Tuesday, May 21, 2013

The Best Synopsis Yet Of The IRS / Reporter Tracking Scandals

... comes from James Taranto of the WSJ.
As we wrote Friday, this will be a scandal like Watergate if it turns out that the IRS was acting under orders from Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett. If the White House's conduct turns out to be unimpeachable, then it is something far worse: a sign that the government itself has become a threat to the Constitution.
That's a succinct and wiser summation of my own, chaotic thoughts on this stuff. If it ties back to Jarrett or Obama, they can be tried, convicted and sentenced. Sufficiently punished, it could deter future fascist strategies like these. If it doesn't go back to the top, then what do you do? How do you root it out from within a Byzantine bureaucracy like the IRS, DOJ, wherever? Are you really going to hold Congressional hearings that drag people in all the way down to the lowest line unit level of these agencies?

Do we realize what it means when a government agency of 88,000+ people goes rogue?

In her excellent column the other day, Peggy Noonan was shocked at the bold responses of the IRS witnesses in front of Congress. They simply stonewalled and lied right to the faces of the representatives questioning them. Their attitude was, "You can't punish me. You can't even find out what we did. You'll never lay a hand on me."

What happens when an entire branch of the government realizes that they are so large and the regulations governing them are so complex that no practical restraints on their behavior exist?

6 comments:

Doo Doo Econ said...

This is why I made tshirts to help people express these concerns:

1) Caution: Tyranny Ahead http://www.cafepress.com/doodooecon/8181352

2) I The Governmnet http://www.cafepress.com/doodooecon/6618262

K T Cat said...

Unrelated: This is my favorite.

Foxfier said...

*pops tums*

Nick said...

Hi, linked across from another blog. Good article - you might find this one as well.

Nick said...

That should be "find this one interesting" ... man I need to get some coffee on board, haha ..

ligneus said...

You scrap the whole darn thing, fire all 88,000+ of them and start over with a flat tax.