Fuck the IRS and fuck Biden for the politicization

I don't know why exactly Joe Biden's new, agent-enhanced IRS decided to scare the hell out of middle-class Americans like me by sending us a letter, months removed from the end of normal tax-filing season, out of the blue ... 

Urging us to sign up for Obamacare.

As this was NOT a month after I had filed my annual tax return, I knew this couldn't be getting notified that I had failed to sign my return, or something like that — which I have done before.

So, my first thought, before opening the letter?

"I'm being audited."

Way to scare the shit out of me.

Put a stamp-like notice on the front of the letter next time.

Second, I consider this a politicization of the IRS.

Maybe it's not Tricky Dick's weaponization of the IRS in the 1970s, but it is a politicization.

And, given that wingnut Republicans fought Biden tooth and nail on the issue of hiring more agents, politically, it's also an incredibly stupid one.

And, ultimately, it's Genocide Joe doubling down on not doing anything to fix our health care system, as in, no national health care.

No, that's semi-ultimately.

Ultimately is that this is yet another reason not to vote for Warmonger Joe.

#BernieSanders has an integrity fail with the IRS — blame Jane?

Bernie and Jane, back in the romantic bloom days.

It's tax deadline day. And, it's a presidential election season.

So, it's time for a mashup post!

Some Sandernistas started Twittering last week that Bernie Sanders had released his 2014 IRS tax return, after being criticized by the Hillary Clinton campaign for just releasing a summary, originally.

Sorry, but that doesn't cut the mustard with me.

Say what else you will about Hillary Clinton, but she's released scads more, and with Jeb Bush hors d'combat, is the most transparent candidate of either party in this regard. And, Sandernistas, she had released her complete 2014 return some time back — I believe before Sanders had released even his "summary."

As a good skeptic, I favor accuracy in politics and political news. I do so enough that, while I rely on Politifact as a guide, I have had my fair amount of squabbles with it.

As for politicians? I vote for ideas first, candidates second.

Bernie Sanders is definitely better than Hillary Clinton within the Democratic party, but he's not Yahweh Sabaoth, and there's more than two political parties.

I had already seen some of these stories, both about Bernie's lack of transparency before now, on even 2014 returns, and about Hillary's actual transparency.

It took 30 seconds of teh Google to get those two hits.

Would that others would know that.

Per that last link:

All told, the 2016 presidential campaign has been an abysmal one so far for tax transparency, according to tax experts and government watchdog groups. 

“It has been pretty bad,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, an advocacy group. “To tell the truth, it’s really only Hillary that’s been fully complying with that expectation that the candidates release all their tax returns. All the other candidates have released just the summary pages . . . and not the details.” 

Without the full returns, voters can’t see such items as sources of income, which tax breaks they claimed, what they might have deducted as business expenses or how much they gave to charity, said Joseph Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts and author of the “Politics of Federal Taxation” column for Tax Notes magazine. 

“In some ways, it’s even more insidious; we’re watering down what counts as a tax disclosure,” he said.

Indeed.

As for Sanders blaming his wife, Jane?

Erm, I assume she's filed her 2013 return and that you're not facing an IRS lien. So, why don't you post that, or 2012, or whatever?

Maybe she's actually the reason why he hasn't released more.

Those old returns would show the $200,000 golden parachute she got from Burlington College. More on her departure from Burlington College here. And, yes, it was a gamble to buy that land from the Catholic diocese; that said, per Wiki's page on her, BC's financial flow had been struggling for nearly 40 years before that, so it was a huge roll-of-the-dice gamble.

Those old returns, per Wiki, might lead to more speculation about how the loan to buy the land was paid off:

With the College unable to collect on some promised pledges after Sanders had resigned, and the enrollment increase plans failing, the Diocese settled the loan debt with the College in 2015 for $996,000 less than the agreed amount, and with $1 million of the repayment made in shares of an unidentified LLC company.

Per this piece from the Vermont Business Journal, just what is this LLC? And were there any city of Burlington political shenanigans?

Now, re last Friday’s debate, I think Bernie’s taking some unreasonable bashing for how he would pay for single-payer national health care and other things. But, questions like these leave the window open for more.

Those old returns would show how much she has earned as an ad buyer for previous campaigns of his. 

And they might show other things.

Now, there's nothing illegal about this. (I also think there was no fraud in the BC land-buy incident, but a case of not just bad judgment, but seriously bad judgment. To put it in terms that Sandernistas should understand, it was the equivalent of voluntarily engaging in a subprime mortgage, or close to engaging in a so-called "liar's mortgage.") But, it does leave open the integrity issue, where he's generally held the high ground. And, it does give partial credence to Clinton's lament that Sanders hasn't faced much media screening.

She seems interesting enough as a person; this long bio piece at Yahoo provides more.

#Benghazi, #IRS, #Obamacare, #AP snooping: What Obama needs to do

Eric Hitler, er Holder has crossed a bridge too far.
Time for Dear Leader to push him out.

First of all, that political consultant is me.

And, he's going to give Obama some tough advice, starting with the guy in the picture.

Setting aside that, as a left-liberal in American terms, I've found his stimulus response to the Great Recession, the whole semi-bollocks of Obamacare, and other actions less than ideal, the constitutional law scholar president appears out of his element, even after four-plus years, at the hardball of elective politics.

So, he needs help.

That would start with bitch-slapping him a couple of times, or more than a couple, before he finally realizes, and admits, that "Kumbaya" ain't in the GOP hymnal, that his self-loved mellifluous voice sounds discordant to many on Capitol Hill, and that his White House staff could use somebody with more legislative experience to work the Hill.

Now, on to some specifics.

First, the AP snooping. I don't care if you're having gay sex with him on the down low, at a point not immediate, but after a reasonable amount of stonewalling, if Eric Holder was directly connected, plugged-in, etc., to the AP snooping, can his ass. Period. It's triage and you need to manage it. (As long as you weren't in the loop yourself, and nobody leaks that you were after he gets fired.)

Then, to shore yourself up with Democrats, especially more liberal ones, appoint a new AG with better civil liberties cred. Of course, Holder needs to go, anyway. And, you need to stop the snooping and leak-plugging, not that the non-political consultant me expects that.

IRS? Steven Miller is an acting commissioner. Schmooze GOP Senators about a permanent replacement while cutting the House GOP out of the loop. Hell, tell Mitch the Turtle you'll name his venal wife, Elaine Chao, to the position. (Well, that might be a bit much, but you get the idea. Schmooze.) And, it looks like Obama's made a start here by accepting Miller's resignation. That said, Holder's finger-wagging, again, about IRS criminality and investigations makes me want to fucking barf.

It makes me barf more now that we see this is less of a scandal than Benghazi, because liberal groups got the same treatment. The bigger scandal is that the IRS is overburdened, likely because the GOP wants to starve it. 

Beyond this, any other scandal is Dear Leader's reaction to what is even more a non-scandal than Benghazi is starting to look like the Shirley Sherrod fiasco when Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, with some knowledge by Obama, threw her under the bus.

Obamacare? Namely, the concerns that Kathleen Sibelius shouldn't be soliciting money from health care organizations to help pay for educating the American public about this.

Ain't this what Organizing for Action is for? To shake down rich donors but outside of of electoral politics, as it reportedly says its about? Surely there's room to launder some money in a theoretically legal way.

Benghazi? Even if you don't want to be totally honest (as Republicans don't either) about what the fuck the CIA was doing there, roll out a sacrificial lamb. Or better yet, tell the GOP that you WILL spill the full beans unless it shuts up.

And, if not me, I'll bet Bill Clinton would give you advice halfway like this. Because, if nothing else, and speculation is true, he doesn't want your fortunes to be a lead anchor around Hillary 2016.

(Of course, the left-liberalish part of me, thinking of that, says "please don't take a word of advice, but instead, drag her down with you.")

Beyond that, Ambassador Stevens himself twice rejected additional military protection. 

I am beginning to think that no "scandal" story deserves attention until McClatchy writes something and gets at least in the reasonable ballpark of reality.

Fleecing the IRS, if not the "flock"

Non-Catholic ministers don't take vows of poverty. Some are FAR from it.

Example?

A minister gets a base salary of $40,000 AND a housing allowance of $65,000.

Guess what he pays in federal income tax?

A paltry $740.

Click the link above to see all the bullshit deductions he gets.

That's why, per the interviews Dan Dennett had recently with atheist and agnostic ministers, I can sympathize with them not wanting to leave the ministry for financial reasons.

Having gotten my M.Div myself, with a pre-ministry undergraduate degree, and then willingly NOT gone down that route myself?

I could empathize, but I deliberately choose not to do so.

A sad irony to Joe Stack and his plane crash

It appeared that the IRS line Joe Stack was ranting about, if I understood it, was a provision that allowed companies for whom he worked to treat him a self-employed contractor.

In today's New York Times?

A story about the government cracking down on that practice.

Kenneth Copeland has a lot of ’splaining for Grassley

That would be Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, who, earlier this year, asked Copeland and other evangelist$ to appear before the Senate. The goal was not punitive, but to better understand financial organization of megachurches with large electronic ministries, so as to see if IRS code needed to be restructured. Well, Copeland, along with the others, refused to appear, and was one of the most vigorous in his refusal.

Now we know why.

Land use kickbacks to family members. Sweetheart land sales to family members. Too many family members holding too many insider jobs. Board members fobbed off with sinecures.

Plus, Copeland has veto power over everything. Literally.

No wonder Copeland doesn’t wan to appear. He’s probably breaking IRS regs as it stands, and doesn’t want to give it any “fingerprints” via Senate Finance Committee testimony.

The full story has all this financial ugliness and more.

A final, post-subprime bust kick in the crotch from the IRS

If your house gets repoed because you can’t keep up on a mortgage, the IRS
wants to tax the amount of the debt you had eliminated.

Foreclosure is one way that beleaguered homeowners can fall into this tax trap. The other is when homeowners are forced to sell their homes for less than the value of the mortgage. If the lender forgives that difference, they are liable for income taxes on that amount.

The 1099 shortfall, as it is called, stems from an Internal Revenue Service policy that treats forgiven debt of all types as income even if the taxpayer has nothing tangible to show for it, unless the debt is canceled through bankruptcy.

The Center for Responsible Lending expects that 20 percent of the home loans made in 2005 and 2006 to people with weak credit, commonly called subprime loans, will end in foreclosure. Because so little money was required as a down payment during the boom, the value of many of these houses may be less than what is owed.

Some people in this predicament are fighting the I.R.S. and winning. Sometimes, lower payments can be negotiated with the I.R.S., tax experts say.

In other cases, bankruptcy or a claim of insolvency can eliminate the tax burden.

Even though you may have some legal recourse, in general, this is ridiculous and non-sensical. And, it’s punitive, as well as being stupid.

It will also contribute to more of an economic downturn, taking more money to buy things out of peoples’ pockets.