http://news.cnet.com/…

IRS undercover operations: Privacy invasion?
The bailout bill also gives the Internal Revenue Service new authority to conduct undercover operations. It would immunize the IRS from a passel of federal laws, including permitting IRS agents to run businesses for an extended sting operation, to open their own personal bank accounts with U.S. tax dollars, and so on. (Think IRS agents posing as accountants or tax preparers and saying, “I’m not sure if that deduction is entirely legal, but it’ll save you $1,000. Want to take it?”) That section had expired as of January 1, 2008, and would now be renewed.

Starting with the so-called Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1988, the IRS has possessed this authority temporarily, with occasional multiple-year lapses. A 1999 internal report said the IRS had 126 “trained undercover agents” working in field offices at the time. This is the first time that such undercover authority would be made permanent.

Sens. Max Baucus (D) and Chuck Grassley (R) have been pushing to make it permanent for a while, claiming (PDF) in April that: “Undercover operations are an integral part of IRS efforts to detect and prove noncompliance. The temporary status of this provision creates uncertainty, as the IRS plans its undercover efforts from year to year.”

There’s another section of the bailout bill worth noting. It lets the IRS give information from individual tax returns to any federal law enforcement agency investigating suspected “terrorist” activity, which can, in turn, share it with local and state police. Intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency can also receive that information.

The information that can be shared includes “a taxpayer’s identity, the nature, source, or amount of his income, payments, receipts, deductions, exemptions, credits, assets, liabilities, net worth, tax liability, tax withheld, deficiencies, overassessments, or tax payments, whether the taxpayer’s return was, is being, or will be examined or subject to other investigation or processing, or any other data received by, recorded by, prepared by, furnished to, or collected by the Secretary with respect to a return.”

That provision had already existed in federal law and automatically expired on January 1, 2008.

What’s a little odd is that there’s been little to no discussion of the IRS sections of the bailout bill, even though they raise privacy concerns. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said this week: “I will continue to work with congressional leaders to find a way forward to pass a comprehensive plan to stabilize our financial system and protect the American people by limiting the prospects of further deterioration in our economy.” He never mentioned the necessity of additional IRS undercover operations.

While everything is going on and the abolition of the Fed is on many people’s minds… lets not forget the terrible things the IRS does and that it too needs to be abolished.

Not only did they pass a bailout of Fannie and Freddie but they raised the debt limit. Let the good times roll!

Oh and don’t forget fingerprinting morgage brokers and credit card transactions reported to the IRS.

These stats are taken from my 2007 W-2:

Total percentage of AGI: 33.7628%

Total days spent explicitly for the government: 123.315993

This obviously doesn’t include the matching Social Security funds my employer pays, property taxes I pay indirectly through my landlord, NJ sales tax, state and federal gas taxes, import and export taxes, corporate income taxes, etc.

• 9:00AM Peymon Mottahedeh’s Live Free off the IRS Lies and Abuse. Not a real lecture. It was really an advertisement for his scam. I’ve read plenty of the arguments from the tax protesters. I’ve read the IRS’s responses to many of them. It’s all bogus. The safest and quickest way to end the federal income tax is to assume it’s all legit and get rid of it by lowering spending, getting rid of the federal income tax and IRS and amending out the 16th Amendment. It disappoints me that those in charge of getting speakers for this Liberty Forum got this guy. I wanted presentations not adverts for possible scams.
• 10:30AM Jim Lark’s Knee-Jerk Libertarianism: A Cure for a Common Disease. It was a well spoken discussion on a common problem in the freedom movement and many other belief systems: poor messenger skills. He was very well spoken and very serious in getting freedom fighters to be better at getting libertarian ideas across. Try not to insult, be empathetic and try to not to convince people your right but give them the info to think about why you are right. Here is the audio from the speech: Jim Lark: Knee-jerk libertarianism
• 1:00PM Barry Cooper of Never Get Busted. He has a bit of that sleazy salesman feel but not like Peymon Mottahedeh. He’s not a full libertarian (though he’s running on the Libertarian ticket in Texas District 31) but he has some good practical instructions on how to deal with traffic cops as a user of marijuana and his new movie Never Get Raided goes further including concealing the growing of marijuana and catalogs police tactics. Sounds interesting but I’m not motivated enough to purchase either movie.
• 2:30PM Jim Babka from Downsize DC. Not sure why I attended this one. I already had met him in the elevator earlier that day. I’m subscribed to the Downsize Dispatch, I very regularly use their services to send messages to my representatives and I donate to them monthly. It was interesting none the less (he’s a good speaker so hearing things over again didn’t feel repetitive) and I got myself a bumper sticker. He presented The Onion’s Bullshit is Most Important Issue for 2008 Voters.
• Glen Jacobs was in attendance at Babka’s presentation. After it was over xyz and I got a photo with him. I briefly talked with him about his contributions to the movement. Acknowledging that given his situation I understood why he was unable to publicly participate in the movement but appreciated his work under his pseudonym and that someone in his position (not to say that professional wrestler is widely looked up to but surely more than I, and he’s got more connections) was very valuable. He seemed genuinely thankful. While I have a guess as to who in the community he is I’ll leave it to you to find out.
• 4:00PM F. Paul Wilson’s Awful Lonely at Times: Being a Libertarian from the 60’s On. Those who know me know I’m not much on reading fiction. I’ve never read any of his books nor did I know who he was till just a few months ago when I started listening to Gardner Goldsmith’s radio show. Gardner is a big fan and was ecstatic to be able to hear him speak and hang out. Mr. Wilson was very well spoken and unfortunately didn’t spend much time on his dealings with libertarianism in the 60’s and 70’s. Many there knew of his work and were fans so it’s understandable that he would also talk about his works and how he integrated libertarian ideas into them. Here is the audio of his speech: F. Paul Wilson
• The dinner was alright. I actually preferred the buffet. xyz and I sat with Mike and Sayh(sp?) from the Manhattan Ron Paul Meetup group and a young freelance writer, Sam, who was at the Liberty Forum to get information on private currencies. He originally just wanted to talk with Bernard von NotHaus but decided that if he was going to make the long trip up from Brooklin he may as well check out the whole Liberty Forum. He’s not a libertarian but was very interested in what he was hearing. If I run across him tomorrow I’ll have to give him a copy of the latest Serf City. The keynote speaker was New Hampshire US Senator John Sununu. A good number of people were not all that thrilled that the Saturday keynote was a federal Republican politician. He was booed when he said we need taxes to pay for needed government. He was called out for voting for the original PATRIOT Act He was heckled to do a Q&A when he finished. Which he didn’t… he grabbed his things and left immediately after his speech was over.

It started the 26th when Shuster was filling in for Tucker Carlson (who is a Paul supporter.)

And this morning on Morning Joe where Shuster was filling in for Joe Scarborough this happened:

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What a pompous group. I think bosco put it well… they “might as well have a bucket over [their] head[s] and shout “I CAN’T HEAR YOU” while interviewing people.” They scoff at reading anything which disagrees with their preexisting notions of truth. They say history is written by the winners… well the Hamiltonians, Lincoln supporters, Wilsonianists, FDRs won. Perhaps people should read that which is written by the losers more often.

http://www.youtube.com/republicandebate

• 8:32PM - Paul gets his first question. It’s about the NAU, CFR and conspiracies that his supporters believe. Looks like I was correct that they would try to make Paul and/or his supporters look bad. He answers it well.
• 8:37PM - What top 3 federal programs/organizations should be cut to save money. Thompson spins the question and talks about SSI. Paul doesn’t say IRS unfortunately but Huckabee picks up on that and does… gets good applause for it.
• 8:41PM - McCain attacks Paul on being an isolationist and receives a round of mixed boos and cheers. Paul’s reply has mixed response. Cooper cuts him off while not cutting off Rudy and Mitt at the beginning.
• 8:45PM - Paul pledges not to raise taxes but points out unlike the others that they need to cut spending.
• 8:46PM - Romney and Giuliani make excuses to support corn subsidies.
• 9:00PM - Rudy supports gun regulation and current gun laws.
• 9:09PM - Paul states that a woman should not be charged if she has an abortion. Primarily that it’s not a federal function.
• 9:24PM - Rudy says that he will make Muslims not hate us by keeping strong on islamofascism. I’m pretty sure that’s the reason they are pissed in the first place.
  
• 9:26PM - McCain claims he was the only one who said the Rumsfield plan was “doomed to failure.” I’m pretty sure Paul had said that the entire thing was doomed to failure including Rumsfield’s plan.
• 9:28PM - Romney talks about not wanting ‘terror suspects’ to have the same legal rights to trial as others in this country. Gets schooled by McCain on waterboarding.
• 9:34PM - Will you make a permanent commitment to the people of Iraq? Paul says by giving the Iraqis their country back. Tancredo says Paul is unrealistic.
• 9:50PM - Romney attempts to spin a former statement by him about gays and lesbians in the military.
• 9:56PM - Tancredo schools Huckabee on spending on a mission to mars.
• 10:02PM - Romney squirms on Stars and Bars question.
• 10:06PM - How can we repair the infrastructure of America?
• 10:07PM - McCain claims a presidential line item veto is constitutional. Which isn’t not. Rudy puts him in his place.
• 10:08PM - Will Paul run as an independent? I thought he handled it well. Later, in the analysis, one of the CNN people says: “Paul was wrong, it was only 2000 people in PA, we were there.” I thought I’d seen a CNN article that claimed it was 5000 but I can’t seem to find it now. But NBC claimed it was 5000. Whatever. It was definitely larger than 2000.

The candidates were given the opportunity to create videos to show during the debate. Only Giuliani’s and Paul’s were any good.

I don’t feel it was as bad as invisipunk stated. It wasn’t great… but when are they? Paul was the last to receive a chance to speak. He was 6th in time spoken with 7:11 in front of Hunter with 4:53 and Tancredo with 3:41. Giuliani spoke for 15:45 which was longer than even the moderator or length of all the user videos. So Paul got 9.36% of the time out of all the candidates time spoken and Giuliani got 20.53% with Tancredo getting 4.8%. If equally distributed they all should have had 9:35. source: nytimes.com I think Paul held his own and spoke well. They threw some questions at him which IMO selected to make him look bad or not serious but he handled them well. They didn’t cover much domestic policy like healthcare and education but they’d needed 4 hours for that. And of course Paul is winning much of the online poll.