition to anything the President tried to accomplish, while the Democrats were fragmented. The person who disagreed with my assertion asserted himself that the Democrats were taking their orders from central authority that had them all marching in lockstep. Even a cursory scan of political news should disabuse one of this opinion, unless of course the belief in some secret conspiracy that controlled both parties was too difficult to let go of. The modern Democratic Party is usually portrayed as having a "progressive" wing and a "moderate" wing, with a few outlying "conservatives" like Joe Manchin rounding out the circus. The truth is a lot messier. Every single member of Congress has their own unique constituency that they cannot aggravate too much or they won't be reelected. Senators from large populous states have the additional challenge of balancing the interests of their urban and their rural voters. 

Vote trading has long been a staple of legislating. Senator "A" might be inclined to vote for Bill "X", but will withhold her vote unless amendment "Y", benefitting her state, is added. Senator "B", on the other hand, might be persuaded to vote for Bill "W", which he had doubts about, but whose "yes" vote will carry the day, if Senators "C", "D", "E" & "F" agree to support appropriating funds for a military base in his state. 

This is just what's been happening in the halls of Congress lately. Media reports focus on Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, on his seemingly un-Democratic conservatism and her supposed wackiness, and the allegations that both of them are in the pocket of special interests. This is mainly because they both appear to be the last two holdouts in any intra-party negotiation, and they are the two who are most vocal about retaining the filibuster, which prevents bills being passed by less than 60 votes if their are minority party objections. Bills do not spring fully-formed from the brow of Joe Biden, but are the result of hours and days and weeks of negotiation in order to address concerns from multiple directions. Surprise! Not everybody agrees on everything!

Are We In A Recession?

Are we in a recession? That question reminds me of the punch line to the the question: "What is the difference between ignorance and apathy?" - " I don't know and I don't care". 

The reason that I don't know is that economists, who are the ones who come up with these terms, don't agree on what defines a recession. In most cases they assign the label to a time period retroactively. One definition that you hear a lot about is two consecutive quarters of negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. It's the definition that the party that's out of power (currently the Republicans) likes to use because it's easy to point at and say "Look, those idiots in charge have got us into a recession!". The problem with that definition is that hardly any economists use it. Mainly because, by itself, it doesn't really give us a clear picture of what is going on. The more popular, and more nuanced and therefore more vague and hard to pin down definition is "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales." There's a lot of moving parts that could contribute to the big economic picture. It's not one moment in time that can be pointed at as "THAT'S the recession". 

So are we in a recession? I stand by "I don't know and I don't care". "I don't know" because the definition is so nebulous and "I don't care" for more complex reasons.

The state of the amorphous monster known as The Economy is going to affect different demographics in different ways. The stock market was setting new records every week for several years, but for the most part this had no effect upon the average American. This year it slid down a little a had investors sweating - but did that same average American notice? I'd wager not. The unemployment rate is another measure of economic health; the rate has been ridiculously low the last few years, but if the majority of the employed are working multiple jobs to get by, the news isn't so good. Wages are going up, but so are prices. Whether we are in good economic times or not is an individual thing. It's also highly subjective. Studies have been done that indicate that most people believe that the economy is bad even when they personally are doing well!

How you look at current economic conditions is going to be colored by your partisan leanings. Of course if you didn't vote for the party that's currently in power you're going to focus on inflation, in particular gas and grocery prices; if you're a supporter of the incumbent administration your focus will be on continued low unemployment, continued record job creation, as well as record corporate and retail sales and profits.  

Parties in power claim credit when things are going well and make excuses when things are going poorly; parties out of power point the finger of blame when things are going badly and defect attention some other thing when the economy is doing well. So how things going now? Some good, some bad. Just like always.

Kyle Rittenhouse & Fearing for One's Life

Kyle Rittenhouse was on trial for murder. He killed two people and seriously wounded a third. 

According to trial testimony, the first person that Rittenhouse killed was Joseph Rosenbaum. I've heard various versions of what happened between Rittenhouse and Rosenbaum, and various descriptions of Rosenbaum as a troublemaker. But trial testimony established that Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum four times after Rosenbaum lunged at him. 

The jury decided, as the defense claims, that Rittenhouse fired in self defense. I am unfamiliar with the specifics of Wisconsin law, although I am reasonably sure they don't have a version of a "Stand Your Ground" statute, so it's wasn't a sure thing either way. But is it self defense if you purposely put yourself in a position to provoke people to anger by walking around with a loaded weapon that you are prepared to use against people who are damaging property? Emotions were running hot in Kenosha and he inserted himself right into the middle of it. And "inserted" is the right word. This wasn't his city, it wasn't even his state. He got his mother to drive him across state lines and pick up his illegally obtained weapon because he was looking for trouble. And he found it. Trouble didn't find him. He actively sought out a dangerous situation and shot an unarmed man who he thought endangered him. Then he killed Anthony Huber, who was trying to detail and disarm him, who was also unarmed. Finally he shot and maimed Gaige Grosskreutz, who was armed and trying to stop him. The only reason he was able to shoot the Grosskreutz was that he was unable to pull the trigger and potentially kill Rittenhouse. 

The Kenosha Police Department wasn't on trial, yet their actions were as much to blame for the shootings as is Kyle Rittenhouse. Why, when arresting people for curfew violations, and knowing that the anger was just ready to bubble over into violence, did they allow openly armed vigilantes to roam the streets? And not only allow it, but encourage it?  

Rittenhouse got off. In my opinion it was overly broad self defense statutes that allowed his claim of self defense to stand. They're not much different in Wisconsin than anywhere else, but for the most part a claim that someone "feared for their life" is taken at face value. In the case of the first person that he shot, Rittenhouse claimed he was afraid that he would be killed by his own gun, that he testified that Rosenbaum was trying to take from him. In the case of his murder of Huber, he was apparently deathly afraid of a skateboard. He seemed to be completely unaware that he was being "attacked" because he had just KILLED SOMEONE! 

After the acquittal, instead of breathing a sigh of relief that he wouldn't be going to prison, he has become the darling of the gun lovers in the NRA and the Republican Party, spouting pro-gun rhetoric via his Twitter account and encouraging his supporters to justify his murder and maiming spree by pointing out the arrest history of his victims. 

The NRA crowd and its hangers-on don't see the inherent problem with this no-questions-asked "feared for my life" defense. Cops have been using it for as long as there have been cops, but now you start to see videos of aggressive, armed individuals screaming "I feel threatened" at people armed only with words. I'm not advocating unprovoked violence, but wouldn't a natural extension of this belief be for protestors to just proactively shoot any right wing counter-protester? 

After the Rittenhouse verdict, I'd certainly fear for my life if I saw any of those armed assholes at a protest.

Russia, Russia, Russia

One of the pro-Trump/Republican talking points is to point to the investigation into the 2016 Trump Campaign's connections to Russia as a hoax. They act and talk as if were a proven fact that there was no "collusion" between individuals connected to Russian State Security and the Trump for President organization. They further deride any investigation into Trump's finances, his support for the January 6th attack on the Capitol or any other investigation as "just another 'Russia, Russia, Russia' hoax". In the main they have been pretty successful. Definitely Trump acolytes and other rightists are convinced that Trump was exonerated and that the investigation by Mueller was uncovered no "collusion". But I'd bet that many who have no love for Trump also believe that Mueller's investigation, if not providing a total exoneration, at least uncovered no questionable or unethical actions. But Mueller's report concluded no such thing.

I don't know who among my circle of family, friends and acquaintances has read the Mueller Report. I did. 

To be clear, what the Mueller Report doesn't allege, is that Russia, to use the popular Trumpist term, "rigged" the election, changed any votes, suborned any election officials or otherwise caused fraudulent ballots to be submitted. What it does conclude is that Russian Intelligence was using social media to spread false information about Trump's opponent former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It also came to the conclusion that Russia hacked into various computer systems, including that of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and provided hacked emails from the DNC to Wikileaks, which subsequently leaked them. Mueller's investigation also revealed that several Trump campaign officials were in illegal contact with the Russian government, and that others met with a Russian operative for the express purpose of digging up dirt on Clinton. Several Trump campaign staffers were indicted and convicted of various Russia-related crimes - pardoned by Trump after his election. Mueller was very clear that many of Trump's actions, before and after his inauguration,  met the legal definition of obstruction of justice. 

There was no indictment of Trump for two reasons:

1. The actions of Trump and his campaign did not rise to the legal definition of conspiracy
2. The Department of Justice adhered to a long-established policy stating that they could not (or would not) seek to indict a sitting president. 

That's it. Despite the way the word "collusion" was thrown about by the media and by the general public, there is no such crime as "collusion". Criminal conspiracy is a crime, but it is very hard to prove. The key component in a conspiracy charge is that there has to be coordination between or among the parties. Despite attempts by the Russians to coordinate, Trump's people were either too incompetent or too lazy to do so, although it was clear that they were quite happy to accept all the help that the Russians were giving.  

Don't be fooled by the gaslighting. The Russians worked hard to discredit Clinton and support Trump. Trump gladly accepted the help. Trump obstructed the investigation. 

Not a hoax. 

 
 

The Republicans Think You're A Pedophile

The other day I posted about the ignorance of the American electorate. Maybe I'm too informed about what's going on in politics these days, if such a thing is possible. Part of my effort to keep my finger on the political post is to follow people on Twitter who represent a wide swath of opinions. This exposes me to, as former President G.W. Bush is supposed have said, some crazy shit. One of the most prevalent lately is how the political right wing's predilection to accuse anyone that they disagree with as a pedophile. 

As far as I can tell this originated in one of the QAnon conspiracy fantasies. Supposedly former President Trump was leading the fight against wide-ranging pedophilia rings. Maybe some of you remember the accusations that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was heading up a group of pedophiles in the basement of a Georgetown pizza restaurant - that didn't have a basement. It's only escalated. Democrats who hug their grandchildren are pedophiles. Librarians who stock books that feature gay characters are pedophiles. Teachers who make reference to their own same-sex spouse are pedophiles. 

What's at the root of all of this is homophobia becoming "respectable" again. 

Those of us who were born a half century or more ago remember how one of the boogiemen images of gay people was that they were child abusers, despite statistics showing how child abuse was overwhelmingly perpetrated by heterosexuals. How homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. How homosexuality was a sin. Some of the more optimistic among us consoled ourselves with the delusion that homophobia was a thing of the past, or at least relegated to the most ignorant among us. 

Apparently there a lot of ignorant among us. More than we thought. A lot more.

Just as overt racism resurged after we elected a Black president, and racists felt empowered under former President Trump, the under-the-radar hatred of Gay Americans bubbled to the surface as well. The very fact that Gay Americans can "come out of the closet", that same-sex marriage has been legalized, and there Gay members of the presidential cabinet has not prevented hatred and bigotry from making a center stage appearance. 

Recent legislative actions, specifically in Florida and Texas, have, under the cover of defining age-appropriate sex education and classroom discussion, effectively made any mention of the existence of Gay people illegal. Proponents of these actions claim that they are against the "sexualizing of children" and teaching of sexual topics to children to young to understand, which on the face of it doesn't sound terrible, but characterize opponents as child abusers and yes, pedophiles and groomers. A groomer, in the context of sex, is someone who influences a child over a period of time in order to prepare them for, and make them comfortable with, sex with an adult. Yet this is another "solution" for a problem that does not exist. Teachers aren't "grooming" children in the care, nor are they having explicit discussions with first graders about sex. They aren't even, as the homophobes allege, pushing a "homosexual agenda", training, or grooming, if you will, children to become gay. No, what is being prevented is any acknowledgement that Gay people exist. If little Betty asks teacher why Johnny's two dads are holding hands when they pick him up after school, or where Johnny's mom is, teacher isn't allowed to say "Johnny doesn't have a mom and a dad, he has two dads". Or if a child runs into teacher at a Christmas pageant with her spouse, she isn't allowed to tell the child that she is her wife. 

School teachers are to act as if Gay people do not exist. The assumption underlying these rules is that being Gay is bad, is sinful, is harmful, and any recognition that Gay people live in the community is pushing a bad, harmful, sinful "agenda". And people who don't pretend that Gay people don't exist are pedophiles. 

Homophobia, in my observation, is bigotry disguised as religion. Certainly one way to interpret some passages of the Bible is that homosexuality is a sin, but that interpretation is not universal, even among religious Christians. And for some reason the loathing and hatred of the "sin" of homosexuality doesn't extend to the myriad other offenses against God that are found in the Bible. Divorced people, those who cheat on their taxes, or those who drink too much may be subject to lectures from the pastor, or disapproving looks from the busybodies, but there aren't any other categories of so-called sin that have whole segments of society fighting against them. (Of course I'm not talking about offenses against others like murder or larceny). To be consistent, someone who wants to drive Gays into the closet would also do the same for those who don't keep the Sabbath. But if it's religious observance that fuels a stance against Gay people, it should not be the business of government to enforce one group's religious faith on others. We wrote a whole amendment to the Constitution about that. 

So religiously motivated bigots have come to an impasse. Constitutionally we can't legislate one religion's beliefs, and we certainly can't pretend that naked bigotry is a good reason for legal restrictions, so we are left we with them convincing themselves (or at least saying that they're convinced) that what is actually happening is sexualizing of children and...pedophilia. It doesn't really matter (to them) if they believe it, as long as they get the job done. 

I understand the seriously religiously motivated homophobia. The cult that I belonged to was at one point viscously anti-gay. At the time I went along with the idea that God did not approve of homosexuality because I wanted to do what God wanted me to do, although I never was comfortable with the rabid hatred this belief seemed to engender in some of my co-religionists. One I left that cult, as well as Christianity in general, I had no reason to retain my belief that being Gay was a sin. I changed my mind. Christians who think that they are following God's will be supporting homophobia can change their minds as well, they need to examine whether their sincerely held religious beliefs is a valid pretext for denying other Americans their full civil rights. 

Hardcore bigots - I hold little hope for them.  

Wild West

One of the recurring talking points from the right wing, science-denying Trumpists and Republicans is that somehow, President Biden is an autocrat, or a Communist, or a dictator - depending on the day and the mood of Tucker Carlson. Much of this is rooted in the irrational resistance to mask mandates, and partial vaccine requirements. There is also a lot of overlap with the Second Amendment absolutists who equate "freedoms" with owning enough guns for a small army and believe that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow citizens to overthrow the government if they don't like it. It seems that an article of faith among this strain of America First philosophy is that "freedom" is the ultimate goal and that government - any government - is an illegitimate infringements of our rights. 

While  acknowledging that our government doesn't oversee a utopian society (or anywhere close to it) and that power usually does corrupt, what would our world look like without any kind of government? A familiar saying is that "nature abhors a vacuum". If the government of the United States, for whatever reason you can imagine, ceased to exist tomorrow something would take its place. Maybe not immediately, and likely after a period of chaos, but the people who had power in that post-governmental world would almost certainly exercise that power. Science fiction writer S.M. Stirling wrote a series of novels beginning with Dies the Fire, in which he envisions a catastrophe that renders nuclear and electric power unavailable and even gunpowder won't work in a firearm. (He doesn't explain how this happens...magic?). The immediate aftermath is chaos, death and destruction. As his series progresses he imagines that society is reorganized in a variety of ways. In some areas urban gangs become the new ruling elite. An army general tries to rebuild the United States from his headquarters in Idaho. A renaissance cosplayer organizes Portland on a middle ages feudal model. Iowa closes its borders and its government stays in power with large farmers as the new power base and refugees from other states as virtual serfs. He imagines a dizzying variety of mini civilizations. The areas where there is no forced organization degenerate into dead zones or cannibalism. It's fiction, but with a basis in truth. 

If there really was no government as we know it, one of the first things that you'd see is large scale infrastructure failure. With no one in charge, who is maintaining the roads, how are the electrical plants kept running, and if you think inflation is bad, how can you purchase what you don't grow yourself (assuming you can do some subsistence farming) if there is no agreed-upon currency? 

Some people might be able to live a life of "freedom" on their farm, or out in the woods, away from civilization, protecting themselves with their guns. Until they run out of ammunition of course. How long would it take for somebody with a following to decide that he's the new bigshot in town and you work for him now? Or the local preacher who spent years screaming on YouTube decides that you're the wrong type of Christian and sweeps through your area purging the heretics? Freedom might just be keeping your head down and hoping no one notices you, if you even have the skills to feed and clothe and house yourself. But make no mistake, something or someone is going to fill that void left my an absent government. And the new boss might not be the same as the old boss, it might be worse.