After Non-Profit Application Furor, IRS Says It's Lost 2 Years Of Lerner's Email 372
As reported by the Associated Press, via US News & World Report, the IRS says that it cannot locate much of the email sent by a former IRS official over a two-year period. "The IRS told Congress Friday it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year. Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups." Three congressional committees are investigating the agency because of the allegations of politically motivated mishandling of those applications, as is the Justice Department and the IRS's own inspector general. As the story says, "Congressional investigators have shown that IRS officials in Washington were closely involved in the handling of tea party applications, many of which languished for more than a year without action. But so far, they have not publicly produced evidence that anyone outside the agency directed the targeting or even knew about it." CBS News has a slightly different version, also based on the AP's reporting.
Very fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd love to see what she would say to a taxpayer "losing" 2 years of receipts during an audit.
I think that "my bad" wouldn't be enough.
Re:Very fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd love to see what she would say to a taxpayer "losing" 2 years of receipts during an audit.
I think that "my bad" wouldn't be enough.
Welcome to the realities of asymmetric power.
Only emails outside of IRS lost ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd love to see what she would say to a taxpayer "losing" 2 years of receipts during an audit.
Its better than that. Imagine if you only lost the receipts that were of interest to the IRS, that you still have many receipts that they are not interested in.
From the article:
"Camp's office said the missing emails are mainly ones to and from people outside the IRS, "such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.""
Can we just have a flat tax (that phases in at the poverty line, not literally flat) and no deductions? Then the IRS can be scaled down to a small fraction of its current size and have very little power, no deduction no power to interpret things. As an added bonus it removes a major source of political corruption, the creating of those deductions for influential constituents.
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From the article: "Camp's office said the missing emails are mainly ones to and from people outside the IRS, "such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.""
Oh, so that shouldn't be a problem, then. Just request the emails from the White House, etc. I'm sure they won't have any problems digging up their copies. They couldn't also have lost those particular emails, now, could they?
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Re:Very fishy (Score:5, Informative)
Is there a law, or Executive order, which required their retention?
See 36 CFR 1220.14. The Federal Records Act. NARA. Actual regulations and laws requiring archiving of all records, including e-mails.
You have presented an assymetric argument, and one that does not make any sense. Refine it, or retract it.
We'll wait for you to do so...
Oh Well There's Your Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
NSA should have a copy somewhere in Utah (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing how ineffective these intelligence agencies are when the issue in question goes against the absolute power agenda...
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Re:Oh Well There's Your Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not that hard to recover data from a crashed drive most of the time.
Assuming you actually want to recover it. The crash seem to occur about the same time the controversial policy was coming to light and the emails might be considered incriminating. Just a coincidence I'm sure.
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Its not that hard to recover data from a crashed drive most of the time.
It is when that hard drive has been hit with a sledge hammer a few times or put through a shredder, which is precisely what some organisations require when a drive is faulty. Of course the data on the faulty disk can't be copied over to the new drive because "the old drive was faulty" so data is effectively lost. Backups? what are they :)
Re:Oh Well There's Your Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh Well There's Your Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Oh Well There's Your Problem (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh Well There's Your Problem (Score:5, Funny)
I'd bet the NSA has all of them. They collect everyone's.
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Wish I had mod points; that joke is rapidly getting old, but I still thought it was funny here.
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Never again will data be kept as it was in the past: backup and for a court to find: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/... [gwu.edu]
"Career staff at the White House Communications Agency order the November backup tapes of the e-mail system to be saved instead of recycled as usual. Subsequently, investigators from the FBI and the Tower Commission use the backup takes to reconstruct the Iran-contra scandal."
Iran
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You assume actual computer experts are investigating this matter? These are the same people that when presented with non-Windows OS or any type of encryption will be expert witnesses that testify in court that you're a hacker/terrorist and obstructed the investigation.
And if they'll look on the server, they'll find a bunch of binary blobs. This is going to be Exchange after all and probably migrated to Cloud-Exchange so they have no access to the data on the servers.
Everyone's Personal Email Server (Score:4, Funny)
The IRS told Congress Friday it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year.
Wow! I didn't know the IRS had personal email servers on every individuals personal computer, where all copies of a persons email sent and retrieved is kept and deleted from everywhere else.
The rest of us just use shared central email servers where multiple copies of everyone's email is kept, backed up daily. Boy, are we out of touch with reality!
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Re:Everyone's Personal Email Server (Score:5, Informative)
The Federal Records Act requires retention of records. That email is a "record" for statutory purposes is a long settled matter. Conducting government business on a system with a retention period of 14 days and no archive is a crime.
It's your banana republic government either deliberately neglecting their obligation to preserve or destroying evidence or both. There aren't any plausible alternatives.
Enjoy.
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It's your banana republic government
I never voted for this current administration.
Funny, I never voted for the previous one, but I had to put up with it; in fact I was in the MAJORITY who voted against it and I still had to put up with it. I'm a bit disappointed with this one, but at least it shouldn't be court-martialed for sending troops into danger on false pretenses with insufficient equipment.
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You have only one solution. Move. England, Australia...
Really? Seriously? You think the UK or Australia has more "freedom"/ Seriously? You don't follow politics in those countries, do you.
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Wow, the parent company was modded to zero despite being relevant, factual, and linking to more info. What pathetic person is so afraid of these facts that they mod them down instead of engaging in a rational discussion?
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Maybe it has something to do with the IRS not being in the White House, and not using the White House's email system.
Or maybe it has something to do with the article itself saying that the White House's email system archives everything, and has been in place "since Obama took office", which most people would suppose means 2009, not a year after the 2010 article discussing the system in the past tense.
Stop making stuff up AC (Score:4, Insightful)
if you think any but a handful of emails that aren't sent to or from the a White House are required by the FRA to be archived
Having read the statute, prior to hitting my crack pipe, I see no such "White House" criteria.
You may read the latest revision of the IRS interpretation of the statute here [irs.gov], where you will learn that e-mail — all e-mail — that meets that statutory definition of a "record" must be preserved within either an "electronic recordkeeping system," as defined by the IRS manual and well beyond Lois's broken computer, or "must be printed out and placed in the appropriate record system." Any e-mail communication Lois made regarding the disposition of some non-profit's status would obviously have qualified as a "record" under the plain language of 1.15.6-1.
And yes, we do prosecute people [stltoday.com] for destruction of government records. Probably not the protected political appointee hatchet-people of the powers-that-be, but it does happen, because it's criminal.
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Except you cannot keeep all on server (Score:2)
You knowq most of us which DO have real work, get a lot of email circulating. On our account we may have maybe 128 Mb maybe 256 Mb of place available. EVen if it was 1 Gb. Well whoopy duh. After a year or two you usually have to move email ina rchival because no matter what you will reach your server max capacity. And guess where those archive are ? Archival are a local file, not a server file. You can set it up to have backup but so far I have known of no normal department which does that.
And by t
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You knowq most of us which DO have real work, get a lot of email circulating. On our account we may have maybe 128 Mb maybe 256 Mb of place available.
What are you storing your email on, Genesis carts?
Don't worry... (Score:2)
The corruption is amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody should be depressed and angry but they are complacent. New chief executive, same ole shit. Corruption and lies.
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It's time to learn that the President does not matter to the direction of policy. The President is informed by long time position holders that certain things are of paramount importance to national security, or some such story.
You cannot expect a new President to keep his campaign promises. It will never happen, because of what he learns as part of the n00b initiation process. Either he is brainwashed, or genuinely believes, or considers it an obligation to acquiesce.
In no circumstance will a new Preside
Because IRS has never heard of exchange servers (Score:2)
Seriously, I have a feeling they set up local email accounts, thought archiving was too difficult or expensive to implement, and called it a day - 20 years ago.
And for the record, targeting political organizations wasn't isolated to conservative groups, and the only application rejected was for a progressive organization.
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Just like you can say that there has never been a oil pipeline that has been rejected either. By not quickly approving simple applications and letting them linger for years - you effectively reject the application, without the political backlash of having to actually do it. I would assume it was a simple progressive organization that didn't qualify for the tax break - it was quickly rejected so they can fix their problem, or get back to doing what they should be doing.
Re:Because IRS has never heard of exchange servers (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually they did the same thing to socialist etc. groups. In fact the only group that was actually denied a tax exemption was a progressive church.
But don't let facts bother you.
Re:Because IRS has never heard of exchange servers (Score:4, Informative)
Actually they did the same thing to socialist etc. groups. In fact the only group that was actually denied a tax exemption was a progressive church.
But don't let facts bother you.
BULLSHIT [washingtonpost.com]
The Internal Revenue Service on Friday apologized for targeting groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, confirming long-standing accusations by some conservatives that their applications for tax-exempt status were being improperly delayed and scrutinized.
Lois G. Lerner, the IRS official who oversees tax-exempt groups, said the “absolutely inappropriate” actions by “front-line people” were not driven by partisan motives.
Umm, yeah, the IRS didn't target them. That's why they apologized. And no, it wasn't for political purposes. That must be the IRS can't find her emails....
What was that about facts bothering you?
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No, in reality the IRS investigated all groups with political parties and movements in their names, since they're required by law (i.e. Congress) to only allow non-political groups to be granted tax exempt status. And the IRS investigated (and rejected) far more liberal groups than conservative groups. So (1) they were required to investigate political groups, so the investigation was not only proper, it was required by law passed by Congress, and (2) they didn't target Tea Party groups exclusively or even
Re:Because IRS has never heard of exchange servers (Score:4, Informative)
Ah ha! (Score:2)
The classic "My dog ate my homework" defense! Nicely played!
Not on my servers (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not on my servers (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think that the Government does not have backups, you are sorely mistaken. Federal regulation requires backups and maintenance of backups of all mail data. Durations may vary slightly between certain divisions, but in almost all cases this is required and not optional.
That said, the issue is what regulations have they broken if in fact they are claiming correctly that a persons computer was configured and managed illegally? Followed immediately by "Who is going to lose their job in addition to Lois Lerner?" I have a feeling that if jail time is threatened for management and employees responsible for mismanagement, backups may magically appear.
Then again, they could be telling the truth which should not prevent the termination of employees failing to follow regulation and law. Simple solutions to these types of problems have huge impact on future cases.
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umm (Score:3, Insightful)
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I think it's quite possible if she was using something stupid like Outlook on Windows XP, and had a limited quota on an Exchange server.
Those monstrosities were horrific in terms of reliability and local mail stores based on .PST formats are notorious for being fragile, easy to corrupt and difficult to backup.
This is corporate / government IT from hell.
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and had a limited quota on an Exchange server.
In reality there are two sides to their exchange configuration: how it technically works, and how it legally works.
Being the US government however that means there is only "How it works" which is an alias for how it legally works (How it technically works might as well be magic)
http://www.archives.gov/record... [archives.gov]
Installing exchange server and not raising the default retention period is a criminal act.
Actually, I'm pretty sure not installing a backup package to work around exchange store limitations would als
Re:umm (Score:4, Insightful)
We are not talking about email in 1998. By the early 2000's even small to midsized businesses were having to face document retention policies and discovery requests. Whether by implementing in-house solutions like Vault or using outside services to implement email retention and discovery most companies had to have this in place for more than a decade. The IRS has nearly 90,000 employees. Their IT shop is no mom-and-pop operation.
So to claim that all outside email was lost from 2010 is pretty shocking. The client computer mention might be an error, or it might be that an outside email service was being used. If the latter is the case, this should be a huge red flag.
This worked for the NSA (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA are professional liars. They've been caught lying about a huge number of things: spying on friendly foreign leaders, mass phone surveillance on everyone in the USA, modifying routers before they are shipped overseas, etc.
Double standard much? Who is more likely to be lying: the NSA or the IRS? Everyone in Washington are going after the IRS. Committees are meeting, IRA officials are testifying under oath, criminal investigations have been started. Higher ups at the IRA are going to be forced out, and there will be criminal charges. The same thing is also going to occur with the Veteran's Administration scandal.
Meanwhile over at the NSA, the sound of crickets. They claim that their own secret investigations have found they did everything right. Somehow this seems good enough. No one has been called to task. Even the people responsible for letting Snowden get access to all that information seem to be off the hook.
As bad as the IRS and VA situations are, they pale in comparison to the NSA situation and yet nothing has happened as a result. It's business as usual. The NSA is completely unaccountable to anybody for anything, and when they do screw up nothing happens to any insiders. This is guaranteed to result in a culture of incompetence. We are in big trouble.
Re:This worked for the NSA (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone in the political establishment believed the NSA version. Now the IRS says that they can't find emails because of a technical problem, and no one believes them.
Because the NSA watches over us to protect our freedoms, and they're the good guys. The IRS takes away our money, so they're the bad guys. See? Not that difficult to understand.
No they haven't (Score:2)
Obama trumps Nixon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Two years of emails?!? Nixon only lost 18 1/2 minutes of the Watergate Tapes and he had to resign.
How convenient! (Score:2)
Oh, give me a break. (Score:2)
Do you really mean to tell me that the IRS uses an email system that keeps the only copy of a user's email on the user's PC, and the user's PC isn't backed up? In the era of records laws, retention requirements, etc?
I am a former federal contractor (Score:3)
Each email system had a triplicate of backups done so they would not lose emails. They used Microsoft Exchange Server and digital tape backups. They used Outlook and backed up PST files to network drives.
If they lost her emails with a system like that it was no accident.
Questions to ask (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as the Obama administration lives up to their promise of being the most transparent administration in the history of the ministry of truth
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
I would settle for this Administration following the rule of law.
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I would settle for any administration to follow the law. But yes, it would be nice to start with the present one, and work our way forward. And a good message would be sent by also indicting the surviving criminals from past ones. Alas, it is but a fantasy of mine.
Just a note about this IRS "scandal", The only group that was actually denied was a "liberal" group, the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. So boo on anyone that is trying to keep the story alive.
Re:Yawn (Score:4, Interesting)
The only group that was actually denied was a "liberal" group, the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. So boo on anyone that is trying to keep the story alive.
They were "denied" after they were first approved. Meanwhile the enemies of the current administration were neither denied nor approved, a fate worse than either.
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
The only group that was actually denied was a "liberal" group
The whole point of the scandal (about which you are clearly uninformed, or about which you are being deliberately disingenuous and deceptive) is that the IRS put applying conservative groups through the ringer specifically to delay their activities through then-upcoming election cycle. They dragged out conservative-sounding applications for months or years through an intimidating, recurring process of illegally asking for information like personal information about group members' lifestyles, the books they read, their personal religious musings, and other complete BS. It wasn't about approving or denying the groups' non-profit status, it was about keeping them in limbo while more quickly approving groups that were more likely to back the administration before the election.
You really think the word scandal needs quotes around it, because none of that was real or mattered? Or are you dismissive of that illegal treatment because you, like the administration, just don't happen to like the thinking of the fellow citizens that were abused in that way?
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When it comes to non-profits and raising money, not being approved is synonymous with not being denied.
Re:Yawn (Score:4, Informative)
I would settle for this Administration following the rule of law.
Ha! Laws are for peasants, not their rulers.
Re: Yawn (Score:4, Interesting)
He'll, I'd settle for the IRS following its own rule that are enforced so strictly on the rest of us, which is that the taxpayer is presumed guilty. If you, as the accused, cannot produce records proving your case, you lose and get reamed. So in this instance, since the IRS claimed to have 'lost' the records that would have proved its case, we will make the same assumption the IRS does.
It is becoming a pattern, isn't it ? (Score:5, Interesting)
First they lied to the congress
Then the US Marshals seizing police Stingray records to keep them out of the ACLU
Now IRS is lying about a certain computer crash in justifying their refusal of disclosing tghe email records of a key IRS employee who was in charge of harassing groups which were affiliated with the so-called "TEA party"
The Obama administration simply does *NOT* respect the rule of law anymore !
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The Obama administration simply does *NOT* respect the rule of law anymore !
What do you mean anymore? They never did, F&F, Benghazi, take your pick of a dozen other things. After all "what does it matter?" - Hillary Clinton.
Re:It is becoming a pattern, isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we need an addendum to Godwin's law: Anyone who responds to criticism of a sitting US president by raising the ghost of a prior one automatically loses the argument.
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What I take personally is the constant, unending, pig-headed suggestion that because I hate (and I mean hate) Obama, I wasn't complaining about Bush when he did similar things.
I was.
And I actually voted for Obama, once.
But the constant parade of water-brained team players who come out to claim 'BUT THE OTHER GUY" every time another one of Obama's constitution-shredding sprees comes to light destroys productive conversation and helps ensure that nothing is done about the problem.
And I'm fucking sick and tire
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"The focus was on the type of applicant and the status applied,"
That, AC, is precisely the complaint. They were a certain type of applicant. Politically Conservative
Re:Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do you really want people like Government bureaucrat deciding what is charitable and what isn't? It's been a long time since i've felt that Most chareties were more the Moral Narcisism at best and "a front for monied self interest, pushing self interest through political propaganda" at worst, but I can't imagine how having a bureaucrat deciding which plutocrat gets a tax break makes anything better.
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Insofar as corporations serve their stockholders, employees, and customers, who are real people, they may claim a right to speech on any number of issues that impact them or their constituents.
We can probably re-write the law to survive constitutional review, but neither major party actually wants that unless one gains an advantage over the other.
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Or you can just rig the system, like Obama's advisers do, apparently.
All the President’s Muses: Obama and Prosecutorial Misconduct [observer.com]
Re:Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
Not merely the majority of investigations and delays were targeted against politically conservative groups, but the nature of the investigations, is an issue.
If you think some progressive, liberal, or activist groups were also discriminated against, give Issa's office a call. He's probably happy to investigate even more accusations.
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plainly opposite in many cases if they are trying to stop social improvements like immigration reform
This is a subjective statement. One person may consider a particular immigration reform position as representing social improvement, while another may view the position as damaging to the same society.
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
There's this principle, as part of the RICO act, that says creating a lot of shell corporations, where money moves around between companies in a very complicated way and it's very hard to track it, is one of the signs of an organized crime operation. Parts of the RICO law are written to deal with this specific method. For ciriminals to use this method, they have to build enough shell corps to make tracking the money very hard - a few won't do it, twenty or 50 or 119 is better. The Idea is that the more levels of shells there are, the more time the organization has to delay a criminal investigation, as the investigators have to keep going back to a judge and getting more warrents for new records. If they don't find anything the first few times, the judge is likely to stop giving them more warrents, plus there's more time to move money into places such as offshore accounts, or for the top dogs to skip the country if they must.
There weren't a whole bunch of new PACs and such made by the Democrats in that election cycle, but because of the very nature of the Tea Party movement, we saw a lot of Tea party this and Tea Party that, over a hundred new non-profits for states, groups of states, and particular parts of the movement. In many cases, some of the Tea party organizers put their names on multiple applications in different positions, which is another sign of potential shell corporations. That's another possible red flag under RICO, seeing the same person's name for different positions in different corporations which are being formed in multiple states, as is seeing organizations incorporated in odd states (i.e.a company doing businesss only in Arkansas, but incorporating in Florida). (Delaware is somewhat of an exception to this, as their laws make it popular for many businesses to incorporate there, but I don't think there are any real advantages to incorporating in Delaware for non-profits).
The IRS has also long had a position that even if something is technically legal to do as the law is written, it can still be illlegal if the primary purpose of doing it appears to be not to achieve whatever goal the law endorses, but to evade taxes. That means they could have approached this as a case where some of these new organizations might not qualify as their particular type of non-profit, AND might have made a profit AND had the intent to avoid paying the taxes that would entail. Technically, if somebody screws up and didn't stay within the non-profit rules, the IRS next looks to see if they made money, and if they did, for the third step the IRS gets to assume that the mistake in claiming non-profit status isn't an innocent mistake, but a deliberate way to evade taxes on that money. If you think about it, this makes a certain amount of sense - as the plaintiff at that point is often arguing that they accidentally made a profit without trying to, and they just coincidentally filed as a non-profit by innocent mistake. The press has tended to treat this as though the new non-profits could be set up wrong quite innocently, and have made a profit under law, but not done anything really wrong unless the IRS could prove some sort of intent, but the law normally assumes people don't make profits accidentally, and don't just happen to get the paperwork wrong coincidentally.
Re: Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
The messiah of transparency fails yet again. In the private sector, incompetency like this would be a career-killer. In government, though, it's business as usual.
Re: Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
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OMG Bush Derangement Syndrome raises its ugly head again. Bush has been gone for SIX years dammit. Grow the fuck up.
So is Jeffrey Dahmer innocent now? Been a long time.
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/b/ is causing the Internet to vibrate at a fundamental frequency and the harmonics are hitting Slashdot rather hard.
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a cabal of people who will spend all their mod points modding everything on your posting history down if they find you posted something they find particularly offensive. This causes a lot of people to post controversial stufff as AC.
There are also groups of people like groupies who follow topics in order to impress a particular viewpoint that seems to match their worldview. Both seem to be problems on Slashdot in the last couple of years.
You will find that with the retaliation that seems to be going on in today's environment, people just don't want their online persona associated with something controversial. There is the mass down modding to ruin your karma and restrict your posting abilities but also take Mozilla for instance. They canned a new CEO (who had been working for them in other offices since their inception) for something he did 8 years ago that had the majority support of his community at the time. What will you be driven away from or refused or jailed or whatever retaliation that happens in 8 years over a comment you made today or yesterday?
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I was going to reply then realized it was an Anonymous Coward. Is it me or are there a lot more Anonymous Cowards inside and outside Slashdot.org?
It's really not safe to express a controversial opinion at Slashdot anymore, lest you find yourself posting at -1 Karma, instead of engaging in thoughtful discussion.
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I was going to reply then realized it was an Anonymous Coward. Is it me or are there a lot more Anonymous Cowards inside and outside Slashdot.org?
They were all kicked off th eYahoo comment boards, and migrated over here.
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I propose an experiment (Score:2)
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anyone buy that?
Just keep hitting "Check for New Comments" bro..... watch our libtards offer all manner of cockamamy scenarios and rationalizations.
Fine.
Develop an ideology that demonizes every government employee and agency except for the military.
Now motivated by said ideology and a desire to fight corruption introduce a massive number of regulations that make it impossible to do things efficiently.
Finally head said agencies with political appointees instead of the best available candidates with applicable experience.
Now reap your reward. A bloated ineffective inefficient government, and a government that regularly fails to properly implement basic t
Re:massive govt agency, no backups... (Score:4, Informative)
For fuck sake, the IRS isn't what you think it is (Score:2, Informative)
What? Where are you getting this nonsense? The IRS does not expect you to keep records for your *entire life*. That's absolute moronic drivel. In fact, the IRS doesn't require you to do *anything*; it's congress that writes the tax code. Not just a different entity, a completely different branch of government. The IRS isn't some extra-legal entity that makes up their own rules to inflict on ci
Re:For fuck sake, the IRS isn't what you think it (Score:4, Informative)
>The IRS, in particular, expects taxpayers to keep records FOREVER (or until you die and your will is probated) What? Where are you getting this nonsense? The IRS does not expect you to keep records for your *entire life*. That's absolute moronic drivel. In fact, the IRS doesn't require you to do *anything*; it's congress that writes the tax code. Not just a different entity, a completely different branch of government. The IRS isn't some extra-legal entity that makes up their own rules to inflict on citizens and delights in making them difficult.
There are approximately 2600 pages of tax law. That generated over 70,000 pages of tax regulations - which the IRS essentially wrote themselves and enforce. To a large extent, they did make up their own rules.
Re:For fuck sake, the IRS isn't what you think it (Score:4, Informative)
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