Tag Archives: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

The War Against Americans

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On Wednesday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness detailing how the political left has escalated the war on everyday Americans. The article cites numerous examples.

The article notes:

Special-counsel John Durham just issued his final report on wrongdoing within the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice. 

The summary confirms that our premier investigatory and intelligence agencies interfered in the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. 

Directors and high-ranking FBI officials lied under oath. They misled Congress. They altered court documents and deceived federal judges. 

…The FBI contracted Twitter to suppress news stories. It kept the Hunter Biden laptop under wraps, even as former intelligence officials flat out lied it was likely “Russian disinformation.” That was a blatant effort to aid the 2020 Biden campaign.

The IRS just conceded whistleblowers were correct and the agency fired its entire multiyear audit team responsible for investigating Hunter Biden’s purported tax irregularities. 

The agency claimed it was ordered to do so by the Department of Justice, headed by Biden’s appointee Merrick Garland.

California is facing a crushing $32 billion deficit. Yet it flirts with an $800 billion-dollar “reparations” payout to the state’s black residents. 

…Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis—all outside Florida—have the highest black murder rates in the nation. 

Florida in contrast, with a black population of 3.3 million, has the second largest number of black businesses in the nation. The chairman of the NAACP’s board of directors is himself a Florida resident! 

Black Lives Matter has just announced it lost millions of dollars in investments and ran up huge deficits. 

The culprit was its former corrupt leadership. 

The article also notes:

In almost every American city and town, biological males, with enormous advantages in size and musculoskeletal mass, routinely win women’s sporting competitions. 

They are systematically destroying decades of progress that sought to ensure parity between men and women’s sports. 

Corporate America has joined this cultural revolution hysteria. Companies are apparently now hellbent on destroying their brands, profits, and net worth.

Under pressure from the LGBTQ activists, the Los Angeles Dodgers reinvited the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” to celebrate Pride night at Dodger Stadium. 

Catholics and Christians had objected to the invitation because the group’s notoriety hinges on its sexualized and often pornographic mockery of Catholic ritual, the Holy Trinity, and Christian faith. 

The supposedly courageous group would never dare extend its street-theater blasphemy to other religious groups such as Muslims or Hindus. 

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. As Americans, we have been asleep, and we are paying a price for it. No one involved in the government interference in the past two presidential elections is sitting in jail. Meanwhile, people who simply walked through the Capitol on January 6th have not yet had their day in court. We are losing our nation.

Passing The Buck

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On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article about the claim by IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel that the Department of Justice made the decision to purge an IRS whistleblower from the DOJ’s probe into Hunter Biden. I doubt we will ever know the truth about what actually happened in this instance, but it makes for an interesting story.

The article reports:

IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel told Congress the Justice Department (DOJ) made the decision to purge an IRS whistleblower from the DOJ’s probe into Hunter Biden, according to a letter sent to House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO).

Werfel’s letter on May 17 responded to Smith’s May 16 inquiry about concerns that a high-ranking IRS agent faced retaliation for raising red flags about alleged political interference in the tax probe of Hunter Biden.

Werfel said the decision to remove a whistleblower from the tax investigation was at the DOJ’s direction, confirming what a second IRS whistleblower alleged Monday.

The article concludes:

The new whistleblower claimed leadership excluded his team from the case after it learned of “longstanding concerns” about the handling of the probe. The concerns allegedly angered a redacted “U.S. Attorney for the District…”

David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, a Trump administration appointee, is the lead prosecutor in the case.

The whistleblower also alleged the DOJ and the U.S. Attorney’s office are responsible for his team’s removal from the probe.

In March, Garland told Congress that Weiss has the autonomy to recommend changes. Yet Biden’s attorney general also admitted he has the sole authority to sign off on the charges.

Even in a case as obvious as Hunter Biden and his laptop, the people who are supposed to enforce the law are not doing their job. The current level of corruption at all levels of our government is stunning.

I Guess They Haven’t Learned Their Lesson

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Obviously, the big news today is the release of the Durham Report. Unfortunately there will be no consequences for those who violated the law, but at least we now have the proof that they did. However, the FBI and the Justice Department do not seem to learn from experience that they are not supposed to be political.

On Monday, The New York Post reported:

The IRS on Monday removed the “entire investigative team” from its long-running tax fraud probe of first son Hunter Biden in alleged retaliation against the whistleblower who recently contacted Congress to allege a cover-up in the case, The Post has learned.

The purge allegedly was done on the orders of the Justice Department, the whistleblower’s attorneys informed congressional leaders in a letter.

“Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice,” Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote.

The whistleblower, who supervised the Hunter Biden probe since early 2020, hasn’t publicly identified the first son as the subject of the case that he says is being brushed under the rug, but congressional sources confirmed it.

The article concludes:

The federal investigation reportedly has looked at whether Hunter laundered money, violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lied about his drug use on a gun purchase form. 

House Republicans, meanwhile, are investigating President Biden’s role in his family’s overseas dealings, through which Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden earned millions from partnerships with wealthy people in countries where their powerful relative held sway.

Joe Biden met with his relatives’ business associates on many occasions — including those from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine — and House Republicans allege that Biden family members offered no legitimate business services and were merely selling access to the US government.

I am waiting for someone to explain to me how the lifestyle of some of our ‘representatives’ matches up with their salaries. That alone would justify investigations into many of the people in Washington.

Does This Bother Anyone Else?

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On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that the Internal Revenue Service has spent more than $5 million shoring up its arsenal for its increasingly militarized agents. What?

The article reports:

A new report shows the Internal Revenue Service has been stocking up on weapons, ammunition and combat gear to the tune of $10 million since 2020. 

The findings released last week by OpenTheBooks, a watchdog group that tracks government spending, reveal that in 2021 alone the IRS spent more than $5 million shoring up its arsenal for its increasingly militarized agents. 

Since 2020, the oversight group found, the IRS has spent $2.3 million on ammunition, $1.2 million on ballistic shields, $474,000 on Smith & Wesson rifles, $463,000 on Beretta 1301 tactical shotguns and $243,000 on body armor vests.

A slew of other line-item expenditures – include a mysterious $1.3 million spent on “various other gear for criminal investigation agents.”

Actually I think the IRS was scary enough without being armed. We went through an audit many years ago after I made a donation to the Tea Party. They audited our charitable contributions. We sent them all the records, they delayed their conclusion twice before finding nothing wrong, and then informed us that the case wasn’t actually closed. It was basically an intimidation tactic. I really don’t think they need to be armed.

The article also notes:

The IRS is also in the midst of a hiring spree, with current openings to hire 360 criminal investigators based in all 50 states. 

The agency notes that applicants must be willing to “carry a firearm; must be prepared to protect him/herself or others from physical attacks at any time and without warning and use firearms in life-threatening situations; must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.”

The IRS has said that its special agents are armed because they consistently are involved in organized crime, drug and gang investigations. 

President Biden provided the agency with more than $80 billion in new funding as part of the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act he signed in August.

The IRS argument does not hold up–we have law enforcement agencies that can deal with organized crime, drug and gang investigations. The purpose of the IRS is to collect taxes. I don’t know enough about a flat tax to support it, but it may actually be time to abolish the IRS if they are going to become a bunch of armed bullies.

The Government Giveth And The Government Taketh Away

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On Friday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced Friday that it would propose rules that would make it more difficult for a number of new electric vehicles (EVs) to qualify for tax breaks, according to a news release.

Starting April 18, the IRS will enforce a domestic sourcing requirement for minerals and components used in EV batteries, the agency said. Analysts say that a number of new EVs won’t qualify for a clean vehicle tax credit of $7,500 that was implemented under the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed last year.

…To qualify under the new rules, the IRS said that an EV must have a battery capacity of at least 7 kilowatt hours, have a gross vehicle weight of fewer than 14,000 pounds, be “made by a qualified manufacturer,” and those vehicles have to go through a final assembly in North America. The vehicle also has to be new and the seller has to report “your name and taxpayer identification number to the IRS for you to be eligible to claim the credit,” the release said.

It also said there are price and income caps, including $55,000 for sedans as well as $80,000 for trucks, vans, and SUVs. A list of EV manufacturers was placed on the IRS website.

The article concludes:

John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, told the outlet that he believes only few of the 90 or so electric vehicles that are on sale in the United States will be eligible for the tax credit starting next month.

“Some EVs will certainly qualify for a partial credit. Given the constraints of the legislation, Treasury’s done as well as it could to produce rules that meet the statute and reflect the current market,” he warned to Reuters.

How many of us can afford to pay upwards of $55,000 for a vehicle? What is behind this push for electric vehicles and the gradual phasing out of gasoline-powered vehicles? The automobile is a major part of American life.

According to House Grail:

In 2017, the average US household owned 1.88 cars. The average US household consisted of 2.54 people which means the average American owns 0.74 cars, although this includes children that would have been too young to drive.

If approximately 75% of the population are old enough to drive, then the driving population owns 0.99 of a car each, on average.

What would be the impact of ending the sale of cars with gasoline engines and replacing them with cars the average American cannot afford? The impact would be the loss of individual freedom. Trips to the grocery store to pick up one or two items would be a thing of the past. Trips would have to be carefully planned. How often would families be able to get together? The family is the building block of our society, what happens when family dinners on holidays are no longer possible?

The push for electric cars is a sham. It is a reach for further government control and less freedom for Americans. Putting cars out of the financial reach of average Americans is not a good idea.