Goons and agents and thugs, oh my
Tracking a falsehood through the conservative blogosphere
Goons and agents and thugs, oh my
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
When I heard Newt Gingrich declare on TV yesterday morning that the health care reform law would unleash 16,000 new IRS agents to police the American people, I was reminded of the line, usually attributed to Mark Twain, about how speedily a falsehood can circle the globe.
Gingrich, the former House Republican speaker who, even in his 12th year of exile from elective politics, is still one of the GOP's most prominent verbal provocateurs, actually did his act on two networks. The message was nearly identical. On Fox News, he attacked health reform by claiming that "people are overwhelmingly opposed to hiring 16,000 IRS agents as health police." And on NBC's Today show, he said, "if you say to the average American, 'do you really want to have 16,000 more IRS agents as a brand-new health police,' they're going to say no."
Yet Gingrich, while famous for his wordplay, didn't craft this particular slogan about 16,000 new IRS agents supposedly trampling our freedom. He was merely refining a piece of agitprop that was hatched in a House Republican report back on March 18 and had already spread - with great speed, escalating hyperbole, and finally the imprimatur of gospel - to the blogs and online bulletin boards and cable TV precincts of the farflung conservative media.
And the thing is, the charge is manifestly inaccurate, at least according to the rules of evidence in the empirical world.
In the words of the nonpartisan watchdogs at factcheck.org, the initial GOP analysis was "based on guesswork and false assumptions, and compounded by outright misrepresentations," and that, bottom line, "the scary claim" of 16,000 IRS agents - or, as some scaremongers insist, 16,500 IRS agents - "simply lacks any foundation in fact."
Fact-free scaremongering is hardly new in American politics, of course. Two hundred and ten years ago, Thomas Jefferson's political opponents circulated leaflets warning that he was a Godless heathen who would shutter the churches. But a case can certainly be made that governing in the 21st century is a far more daunting proposition, given the 24/7 digital news cycle, the instantaenous dissemination of untruths, and, all told, the ever-widening opportunities to use technology in the service of ideological polarization.
So let's examine this talking point about "16,000 IRS agents," as yet another Exhibit A.
It all began on March 11, when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said, in carefully hedged language, that the preliminary cost estimates of health care reform "would probably include an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years for administrative costs at the Internal Revenue Service." (Yes, that sounds like a lot of dough - until you realize that our war in Iraq has cost us between $5 billion and $10 billion every month.)
Anyway, the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee took that CBO statement, dropped the word "probably," and seized on the highest rough estimate, a $10-billion increase for the IRS. Then they simply made the assumption that all this money would be poured into hiring new IRS employes - "without any allowance for desks, computers, office rent, utilities, travel, or other overhead costs necessary to run any government enterprise," as the factcheck.org watchdogs wryly note.
The GOP report on March 18 therefore concluded that "IRS may need to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents, and other employes."
Let's give those House Republicans a little credit; they hedged their own findings, saying that the IRS "may need" to hire "as many as" 16,500 new people. But within hours, all these nuances were gone, and the real falsities commenced.
Various individual congressman sent out press releases declaring that 16,500 new IRS people - the number was suddenly cast in stone - would be hired to roam the land and make sure that every American was buying health insurance. By March 19, all those new IRS workers had morphed into IRS "agents" - in reality, a small minority of the overall IRS workforce. Hence, the headline that day on the blog sponsored by talk show host Laura Ingraham: "16,500 More IRS Agents Needed to Enforce ObamaCare."
It quickly got worse, of course. On March 21, Republican congressman Paul Ryan said on Fox News that the IRS would soon have "16,000 agents to police this new mandate." On March 22, a host on the Fox Business Network talked about "IRS goons" being put in charge of "matters that involve the most personal choices we make regarding life and death." His guest, Republican congressman Ron Paul, upped the ante still further, by warning about "16,500 armed bureaucrats...16,500 thugs coming with their guns and putting you in jail." Fox promptly posted Paul's remarks on YouTube, where it soon began to circulate as virual email.
There were more such incidents, of course - on March 25, Republican Senator John Ensign, taking a break from his sex and payoff scandal, the one currently being investigated by the Justice Department, asked on the Senate floor, "Do we want IRS agents showing up at people's houses?" - but let's pause for a moment to track the hyperbole:
The CBO makes a rough, preliminary cost estimate...A House Republican report takes the high-end preliminary estimate, and comes up with a hedged worst-case scenario for new hires...The conservative media outlets repeat this scenario, and assume that all the IRS hires will be field agents...Then the field agents all become armed agents (in truth, only "special agents" working criminal cases, just three percent of the IRS workforce, are permitted to carry guns)...and then all these armed field "agents" become demonized as "goons" and "thugs."
It's difficult for the truth to play catchup, but let's give it a try. Despite the claim of yet another Fox Business Network host, this time on March 23, that the IRS will hire "17,000 new agents and spend $10 billion so that they will check that you have the insurance you're supposed to have," the IRS' role in health reform is actually far more benign. For starters, its prime task this year - for the desk jockeys who comprise most of the IRS work force - will be to tell small-business owners about the new tax credit that comes their way as a reward for contributing to their workers' health insurance.
And what about this rumor of 16,000 - or 16,500, or 17,000 - armed thugs banging on doors to enforce the health care mandate? IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman already shot that one down, in sworn congressional testimony on March 25. When asked, point blank, whether IRS agents will be out in the field enforcing that mandate, he replied:
"No...It’s probably worth me being very clear because I think there have been some misconceptions out there." Under the new law, he explained, the insurance companies will send out forms certifying that people have health coverage that meets the mandate - much the way lenders certify to the IRS the amount of interest that somebody has paid on a mortgage. In Shulman's words: "We expect to get a simple form that we won’t look behind that says this person has acceptable health coverage. There are not going to be any discussions about health coverage with an IRS employee."
And that Ron Paul line about the IRS sending people to jail? The law itself waives criminal penalties for non-compliance ("such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution"). Nobody is going to jail.
All told, it would be nice if the world turned on the truth, but we know of course that the gut often trumps the intellect, that fear often crowds out reason. Besides, it's election season, when hyperbole is ascendant and partisan emotion runs high. But until Newt Gingrich, or some other messenger, surfaces anew to spook the public about an IRS "health police," I'm just offering this modest corrective - and not for any partisan purpose, by the way. The most infamous whopper of our era, after all, was uttered by a Democrat who insisted, "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
As the late, great political columnist Lars-Erik Nelson once said, "The enemy isn't conservatism. The enemy isn't liberalism. The enemy is bulls--t."
Comments (77)
And Dick also "believes" that the billions in dollars in writedowns and new fees by John Deere, AT&T and others because of ObamaCare is also fake. Polman is corrupt, and so is his kind in the media. They do not want American to know the truth about ObamaCare.— CD75- So what Dick is saying is that the conservatives are misleading the public because there will be 16,000 IRS new ObamaCare agents sitting behind a desk, not in the field. What a distinction without a difference. Dick, that is so weak. Dick you are not that partisan and dumb, are you?— CD75
- 17,000,000 nuclear warheads are going to be pointed at my house? Oh my God!! Everybody run!!— schnail
- This is a good look into the nuts & bolts of the right-wing lie and smear machine. I had researched this when I saw idiots posting comments to this blog repeating the lies, and reached the same conclusions as Polman. I will go so far as to say that Democrats simply do not do this sort of thing. The organized, intentional dissemination of lies is one of the fundamental features of the modern Republican party.— Yersinia Pestis
- Both of your statements were easily disproven, CD. Continuing to spout lies is what the Nazis did at the end of WWII.— HandNik
- Thanks for taking the time to so careful trace the evolution of a political falsehood. You could add in there that the 16,500 was increased to 17,000 because of rounding the 500 up to 1,000, presumably. Let's keep in mind that FoxNews' motto is "fair and balanced" not "fair and accurate". On a more serious, note, though, the conjuring up of IRS agent is a favorite Republican tactic. It reminds me of the whole "jack-booted" feds line that got George Bush senior upset with the NRA. Regretfully, this can lead to acts of violence against the IRS, such as the domestic terrorism incident when a plane was flown into an IRS building and IRS workers were killed.— Nalaka
Comment removed.- Oddly, it was only last week that I was talking about the abuse and misuse of the word "thug." Does Polman read the comments? At any rate, it is sort of funny but perhaps very scary the way these terms are used to craft a narrative. If you have ever read the comments section from any CNN or AP story posted on yahoo news etc., you will find that many people truly believe that "thugs" are coming to enslave them. This belief ties into the paranoia about Obama taking away guns, which would be needed to stop Obama's thugs and their desire to form a one world order government and take away everyone's freedoms. I'm not making this up. Go ahead and read the comments section to these stories.— puttinonthefoil
- Comment removed.
- Funny, even BusinessWeek (a Bloomberg publication) says that Dick is a liar. See "Shulman Says IRS Has Few ‘Punitive’ Ways to Enforce Health Law" April 5, 2010. The GOP is not lying. Polman is not reporting the whole story. Funny how Polman left out the part that the IRS will withhold your tax refund if you do not have insurance.— CD75
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when are the repubs going to realize their antics and their tone scare away as many if not more potential voters than their idealogy?— potus- You know Obama is really failing when Newsweek calls his foriegn policy "naiveté". http://www.newsweek.com/id/235819— CD75
The law requires IRS agents not to enforce anything, but only to inform you of tax credits you may have coming. Isn't that nice. Just the other day a kindly IRS agent informed me that I made an error on my taxes and am deserving of a larger refund. He delivered my refund to me personally, and attached a charming note, on which he drew a smiley face. He gave my daughter a pat on the head, gave my dog a biscuit, and was on his way, whistling all the way down the street. Doesn't this kind of thing happen all the time?— jmc- One other thing, you forgot to cite the parts of the actual bill where our betters in Congress told us there were not going to be 16,000 IRS agents hired.— jmc
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- The real question is why do the Republicans lie so much and what is their real agenda? It appears that the main objective is to get re-elected. Republicans seem to have forgotten why they ran for office in the first place. Their main current strategy is to do nothing. In the meantime, they're on the tax payer's payroll collecting their check and enjoying their cadillac health insurance plan. Why not debate the merits of the plan? Because they offer no alternative. In fact, the bill they voted against was very similiar to the plan Orin Hatch and the Republicans proposed in the 1990s as an alternate to the Clinton plan. This is really just the Republicans serving as the mouthpiece for the insurance industry and getting kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions so they can get reelected. They are selling out the american public for their own benefit. They know what they are doing is not what is best for this country so they make garbage up to frighten and confuse voters.— MikeP
- Lies, Lies, Everywhere Lies = Republicans. It’s why the Republicans, as whole and in general, are the most misinformed segment of the electorate. Fox viewers are consistently among the vast majority (almost in totality) polled who are misinformed. Tea party “teabonic-spewing movement” is almost all Republican and Republican leaning independents. That says it all. Combine that with a pliant, Bush-taught, incurious right-wing friendly media and you have the makings of a very misinformed public. The Right’s media mouths are the biggest problem facing the public in political information. Rush Drudge et. al., know that what they say is 100% BS, but their know-nothing, non-thinking listeners/readers believe every one of their million dollar lies. Then they come here are repeat it as if it is fact. Nearly the entire Republican party support is full of people too stupid to operate a gumball machine ...— MMorgan83
- Talk about lies:) Tea Party supporters by party affiliation according to the latest Gallop poll. 49% republican , 43% independent & 8% democratic. 43 and 8 equal 51, so a majority of the Tea Party supporters are not even republican by my math:) Also, by income level, less than $30,000 19%, 30,000 - 50,000 26% and over $50,000 55%. Very interesting indeed. http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/Tea-Partiers-Fairly-Mainstream-Demographics.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=Politics#1— NEPhilly
- "Fact-free scaremongering is hardly new in American politics, of course." Boy, you got that right, DP. Just look at what climategate revealed.— pj katauskas
Sexy armed agents coming into my home to ravish me! YAY!- pj, actually the recently concluded investigation of the stolen emails of the climate science community completely exonerated all the researchers from all allegations of fraud or misrepresentation of any kind. The only thing they were guilty of was gossiping snarkily about science-denying fools.— Yersinia Pestis
- In the '80's, Reagan said: "Tear down this wall!" In 2010, I say to Obama, Bush, Romney and Gingrich: "Leave me alone!" I don't want your health care, your Socialist Security, your domestic spying, your middle-eastern wars. I want my government to simply maintain a strong military and stay out of everyone's business.— Mark Glaeser
- NEPhilly 2:20 PM - you've proven my point solidly. Nice Cherry-pick, too. Why didn't you note that when Gallup asked the same poll pool who identified as Independent, a follow-up on which party they identify with most, a whopping 70% lean 'Conservative" so stop your peddling of blatant misinformation here, just like I said in my previous post. So by "your math” … go back to school. Such disingenuousness from you.— MMorgan83
- Pestis, that supposed "exoneration" was by a committee of British lawmakers,not scientists, of which the majority were Labor Party members, i.e. liberals, one independent and 2 conservatives. You are easily lead to believe what you want to believe, it appears. The head of AccuWx doesn't buy into the climate change hoax, and he's apolitical and a scientist. I suppose you believe that the internal Penn State faculty investigation of Prof. Mann "exonerated" him? A kangaroo court set up to favor him was all that was.— pj katauskas
- morgan, how can I cherry pick a poll that says 49% of Tea Partiers are repubs and 51% are dems and independents? That is what the results say in black and white. Congrats on hitting on all the lefts boogeymen in your post though, Tea party “teabonic-spewing movement”, Bush-taught, incurious right-wing friendly media, Rush, Drudge & the classic 'Nearly the entire Republican party support is full of people too stupid to operate a gumball machine ...'. Wow, you only left out Reagan and Rove:)— NEPhilly
- pj, it was the Science & Technology committee of the British House of Commons, which I have no doubt was assisted by and heard testimony and evidence from many actual climate scientists, and the results, as you note yourself, were subscribed to by independent and conservative members. Good enough for me, especially since the allegations (and the hacking) were done by knuckle-dragging apologists for coal and oil industry interests.— Yersinia Pestis
- Like I said, politicians, not scientists, "exonerated" the cover-uppers. I suppose the same committee would have voted to give Al Gore the Peace Prize. Until some reputable body of scientists can (1)exonerate those clowns, and (2) actually prove that there is man-made global warming that can actually be reduced, NOT using models riddled with questionable assumptions , I remain a skeptic. In any event, the kind of evidence we have certainly doesn't justify the draconian measures being proposed by the alarmists.— pj katauskas
- MMorgan83 – I think you might want to reference Mark Blumenthal: “Back in February, a CNN survey found that on the first party question, 44% of Tea Party activists identified as Republicans, 4% as Democrats and 52% as independents. However, as I reported in a column last month, when CNN asked the traditional follow-up, nearly all the independents leaned Republican. Thus, with leaners included, 88% of CNN's Tea Party activists were Republican, 6% were Democrats and only 5% fell into the pure independent category. As GWU Political Scientists John Sides often reminds us, independent leaners typically "act like partisans." Leaners vote for their party's candidate about as often as those who initially identify with the party.” And http://www.themonkeycage.org/2009/12/three_myths_about_political_in.html— PicassoArt
- I have a couple of questions. Considering that cost estimates for government entitlement programs are always significantly on the low side (see the original estimates for medicare, social security, etc. compared to actual cost), why is it outrageous for people to assume that the higher estimate number is the one closer to reality? Based on prior government estimates, we might want to peg that cost at $90 billion instead of $10 billion. Also, if, as Polman says, there is going to be no agents enforcing the healthcare mandate, and the only thing that will need to be done is a form sent in with the return that the IRS won't "look behind", then why is this estimated to COST BETWEEN $5 BILLION and $10 BILLION? Seems like a lot of money for the IRS to not really do anything.— pete317
- NEPhilly – Again, I appreciate the lengths you’ll go to, to defend with more wrongness, your ill-informed points – Insert coin, turn handle - Thanks for the gumball, Mickey! See, that’s how it works. :)— MMorgan83
- PicassoArt - Not sure why you are addressing me - I think I AGREE with your post. ???— MMorgan83
- And flash forward to 2015. Pops the Weasel. The IRS has indeed hired over 16000 new agents.
- This proves precisely why the Internets and The Google are actually hurting communication by flipping it on its head. In the old days, like pre-online and pre-Fox, when an accusation or claim was made it would be vetted by journalists and reported on its merits. Now anyone with a keyboard and a modem can become a faux journalist, and all it takes is one high-profile blog to latch on to an exaggeration (or outright lie) to make it go viral. And in this era, viral equals fact, a fact that must be disproved, not proved. It's as if we suddenly rewrote the rule of law to make everyone guilty until proved innocent — and politicians and their sycophants in the media (or, perhaps, the media and their sycophants in politics) are screaming for death for parking tickets. We have indeed tumbled through the looking glass.— HeywoodEm
- This proves precisely why the Internets and The Google are actually hurting communication by flipping it on its head. In the old days, like pre-online and pre-Fox, when an accusation or claim was made it would be vetted by journalists and reported on its merits. Now anyone with a keyboard and a modem can become a faux journalist, and all it takes is one high-profile blog to latch on to an exaggeration (or outright lie) to make it go viral. And in this era, viral equals fact, a fact that must be disproved, not proved. It's as if we suddenly rewrote the rule of law to make everyone guilty until proved innocent — and politicians and their sycophants in the media (or, perhaps, the media and their sycophants in politics) are screaming for death for parking tickets. We have indeed tumbled through the looking glass.— HeywoodEm
- The government is always hiring. And the government keeps getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger and bigger and bigger. And they keep hiring more and more employees, and more employees and more employees. And they keep getting raises after raises after raises and they we keep paying for their lifelong pension. Considering the frenzy pace that the government is hiring I would say it is most likely that the IRS will hire thousands upon thousands of more agents. I love how the left twists themselves into pretzels to deny all this.
- Heywood, welcome to the wonderful world of the Internet.— pj katauskas
- To all of you Fox/Rush ditto heads: http://www.factcheck.org/2010/03/irs-expansion/ It's not that hard. Really, Just get your heads out of your holes for 1 single second.— MMorgan83
- Hewwoodem- Big problem with what you wrote is it will happen. Those pesky facts sure get in the way of the truth.
- "Some of this administration’s 200,000 extra workers will be added thanks to changing priorities. For example, President Obama’s 2010 budget increases funding for the Social Security Administration (SSA), so it can hire additional employees to work through a backlog of cases. The agency will hire more than 5,000 people by September 2009, says Kia S. Green, an SSA spokesperson. “These include front-line positions in the local field offices and Teleservice Centers as well as legal support positions in our hearing offices,” she says. ".................. This was just from the stimulus package. I am sure none of these extra positions will be in the IRS ( sarcasm)
- morgan, sorry the numbers from the poll do not fall into the main stream medias narrative that the Tea Party supporters are a bunch of wackos, etc. They aren't my numbers, I am just reading them from Gallup. Also, it would make sense that the Tea Party independents lean conservative as it is a conservative movement so that makes sense to me:) I also looked at the areas where the Tea Party members are similar to all adult Americans (the chart below the divergence one) and the numbers all are within 2 percentage points. So the Tea Party is made up of people with almost the exact demographic as the country as a whole. How do you explain that?— NEPhilly
- The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data. Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted. Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.
- The era of big government will get even bigger this year. "The Washington Times" reports there will be 2.5 million federal employees this year. It's the first time in history that the number of federal employees will surpass the two million mark.
- What will happen, SMike? HeywoodEm is correct about this. Anyone can write anything. Most aren't trained journalists, and don't source their information. They merely pass it along without checking it. They don't research what they write. They just opine. Much like us in the comment section of this blog. It's really a shame and it is harming our country. Can you imagine Walter Cronkite not having his facts straight? Can you imagine Harry Reasoner reading one column, and because he personally agreed with its content, just running the information without checking other sources? Journalists -- who routinely take a beating on this site -- spend years cultivating the trust of their sources. They keep massive files so they can cross-reference information and provide a historical context. The journalists I know -- even in small town media -- pride themselves on digging for facts. They offer opinions only on the op/ed page. The Internet has made us lose this kind of reporting. And many people are interested only in hearing information that supports their own views of the world. It's a dangerous place to be.— NigeltheMastiff
- What will happen, SMike? HeywoodEm is correct about this. Anyone can write anything. Most aren't trained journalists, and don't source their information. They merely pass it along without checking it. They don't research what they write. They just opine. Much like us in the comment section of this blog. It's really a shame and it is harming our country. Can you imagine Walter Cronkite not having his facts straight? Can you imagine Harry Reasoner reading one column, and because he personally agreed with its content, just running the information without checking other sources? Journalists -- who routinely take a beating on this site -- spend years cultivating the trust of their sources. They keep massive files so they can cross-reference information and provide a historical context. The journalists I know -- even in small town media -- pride themselves on digging for facts. They offer opinions only on the op/ed page. The Internet has made us lose this kind of reporting. And many people are interested only in hearing information that supports their own views of the world. It's a dangerous place to be.— NigeltheMastiff
- Darn. I hate it when I hit enter twice. Sorry.— NigeltheMastiff
- Shoot. I hate it when I hit enter twice. Sorry.— NigeltheMastiff
- nigel, you better tell ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC that as well:) There is sadly no Walter Cronkite's in this crop of media talking heads on either side. We could use a man like Harry Reasoner, but there are no 'down the middle' reporters anymore. Their opinion leaks into every article, every interview & every telecast. It used to be you couldn't tell the jounalists political leanings from their articles/stories. Not anymore I'm afraid my friend:(— NEPhilly
- Nigel- Or CBS's Dan Rather running with a story backed up by phony documents? LMAO.............................. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said, in carefully hedged language, that the preliminary cost estimates of health care reform "would probably include an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years for administrative costs at the Internal Revenue Service." The Report is legitimate. Considering the frenzy pace of government hiring it is more than plausible that the IRS will hire 16,000 new agents. Last year along the Federal government hired hundreds of thousands of additional employees. Obviously it is a political loser for the Obama admin. to come out and formally announce this so it is all speculation at this point but If I were to place a huge bet on this I would go with the IRS hirings thousands of new agents versus not hiring thousands of new agents
- NEPhilly, I disagree with you about CNN and some of the other media outlets. I think Wolf Blitzer is pretty even-handed. And I think the major networks (with the exception of Fox and MSNBC) try to be impartial and just report the news. Every now and then I might see some bias creeping in, but not often. Every time I have watched Fox I see a very blatant slant to what they are presenting. I don't get MSNBC, so I can't comment on that, but I think they even admit their liberal bias. It's ok if you don't agree with me, but I do watch for that kind of reporting. And it is my training so I tend to pick it up, I think, when it happens. What I lament the most is the death of newspapers, because their journalists really did offer the real value of investigative journalism. And it never mattered who was in office. They just dug and dug on a story until they uncovered the truth. You can't really do that on TV because of the nature of the medium.— NigeltheMastiff
- swedesboromike : two things, first, while i agree that the govedrment has gotten faaar to bloated, does the 2.5 million employees perhaps include hundreds of thousands of temporary census workers? And second, even if you take the high end number of $15B, and ignoring the semantical distinction of "agent", they still couldn't hire 16,000 agents - unless they have 16,000 empty desks, computers, phones, office space, etc. i wish they weren't hiring any - but that doesn't mean that the number isn't bs.— still_independent
- Nigel- I think alternative media has done a good job exposing the the bad journalism on the major networks. Dan Rather's usage of a false document is a good case in point Priot to alternative media and the internet Mr. Rather would have gotton away with it.
- NEPhilly: you must admit that it's kind of disingenuous to say "51% are dems and independents" when it's only 8% dems. How about we flip it? 92% are repubs and independents....— still_independent
- Nah, they won't need 16,000 agents, they will just confiscate refunds, as the IRS commissioner stated the other day. Why let facts get in the way of fact free ridicule.— tom - wilmington, de
- SMike, I know you will never agree with me, but from everything I read about that incident -- which, after all, was five or six years ago, the information was true, but the documents were false. Still, CBS management canned him. So I don't see that this particular point is all that huge an indication of CBS' liberal bias. (BTW, I was never a big fan of Dan Rather. He had a substantial ego that came across on air, and I just didn't like it.) But let's take the Swift Boaters. They got a lot of play, I believe, on your favored network. Yet their information was inaccurate. The military records showed that John Kerry performed quite well in Vietnam. Sometimes you are blind to the flaws on your own side.— NigeltheMastiff
- The proposal that is in the works at the IRS right now is that any additional IRS agents will not be to enforce obamacare, but to enforce the enforcement of obamacare thru the tax practioner network. In other words for those of us who use a tax practioner to do our taxes we will have to produce proof at the time of preparing our taxes that we have obamacare, if not then an entry will be made on the tax return and the penalty will be assessed as an additional tax. For all you naysayers, this came from the mouth of IRS people at a seminar when a question of enforcement was raised even before obamacare was passed.— junethe4th
- I hate to wade into Swift Boat territory, but I will post this, which is not an Internets rumor: My cousin and a man who works for our company both served with Kerry and spoke highly of him. My cousin, in fact, bunked with him and jokingly says he'll never forgive him for taking his best gunner. That gunner was on the boat on the mission in question and was effusive in his praise. These are truths that you can feel free to believe or not. They are not, however, backed by Richard Mellon Scaife's money. (And a disclaimer: I did not vote for Kerry.)— HeywoodEm
- Nigel-The swiftboaters issues with John Kerry had a lot to do with his congressional testimony when he returned from Vietnam. Kerry besmirched their character by protraying the soldiers as war criminals reminiscent of " Ghengis Kahn ". As for Dan Rather, I can't imagine you giving a pass to conservative journalists who used false documents.
- Still Independent- I would agree that a sizeable amount are probably temporary census workers but it's not census workers alone that have balooned the size of federal employees. The 16,000 additional workers comes from a house ways and means report which estimates that is how many additional IRS agents will be needed. We are arguing semantics. Has it happened? no Will it happen? well yes, in all likliehood it will. But it will be a hush hush hiring spree when it does happen. Bookmark today's blog because it will be interesting to look back 3 or 4 years from now and see the how many the IRS actually hired.
- How is this little bit of wordplay any different from the ones used to sell HC by the White House? Its not, except that you're a liberal so its OK if your guys do it. PS- Yersina Pestis is a dope— tjm333126
- Comment removed.
- This is a test. My posts are appearing.— NigeltheMastiff
- Republicans accuse us of being and doing what they already are. In poker it's call a "tell." If FOX's Rupert Murdoch accuses the NYT and CNN of being stooges for Democrats, he's actually admitting that he's a stooge for the Republicans. Not to mention, that's some real chutzpah for Murdoch - who hired a former GOP consultant, and a man who wrote a strategy memo for President GW Bush, to run FOX News (Roger Ailes) - to accuse CNN and the NYT of being biased. Murdoch doesn't get it. He thinks CNN and the NYT are his competitors. They're not. They're media. He's a propagandist. – J. Aravosis, right again— WinsomeOne
- still, I posted the exact numbers of the poll. How is that disingenuous? I was responding to morgans nonsense, that the Tea Party is nothing but repubs. I also see in the poll that the members of the Tea Party almost match the general population demographics exactly. Interesting isn't it? You would think from the media reports that they are nothing but fringe elements of the GOP, but the poll tells a totally different story from the narrative put out by its opposition.— NEPhilly
- Not sure if PicassoArt meant to address me or not, but I did go and read Mark Blumenthal’s column and the post at the Monkey Cage. Funny how a rather extensive analysis of the Tea Party poltical affiliation/ideological views reveals what I had said – they are nearly all Republican identified, whether by Party affiliation or ideological leaning. I will stand corrected that it was actually a CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll and not the Gallup, but what I was referring to was a further in depth research than Gallup’s “demographic poll”. Um, the Demographics might be “more reflective of the US General Pop.”, but the political identification of the Tea Party is undeniably almost pure Republican: “ … and that brings me back to the CNN poll. Remember the 52 percent of Tea Party activists who initially identify as independent? It turns out that virtually all of them lean Republican. According to CNN, 88 percent of the activists identify or lean Republican, 6 percent identify or lean Democratic and only 5 percent fall into the pure independent category.” Oh yes – “nonsense”. Insert coin. Turn Handle.— MMorgan83
- I have tried to post several times and can't. I wanted to answer SMike's post, but seem unable. I definitely haven't used any questionable language.— NigeltheMastiff
- NEPhilly, let me explain why it is disingenuous. You might be tempted to think that the 42% independent represent a more moderate contingent, but couldn't we make the argument that many of them are Beck-heads who do not identify with Republican because they want to be *more* conservative?! You are trying to sell this percentage as mainstream, but it is not. That is where you are being disingenuous and playing it off as just numbers. Proof? Well, isn't the tea party backing primary candidates in Arizona and Florida who are much further right than McCain and Crist respectively. To reiterate, your 92% might not be mainstream America, but 49% Republican and 43% *more* Republican; otherwise how do you explain their support in primaries for *more* conservative candidates?— puttinonthefoil
- OK. One more time. SMike, you couldn't be more wrong. I have always been very critical of journalists who really get it wrong (I originally said Sc##w up), including the NYT, which reported without substantiation that McCain had an inappropriate relationship with a lobbyist. That was very poor journalism. I am much more interested in truth and facts than ideology. Yes, of course, I have my ideological leanings. But I will denounce liberals if they are unethical. And I will also denounce journalists who really get it wrong through bad investigation or journalism. I will also give a pass to those whose documents may be wrong, but who are able to substantiate their stories through other means. If they are conservatives, so be it. But there are those who will protect their philosophical leanings at all costs. I am not one of those. There are many who are.— NigeltheMastiff
- Typical republican behavior, and yet another reason not to vote for any of their candidates. On that note, I thought that Corbett might be a good candidate for PA governor based on his corruption investigation, but he has permanently lost my vote by joining in on the pandering AG suit against the new healthcare bill.— johngilb
Obamacare requires insurance companies to pay for treatment of pre-existing conditions. So people can pay nothing, wait until they get horribly sick, and the enroll in an insurance program to pay for your medical care. Insurance companies can only survive this illogical construct if everyone pays in and signs up for insurance. But, as the Pole-man indicates, the Obama administration has no intention of actually enforcing the must-join requirement. Adverse selection will result in unsustainable losses for the insurance companies. When one of the new 16,000 IRS agents identifies illegal non-participants, the confiscated funds go toward growing the federal government, not toward reimbursing the abused insurance company. It's a construct that is intended to dismantle the private insurance industry, and replace it with government bureaucracy.— Mr. Smith- So it's a billion dollars a year then for the IRS to ensure that we pay money to the corporate "health" companies. Thanks for clearing that up. It will make me feel so much better when I have to pay the tax penalty for not buying into the corporate "health" system. I'm so glad you found "the truth."— thefadd
- Gentlemen, I already said that the Tea Party movement is a conservative based group. Obviously their numbers will skew conservative as the group was founded in opposition to the non-stimulus package. My only argument was their demographics almost match the country as a whole down the line, so don't imply that they are a far right fringe group. They are average citizens who care enough about their country to get involved and I applaud them. If their politics doesn't match yours, don't call them names, start your own group or join a group that matches your ideology. Lets have a honest discussion about the role of the federal govt. in everyones lives. Liberal versus conservative and let the movement with the best ideas prevail. Game on:)— NEPhilly
What a dishonest article. Polman says that 16,500 new IRS agents is an overstatement, but doesn't come up with what HE thinks is a more accurate figure. Why? Because 10,000 new IRS agents are almost as scary as 16,500. Polman refuses to put out a more "correct" number, because by simply decrying the 16,500 figure, he misleads his supporters to believe that the real number is zero.
I just got done filing for free, my 1040ez tax return. To my surprise, married and filing jointly, I received an $800 tax credit. That paid all of my taxes still owed with $305 left over for mad money! Thanks President Obama, and thank you Democratic leadership, Nancy Pelosi and Mr Reid, for getting the votes that got me my money, you're the best. And, a tip of the hat to the friendly, fast IRS for getting all of this done so quickly. Government is so much better under the Democrats, it makes such a difference to have a government by people who believe in government for the people.- Provinmg once again that the federal govt.'s support of subprime mortgages & Fannie et al buying the bad notes back supports the notion that the financial crisis was instigated by govt. housing policy, imho:) ***The eight-hour hearings also featured a former Citigroup mortgage lending officer, Richard Bowen III, who testified that he had alerted his bosses to “breakdowns in processes and internal controls.” From 2006 to 2007, Mr. Bowen said that decisions on poorly underwritten loans were changed from “turned down” to “approved,” and that as many as 80 percent of the loans that Citigroup sold to Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae and other investors were defective. After several attempts to correct the problems, he sent a detailed e-mail memorandum to Robert E. Rubin (yes that Robert Rubin, who made millions while Citi deteriorated and is back now), an influential Citigroup executive and board member, and several other high-ranking officers.*** http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/business/08panel.html— NEPhilly
- I can't believe that the above republican commentators are so recklessly untruthful as to think we don't all know that employers already report employees' healthcare status to the IRS.— liberal
- As to the number of IRS agents, for many years the number of agents has been less than the optimum number to collect taxes cost-effectively. The result is that honest taxpayers must pay the taxes of many dishonest taxpayers who won't get caught by the IRS. Funny thing, this is one "tax increase" that the republicans seem to love.— liberal
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About this blog
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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