Archive [April 2000]

TAX ATTACK

What would the IRS say to a small businessman who claimed, “So sorry, I can’t balance my books”? They’d fine his business into oblivion, that’s what.

Well, Congress’ General Accounting Office (GAO) has audited the IRS, and found that the IRS can’t balance its own books. Among the IRS’s violations were “pervasive” management flaws, resulting in “potentially billions of dollars in lost revenue” (and $1 million in employee theft).

The agency found that the IRS had hired 138 employees with criminal backgrounds that included theft, assault, and weapons violations. These people were processing cash, checks, and taxpayer information. In fiscal 1999, the year covered by the audit, the agency made $51 million worth of bookkeeping errors that its accountants failed to spot. Nearly $16 million in “potentially fraudulent” refunds were discovered — after the checks were mailed — and the GAO concluded that the full amount “could be in the billions of dollars.”

The GAO also found that the Earned Income Tax Credit (the Democrats’ welfare program disguised as a tax relief scheme) was the source of no less than a billion dollars in improper claims, many of which were detected after the agency had already sent out the checks.

The IRS blamed its outmoded computers for all these problems, and congratulated itself on successfully collecting $1.9 trillion in taxes. Happy filing.

FELONIOUS FAT

The London Telegraph reports that Colorado is planning a law against… fat. (Proving once again that whenever I make jokes about liberals, the punchlines invariably come true.) That’s right; the “Obesity Prevention Act,” to be introduced in the state legislature this month, will “identify fat people as suffering from a disease.” It will also make dieting Colorado’s “official health policy.” Let me quote directly from The Telegraph, because I want you to realize that this is not a satire: “Politicians also want the state to look at ways of ensuring citizens do not overeat at meals.” Tell me, please: how on earth are they going to do that? What business is it of any government whether free people overeat or not? (And if it becomes the business of government, are the people free?) The Telegraph story continues: “Colorado says it will provide treatment to help state employees lose weight.” Treatment!! Since when do people need “treatment” from the state to go on a diet? Colorado will also “produce an annual ‘fat report’ to see if tougher measures are needed.”

What “tougher measures”? A fat tax? Dividing restaurants into “eating” and “non-eating” sections? Suing the Big Food companies? Sending the overweight to snack outside office buildings? It’s only a matter of time.

Camp Homeless

Ten years ago, Santa Cruz, CA opened a “tent city” for the homeless. It was a disaster. In 1995 the city abandoned the idea when rain turned the campground into a bog. Ever compassionate, Santa Cruz is now actually considering designating a place for the homeless to sleep in their cars. The City Council has picked the National Guard Armory parking lot for its homeless car camp.

Obviously, this is an idiotic idea. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can predict the outcome. But even if you’re a liberal, and don’t personally know anyone who has common sense, all you have to do is check out the disastrous results in other locales. Berkeley’s “Rainbow Village” closed after 13 months of operation, during which one camper was charged with murdering two others, and another died when his trailer caught fire. Likewise Eugene, Oregon, which opened a camp in 1993 and closed it three years later.

Still, Santa Cruz is going ahead, making plans for the homeless to register and obtain permits to park and sleep in the official homeless lot overnight. Mayor Keith Sugar is planning to have “personnel” on site at all times, “enforcing the rules.” He adds: “We’ve also got to have lighting and chemical toilets.”

Of course, even all this will not satisfy the homeless advocates. “It’s a very limited first step,” says activist David Silva. “It won’t do anything to decriminalize those doing outdoor survival sleeping.”

You read it here first, my friends. It is no longer politically correct to call them “the homeless.” Now they are “outdoor survival sleepers!”

Golleeee

Remember during the 1992 presidential campaign, when President Bush visited a grocery store and expressed polite interest in the bar code scanner? Reporters went nuts. “We knew it! George Bush is out of touch! He doesn’t even know what a scanner is!” The press mistook President Bush’s cordial conversation with the clerk for ignorance, and they were gleefully off and running. The story lasted for weeks.

But did you see a comparable hoopla last month when Bill Clinton was awed by a computer screen saver? No you did not. I reference a tiny story I found in The Houston Chronicle headlined: “SCREEN SAVER AMAZES CLINTON. “ It was a 100-word report out of Palm Beach Gardens, FL and began like this: “President Clinton … was dazzled this week by a basic and ubiquitous display of software — a screen saver. ‘Amazing,’ Clinton said as he watched a series of images — coffee cups, deer, and a blackboard — form and dissolve on a monitor during a visit to a computing class in a senior citizens center.”

You’d think Algore would have explained his invention better when the two of them were busy wiring schools to the Internet. The report goes on to quote “a White House spokesman” explaining Clinton’s “apparent fascination” with the screen saver: “His [computer] only has the Presidential seal, and it doesn’t move.”

Sounds like he needs an upgrade. Call Jiang Zemin.