Category: Uncategorized

I’m sure this will come as a shock to some:

In the case Schulz v. IRS, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled:

… absent an effort to seek enforcement through a federal court, IRS summonses apply no force to taxpayers, and no consequence whatever can befall a taxpayer who refuses, ignores, or otherwise does not comply with an IRS summons until that summons is backed by a federal court order. … [A taxpayer] cannot be held in contempt, arrested, detained, or otherwise punished for refusing to comply with the original IRS summons, no matter the taxpayer’s reasons, or lack of reasons for so refusing.

Bob Schulz, the plaintiff, is head of We the People, an organization that has taken separate legal action against the federal government for its failure to answer a “petition for redress of grievances” regarding the income tax. Though the court affirmed a lower court decision in favor of the IRS, saying Schulz’s motion to quash an IRS summons lacked “subject matter,” it used the ruling as a means to clarify the agency’s power under 26 U.S.C. Section 7604.

It’s a charade, people. It always has been. The problem is that the agency has no trouble getting the employers, banks and county clerks to do its dirty business for it. The fact that 90 percent of what the IRS does is illegal doesn’t matter to most people, since everyone in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is too scared to stand on their rights under the law.

I wonder how fast the black robes will move to overturn this ruling? They can’t be bothered to deal with genuinely Constitutional issues, but I imagine that they’ll lose no time in manufacturing an imperative government interest to pave over this little legal obstruction.

Typical tax ruling:

“Prove that you didn’t shoot the man murdered at 50th and Broadway on January 31st at 10 AM.”

“Well, you see, I was out of the country at the time. Here’s my boarding passes. Here’s 50 affadavits from the people in my tour group proving that I was with them viewing Etruscan ruins at that very time. Here’s the police testimony of five witnesses stating that the description of the shooter is a black man eight inches taller than me and 100 pounds heavier. I’m a white woman, by the way. With blonde hair.”

“The evidence is frivolous and cannot be allowed into court. Guilty!”

JP reveals some interesting thoughts:

You seem to be under some misapprehensions. I presume they are not willful blindness…

1) Acknowleding the situation in Sunni areas, where a minority of baathists still work for a return to power by violent means and makes the will of the people somewhat unclear, is a mark of mature reflection and temperance. The alternatives (“fuck ’em if they can’t make a vote” or “declare the whole enterprise illegimate because a minority of people are holding hostage a majority of the, at best, lukewarm on democracy after losing power”) are not desirable.

I’m not blind to anything. Quite to the contrary, I think it is the democratic triumphalists who are blind to the almost complete irrelevance of the voting turnout. Elections are held in tyrannies across the world every single year. Voting is not freedom. “Mature reflection and temperance” here serves as a euphemism for the admission that neither democracy nor representative democracy are being practiced in Iraq, they are instead being used as a cover for tribal power games.

JP doesn’t seem to see the illogic required to assert that a system is free and democratic while the overseeing authorities, on the sole basis of their military force, compensate those who don’t participate.

2) The ‘formula being sought’ to keep Allawi as Prime Minister isn’t sinister: it’s the way politics are done in a multi-party system. Sharon’s Likud party, for instance, is only 33% of the vote – he has to build a coalition. It’s what they do, use the right yardstick when evaluating them. The reason this works is that the parties frequently have more in common than different. Allawi is reasonably respected by all factions, and working to keep him on is like working to make Bill Frist the majority leader. In fact, the Shiite have some fairly good reasons to keep Allawi as head – a lot of it has to do with PR.

Garbage. I’ve lived for years in countries with parliamentary governments. The Sharon analogy is a poor one; you’ll note that Shas and the religious parties which serve as Likud’s junior partners never hold the prime ministership. There are times when a parliamentary system with two powerful parties will settle on a minor party member as a compromise candidate, but that clearly isn’t the case in Iraq – assuming that the pre-election polls are reasonably correct – and the Shiite list holds a near-majority.

3) Sistani isn’t the ‘leader’ of the URI – he’s the spiritual guide. That’s the equivelent of saying Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are the leaders of the Republicans.

JP’s analogies are going from bad to ridiculous. First, the “spiritual leader” of Islamic parties usually is the leader. Sistani is the man with whom the USA is negotiating with, the fact that he is a cleric doesn’t change that. Neither Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell lead a coherent faction within the Republican Party nor are they even of the same Christian denomination as the president. JP would be almost as accurate to compare them with the self-disenfranchised Sunni Muslims as with the Grand Ayatollah Sistani.

4) Iraq is and was a much more secular place than you give it credit for. Your arguments are very much like saying ‘Christian Evangelicals are taking over the government’. It speaks more to the biases of the observer than the observed. Iraqi Shiite parties are really not interested in an Iranian-style government. Certainly, there are wackjobs there, just like here, but there seem to be moderate voices getting in play. From those Shia I happen to know, it seems a lot of them are ‘friday Moslems’ (just like here, and ‘Sunday Christians’). It’s pretty natural.

I’d consider taking this argument more seriously if Iran didn’t appear to be so enthusiastic about Sistani, and the USA so apprehensive. Especially if he hadn’t been a longtime associate of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The fact that his list appears likely to win big in the elections, but his name hasn’t been trumpeted from the cable news shows indicates the likelihood that Washington knows he’s probably going to be trouble.

5) “Fear” is the wrong word, I think, but the Founding Fathers recognized that direct democracy is amenable to demogogues and breads-and-circuses. A democratic republic, with the restraint of enumerated constitutional powers, where you can throw out the people that suck without the entire system collapsing, is the thing that most works. Now, if only our courts and government practiced that restraint. (As an aside, I _do_ think the Iraqis have shown excellent restraint in this process.)

I used to believe it worked. I don’t believe so anymore. All things have a lifespan, and while it’s difficult to say what the lifespan of a constitutional democratic republic is, I’m quite sure we’ve exceeded it. Perhaps if Jeb Bush wins the presidency in 2008, more people will begin to share my disdain for the process.

The Gargler makes an insightful point:

I love those who defend city-life. They dance and dodge to the best of their ability when you try to pin them down on just what the city offers that the country does not. If you can ever force one to give you an answer you’ll probably get a stuttering list of important sounding places that the cityboy has never actually stepped foot in.

The workerbee will prattle on about museums he doesn’t go to, symphonies he’s never been to, festivals he doesn’t care about, and so on. Dispatching these one by one, you eventually come to the foregone conclusion. The city has more bars. Confronted with this.. they offer only deer in the headlights stares.

The fact is, he doesn’t know why he’s there at all, and if he does, he’d never admit it.

As far as I’m concerned, there are only two rational reasons for a man to live in a city. One is the increased potential for more, and more attractive, sex partners. The second is greater access to high income jobs. (For most men, this latter is often counter-balanced by the greater cost of living and higher taxes, making it a wash.) For women, the primary reason is increased exposure to high-income men, although working as a nanny in any wealthy suburb is almost surely more effective.

In any case, it is amusing to hear those who live in cities point to places they don’t visit and things they don’t do as the chief benefits of their place of abode. Now, there are certainly city rats who truly love life under neon, but I’ve always found it significant that the first thing all the successful CEOs and whatnot do when they feel that they’ve made it is to find themselves a place away from the city.

Why not skip the whole process altogether and jump right to the end game? With the Internet, there’s almost no genuine need for people, even managers and executives, to be physically present in the office on a daily basis. Escaping the tyranny of physical presence is one of the great opportunities of these interesting times in which we live.

Of course, that’s easy for an uploaded, machine-augmented superintelligence to say….

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today. The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get “government approval” of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

Asked whether the press enjoys “too much freedom,” not enough or about the right amount, 32% say “too much,” and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.

The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.

They may not learn how to read or write very well, but it’s clear that the brainwashing is proceeding according to plan. I’d guess that the same poll taken a generation from now will significantly increase the percentage that believe government approval should be required. The entire – ENTIRE – point of the public schools is to increase reliance on government; they are working precisely as designed.

Personally, I’m quite curious to know the views of the principals and teachers on the concept of press freedom. I suspect their views are even more radically pro-government than their indoctrinated little victims.

It’s still far too early to get excited about the Iraqi election in my opinion, the unsubstantiated 72 percent turnout claim of one Iraqi election official notwithstanding. DEBKA’s reports are rather more sober:

Four hours after the polls closed, a clearly relieved President George W. Bush spoke at the White House in praise of the bravery of Iraqis who turned out to vote and “firmly rejected the antidemocratic ideology” of terrorists. But the US president seemed to edge away from his usual encomiums on a “victory for democracy.” Nor did he actually commend the Iraqis for the big step they took towards establishing a free and democratic government.

The truth is that there was not much of either in this remarkable election.

DEBKAfile’s Iraq experts reveal that, while the turnout is officially estimated at 60%, the real figure will probably turn out to be quite a bit lower, no more than 40-45% – in itself an exceptional feat. The other surprising manifestation was the high proportion of Iraqi women voters – appraised at more than 55% of the total. This was most marked in the Shiite districts of the south, where local clerics ordered everyone to vote, but the men stayed at home and sent their womenfolk to perform their democratic duty.

The Shiite turnout was disappointing in other ways too. Long queues and 80% percentage of eligible voters appeared only in the two shrine cities of Najef and Karbala. Further south in the densely populated Diwanya, Mussana, Qadasiya and Amara, the proportion did not go beyond 40%. In Basra, Iraq’s second largest town, the turnout was 32-35%, although Iraqi election officials claimed 90%….

The most striking vote-rigging incident was reported in the northern oil town of Kirkuk. There, Kurdish troops and intelligence are alleged to have trucked in tens of thousands of armed Kurds from across the province to commandeer the polling stations. Cautious estimates put the figure of imported voters at 50,000. In the absence of a proper voters’ register and computers, there was no way of establishing which voters were intruders from other districts. When the non-Kurdish politicians saw the invasion, they backed off. By artificially inflating Unified Kurdish List numbers in Kirkuk, the Kurdish community substantially stepped up its representation in the national assembly.

Ballot-counting had barely begun Sunday night when the Shiites declared themselves the big winners over their Euphrates River TV station.

As I wrote in my column today, it’s the substance that matters. But the news media, regardless of whether it is pro- or con- a particular issue, isn’t exactly known for getting to the heart of things.

Nick B gets a little carried away:

So far, 72% turnout. Compare to the high turnout in our own last presidential election…

NO, THEY DON’T WANT TO VOTE, VOX!!!

I shall be very impressed if anyone manages to discover, within the copious amount of my scribblings floating about the Internet, a single opinion expressed with regards to the likelihood of the Iraqi turnout being high or low, still less the desirability or importance of such a turnout.

There will be more on this tomorrow, but it’s important to keep in mind that voter turnout was always much higher in the Soviet bloc than it is in the United States. Of course, there the violence was threatened if you declined to vote instead of the other way around. The point is that I’ve never been interested in the turnout percentage since that’s completely irrelevant compared to the more important questions yet to be answered.

For whom are the people voting, and will the winner(s) be permitted by the occupation coalition to take sovereign power?

If the government was trying to make whores out of women:

Once one of the most generous systems in Europe, Germany’s unemployment program has been reformed to require those out of work to take jobs for which they are qualified, or lose benefits. In the case of women, females below the age of 55 who have been out of work for a year or more must take any available job offered.

The full legalization of prostitution two years ago – with brothel owners now paying taxes and employee health insurance – has created an awkward situation at German job centers where employers can access the official government database of those seeking work, reports the London Telegraph.

When women battled for the “right” to enter the workforce, I don’t think this was quite what they had in mind.

Al Franken turns out to have too much posse. Michelle Malkin, on the other hand, is not so much a problem.

The whole thing is technonsense, of course.

Franger brings a Salon discovery to our attention:

One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, “Ethics & Religion,” appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.

I may be back in syndication before too long if this keeps up. There won’t be anyone left! Has anyone considered the possibility that the Dear Leader is actually a Democratic plant? I mean, he governs like the love-child of FDR and Woodrow Wilson and his administration is proving to be more effective in marginalizing the conservative media than Bill Clinton’s.

Dr. Z shares his Super Bowl moments:

My favorite Super Bowl line came in the 1985 contest between the 49ers and Dolphins, the only one held in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the big Wednesday interview session in the Amfac Hotel in Burlingame, and the ballroom doors have just opened, spilling forth a huge mass of writers with their notebooks and little carry-bags and stuff. A gigantic, lowing, mooing herd.

Two young women in Amfac uniforms are standing across the hall, and I hear one of them saying, “This is incredible … incredible … simply incredible.”

“What’s incredible?” I ask her.

“I’ve never seen so many straight guys in my life,” she says.

If you’re a heterosexual man without any obvious physical deformities, San Francisco is like paradise. Extremely attractive women will all but take a number to go out with you, since even the straight guys are metrosexually dubious. And when faced with an alpha male, they practically go into heat.

When Chilliette’s bridesmaids came out to Minnesota for the wedding – she’s a Bay Area girl – they were more than a little taken aback by Big Chilly. The idea of a man who swatted his fiance on the butt and called her “woman” in public was just completely outside their experience. When one of them asked Chiliette if perhaps he wasn’t “a little, I don’t know, macho” Chiliette just laughed.

“He’s just from the Midwest”, she said, as if that explained everything*. And perhaps it does.

*it should be noted that downtown residents of cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago may be physically located in the Midwest, but they consider themselves to be metaphorical residents of New York City and comport themselves in such a manner. New Yorkers, meanwhile, scoff at their would-be imitators while simultaneously regarding themselves as metaphorical Europeans.