Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

Let’s start with this:

Tax refunds sought by hundreds of thousands of poor Americans have been frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, blocking refunds for years to come, the Internal Revenue Service’s taxpayer advocate told Congress today.

The taxpayers, whose average income was $13,000, were not told that they were suspected of fraud, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. The advocate, Nina Olson, said her staff sampled suspected returns and found that, at most, one in five was questionable.

A computer program selected the returns as part of the questionable refund program run by the criminal investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service. In some cases, the criminal division ordered that taxpayers be given no hint that they were suspected of fraud, the report said.

Most of the poor people whose returns the computer flagged as fraudulent were seeking the earned income tax credit, a benefit for the working poor. The credit can return all of the income taxes and Social Security taxes withheld from the paychecks of poor people. Without the credit, many poor people coming off welfare and going to work would receive less money because of taxes taken out of their paychecks and the loss of health benefits, I.R.S. data and other government documents show.

I’m going to be a bit disorganized, so please forgive. That the IRS spends any time at all concerning itself with real or imagined fraud committed by citizens who make $13,000 a year is startling. Strike that - It’s downright fucked up. The amount of money spent tracking down such fraud is surely far greater than what could be recouped in unpaid taxes. This is John Stossel government at near its worst. This is the product of self proclaimed good government advocates who use whatever instance of fraud they can find to discredit and destroy programs which benefit the sick, the poor and the needy. While they show little concern for the billions of dollars tax exemptions granted to massive corporations, they seem intensely interested in exposing a few poor Americans who cheat the system for little gain, in the apparent hope of discrediting and destroying entire social programs. That those citizens who can least afford to contest the arbitrary class based decisions of the IRS are the ones who suffer under the program described above likely warms the hearts of Stossel and his brethren. It should fill the mouths of the rest of us with bile.

Or, as Albert says, stop fucking the poor.

Since there seems to be close to universal dislike for the new design, I’ve switched back to the old one until I can get the kinks worked out.

If you’ve ever visited this site before you’ll probably notice some changes to the design. The hope is to make it a little easier to read. I’ve just noticed that there is no real way of distinguishing hyperlinks from normal text, which is a pretty big problem. Hopefully the new header image isn’t so goofy it makes you sick. It’s only temporary, so don’t worry. Anyway, let me know what problems you run into. Thanks.

I just wanted to highlight a little more of yesterday’s Boston Globe article dealing with the “signing statement” produced by President Bush on the occasion of his signing a bill outlawing the torture of detainees into law. Considering the provisions of various treaties signed by previous presidents and ratified by the United States Senate, a clear cut ban on torture was already the law of the land, but legal clarity in the face of ongoing illegal abuses is always welcome.

What we see in the text of the President’s signing statement is blunt premeditation. The administration intends to direct various agencies of the government to violate laws both new and old. Quite clearly, the administration is not at all uncomfortable declaring its intent to violate the law under some strange patriotic pretense coupled with disjointed legal reasoning unworthy of a hack. It has done so for years with no repercussions. Indeed, it expects applause and adoration for its efforts. Sadly, it will find some. Should this particular event ever find its way into political hack consciousness, much love will be directed towards the effort to break the law on the editorial pages of countless newspapers, as well as in the posts of innumerable bloggers who define morality and patriotism as the paid product of the Republican party’s professional spin apparatus.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit.

”The signing statement is saying ‘I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it’s important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,’ ” he said. ”They don’t want to come out and say it directly because it doesn’t sound very nice, but it’s unmistakable to anyone who has been following what’s going on.”

To sign a bill into law that you plan to violate is not only dishonest in the extreme, it violates the President’s oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States which directs, in no uncertain terms, that the President and the executive branch operate within the law. Unchecked power was not a popular concept with the revolutionaries of the late 18^th century. I wish it were so unpopular today. That the President feels justified in defiling the Constitution in order to perform vile acts of torture makes this almost unbearable. It serves to overflow a bucket of bile with the excrement of the diseased.

I often argue that when a democratically elected government acts, that the citizens who provide that government with the power to govern bear a significant portion of the moral responsibility for that act. This is without regard to whether they agree, disagree or don’t care. That is often a hard reality to deal with; taking personal moral responsibility for a policy or an action which you disagree with in every fiber your being simply because you choose to live in a nation whose government’s power is derived from the people and from nowhere else. We provide the legitimacy and only we can take it away.

When a government knowingly violates the law, repeatedly and with vigor, we the people are likely absolved of all moral responsibility for the illegal actions of an illegal government. We do indeed have a deal in place. By acting outside the boundaries of the constitution, the administration proves itself illegitimate. We are obligated, in my mind, to declare any government who dares overstep the boundaries the Constitution prescribed both illegal and unfit to govern a great people. Now what the hell do we do about it?

I don’t usually follow college football very closely, but I have to say that the last two nights have been a treat. It’s an extraordinarily rare occasion that we see two terrifically competitive college bowl games played in prime time on consecutive evenings. This year’s Orange Bowl and Rose Bowl provided football junkies with enough juice to satisfy the crazed soul for at least a week or two.

Like a lot of people, I tuned into the Rose Bowl tonight for a last chance to watch Reggie Bush tear through a college defense. That’s all well and good, but the thing I came away from tonight’s game with is slack jawed awe at the talent of the Longhorn’s quarterback Vince Young. The guy is a six and half foot tall monster who can run a game, has an arm like a cannon, can throw an accurate pass with a defender or three wrapped around his knees and can put the ball down and run over a swarm of defenders and shake a few more. All that and he’s a Junior. Damn. If he’s even half as good as he played tonight, I suspect we’ll be hearing his name in close proximity to glowing accolades for a decade or so to come. If he winds up on the Redskins or Cowboys, I think that will serve as the final piece of evidence that the universe is conspiring against Philadelphia sports fans.

I mentioned last night that I would put up more of the video from Letterman’s O’Reilly interview when I got a hold of it. Well, I’m a little late to the party, but here’s the whole interview. It’s a huge download (WMV format), but if you haven’t seen the interview yet, it’s well worth a look. Also, have a look at Albert’s take on it as he points out some of the choice moments.

(WMV file taken from Crooks and Liars)

From the Boston Globe:

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ‘’signing statement” — an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law — declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

”The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief,” Bush wrote, adding that this approach ”will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.”

Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president’s signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year’s weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law.

He gets a choice? When the hell did that happen? Well, the experiment was fun while it lasted. I’ve been trying to find just the right expletive to describe my feelings about this, with little success. English speaking people may not yet have developed an adjective to describe feelings so foul.

A friend of mine wrote me a Haiku this morning. Since I don’t have anything of my own to post at the moment, I thought I would share it with you.

Chris hates his job here
I thought he’d be long gone but
damnit he’s still here.

[post deleted]

David Letterman to Bill O’Reilly:

“I Have the Feeling that 60% of What You Say is Crap”

I was thinking about that figure and it seemed insanely low to me at first. Then I remembered that O’Reilly probably pronounces his own name correctly as well as the names of his guests, various countries, commonwealths, states and the people he disparages willfully on a daily basis. That gets him about a quarter of the way there. I’ll assume that rest of the spread was covered by Dave being polite. Here’s the video.

I’ll try to get some more video as much of the interview was more interesting than what’s on that exerpt.

(Via some guy you never heard of .)

Update: I posted the full video here.

I didn’t mean to do any retrospectives on the occasion of the new year, but writing the last post got me thinking about the past a little more than I’d like. The following anonymous quote sums up 2005 for me (link).

Today, I saw my country favorably compared to Indonesia and Thailand, (always our traditional benchmarks of infrastructural success) while the elderly die of thirst in the street.

Not that I want to be overly obvious or naive, but the one thing that the past year should have taught us is that the phrase “never again” really ought to mean something. Interpret that how you will.

The last year represents something of a tipping point for the city of Philadelphia. It was a year in which reforms and attitude adjustments which began with the Goode administration, took off under the Rendell administration and have continued under the Street administration, bore fruit so large that even the most skeptical were forced to acknowledge their presence. The change is most evident in Center City, where a residential housing boom and a commercial revival are as easy to see as the construction cranes that litter the sky.

Even those of us who have been lifelong Philadelphia boosters sit in stunned, slack-jawed silence when listening to the increasingly frequent tales of people who moved here because they actually like it. I honestly never thought I would see the day. Having watched most of my childhood friends and all of my siblings leave town for sunnier climbs, I have to admit to feeling a bit vindicated in my decision to stay
Not good enough. Not even close,

Forgive me for stealing from John Edwards, but Philadelphia is two cities. One - mine - is well off, safe and well served by municipal government. The other is anything but well off, safe or well served. One Philadelphia is bleeding while the other is noshing at the latest BYOB and watching its property values skyrocket. One is featured in style sections and Sunday magazines, while the residents of the other worry that the contents of another sort of magazine might wind up lodged in their child’s head. There is little middle ground and there is little in the way of a middle class. This is unsustainable.

Due to a series of events in my own life, none of which I will discuss in any detail here, I have an interest in public policy regarding the prevention of homicide. Indeed, this is what spurred my initial interest in politics. Victims of homicide are likely to be a certain age, a certain sex, in a certain economic class, with certain level and quality of education among other factors. You can look it up. What you will find is that most murderers fall into the same demographic. While we as a society can do little or nothing about the tendency of young men to be full of impulse and rage, we can do something about poverty and bad schools. That may seem a quaint idea, but if this city is to really succeed, quality of education and economic opportunity will need to be addressed in a way we have never seen.

380. That’s the number of people murdered in Philadelphia in 2005. A number beyond even a fantastic attempt at comprehension. A disaster. When one is too many - three hundred plus eighty. A disaster.

To conclude this disjointed mess I’m going to reprint something I wrote in last year’s edition of the same post. It’s a bit out of date, but it still reflects my feelings.

It amazes me to hear that news commentators have compared the level of violence in Iraq to domestic crime and homicide rates. The fact that they can even make a comparison between America’s cities and a war, however ugly and misguided that comparison may be, tells me that we are seriously deranged, and have been for so long, that we can’t even see it. Can you imagine getting on TV and saying that the casualties of major war really aren’t so bad because they compare quite favorably with the death and destruction occurring in our own cities and towns? Good lord!

When we discuss murder in the United States, we to often focus solely on the issues of law enforcement and gun policy, to little avail. While these are both issues that do need to be addressed, they scratch at the surface of the problem. If we are to have any hope of ever crawling our way out of this disaster, fundamental problems with our education policy, narcotics policy and mental health policy will all need to be addressed seriously.

In a country that wasn’t half off its nut, the blood bath would matter.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has been busy denying that recent visits by U.S. officials are concerned with using Turkey’s bases to attack Iran. The denials were made in response to claims by the Turkish press, usually a loyal government lapdog, that the U.S. consulted with NATO and Turkey about the use of Turkey’s bases, which has long been a central tenant of the two countries military alliance.  Even when the Turkish Parliament denied the U.S. to deploy troops into Iraq in March 2003, which caused a strain in relations that has yet to be rectified, Turkey’s airbases were still allowed to be used by the U.S. Air Force. Despite the Foreign Ministry’s denials, there are a few reasons to believe that the claims are true.

 Since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, Turkey’s relations with Iran have been characterized primarily by tension and suspicion due not only to Turkey’s historical aversion to official religious influence in government, but also to the sizable Kurdish minority residing within along the border. While the two countries have never come to blows no more than they’ve talked about it, but Turkey would certainly prefer a weaker Iran which, along with Israel, is the closest country to Turkey in military strength. No Arab state has even come close since the first Gulf War.

 Since the shock of March 2003 when the Turkish Parliament adhered to 95% of the population and denied the U.S. use of its land to invade Iraq, relations between the two countries, which for long have been as close as U.S.-Israeli ties, have been strained significantly. Ever since the dust settled, however, intense diplomatic activity to repair relations has been undertaken almost constantly. Given that the U.S.-Turkish alliance is purely military/strategic in character, relations would be repaired through military/strategic cooperation.

What will determine the outcome of this situation is whether the civilian or military establishment in Turkey has the final say. In March 2003, the Parliament was able to silence the powerful military, but that incident was an exception to almost 80 years of military preeminence. Anger at the U.S. among the public is at an all time high, and the ruling party is closely in touch with this sentiment. They certainly would not pursue such an audacious operation against a Muslim country, but the military would.

Trolling around the wingnutosphere this morning I came across something that I wanted to share with you. The following paragraph is by a person named Paul, who seems hell bent being as just as confused as he wants to be.

Kos’s rant is absurd on its face. If those who want vigorously to protect the homeland were motivated by fear for their personal safety, it would only be because the terrorists have the capacity to kill on a vast scale. The chances of a given American dying in another 9/11 are essentially nil. But if the terrorists have the capacity to kill on a vast scale, then the only rational response is to take strong measures to prevent future attacks. Thus, Kos’s ad hominem argument would be irrelevant.

Just read that paragraph a few times and let it sink in. Got it? Really? Now tell me what the hell it means. Is it anything, or did he just cut up the words on a sheet of paper, throw them in the air and them tape them back together? I re-read the Daily Kos post he’s referring to just to see if this was some strange stab at a summary, but I don’t see how it could be unless the writer is suffering from a disability which impairs his reading comprehension. Perhaps I’m suffering from the same?

The author goes on to write this:

Kos mindlessly invokes the American Revolution but forgets that one of its slogans was “Don’t Tread on Me.” This quintessentially American sentiment explains why Americans are unwilling to tolerate future attacks on the scale of 9/11, much less the far more deadly attacks that al Qaeda has in mind.

I thought he said the chance of a “given” American dying in that sort of attack was nil? Or was that somebody else? Was he paraphrasing somebody? If so, who was it? I’m so confused. The slogan he’s referring to I do know. It’s from the Gadsden flag which sometimes also featured the phrase “Liberty or Death.” Go figure.

I do like that Paul brought up “Don’t Tread on Me” because it embodies what so many have been saying since the NSA scandal broke. Don’t tread on my rights, don’t tread on my liberties and don’t you dare claim that any threat justifies or permits you to tread on the Constitution of the United States.

I’ve been lazy on this subject for months, but I really like what Albert wrote about his support for Chuck Pennacchio this morning.

I want a senator who believes in universal health care. I want a senator who believes that every child who wants to further their education is entitled to do so. I want a senator who wants to change our energy dependence of the Middle East. I want a senator who will work to further womens rights. I want a senator who is serious about the generational debt my generation is facing and will pass along to the next generation and the next… I want a senator who will hold this corrupt adminstration accountable for getting us into the Iraq War. I want Chuck Pennacchio as my senator.

Shocking really. Reviewing the typical coverage of the upcoming senatorial race in Pennsylvania, one could be forgiven for not knowing that there is a candidate for the Democratic nomination who has positions that resemble the positions of the base of the Democratic party. Hell, one could be forgiven for not knowing that there is a candidate who has positions at all. Live and learn.