It was no fun to watch Acting IRS head Steve Miller testify before the House Ways and Means Committee last week. Miller simply had no real explanation for the troubling actions at IRS.
Even his terminology induced cringes. Miller’s mea culpa was for “horrific customer service.”
Customer service? That’s a stretch.
A customer holds a position of honor in a free society. Businesses spend billions on advertising — just to gain our favor. We have the power to make a business succeed or fail according to our decisions.
We don’t have to be well connected or part of the political or social elite to share this power. The most ordinary of customers can have a powerful impact. When I was a kid, customers in my state helped build a small business, Wal-Mart, into the envy of the retail world. In 1956, ordinary bus riders in Montgomery, Alabama, used their “buying power” to help change the world.
As customers, we make demands. We make sure we’re satisfied. Sometimes we negotiate price; when no negotiation is possible and we don’t like the deal, we walk away. We have a choice. We decide.
Does this same type of empowerment exist when dealing with folks at the IRS?
Not so much. They tell us the price. We submit or go to jail. That’s no customer.
Cowering serf might sadly serve as the more apt moniker.
As the IRS grows bigger and more intrusive each year, and as its agents shake us down for ever larger sums, we should at least be able to keep the word “customer” away from them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Customer Service?”
I would thin we could keep “service” away, UNLESS we use service as in ” The stallion was needed to service the mare”.
Jay — Touché!
The DHS, not the police, showed up at the IRS protests to protect the IRS from the Tea Party protestors. The DHS had “Federal Protective Service” stenciled on the side of their vehicles. Which sound accurate, ie that they are there to protect the government from citizens. If this keeps up, they will need to be guarding the IRS to and from their homes as well and armed guards all the time, like any banana republic dictatorship.
Pelosi pointed out that Douglas Schulman was appointed by Bush to head the IRS, and he served until Nov 9 2012. Reports show the IRS abuse started at least as early as 2010, and maybe earlier. Schulman is apparently a Democrat, as he donated $500 to the DNC in 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Shulman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioner_of_Internal_Revenue
This begs the question, was Bush also attacking the Tea Party (after all, he was a huge spending RINO and likely didn’t care for the limited government movement)?
Regardless, if this abuse was occurring under Schulman (as it appears) then why didn’t anyone within the IRS report it? If Republicans were abusing Tea Party groups, one would think liberal IRS agents would report it. If Schulman started it (being a Democrat even though appointed by Bush) then why didn’t conservative IRS agents report the abuse?
The IRS, and the executive branch, has a lot to answer for.