Some brief notes from here and there:
- The Treasury Department’s Inspector General found that the IRS doesn’t always follow the rules when it seizes property. In fact, in almost half of the seizures in the random sample they studied, the IRS had screwed up at least once. Errors included not applying the proceeds of the seizure to the correct account, and not providing a correct accounting to the taxpayer of what was seized and what liability it was being applied to.
- Among the winners in the recent European elections was Joe Higgins, who won Ireland’s Dublin-based seat. Higgins “once spent a month in prison for offences related to a bin tax protest.” The bin tax revolt is one I haven’t much looked into.
- Finally… Craig T. Nelson and Fox News are still trying to hint at a conservative tax resistance campaign without being willing to actually commit to it themselves.
The interview as a whole is nearly incoherent, and I don’t think you can blame it on the rushed transcript.
But here’s the meat on the tax resistance part:
- HANNITY:
- …You’re thinking, is it true about not paying income taxes?
- NELSON:
- Well, what I’m thinking is that, if I’m a fiscally-responsible person and investor, I’m going to invest my money in a company that’s bankrupt? I’m going to go to a bank that is not — doesn’t have any fiscal acuity? And that’s our government.
- HANNITY:
- That is — it’s worse than that.
- NELSON:
- And I’m saying to myself, “Wait a minute. What if each of us withheld as much as Timothy Geithner withheld?” As Americans, and said, “You know what? We’re not going to pay that.”
- HANNITY:
- You do that, I do that, we’re going to be arrested. Listen, I mean it sincerely, Timothy Geithner…
- NELSON:
- Do you think that a lot of us, en masse, doing the same thing, standing up — we’re not a representative form of government any more. We’re not being represented. We have lobbyists who are petitioning for certain favors, certain grants. And here we are…
- HANNITY:
- So you’re saying we hold back what tax cheat Geithner didn’t pay? Hold back that amount of money?
- NELSON:
- Just that amount, would change a lot of things.
- HANNITY:
- I like that.
- NELSON:
- At least would, would say…
- HANNITY:
- I like that idea. Now the IRS is going to arrest me with you. Great.
- NELSON:
- It would say to the government, you know, we’re protesting the way you’re doing things. I didn’t know I was responsible for this bailout. I really didn’t know. I wasn’t asked about it. There were companies that went under. Aren’t we a capitalistic system? Aren’t we free to do that?
