Defund The IRS –

  Issues & Insights

. . ."Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration had obtained an additional $80 billion for the IRS, more than six times its current annual budget. Funding for enforcement was to increase by 69% through fiscal 2031. Such a “generous injection of other people’s money” would mean, according to the Washington Free Beacon, that the IRS will “employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.”

"The expansion will now be delayed for at least one fiscal year.

"Of course hiring 87,000 new IRS agents, as the Biden administration hopes to, would do nothing to reduce inflation. It would, however, give the federal government greater power over a citizenry it wants so desperately to control. The FBI can arrest Americans, the intelligence communities can spy on us, but it’s the IRS that can, and does, terrify and ruin.

"We wish we could say the IRS is a harmless collection agency that operates a paper-shuffling process and provides exceptional customer service. We’re sure some, maybe even many, who work for the IRS have the same wish. But the reality is that it’s a voracious monster.

"The fear and loathing of the IRS goes beyond its leadership’s inclination to be an attack dog for politicians (think of the Democrats during the Obama years) who want to not just injure but eliminate their across-the-aisle opponents. When the ruthless Dr. Floyd Ferris sneered in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” that:

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Would any American be surprised if those words were lifted straight from the unofficial IRS operations manual, and not fiction that hits close to real life?. . .

Only One Republican Candidate Gets Results

 In their party's two leading candidates, Republican voters have a choice between a former president with a record of deferring to experts with mixed and sometimes dismaying results, and a state governor with a demonstrated capacity for mastering the details on issues and following through and getting results. 

Michael Barone (jewishworldreview.com)  "The Wollman Rink episode, or, rather, the unduly optimistic conclusion I drew from it, explains a lot about Donald Trump's presidency and why he may not do as well against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) in the contest for the Republican nomination, as current poll numbers suggest.

"The story of the ice skating rink repair is now ancient history, a reference even fewer readers will find familiar than when I featured it in a column in December 2016, a month after Trump's surprise election as president.

"The Wollman Rink was first opened in 1945, but due to mismanagement by the city government, it deteriorated over the years, and by 1984, when the Trump Tower opened just a few blocks away on Fifth Avenue, it wasn't working at all, even after the city government spent $13 million over six years trying to fix it.

"Enter Trump, who offered to get the rink working, and did so, as he recounted in his 1987 memoir, "The Art of the Deal," ahead of time and $3 million under budget. Maybe as president, I speculated, he could transform government procedures and eliminate endless environmental reviews and enable the public seriously to build infrastructure again.

"No such luck. Even as the head of the executive branch, and for the first two years with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, Trump did not come close to making the deep reforms needed to make American infrastructure great again. It seems that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), with a razor-thin majority in the House and facing a Democratic Senate and president, may have gotten more than Trump ever did.

"Why was I mistaken? I failed to draw the appropriate lesson from Trump's own account. He admitted he knew nothing about skating rinks and that he needed experts who did. He decided he could find them most easily in Canada, a technologically advanced country with thousands of working ice-skating rinks. Months later, New Yorkers were once again ice-skating in Central Park.

"As president, he seems to have operated similarly, not bothering to master issues himself but hiring purported experts and relying on them to get things done. But too often, the skating rink didn't get repaired, or the expert failed to show the respect the president craved.

"And what Common Good's Philip Howard called the "decade-long review and permitting procedures (that) more than double the effective cost of new infrastructure projects" stayed in place. A missed opportunity for the nation.

"Rather than lay the groundwork for fundamental reform, Trump's typical response was to denounce his appointees, the highly talented and utterly incompetent alike, and seek out yet other purported experts.

Sometimes, the results were good. Operation Warp Speed, a suspension of usual procedures with a huge outlay, produced COVID vaccines that, though not preventing infection, significantly reduced death rates.

"But not always. Trump largely turned over COVID policies to credentialed experts such as Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, who pushed him toward advocating restrictive policies. Fauci, who had funded research in the Wuhan lab, worked secretly to quash the lab leak theory and to smear as incompetent scientists who favored less stringent restrictions. A president more inclined to ferret out details on critical problems might have prevented such misconduct." . . .

Cracks in Biden's wokester Pentagon? Military backs off from promoting gay culture -

In a tweet last July [2020], then-candidate Biden said: “Banning the Confederate flag from military installations was long overdue. Banning the LGBTQ Pride flag — the very symbol of diversity and inclusion — is undeniably wrong. The Pentagon should ensure it is authorized, or as President, I will.” 

 Monica Showalter; American Thinker   "In the wake of the Bud Light boycott, something interesting is happening in the military, too.

According to Politico:

The Pentagon will no longer allow shows involving drag performers to be hosted at military facilities, a spokesperson said Thursday, enforcing a longstanding policy amid intensifying pressure from Republican lawmakers to cancel the practice.

Drag shows on military bases have been a contentious issue in recent months as part of a larger push by some Republican lawmakers who say personnel policies including diversity training and racial-justice education distract from warfighting and harm recruiting efforts.

"There's also this, reported on Fox News:

The U.S. Navy has taken down posts celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride month on social media, including rainbow banners that read, "Pride."

Pride posts made on the Navy's Instagram and Twitter accounts on Thursday, June 1, are no longer there as of Friday, June 2. The posts showed outlines of Navy vessels and aircraft with streaming rainbow trails and the word "Pride" stylized in different colors. They were removed without explanation.

A meme account on Twitter called "End Wokeness" called attention to how the Navy also took down an LGBTQ+ Pride banner on its account. Some users left comments suggesting the posts were taken down in response to backlash over military support for Pride.

"The tweet is here:

‘Pride’ Month is not license to resort to name-calling the faithful - American Thinker

. . ."I was shocked to read those words: “. . . which is stacked with openly homophobic members.” How do they know they’re “homophobic” and not simply religious Jews and people? 

"Shame on the Associated Press for resorting to name-calling, e.g., “homophobic members.” Would they call people who are religious and disapprove of adultery, “adulteryphobic?” Or would they call those who oppose pedophilia “pedophobic?” There are other sexual acts or relations that could also be named that are mutually considered sinful and forbidden by Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and Christianity."