Press TV posted a monologue I did last night responding to a new Pew poll indicating that most Americans are feeling financially stressed and that 82% of households reported suffering a financial shock last year. My riff focused on how U.S. government policies make life more difficult for average Americans: If you listen to Congress and the […]
Tag Archives | Taxes
FFF: America’s Cluster Bomb Congress
The Future of Freedom Foundation placed online today my article from the August 2014 issue of the Future of Freedom – America’s Cluster Bomb Congress by James Bovard Tens of thousands of Americans have been bushwhacked by a single arcane sentence in a 673-page law Congress enacted six years ago. The IRS is seizing both […]
IRS “Structuring” Robberies Go Back Decades – Playboy 1996
The New York Times had an excellent piece on Sunday on the IRS pilfering people whose bank account deposits were deemed “suspicious” – based on the shabbiest pretexts. (The Institute of Justice, which is doing great work on asset forfeiture, provided much of the research for the piece.) This abuse has been ongoing for decades. Here’s […]
“Debts Make Free Men Slaves” – My Two Cents on National Debt
I was interviewed yesterday by Press TV on the record setting national debt. The old Roman saying in the headline for this blog occurred me to after the interview finished but oh bother. You can hear the early morning monologue by clicking here. And here are some outtakes from the interview: “The debt load is far […]
Wash. Times: Our Cluster Bomb Congress Plants Legislative IEDs
BOVARD Our cluster-bomb Congress plants legislative IEDs Arcane laws lie dormant until exploding under unsuspecting Americans by James Bovard Tens of thousands of Americans have been bushwhacked by a single arcane sentence in a 673-page law Congress enacted six years ago. The Internal Revenue Service is seizing both federal and state tax refunds for individuals […]
20 Years Ago: The Growing IRS Dictatorship (Wall Street Journal)
The IRS did not start its mischief recently. Here’s a piece of mine published on April 14, 1994 – Wall Street Journal -The Growing IRS Dictatorship By James Bovard A Gallup Poll released last week found that two-thirds of Americans believe that the Internal Revenue Service abuses its power. Yet few people realize exactly how […]
Counterpunch: No Cure for IRS’s Perpetual Political Outrages
COUNTERPUNCH, January 7, 2014 How the Tax Code is Used to Suppress Political Opponents Is There No Cure for the IRS’s Perpetual Political Outrages? by JAMES BOVARD The power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy one’s political opponents. When the latest IRS politicalization scandal erupted last May, many commentators talked as if […]
