Should a spurious inalienable right to Employee Confidentiality protect IRS personnel from being held accountable when they commit crimes?
In 2010, Christine O’Donnell, then running for U.S. Senate, had to fend off false accusations about tax liabilities on property she no longer owned — after her tax returns had been released to political opponents. No one broke into her home and stole a copy of the returns. Some IRS guy had divulged them.
Other citizens too, as we’ve noted, have been targeted by IRS and other agencies for ruffling the feathers of the powers that be.
Congressional committees looking into the Internal Revenue Service’s diverse assaults on persons with inconvenient political views have tossed O’Donnell’s case onto their slush pile. But IRS is not cooperating with these investigations. IRS says that openly naming perpetrators would violate Employee Confidentiality. (Which apparently bears a family resemblance to Diplomatic Immunity.)
This is par. A few IRS officers have been transferred or even resigned following revelations about how IRS harassed conservative applicants for tax-exempt status. But the FBI has dropped its non-investigation of evil deeds with respect to which a perpetrator like Lois Lerner feels she must plead the Fifth and depart the scene with only her freedom and her $50,000 pension. Others also see nothing to see.
If our laws allow IRS to stonewall to protect the guilty, they should be changed. Such governmental targeting of us should be both illegal and punishable. Do you agree?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photograph courtesy of scismgenie, some rights reserved.
9 replies on “Protecting the Guilty at IRS”
Sovereign immunity was a great concept for the royalty in feudal times, allowing rape, mayhem and all other forms of abuses which eventually lead to revolutions and equivalent practices by the subjects against the former perpetrators.
I would prefer that not happen again and therefore would support full individual responsibility, civilly and criminally be imposed on all governmental officials and employees, the same as if they were ordinary citizens.
Is that radical?
@JFB May be radical, but if so, I’m a radical. I particularly like the ‘all government officials’. Everyone of them should have to live and operate under the same rules they make for the rest of us. (That includes getting rid of their breaks on Obamacare)
These IRS and other scandals should come AS NO SURPRISE. Early into the great ones reign ( I guess before the inventor of the Tele Prompter passed away), when NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY (or, perhaps a portion of it-I forget exatly0 CANCELED GIVING THE GREAT ONE SOME AWARD, HE THREATENED THEIR TAX EXEMPTION.
This was (still is?) a FEDERAL CRIME TI USE THE IRS FOR PERSONAL VENDETTAS, ETC. (Selectively enforced, it seems, against conservatives and Republicans, never against Demorats or liberal advocacy groups).
Just my view
A law that protects the government when it breaks the law, is not a constitutional law and has no validity in America. They have no inherent right to do that. It does not take a lawyer or an earstwhile “constitutional scholar” to know that. If anything, the government should have fewer rights of protection when it betrays the responsibility entrusted to it.
The socialists in China would take these people out and machine-gun them. Curious that our government is so ready to embrace socialism but skips that part for people that betray the public trust.
off topic:
I ask again, what level of corruption must a bank surpass before it loses it’s bank charter?????
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-05/lawsky-said-to-open-currency-probe-of-more-than-one-dozen-banks.html
Paul Jacobs asks: “Such governmental targeting of us should be both illegal and punishable. Do you agree?”
The question is what kind of punishment is appropriate. Personally, I favor starting with a poison oak enema.
“If our laws allow IRS to stonewall to protect the guilty, they should be changed. Such governmental targeting of us should be both illegal and punishable. Do you agree?”
I agree completely. Protecting government employees using laws that are meant to protect citizens from the IRS, is Orwellian and tyrannical.
Obama hasn’t shown any desire to punish those who’ve broken the law to his advantage, but he has shown a desire to fire and threaten those military brass who know about Benghazi and Obama’s actions.
Can anyone else hear Richard Nixon laughing?
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