I reported recently that the CIA had been ordered to comply with a FOIA request for information about torture and abuse of detainees. Well, as it turns out the CIA has a few tricks left in its secrecy basket and is going to keep fighting against disclosure.
No shocking revelations, but the San Francisco Chronicle fills in some blanks on how the new program will work in which the IRS uses private debt collection agencies to go after noncompliant taxpayers.
Thanks to “Occupant No-name” at the ever-interesting Claire Files Board for plugging The Picket Line.
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- How you can resist funding the government → what happens if the IRS knocks on my door? → or their quasi-private debt collection contractors?
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- The next big tax bill coming down the rails in Congress may restore the federal income tax deduction for state and local sales taxes and may authorize the I.R.S. to contract out some of its collection efforts to private bounty hunters.
- Aboard the U.S.S. State of Denial, more about the I.R.S.’s new bounty hunters, and sixteen times in the last century the U.S. has invaded another country to overthrow its government — how many democracies have resulted?
- Tax resistance is one of the techniques being used in the power struggle in the Ukraine. Also: the I.R.S. is going to start using bounty hunters from outside the agency to collect unpaid taxes.
- The I.R.S. is changing its policy — employers no longer have to snitch on employees who claim lots of allowances on their W-4 forms. In addition: more seasonal articles about tax resistance. Also: can you get a reward for denouncing a tax evader to the I.R.S.? Is the estate tax about to die? Will the I.R.S. be able to use bounty hunters or won’t they? And how do folks who make over $200,000 a year manage to avoid taxes?
- Impersonating the voice of authority and making it say absurd things may be the best way of discrediting it. Also: more details on how the I.R.S. will be using private collection agencies.
- The I.R.S. is going to use private collection agencies to go after people who owe taxes. But these collection agencies will pocket 22–24% of what they collect. Maybe that’s better than letting Congress have it.
- Tax Day has come and gone, and all over the country war tax resisters decided to send their money to charity rather than give it to the government.
- NWTRCC Spring Conference meeting minutes, Christian criticism of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund lobby, what the I.R.S.’s new private debt collection squads can’t do, and an important caveat about the retirement savings tax credit.
- We seem to be stuck — the more you try to get out of the government’s clutches, the more tightly it squeezes. If you cooperate, even only when it demands at gunpoint, you make the leviathan stronger. The libertarian utopias and strategies of aloofness are chimerical. The only choice seems to be to plod ahead in the mud of this real world, choosing to side with the angels or the devils and making your decisions accordingly. Also: an update on the I.R.S. plan to use private debt collection agencies. And: eating healthily on a small budget.
- The I.R.S. may start turning over some of its delinquent accounts to private debt collection agencies as early as this month. Also: Russell Kanning’s sentencing hearing is moved up to next week. And: what effect does socially-responsible stock picking actually have on the world outside of the stock exchange?
- More details on the I.R.S. plan to use private debt collection agencies, including what these bounty hunters can and cannot do. Also: some practical tips from free range activists.
- Donald Hughes proposes an interesting strategy for Canadian tax resisters — get a tax credit for being a gadfly candidate. Also: the government is going to lose a bunch of money by turning its tax collecting over to private companies, but the rules Congress uses to do its accounting provide bizarre incentives for doing it anyway.
- A peek at the early days of the movement to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation in Britain. Also: a British anti-war group calls for a tax strike. And: kicking the I.R.S. while it’s down.
- More details about how the I.R.S. is using private collection agencies. Also: just how big is the “defense” budget? And: how Popular Science reported the roll-out of the I.R.S.’s newfangled data processing system (the one they’re still using today) when it first came on-line in the early 1960s.
- I’ve written an article promoting tax resistance for the latest issue of Simple Living News. Also: the National Taxpayer Advocate releases its report to Congress. And: a new website aims to keep a close eye on the I.R.S.
- Ed and Elaine Brown gear up to martyr themselves for fatuous tax protester claptrap. Also: it costs about 26 cents for the I.R.S. enforcers to collect $1, and every year they lose $20 billion in unpaid taxes to the statute of limitations. And: Cindy Sheehan continues to beat the tax resistance drum.
- Rushworth Kidder tries to define and develop moral courage in his book on the subject, but a whiff of sycophancy comes off the pages and spoils the project. Also: some advice on what to do if the I.R.S.’s private tax collection contractors come calling.
- Calculate how much you’re paying for the Iraq War. Read (and watch) how the New Hampshire anti-torture-tax activists do their thing. Wonder if Congress will kill the I.R.S. private debt collector scheme. Bask in schadenfreude as you contemplate the I.R.S.’s paleolithic database technology.
- The National Taxpayer Advocate issues its annual report, including withering criticism of the I.R.S.’s use of private debt collection agencies. Also: Dennis Kucinich joins Ron Paul in giving shout-outs to tax resisters from the campaign trail.
- The preliminary numbers are out for the 2006 tax year, and once again about a third of American households who filed their taxes paid no federal income tax at all that year. Also: The anti-war coalition group United for Peace & Justice encourages its members to “to nonviolently take matters into our own hands and encourage taxpayers to directly refuse to pay for the war.” And: More on Daniel Jenkins’s campaign for legal conscientious objection to military taxation. Also: How a frugalista philosophy allows you to work for your priorities instead of Uncle Sam’s. And: Sure enough, the I.R.S.’s private debt collection outsourcing program has been an expensive boondoggle.
- Is the end of the I.R.S. private debt collection program at hand? Also: The Picket Line is plugged on Soul-N-Black blog talk radio. And: a new Gay Tax Protest website.
- The I.R.S. is systematically miscalculating its “failure to pay” penalty, and only calculates interest correctly about two times out of three, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate.
- The I.R.S. abandons its experiment in outsourcing cases to private debt collection agencies. Also: more signs of a tax revolt against the sub-equal legal treatment of same-sex marriages.
- The voluntaryist case against taxation. Greece erupts in a variety of tax resistance tactics. The I.R.S. hands Cindy Sheehan a summons. More private tax debt collection follies. To be free is not freedom from responsibility but freedom to take responsibility. Also: some background on the tax resistance campaign in Germany in 1848.
- Have things really gotten that bad? → U.S. government is cruel, despotic, a threat to people → U.S. torture policy → evading legal prohibitions / White House approval
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- For a picture uglier than leering military prison guards turning loose their dogs on a naked cowering prisoner or masked jihadists sawing off the neck of a civilian contractor try picturing a bunch of lawyers sitting around trying to find the loopholes in the torture prohibitions of the Geneva Conventions.
- Seymour Hersh gets the goods on how the abuse at Abu Ghraib was a direct result of decisions made by the Secretary of Defense. Also: The I.R.S. thanks me, with a colorful badge and certificates of appreciation, for my invaluable contribution to the American tax system.
- Looking for loopholes — you can read the Geneva Conventions with the same glee as the lawyers who discovered they banned torture only against those prisoners we don’t suspect of being on the other team.
- I found the loopholes in the International Convention Against Torture — turns out they were written by the United States in anticipation of just such opportunities as we face today.
- Great Moments in Passive Verbs. Also: the quest for loopholes and immunity continues; and: any guess as to what sort of institutional structure encouraged the abuses at Abu Ghraib?
- If you’re still interested in reading about Abu Ghraib, I can point you in the direction of a good set of words on the subject.
- In Backwards Land, the Nuremberg Principles say that “I was only following orders” is a perfectly valid defense. In other news: The Bush Administration hired its lawyers from Backwards Land.
- Julia “Butterfly” Hill, commenting on her war tax resistance and on the state of the world: “There are too many ways we all accidentally or knowingly participate in this injustice that supports its existence, including in our inactions. It is too easy a trap to fall into, to separate our selves from people like Bush, the media, and this current administration, and claim a moral stand merely by means of verbal disassociation.”
- The Bush Administration had every opportunity to repudiate the notorious “torture is legal when the president says so” memo yesterday when Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead, Ashcroft was very careful to do everything but repudiate the memo or its message. Also: Much of the memo has now been released on the web — and it is every bit as ugly as the news reports suggested.
- I know this is a blog about tax resistance, not about current events, but I also cover issues of personal ethics and of individual responses to government-sponsored atrocity here — and so I think it’s worthwhile to write about the American torture policy.
- An update in the legal battle between the I.R.S. and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Quakers). Also: The Dubya Squad are starting to back off just a bit from their “torture is okay when we do it” stand, and they’ve released more White House documents to try to make the case that it’s not as bad as it seems.
- Can you stand yet another update on the torture policy debate? The White House is finally starting to open up and give straight(er) answers. And I’ve got ’em in a compact summary, with useful commentary. No, really.
- Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman give us their 5.2 cents on the “Fair Tax” National Sales Tax proposal.
- From Israel to Vietnam to Iraq to Git’mo: the news in brief.
- So remember how when those torture memos came to light the Dubya Squad promised to ditch them pronto and come up with a new set of interrogation guidelines? Don’t hold your breath.
- More U.S. torture revelations from Gitmo and Iraq. Also: Hannah Arendt on the difference between temptation and compulsion, and the dictum of Socrates that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it.
- Even the Washington Post is starting to think this torture thing is serious. But Dubya has put another torture memo alumnus up for nomination so he doesn’t seem to think Congress much cares. But there are more torture memos on the way so if there is anyone left who is capable of outrage but just hasn’t heard enough yet, there’s still time. Also: some data on U.S. arms sales in recent years.
- The Dubya Squad have released a new torture memo. Although the news media will probably report it as a climb-down from the controversial memos of years past, it is another ugly exercise of lawyers asking “how much torture can we get away with?”
- More revelations about the sick U.S. torture policy and attempts to cover it up are leaked to the New York Times by military intelligence officials and interrogators.
- A formerly pro-war libertarian wonders why he didn’t find the liberal anti-war movement to be very persuasive. Also: the social security reform debate for dummies. And: Alberto Gonzales tries to wipe the torture memos off of his hands.
- A lengthy round-up of news and views concerning yesterday’s confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales.
- A thing or two more about the confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales.
- A must-read modest proposal for expanding the use of torture, an interview with Adam “Bury the Chains” Hochschild, a surprisingly sensible article from Iraq War hawk Andrew Sullivan, and a war tax resister from Austin tells about living with the crackdown and hoping for a peace tax.
- Shifting money from a tax-deferred retirement account to a Roth IRA can be a good move, for tax resisters and for taxers alike. And: the Dubya Squad are trying awfully hard not to admit that they’ve got a policy of torturing people.
- The I.R.S. is told it must challenge a “social norm” that tax evasion is okay if it wants to close the “tax gap.” Also: another billion dollar tax evasion technique. And: the tip of the torture iceberg keeps getting bigger, and U.S. troops are caught acting like drunk Gestapo University undergrads on spring break.
- Sigh… It’s time for another U.S. Torture Policy Update.
