Red Meat Government: Costly Attempts To Save Money Lose Money

Throw 'em a gob of red meat.

Tasty enough to rationalize suicide.

Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris: On Taxes

25 December, 1783

"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law. All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."  http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html 

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html

"Plutocracy Triumphant"

Cartoon Compendium

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/plutocracy-triumphant.html

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Budget deal throws away free money by protecting tax cheats

If they end up voting for it, lawmakers in both parties will have put into law a proposal to fund most of the government through September that reduces the budget for the Internal Revenue Service by $346 million, or about 3 percent. This is deeply counterproductive.

When the IRS doesn't have enough money to conduct audits of tax returns, it's easier for cheaters to get away without paying their fair share. Extra money spent on enforcement is well worth it from the perspective of the country's bottom line. By one estimate, every dollar cut from the IRS budget increases the deficit by roughly $7. It's free money. Congress is throwing it away, choosing instead to increase the budget deficit and national debt at the expense of people who are playing by the rules.

The bill also attempts to address the controversy over the way the agency has handled the tax status of liberal and conservative political groups by forbidding the IRS from targeting any group for scrutiny based on ideology. If that provision passes, it is not clear how exactly the agency is supposed to enforce the law granting tax-exempt status to certain political organizations but not to others -- which is the ambiguity that got the agency in hot water in the first place.

But however you feel about the tax status for political groups, that controversy has nothing to do with the IRS budget, which Congress has been steadily reducing since way back in 2010.