United Liberty

I’ve been talking with some of my friends about this story. Here’s a comment they made about what happened in Austin last week:

…the media is going to take what he did and sweep it under the rug as bat shit crazy and ignore the point he was trying to make. To a godless man in a godless world that was his best option in his mind. He wanted to hurt the government like they hurt him, but he instead hurt innocents that had nothing to do with it. But how do you strike back at something so big and abstract as government? I’m sure he was right when he said he wouldnt be the last. If people don’t take notice of how the government is [screwing] its own citizens we are going to have more and more incidents like this. Basically, America will become its own terrorists.

I want to unequivocally condem the murder Joe Stack committed by flying an airplane into an IRS building. Joe Stack was a fed up man, who thought he was out of options and wanted to make a point.  It’s too bad that he decided to take his life and endanger others to make his point.

Read his suicide note.  It’s very well written.  He worked within the system, as best he could, obeying the rules and finally concluded the tax system is biased, so biased that it cost him:

$40,000+, 10 years of [his] life

What should we take from this act of violence?  Anything? Why was Joe Stack compelled to take his life?  That’s a scary place my mind rejects it out of hand.

Over at Carpe Diem, Mark Perry points to IRS data showing that 400 taxpayers paid 2 percent of all income taxes.

No doubt you heard about Andrew Joseph Stack flying his Piper Cherokee into an office building where about 200 IRS employees worked in northwest Austin, Texas.  In addition to the intentional plane crash, he apparently set his home ablaze and possibly booby-trapped his car with a bomb.  His suicide note/manifesto was briefly posted here, before the webhosting company took the site offline “due to the sensitive nature of the events.”

You may recall a report issued by the Missouri Information Analysis Center last winter that equated support of many “extreme” views common in libertarian thought, including resistance to the current tax levels and system, with domestic terrorism.  It’s obvious from the note left by Stack that he is no fan of the government, specifically calling out the IRS and FAA, as well as Congress’ manipulation of the tax code.  It will likely be a few small correlations between Stack’s manifesto, his actions, and the MIAC report that generate more government scrutiny of those who oppose the continued growth of the federal government.

I know what you’re thinking: man that Pete is a positive guy. I like to describe myself as realistic, with a bit of fatalism throw in. Either way, I find it hard to look at the economic landscape and have any hope. It is especially dreadful when politicians have to get re-
elected, AND said politicians consult certain “economists”.

Economists have for years looked at what is happening in a society and sought to come up with solutions as to how an economic crisis can be “fixed”. The problem is, like in all fields, you have good economists, and you have the not so good (The latter seem to be the ones that always find their way onto the public payroll).

In extremely broad terms economists can be split into two categories:

If you are a student of American history your eyes should be opening as to which economist is most often chosen by our elected officials. The real question is “why”?

Well, why wouldn’t a politician pick economist #2?

Would you like the IRS to have a greater role?:

[ObamaCare] would require most Americans to have health insurance and to prove it on their federal tax returns. Those who don’t would pay a penalty to the IRS.

That’s one of several key duties the IRS would assume under the bills that have been approved by the House of Representatives and Senate and will be merged by negotiators from both chambers.

The agency also would distribute as much as $140 billion a year in new government subsidies to help small employers and as many as 19 million lower-income people buy coverage.

In addition, the IRS would collect hundreds of billions of dollars in new fees on employers, drug companies and device makers, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

If you fail to buy health insurance and don’t pay the fines associated with that, you will go to jail for one to five years. I don’t see how it is even remotely constitutional for the government to force citizens to buy a commodity like health insurance.

As we now know, one of the mandates under the current health care proposal in Congress is that individuals must have insurance or pay a fine, which will be enforced by the IRS. Guess what happens if you fail or refuse to pay that fine:

The debate over whether the federal government should require all Americans to carry health insurance is heating up.

The latest spark is a letter that Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, sent Thursday to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.

Given that the health-care bill written by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus contains a $1,900 fee (or excise tax) for not buying health insurance, Ensign wanted to know what would happen if an American didn’t pay the penalty.

In a handwritten letter, Barthold told Ensign that under an existing provision of the Internal Revenue Code, willful failure to pay a fine can result in being charged with a misdemeanor which could carry a penalty of up to $25,000, or up to a year in jail, or both. The handwritten letter was a follow-up to an answer that Barthold gave Ensign during Thursday’s mark-up of the Baucus bill.

Buy health insurance under the requirements set forth by government bureaucrats under ObamaCare or go to jail.

As you know, there will be an individual mandate in ObamaCare, at there is to this point. Do you know which agency will be responsible for enforcement of the mandate? The IRS:

[H]ealth care reform, as currently envisioned by Democratic leaders, would be built on the foundation of an expanded and more intrusive IRS.

Under the various proposals now on the table, the IRS would become the main agency for determining who has an “acceptable” health insurance plan; for finding and punishing those who don’t have such a plan; for subsidizing individual health insurance costs through the issuance of a tax credits; and for enforcing the rules on those who attempt to opt out, abuse, or game the system. A substantial portion of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill, is devoted to amending the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 in order to give the IRS the authority to perform these new duties.

The Democrats’ plan would require all Americans to have “acceptable” insurance coverage (the legislation includes long and complex definitions of “acceptable”) and would designate the IRS as the agency charged with enforcing that requirement. On your yearly 1040 tax return, you would be required to attest that you have “acceptable” coverage. Of course, you might be lying, or simply confused about whether or not you are covered, so the IRS would need a way to check your claim for accuracy. Under current plans, insurers would be required to submit to the IRS something like the 1099 form in which taxpayers report outside income. The IRS would then check the information it receives from the insurers against what you have submitted on your tax form.

Tax collectors are using new and social media sites, such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook, to trackdown people who owe back taxes:

State revenue agents have begun nabbing scofflaws by mining information posted on social-networking Web sites, from relocation announcements to professional profiles to financial boasts.

In Minnesota, authorities were able to levy back taxes on the wages of a long-sought tax evader after he announced on MySpace that he would be returning to his home town to work as a real-estate broker and gave his employer’s name. The state collected several thousand dollars, the full amount due.

Meanwhile, agents in Nebraska collected $2,000 from a deejay after he advertised on his MySpace page that he would be working at a big public party.

In California, which has recently been so strapped for revenue it has had to pay some bills with IOUs, agents are also using social Web sites. When one delinquent was identified as a rigger of sails, a curious collection agent searched his name and the term online and found a discussion board used by local riggers. In one thread someone asked where the rigger was because his store had closed, and a reply was posted, “Oh, he moved across the bay.” The agent found the man and collected a four-figure sum.

An Internal Revenue Service spokesman declined to say whether its agents use social-networking sites to pursue delinquent taxes or assist audits.

Be very careful about what you put online.