Friday, May 23, 2014

BloggeRhythms

Interesting dichotomy came to mind while reading the news this morning. According to Fox News.com: More than 318,000 federal workers and retirees owe just over $3.3 billion in back taxes, the Internal Revenue Service said Thursday."

Nearly 3.3 percent of all 9.8 million federal workers and retirees are behind on their taxes. Delinquent taxpayers in the overall population are estimated to be at least 8.7 percent.

While 714 people work for the House and Senate, IRS officials said the data used to compile the report does not indicate whether any of those delinquent taxpayers were members of Congress.
 
Additionally, 821 employees of the nation's federal courts have overdue tax bills but the data didn’t indicate whether any of them were judges.

Fox wrote that, “Agency officials said the IRS pursues delinquent taxes from federal workers the same way it goes after money that others owe. The agency will initially send at least two bills for the taxes it believes are due, a process that eventually can evolve into garnishing wages from paychecks or seizing property.”

Almost 4.1 percent of active civilian government workers owe back taxes, and “Among Cabinet-level departments, the highest rate of delinquency is at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where 5.3 percent of workers have overdue taxes. The lowest was at the Treasury Department — which includes the IRS — where 1.2 percent of workers were delinquent.”

Now we come to the incredible part.

According to Wikipedia using information taken from reliable records, “Over the two years between April 2010 and April 2012, the IRS essentially placed on hold the processing of applications for 501(c)(4) tax-exemption status received from organizations with "Tea Party", "patriots", or "9/12" in their names. While apparently none of these organizations' applications were denied during this period only 4 were approved. During the same general period, the agency approved applications from several dozen presumably liberal-leaning organizations whose names included terms such as "progressive", "progress", "liberal", or "equality."
 
The list, first distributed in August 2010, suggested intensive scrutiny of applicants with names related to a number of political causes, including names related to the Tea Party movement and other conservative causes. 
 
Eventually, IRS employees in at least Cincinnati, Ohio; El Monte, California; Laguna Niguel, California; and Washington, D.C. applied closer scrutiny to applications from organizations that: referenced words such as "Tea Party", "Patriots", or "9/12 Project", "progressive," "occupy," "Israel," "open source software," "medical marijuana" and "occupied territory advocacy" in the case file. 
 
Other key words or phrases included:

Outlined issues in the application that included government spending.
 
Government debt, or taxes; involved advocating or lobbying to "make America a better place to live"

Had statements in the case file that criticized how the country is being run; advocated education about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights

Were focused on challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — known by many as Obamacare; questioned the integrity of federal elections.

So, while the IRS, the nation’s tax collector, assigned employees full time across the country to seek out potential political foes of the administration, federal personnel owing almost 3 1/2 billion dollars got a couple of letters and a threat of possible further action, which apparently, never happened because the tax debt is still outstanding. And if that isn’t evidence of targeting and abuse of power, among many other derelictions of duty, one has to wonder what is.

Therefore, I guess that is why Lois Lerner hid behind the 5th Amendment, refusing to testify before Congress. And if I were in her shoes, I think I’d be interested in another kind of fifth, and probably be drinking one or two daily, because she's still got a lot of explaining to do.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

No comments:

Post a Comment