I’m planning to produce an educational video that’s going to be called “Runaway!” It’s a narrative story about a slave boy named Blanche who has learned to read and write. He thinks he has it pretty good, even better, his master has promised him emancipation the day he “puts on the wooden overcoat.” That day comes without warning and… well, the title of the video is RUNAWAY! – you ought to be able to figure out the rest.

The project is educational has a red-state sensibility about it and will touch on themes of literacy, slavery, the Underground Railroad, and folklore.  It will be aimed at teens and pre-teens.  Right now, the Facebook page is less about the film story and more about the process I’m going through to go tax exempt and raise the cash.  So if you’re a Facebook user, I’d appreciate a visit to “The Runaway Project” page, and if you can’t hit the “like” button while you’re there, at least offer to friend me.

Thanks.

I had to battle to paint my stoop.   In the final analysis, I got permission to use a brick red paint.  Had I asked for leave to paint it green or purple, the alteration would have been deemed inappropriate and my request would have been denied.

I don’t think anyone denies that Muslims have the right to worship, but they don’t have the right to build a facility for group worship in my neighborhood.  Neither do Christians.  All city dwellers are effected by zoning.  Up in the mountains, neighbors are restricted on the height of the structures they build because it’s not right to block your neighbor’s view of the mountians.  In our county, I think you’d run into trouble if you tried to build a day-school outside city limits  -  I think the concerns are ground water and fire protection.

This argument about the mosque got silly fast.  Us right-wing nuts need to remember that a person doesn’t have the right to build anything he wants on his property just because he wants to.

Drive vs. Reverse

Detroit vs. _________________?

Now we see that a gang of conservative lawyers are challenging the constitutionality of the AHCA (Affordable Health Care Act of 2009).  They argue that the Commerce Clause doesn’t grant the government the power to require an individual to buy a product or service.  The government responds that the Act doesn’t really require anyone to buy, lookit, those that choose not to buy will be subject to a tax, Mr. Obama’s assurances that it’s “absolutely not a tax” notwithstanding.  Sort of like a sales tax for not buying.

Who are the people that won’t buy the insurance?  I’d think the largest group is going to be young adults, although insurance companies are going to permit parents to cover their children to age 27.   So as a practical matter the folks that will pay the penalty rather than buy the insurance will probably be age 27 to 39 or so.  The 39 number is arguable, but that seems to me to be about the time when advancing age starts to make people do the kind of things that the preachers are taking credit for. 

Of course, the government employees and the people that rely on entitlements all have health insurance.  It’s the ignoramuses that don’t.

I’m struck by the irony of this:  this band of conservatives lawyers are basically arguing that the AHCA is unfair to American ignoramuses to a degree that’s un- Constitutional.   Conservatives are carrying water for a group of people that split 90/10 for Mr. Obama and are too stupid to realize they had a target on their backs.   

Endnote:  evidently conscientious objectors can go without coverage and escape the penalty.  I guess that’s some really fundamentalist Christian sects, Quakers, and Muslims.  On the face of it, the Quakers offer the best package.  Seventy-two virgins sounds enticing but, my luck, they’d all look like Susan Boyle.

Did someone say “what’s it about?”  Well… just imagine.

What would have happened if there were 20,000 indiginous tribal people populating Earth when another, more agressive, tobacco smoking peoples arrived from the sky seeking resources?  And what if the indiginous people were twice as big and more athletic and far more spiritual because the trees and fauna on Earth were all connected in a neural network that made it bigger and more powerful than a brain?  And what if the conciousness of a couple of the sky people could flip flop back and forth between sky-bodies and indiginous-bodies?  And what if the indiginous people, men and women alike, had pony tails that serve as phallic connectors that allow them to commune with Mother Gaia to drive away the sky people after the sky-guy in his indiginous body does the obligatory Knute Rockne slash Woody Guthrie speech ?  (“This land is ours!”  [Cheers from crowd.])  Well.  One thing sure, the outcome would have been different.

Like all great movies, Avatar leaves us with some moral ambiguity.  It seems a bit selfish if not downright churlish for Earth to be set aside and preserved for the benefit a mere 20,000 individuals if an entire life form is left to extermination, after all, only the eco-scientist smoked tobacco.  I came away hoist on the horns of a conundrum.  Isn’t it OK to share the wealth?  To spread it around a little?  Why should so few have so much?

This movie has given me the blues.

Reminds me of a joke.  A kid asks his father “can you tell me the difference between potentially and likely?”  His father sez “Go ask your mother if she would sleep with Robert Redford for a million dollars. Then go ask your sister if she would sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars. Come back and tell me what you’ve learned.”

The kid is puzzled, but asks his mother. “Mom, if someone gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with Robert Redford?”

“Don’t tell your father, but, yes, I would.”

He then goes to his sister’s room. “Sis, if someone gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with Brad Pitt?”

She replies, “Omigod! Definitely!”

The kid goes back to his father. “Dad, I think I’ve figured it out.  Potentially, we are sitting on $2 million bucks, but in all likelihood, we’re living with two sluts.”

Big Hat Salazar says he’s gonna drop another dime on the gulf drilling industry but it looks like to me like he’s still got a huge obstacle in showing the “likelihood” of another spill that would cause irreparable damage.

He got his teeth kicked in on the appeal but only 2-1.  I suppose the appeals court judge has a lifetime appointment, but I wouldn’t want to spend a lifetime in Louisiana if I made a ruling like that.

Now for something more sophisticated… to the tune of “[We'll have] Manhattan”:

We’ll have Mohammed
Mullahs  
And Ayatollahs too
It’s lovely to subdue
The Joooo

It’s very fancy
On old Damascus Street
You know
The camels charm us so
When balmy breezes blow
To and fro

And tell me what meat
Compares
With goat meat
In July
Sweet pushcarts
Gently gliding by

A car bomb
We pray will spoil
Two rabbis and one moyel
We’ll kill a Hebrew
And whip ourselves with joy

“They are not near Baghdad. Don’t believe them…. They said they entered with… tanks in the middle of the capital. They claim that they – I tell you, I… that this speech is too far from the reality. It is a part of this sickness of their plan. There is no an… no any existence to the American troops or for the troops in Baghdad at all.”   Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, a/k/a “Baghdad Bob,” Iraqi Minister of Information, April 5, 2003.

Last, but in no way least, the Great and Power Wizard of Oz:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZR64EF3OpA

In 1997, the Senate began to reform IRS. 

Former Commissar Peterson testified that verbal attacks on IRS encourage events like the Oklahoma City Bombing. 

The testimony of former Commissar Lawrence Summers (now president of Harvard University), stressed the importance of avoiding criticism of IRS agents. 

The Senators heard that pressure to produce at IRS makes it a terrible place to work. 

What will we do?

I won’t keep you in suspense.  The lasting consequence of reform was this finding: tax collectors suffer from stress-related disabilities.  Our wonderful lawgivers hobbled any defense of the federal government to phony disability claims by revenue agents.  And now it’s a cry of treason for a citizen to denounce the altruism of IRS agents. 

The revenue agent, the unceasing victim. 

Anything wrong with this picture?  Sure.  It’s baloney.  The revenue agent deserves to suffer.  His lack of integrity is the problem with the IRS.  He’s the most rapacious creature known.  He robs the rest of us.  He always has.  He always will.  Wasn’t Jesus condemned for befriending harlots and publicans?

Who ever volunteered for a community project and found himself working elbow-to-elbow with an IRS agent?  A glass blower?   Maybe.  A preacher that parts his hair?  Or a feminist that has orgasms?  Perhaps.  But never a revenue agent.

IRS looks the other way while its agents extort the rest of us.  We submit impotently to unconscionable acts of IRS agents.  And we pay him, a case study in mediocrity, far better than any comparable workingman, indifferent to his cost to government. 

Cost to the government?  You decide.

In Kordopatis v. US, (DC Pa, 1/13/97), IRS exacted a $6,000 penalty tax out of Kordopatis.  Kordopatis’ ladyfriend owned part of a failed dress shop–she failed to pay all the employee taxes.  Kordopatis, not an officer, director, or shareholder, had no authority to sign checks or hire/fire employees.  He loaned money to the store, and on one occasion, he and his ladyfriend locked her co-owner out of the store.

Kordopatis won and recovered his $6,000 from IRS, and presumably, his legal fees.  That would be $25,000, minimum.  That cost is surely matched by another $25,000 cost, the salary of the government lawyer, in theory, an advocate for the interests of the government.

In Kordopatis, IRS went to war with no law and no facts supporting its position.  IRS paid the salary of some peephole artist to investigate and make the unprovable determination of Kordopatis’ liability.  The case passed supervision and review, but even then, any number of IRS appeals and several government lawyers could have ditched the case.

Did the peephole artist get fired for wasting $50,000?  Or his supervisor?  Or the reviewer?  Or the appeals officer?  What happened to the ostensible advocate for the Commonwealth?  I’ll bet not a one got a stern talking to.  $50,000.  That’s a lot of money, ask anyone at the DNC.

The government suffers these kinds of losses because of the revenue agent’s prolific lying.  If any fraud holds a candle to a cop, it’s the common variety revenue agent.  Any revenue agent that tells you otherwise is lying. 

Johnson v. Sawyer (77AFTR2d 96-2383) displays an even more outrageous example of profligate waste and fibbing when nothing is at stake.  Mrs. Johnson kept goofy business records for her high-profile husband.  Johnson underpaid his tax by $3,475.  To protect his wife, Johnson paid the tax and plead guilty to a criminal charge for one year, subject to strict measures to avoid publicity, agreed to by the US Attorney’s office.  He received a six-month probated sentence, and no fine.  High school kids get stiffer penalties for smashing pumpkins on Halloween, or for peeing on bushes in the park.

Five days later, on April 15, Johnson learned that the press was needling big shots in his company about his conviction.  IRS had released the news to 21 area media outlets, stating falsely that Johnson plead guilty in two years, altered documents, and falsified deductions.  Two days later, over strenuous objections from Johnson and the US Attorney, IRS issued a regional news release.  What possible rationale could they offer for violating the plea agreement?  IRS theorized the “no publicity” agreement bound only the US Attorney, not IRS.  Johnson, a highly decorated WWII veteran, lost his job. 

A jury awarded Johnson $6,000,000 in actual damages, plus $3,000,000 in punitive damages, for intentional and malicious IRS conduct.  US appealed.  In the process, the US attorney suborned false IRS testimony.  According to the appellate judge “… the opposite was true.”  (Judges attend charm school to learn to say “the opposite was true” where common men say “it’s a goddamn lie.”)

$9,000,000, plus interest for 15 years, plus the cost of compensating the ostensible advocate for US.  Some people don’t pay that much alimony.  The IRS appealed again.  Johnson doesn’t think he’ll ever see the money.

Finally, consider the bungled high-jacking in the case of US v. Williams (75 AFTR2d 95-1805).  Ms. Williams planned to divorce Mr. Williams, who fell behind in paying the employee taxes at his restaurant.  In the property division, Mr. Williams transferred his interest in their house to Ms. Williams.  Ms. Williams assumed $650,000 in debts.  Six months later and single, Ms. Williams contracted to sell the house.  A week before closing, IRS notified Ms. Williams and the purchaser that IRS claimed liens on the property of $41,937.  The purchaser threatened to sue Ms. Williams if she failed to close, so Ms. Williams paid the tax under protest and filed a claim for refund.

IRS denied Williams’ claim, so she sued.  While admitting the tax was lawlessly collected, IRS theory was “Ms. Williams can’t sue.  She’s not the taxpayer, her ex was.”  IRS argued that the law denies Williams standing because that would open the government to rampant abuse at the hands of parties who volunteer to pay taxes they don’t owe.  Read that last sentence over until you understand it.  Abuse by taxpayers who owe nothing… incredible.

OK.  I insisted that revenue agents cost the government money, that they are liars, blackmailers, high-jackers, rogues and extortionists.  These three cases corroborate that hypothesis.  The only question: are the conclusions hastily made?  Or are the cases exceptional, or drawn out of context? 

My thirty years experience says no.  These three cases simply repeat a theme that percolates out of tax cases.  Inexorably, one concludes that he, the malevolent revenue agent, grasps no idea except that it damages his enemy; that he has an incurable hatred of taxpayers.  Why this simian rage?  Simply because the revenue agent perceives that a regular citizen is having a better time than he is. 

H. L. Mencken attributed the same idiosyncrasies to farmers.  But here on the foreskin of the 21^st century, the revenue agent far outstrips the farmer when it comes to venality.

Like Mencken’s husbandman, the revenue agent is not against alcohol.  He uses alcohol, but he drinks alone.  He only puts down the use of alcohol when it stimulates cultured communion.  The revenue agent would outlaw the civilized use of alcohol.  Why?  He repudiates the form most agreeable to the common man, but inaccessible to him.

Our representatives bestow egregious authority on a brotherhood of philistines.  Only federal judges have more power than revenue officers, so unconscionable acts lie within the means of windowpeekers.  People often call revenue agents Nazis, and it’s easy to see why.  Once the Nazis obtained the means, the unspeakable also soon fell within their tastes and mores.  Why does the revenue agent continually assault the American public with his degraded ethics?  Because he can.

These brainwashed snitches never own up to personal responsibility for their envious savaging.  IRS ingrains in them a catchphrase to dislocate their brains: “Each taxpayer should pay his fair share.”  In other words, a taxpayer should pay his fair share because his share is fair, being equally and equitably laid on, as we all know, by Title 26 of the US Code. 

Any rational man asks, “If fair share is such a praiseworthy goal, what gives with all he targeted benefits?”  And why would Chief Justice Rehnquist have remarked in Williams, that fairness is “a factor not usually of great significance in construing the Internal Revenue Code”?

The revenue agent spins the prayerwheel and chants the mantra, by doublethink disobliged to reason and logic. Emancipated from intellectual honesty, his cerebellum fills with misty daydreams, musings of utopia, where each citizen pays according to his ability, as defined by IRC§61 and regulations, rules and procedures promulgated thereunder, under penalties of perjury, subject to examination and verification.  A kingdom comes… where substance champions over form, except where form champions over substance, if it benefits the sovereign, in the discretion of the IRS, as determined by the examining revenue agent.

Millions of schedules, billions of columns, furrows in a field sowed to give forth a harvest of early retirement, nay, disability retirement.  The pious publican plows onward, tilling in the dusty footsteps of the mule, the subservient taxpayer. 

But the path rises to meet the footfall of the revenue agent.  It’s OK to whip the mule if he stumbles.  He’s rented.

“Subsidies would help poorer people buy coverage, and states would set up exchanges to allow individuals and small groups shop for insurance.

“People who do not comply would be levied penalties, and if they don’t pay them the penalties could be taken out of their tax refunds.

“‘There has been some insinuation about how we are going to approach our job,’” IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said after speaking at the National Press Club.

Under the new law, the IRS cannot seize assets or levy fines, so Shulman said refunds were the most obvious option to collect penalties.”

Working poor people don’t have enough income tax withheld to amount to a hill of beans.  They file tax returns to get the Earned Income Credit.  So cutting through the fog of Washington speak, what the Commisar of IRS is saying is that IRS is going to snag a guy’s earned income credit if he doesn’t have coverage.

Is it just me?  Or does this new health plan seem regressive?

The first thing I’m going to do is to run in Iowa. I’m not sure if I will run as a Democrat, an Independent, or if I will change my registration to Republican.

Initially, I’ll be a one-issue candidate. I’ll promise to remove the Department of Agriculture from Washington DC and plop it down in Des Moines, once elected, by executive order. Probably the best way of getting the word out is on the small town radio stations that do the farm reports. I can do those radio interviews from my home here and save a lot of money. The accident of my birth in Iowa gives me the imprimatur to stake out my claim as a favorite son and land some otherwise tough-to-get interviews on those rural radio outlets.

It’s reasonable to expect that this idea will gather a lot of grass roots traction, so in pretty short order, I’ll need to get on primary ballots nationwide. That costs money. Also I’ll have to find a way to pay my niece to help me get viral on the internet. She’s really smart, even though, to look at her, you wouldn’t think she had a brain in her head.

So now I’ve got cash to spearhead a campaign in Des Moines and the Quad Cities. I’ll probably have to start referring to my plan now as “devolution” and call it my “devolutionary” idea and call myself the “devolutionary candidate.” They like to think that big ideas need big names in those all-blue places like the Quad Cities. Cue theme music. “You say you want a devolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world…” I wish Lennon had left “you know” out of there, it’s such an annoying speech habit.

The front runners will do their best to get the press to ignore me, so at this point in my campaign, I’ll have to resort to some cheap and tawdry political stunts. Maybe I’ll promise to pick Sarah Palin as my running mate. And if anyone asks me why, I’ll tell them that it improves my chances of getting to see her naked. I’ll accuse Obama of hiding in the Rose Garden. All politics is local though, so I’ll mainly spend my time beating the drum for moving the Department of Agriculture to Des Moines. “Bring AG home! Bring AG home!”

At a point in time where I rise above 5% in the polls, the front runners will be compelled to speak out against me. It won’t get personal – yet. They’ll find out I don’t like ethanol and try to hang that around my neck, and I’ll respond that they’re just “playing to the boobs.” It’s a foregone conclusion that the machine politicos will argue that devolution is way too costly. “Costly?” I’ll counter. “Are you kidding? Back in the 90s, Linda Tripp was making $90,000 a year as a secretary.”

I’ll have some research people on board by that time that will fact check stuff like that before I say it. The truth is that the government has standard pay grades for its “General Schedule” employees – the hired help – and the “GS” folks get huge pay differentials if they live in expensive areas. And guess what, the differential is for Washington DC? 23.1%.

Compare at http://www.federaljobs.net/paytables/09gstbls.txt …

A GS-12 (step 10) makes $77,194 in Des Moines while a GS-12 (step 10) in Washington DC makes $95,026. “Are you standing there today, Mr. Obama, IF THAT’S REALLY WHAT YOUR NAME IS, trying to tell the good people of the GREEEEEAAAAAT State of Iowa that the federal government couldn’t move Linda Tripp to Iowa for $17,832? There’s lots of unemployed truck drivers and furniture movers here that would just love to have the chance to try. And what’s the government plan to do with all those wonderful vacant buildings they JUST WALKED AWAY FROM out at Fort Des Moines? HUUUUUH?” You know, demagogue it that way. That would be a pretty easy technique to train my campaign workers to use. They have that nutty caucus system in Iowa, and I need someone in almost every single caucus willing to demagogue.

As a practical matter, the government wouldn’t probably have to move many people at all. Lots would take retirement and/or take jobs at other agencies. Lots of civil service workers that presently live in Iowa would put in for the jobs. I wouldn’t probably point that out. People on both sides of the ideological aisle would figure it out. It’s win-win-win for Iowa Democrats, Independents and Republicans. And all politics is local.
So anyway, after I win Iowa, it’s on to New Hampshire. I figure I’ll claim victory if I get 10%.

I’m not sure I know right now what federal plum it’s going to take to bribe the Granite State voters. It probably needs to be something outsized because of the importance placed on their primary elections by the press. Maybe something like the Department of Education. New Hampshire has always struck me as a place full of schoolmarms anyway. Actually, I suppose that I won’t have the time, the inclination, nor the necessity to figure out what agency or department I need to pay them off with – it’s reasonable for me to suppose that they’ll have that figured out for themselves long before “THE KICKBACK EXPRESS” makes its way to Manchester. Of course, whatever agency it is that needs to find a home in New Hampshire needs to do it outside Manchester. The pay differential in the Boston-Manchester MSA is actually higher than Washington DC! Makes no sense to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Thank goodness their primary is only a week after Iowa’s. The Granite State voters only need to stay bought for that one week…

What I’ll really be navel gazing about is I might have to switch to one or the other of the major parties before I get to New Hampshire. I can’t wait too long to decide. They can’t reprint the ballots overnight. They have a funky system that allows independents to vote in either primary, but party members have to vote in the primary held by their own party. So you can see that’s a dead ender for independents – no primary at all if I take it right – and so it’s probably much better if I whore myself off to one party or the other if I haven’t already done so in Iowa.

Thinking ahead to South Carolina, I think the Palmetto State would be a walk over if I bribed them with the Department of Defense. It’s a smaller state though and maybe they’d be satisfied with Veteran Affairs. Not sure. The place is some kind of schizo, they elect both Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint. So it’s best for me to lay behind the log like I did in New Hampshire – I’ll let the Palmetto State porchclimbers come forward with their demands before I ever show my hand.

Nailing down the base shouldn’t be so tough. When you think energy you think of Texas… I kind of like the idea of the Department of Transportation in Oklahoma to sort of help establish my bona fides as a favorite son here. The Bureau of Indian Affairs would be nice too. More Indians here than anywhere else.

Kansas ought to install me as a favorite son too. I’ve always thought Kansas was slow to accept outsiders, so the Department of Homeland Security makes a lot of sense on the face of it. Interior needs to be someplace like Utah or Nevada or Wyoming or Montana. You get the picture.

The battleground states need some forethought. Ohio. Missouri. Virginia. Florida needs to be administering all the stuff for the old folks. I’ll ponder on Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Missouri later. No question but that they can be bought. A way better deal than Nebraska or Louisiana got for selling out on the healthcare bill. They don’t have to feel dirty afterwards, and they get something permanent.

I’m not sure that New York and California can be bought. Besides that, all the big cities in those states have the Manchester, New Hampshire problem. No savings in the pay differential. So screw them.

dennism (c) 2009