Tag: hit&run

Fewer than 40 percent of Americans surveyed think they’ve seen a tax cut since 2017, when President Donald Trump signed the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” In fact, most people think their personal tax burden has gone up. But “independent analyses have consistently found that a large majority of Americans would owe less because of the law” and “preliminary data based on tax filings has shown the same,” reports The New York Times. Meanwhile, “not even one in 10 households actually got a tax increase.”

Data from the Tax Policy Center show 64.8 percent of Americans got a tax cut, while SurveyMonkey/New York Times data found only 39.6 percent thought they got a tax cut.

People with household incomes of less than $30,000 were the most likely to accurately perceive the situation (32.1 percent got a tax cut, and 30 percent think they did). Much larger tax-cut perception and reality gaps exist at higher household income levels:

• • About 69 percent of people with a household income of $30,000 to $50,000 got a tax cut, but just 36.1 percent think they did.
  • Nearly 82 percent of those in the $50,000 to $75,000 range got a tax cut; 41.5 percent think they did.
  • 86.6 percent of households making $75,000 to $100,000 saw a tax cut, but just 47.9 percent think they did.
  • And 89.5 percent of those in the $100,000 or more bracket got a tax cut, while just 46.4 percent think they did.

“To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained—and misleading—effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase,” write the Times‘ Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley.

FREE MINDS

FUCT at the trademark office. The clothing company FRIENDS U CAN’T TRUST—that’s FUCT, for short—has taken its battle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office all the way to the Supreme Court. The office denied founder Erik Brunetti’s request, citing a federal rule against registering “scandalous” trademarks. “Now the Supreme Court on Monday, for the second time in two years, will review whether provisions of a federal law, the Lanham Act, violate the First Amendment,” reports CNN. The first case, from 2017, involved a band called The Slants. Read (or watch) more about that case here.

FREE MARKETS

Silk Road 2.0 creator sentenced. Ross Ulbricht, creator of the original darknet digital marketplace Silk Road, was relegated to two consecutive lifetimes in federal prison. But after the federal government seized Silk Road in 2013, a Silk Road 2.0 quickly took its place, thanks to the efforts of “Dread Pirate Roberts 2” Thomas White.

“White was arrested in 2014” by the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, writes Tim Cushing, “but his sentence has only now been handed down.” And “the creator of Silk Road 2.0—doing double the business of Silk Road 1.0 at its peak—is looking to be out of prison years before his inspiration sees freedom.”

White was sentenced to 5 years and four months in prison. “There’s your compare-and-contrast. In the US, drug crimes are the worst crimes,” Cushing writes.

“Our government argues lengthy sentences for drug cases are needed to deter others from drug dealing. Seeing how quickly the new Silk Road replaced Ulbricht’s version makes it clear lengthy sentences aren’t deterring anything.”

QUICK HITS

• Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) has released a decade and a half worth of tax returns. In 2018, Harris and her husband’s combined gross income was $1.89 million.
• The Mueller report is reportedly being released sometime this week.
• Whole Earth’s “3 Nut Butter” clearly contains the word nut in its name. Its label lits “Peanut, Pecan & Walnut” under that. But because Whole Earth didn’t use the specific nut-warning language required by U.K. regulators (“contains nuts”), the country’s Food Standards Agency has recalled the product.
• All your passwords belong to us:

DEA demanded a user’s login details from LastPass https://t.co/vzNdWflk0g

— threat level: beige (@TimCushing) April 15, 2019

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Columbus, Ohio, police searching for a missing woman found her body in her car, which happened to be a police impound lot. Officials say they don’t yet know how Falyce A. Yuill, 61, died or whether she was already dead when her car was towed or if she died at the impound lot. An initial autopsy found no signs of trauma or foul play.

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Michael Knowles, a writer for the conservative Daily Wire, attempted to speak at the University of Missouri-Kansas City on Thursday. Protesters heckled him, and one hurled a liquid that smelled like bleach at him.

The substance was not actually bleach. Police arrested the attacker immediately. According to Campus Reform:

UMKC responded to the incident in a tweet, saying, “we have a responsibility to allow free speech, but we cannot condone physical disruptions of peaceful activities. We believe free speech can be exercised constructively in a way that doesn’t put people at risk. We are gathering facts and will review campus policies & procedures.”

Knowles was on campus to give a talk called “Men Are Not Women,” presumably about his views on the transgender community.

Knowles is a professional provocateur and decidedly trollish rightwing figure. (His book Reasons to Vote for Democrats is just 266 blank pages.) It seems obvious that the best thing to do is ignore his talks, which are quite intentionally designed to get a rise out of lefties and trick them into making themselves look intolerant and cartoonish. True to form, the activist left greeted Knowles with the kind of stupid, self-defeating behavior that Knowles’ ilk thrives on.

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Happy April 15, everyone! The federal government collects about $3.5 trillion in tax revenue each year, according to the White House Office of Budget and Management. Here, in no particular order, are six of the more infuriating ways that money has gone to waste.

1. $300,000 on 391 coffee mugs

In what world do coffee mugs go for more than $750 a pop? In a special world we call the Pentagon.

To be fair, these weren’t exactly normal mugs. As Reason‘s Zuri Davis explained in October, the specialty metal mugs can be plugged into aircraft and have the ability to reheat beverages while in flight. Unfortunately, their odd shape make them susceptible to shattering, thus necessitating replacements.

Since 2016, the Air Force has spent $326,785 on 391 of those mugs. The exorbitant cost was due to a combination of factors, including rising prices for raw materials and the fact that some of the suppliers who produced the necessary parts no longer made them. Maybe next time the Air Force should just give its crews some Red Bull.

2. $400,000 to promote asset forfeiture…in Paraguay.

You know how various federal and local police agencies can take suspected criminals’ money and other possessions, often without even obtaining a conviction? Apparently, the State Department loves the concept so much that it decided other countries need to do it as well.

Paraguay’s government established an agency in charge of seizing assets back in December 2017. The U.S. government allocated $400,000 to support the new agency’s “strong and sound institutional growth from the beginning and help it become effective at managing and liquidating seized and forfeited assets for the benefit of Paraguayan national interests.”

Which is worse? Watching the U.S. government seize its own citizens’ property, or being forced to fork over money to help a foreign government seize its people’s possessions too?

3. $13.6 million to hire two border agents

In November 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) awarded a $297 million contract to an outside company called Accenture, with the understanding that it would recruit and hire 7,500 more agents in five years. Ten months into the contract, we got a progress report: The agency had paid Accenture $13.6 million in return for two accepted job offers.

Granted, more CBP agents is not necessarily a good thing. But what a way to blow a few million bucks. Thankfully, CBP terminated the contract earlier this month.  

4. More than $325,000 for Mike Pence’s national anthem stunt

Remember back in the fall of 2017, when President Donald Trump said some mean things about NFL players who kneel during the pregame playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner”? You may also remember how Vice President Pence made a big point of leaving an Indianapolis Colts game early after several players knelt.

HuffPost calculated last year that the stunt cost taxpayers at least $325,000 once you consider Secret Service expenses, travel expenses, and the money it costs for the vice president to fly on Air Force Two. All this for nothing more than a political stunt. And why should taxpayers foot the bill for high-profile politicians to attend sporting events in the first place?

5. $333,000 to study bars on the U.S.-Mexico border

“The U.S./Mexico border is a unique macro context for drinking, with increased alcohol availability due to the lower minimum legal drinking age in Mexico of 18 years and an increased number of venues for on premise consumption of alcohol (bars, clubs, restaurants),” according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for the 2018 fiscal year.

Is that something U.S. taxpayers should worry about? Apparently so: The NIH gave the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation $333,210 to study the phenomenon.

One of the study’s goals: to determine whether “younger Mexican Americans in the border cities will be more likely to drink in public venues such as bars and clubs than at home and with family than age matched Mexican American and Whites in Valley cities.”

6. Nearly $3 million to study dance clubs

Here’s another questionable NIH grant to the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. In 2018, the group got $180,304 to study “the high risk behaviors…of young adults who patronize clubs.”

“This project targets young, working adults who frequent clubs that feature Electronic Music Dance Events (EMDE) and engage in high risk behaviors,” the grant’s public health relevance statement reads. “These high risk behaviors are excessive alcohol use, drug use, physical and/or sexual aggression, and unsafe behaviors upon exiting from clubs.”

It’s worth wondering question why taxpayers should have to pay $180,304 for this kind of research. But the actual number is much higher—about $2.9 million since 2014, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

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[You might also read my earlier post on the subject, Anti-Libel Injunctions and the Criminal Libel Connection, The First Amendment and Criminal Libel Law, and The First Amendment and the Catchall Permanent Injunction; or you can read the whole article in PDF.]

Let’s now shift from an anti-libel injunction that I argue is constitutionally permissible (even if perhaps unsound in other ways)—the catchall injunction—to one that is broadly understood to be unconstitutional: the specific preliminary injunction. Paula sues Don for libel, arguing that Don lied when he said that Paula had cheated him in business. She gets a preliminary injunction, just weeks after filing, or even a temporary restraining order (whether or not ex parte) just days after filing. That injunction says, “Don shall not accuse Paula of cheating him,” and lasts until trial (which could be years or at least many months in the future). It is specific rather than catchall because it bans only the repetition of a specific allegation or set of allegations (here, of cheating).

Such specific preliminary injunctions have been sharply condemned by most appellate courts that have seriously considered them—even by courts that authorize specific permanent injunctions—because those injunctions suppress speech without a finding on the merits that the speech is unprotected. In the words of the California Supreme Court in Balboa Village Island Inn, Inc. v. Lemen, the most influential recent decision allowing permanent injunctions against libel,

In determining whether an injunction restraining defamation may be issued, … it is crucial to distinguish requests for preventive relief prior to trial and post-trial remedies to prevent repetition of statements judicially determined to be defamatory…. “… The attempt to enjoin the initial distribution of a defamatory matter meets several barriers, the most impervious being the constitutional prohibitions against prior restraints on free speech and press …. In contrast, an injunction against continued distribution of a publication which a jury has determined to be defamatory may be more readily granted….”

Likewise, when the Kentucky Supreme Court authorized permanent injunctions against libel, it expressly rejected preliminary injunctions:

[T]he speech alleged to be false and defamatory by the Respondents has not been finally adjudicated to be, in fact, false. Only upon such a determination could the speech be ascertained to be constitutionally unprotected, and therefore subject to injunction against future repetition. We are mindful that the rule announced herein delays the availability of injunctive relief during the time it takes to litigate the issue. Thus, while the rule may temporarily delay relief for those ultimately found to be innocent victims of slander and libel, it prevents the unwarranted suppression of speech of those who are ultimately shown to have committed no defamation, and thereby protects important constitutional values.

The Nebraska Supreme Court took the same view:

A jury has yet to determine whether Sullivan’s allegations about Dillon and his business practices are false or misleading representations of fact. For these reasons, we conclude that the temporary restraining order, as well as the permanent injunction restraining Sullivan’s speech, constitute unconstitutional prior restraints in derogation of Sullivan’s right to speak.

Or in the words of the Alaska Supreme Court, “Preliminary injunctions are almost always held to be unconstitutional burdens on speech because they involve restraints on speech before the speech has been fully adjudged to not be constitutionally protected.” And while the court went on to say that, “A preliminary injunction barring speech may be permissible only if the trial court has fully adjudicated and determined that the affected speech is not constitutionally protected,” the injunction that it was authorizing this way isn’t really so preliminary.[1] The few cases that have upheld preliminary injunctions against libel have not squarely responded to this criticism.[2]

More generally, the Supreme Court likewise held in Vance v. Universal Amusements, Inc.[3] that alleged obscenity cannot be enjoined simply based on a pretrial showing that the speech was likely to be obscene—at least absent the procedural protections offered by Freedman v. Maryland—even though it could be enjoined after a finding of obscenity on the merits. Likewise, in Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm’n on Human Relations, the Court upheld an injunction against an illegal advertisement only “because no interim relief was granted,” so that “the order will not have gone into effect before our final determination that the actions of Pittsburgh Press were unprotected.”

The problem with the specific preliminary injunction, then, is that it doesn’t just lead to punishment of speech that a jury has found libelous beyond a reasonable doubt (or even by a preponderance of the evidence). It leads to punishment of speech that a judge has found will likely be shown to be libelous, and this finding may have been based on a highly abbreviated (and sometimes even ex parte) adjudicative process.

 

[1] See also Mishler v. MAC Systems, Inc., 771 N.E.2d 92, 98–99 (Ind. Ct. App. 2000) (condemning a preliminary injunction issued “after only the most preliminary of determinations by the trial court”); St. Margaret Mercy Healthcare Centers, Inc. v. Ho, 663 N.E.2d 1220, 1223–24 (Ind. Ct. App. 1996) (dissolving a preliminary injunction on First Amendment grounds, because speech cannot be restricted “before an adequate determination that it is unprotected by the First Amendment”); Hartman v. PIP-Group, LLC, __ S.E.2d __ (Ga. Ct. App. 2019) (“We have found no Georgia case upholding an interlocutory injunction prohibiting speech. Our Supreme Court has noted that although ‘it has never been held that all injunctions against publication are impermissible,’ such an injunction has been upheld only when it ‘was entered subsequent to a verdict in which a jury found that statements made by [the defendant] were false and defamatory.’”); Anagnost v. Mortgage Specialists, Inc., 2016 WL 10920366, *3 (N.H. Super. Ct.) (“[B]y asking for a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs seek to enjoin Gill from making statements that have not yet been found to be unprotected.”); Paradise Hills Assocs. v. Procel, 1 Cal. Rptr. 2d 514, 519 (Cal. Ct. App. 1991) (“A preliminary injunction is a prior restraint.”); Cohen v. Advanced Med. Group, 496 S.E.2d 710, 710-11 (Ga. 1998) (overturning a preliminary injunction against libel on the grounds that the injunction was not “‘entered subsequent to a verdict in which a jury found that statements made by [defendant] were false and defamatory’” (quoting High Country Fashions, Inc. v. Marlenne Fashions, Inc., 357 S.E.2d 576, 577 (Ga. 1987))); Auburn Police Union v. Carpenter, 8 F.3d 886, 903 (1st Cir. 1993) (stressing that an injunction of charitable solicitation was permitted only “after a final adjudication on the merits that the speech is unprotected”).

[2] But see Gillespie v. Council, 2016 WL 5616589, *3 (Nev. Ct. App. Sept. 27) (reluctantly allowing preliminary injunction in libel case, because a 1974 Nevada Supreme Court had allowed such injunctions); San Antonio Community Hosp. v. Southern Cal. Dist. Council of Carpenters, 125 F.3d 1230, 1233–39 (9th Cir. 1997) (concluding that a preliminary injunction in a labor union libel case was not a prior restraint because the statements were so misleading as to be fraudulent, and “[t]he First Amendment does not protect fraud”); Bingham v. Struve, 591 N.Y.S.2d 156, 158-59 (Sup. Ct. App. Div. 1992) (ordering a preliminary injunction against a libel on a matter of private concern, concluding that the libel was constitutionally unprotected but not considering the prior restraint problem); Parland v. Millennium Const. Servs., LLC, 623 S.E.2d 670, 673 (Ga. Ct. App. 2005) (allowing a preliminary injunction so long as there is a showing of irreparable harm); Barlow v. Sipes, 744 N.E.2d 1, 10 (Ind. Ct. App. 2001) (allowing preliminary injunction as to speech on matters of “primarily private concern”).

[3] 445 U.S. 308 (1980); see also Blount v. Rizzi, 400 U.S. 410, 420 (1971) (holding that a determination by a judge of “probable cause” that speech is obscene is insufficient to justify a restriction); FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 240 (1990) (reaffirming this principle as to “prior restraint[s] in advance of a final judicial determination on the merits”); State v. Book-Cellar, Inc., 679 P.2d 548, 553-55 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1984) (upholding a statute that authorized preliminary injunctions against the distribution of obscenity by requiring “that a final judicial determination [be] made by the end of 60 days from the issuance of a preliminary injunction,” a safeguard compelled by Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51 (1965)); City of Cadillac v. Cadillac News & Video, Inc., 562 N.W.2d 267, 270 (Mich. Ct. App. 1996) (overturning down a preliminary injunction of obscenity on the grounds that the injunction would permit “removal of allegedly obscene materials from circulation before a judicial determination whether the material is obscene, with none of the safeguards” established in Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51, 59 (1965)).

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This is my first year married filing jointly, and also my first year being stoned while I do my taxes.

The first hurdle was trying to remember my TurboTax password. Well, the first hurdle was building up the motivation to do my taxes. I smoked a massive joint with my husband and browsed flights to Budapest and Dubrovnik before realizing that I could not procrastinate anymore and also could not fly to Eastern Europe to avoid my tax burden.

The TurboTax password was hidden in plain sight, right in our Dashlane password manager account. That didn’t stop us from staring at the screen for somewhere between five and 20 minutes trying to figure out which one was the password (time is hard to estimate, man). The thought occurred to me that I might be too high to do my taxes. I steeled myself and tried to concentrate.

High people can be quite functional. I have a decent sense of my own limits. I was high for the vast majority of college: an acolyte of the wake-and-bake school of thought, trotting to class each day under the influence of coffee and a spliff. Prattling professors and try-hard college students couldn’t get to me if I was stoned, so I would sit in the back of the class and read the news each morning in a slight stupor—my bookwormish ritual. Weed has always gently mellowed my naturally Type A, ultra-organized personality. If it can dull the pain of higher education, presumably it can dull the pain of taxes too.

At the beginning of TurboTax’s tour, they ask you to answer a few questions about ways your financial circumstance has changed over the past year. I had switched jobs and—more important to the IRS—had gotten married. “Most couples who file together save money on their taxes together! We’ll gather info for both of you, and help get your first refund as a couple.” TurboTax chirped, accompanied by a heteronormative graphic of a diamond ring intertwined with a chunky wedding band.

I uploaded my W2s and started tediously entering freelancing 1099s. I connected my Wealthfront investment account to the TurboTax platform. I attempted to demystify what a 1099-DIV is, and to figure out how to declare our various investments. No real roadblocks thus far, but my mind kept wandering.

As I got to the charitable giving part, a thought came to me: Maybe one good side effect of taxes is that they force people to confront whether charitable giving and (for the religious among us) tithing really matter to them. Oh no, am I becoming one of those people, the ones who let government incentives dictate their actions? I think so, just a little bit.

Last year we gave one-time donations to various causes, but nothing enormous. While filing taxes this month, we realized the error of our ways, and also that a write-off sounds nice. The day after filing, we set up monthly donations to our church (non-denominational, but Baptist-tinged) and to immigrant and refugee respite centers in the Rio Grande Valley. The government nudge wasn’t the single deciding factor—this is something we’d wanted to do for a long time—but it was the catalyst that brought it front of mind. (Tokes.) Thanks for the reminder, taxes!

As the legal theft droned on (asking about property taxes and mortgages), my stoned mind couldn’t help but marvel at the glorious invention of TurboTax. Our entrepreneurial overlords had created software that makes everyone’s yearly government takings way easier to calculate and complete. Now they have a near-monopoly on digital tax-filing services. Also, what a brilliant business concept: a platform that appeals and caters to almost everyone. Shark Tank‘s wise sage Kevin O’Leary has a saying about how entrepreneurs should focus on areas where there are built-in markets (i.e., weddings and funerals). The TurboTax inventors went even further! All hail the free market! I delighted in the built-in audit risk assessment for freelancers far more than any sober human being would. I smoked another joint on the porch and sipped some coffee.

Things took a turn for the worse when I got to the page that asked “Do you want to donate $3 to the presidential campaign fund? This will not reduce your refund or increase your tax due.” I clicked on the description, rightly fearing the worst. TurboTax explained that this opt-in funding of elections could “reduce candidates’ dependence on large contributions and, hopefully, to put everyone on an equal financial footing (so they’d have more time to discuss the issues).”

It was at this point that I realized I wasn’t sufficiently stoned anymore. As if candidates would focus on the substance—and as if that substance would matter to the many hobbits and hooligans swarming around the ballot boxes like flies. As TurboTax auto-checked for more credits and deductions, my brain descended into campaign finance reform, and I made some cannabutter tea (Thai red tea with milk, a hefty chunk of homemade cannabutter, and some sweetener), which produces a long-lasting but mild high.

By the time we were done, we owed the government a lot of money and the covered porch smelled like a hotboxed dorm room.

Pot isn’t a cure-all. It didn’t cure the pain of owing the government roughly $2,000, or the frustration of wondering whether we were entering all our stock holdings correctly. But it did make rote data entry just a little more fun. Marijuana apparently isn’t too dangerous to inhibit me from filing my tax returns. I even managed to figure out the 1099-DIVs.

Weed is one substance in our arsenal that makes the mundane necessities of life a bit more manageable, a bit more whimsical, and a bit less dreaded. If they’re going to make us surrender hard-earned wads of cash, we at least ought to be able to chief a blunt while we do it.

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Americans are dodging income taxes at a growing pace. They have good reason to do just that.

Taxes are, as per a handy Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guide for students, “required payments of money to governments that are used to provide public goods and services for the benefit of the community as a whole.” Yet our politically divided countrymen find little agreement over what constitutes “benefit” or “appropriate payments” and often act as if government is better used to punish enemies than to help anybody. That has, in turn, fueled an understandable reluctance to cough up cash for what’s offered.

In the latest IRS figures, voluntary tax compliance for 2008–10 is 81.7 percent of the revenue the federal government believes it’s entitled to collect. That’s down from 83.1 percent in 2006. The slide “does not support concluding that noncompliance has increased,” say the tax men. But that’s pretty much what they said when disappointing numbers prompted then–Sen. Max Baucus (D–Mont.) to call, in 2004, for 90 percent compliance by 2010—a deadline he later extended to 2017. That’s not the direction things moved.

We should hope those numbers head over the cliff’s edge in the years to come.

Good government types like to justify taxes by citing Oliver Wendell Holmes, who called them “the price we pay for a civilized society.” But they’d be well-advised to remember the words of Thomas Aquinas, who believed governments were entitled to impose taxes for “the common good” but that “if they extort something unduly by means of violence, it is robbery even as burglary is.”

In his classic 1993 book, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization, the late tax historian Charles Adams pointed out that “people instinctively, in all ages, have called tax men robbers because they operate by threats and intimidations and don’t pay for what they take.” Resentment brews, too, because taxes do not fit any traditional definition of a voluntarily incurred debt. “A tax is owed because a government orders it to be paid,” Adams added. “Nothing else is required.”

Maybe that’s all right if what you’re ordered to pay for benefits you in an obvious and desirable way. But if you deeply resent the forced extraction of your income so that it can be spent on wars of aggression, corporate subsidies, welfare payments, punitive law enforcement, or other purposes you find abhorrent, any budding appreciation is likely to die on the vine. War tax resisters have a long and proud history of trying to deny fuel to the military machine. After years of public life, libertarian icon Karl Hess lived a life of barter to deny the state any undeserved pound of flesh.

It’s even worse if you live in a fractured society in which the factions have turned against one another—21st century America, say—and the instruments of the state are used as bludgeons with which to harm a temporary ruling clique’s perceived enemies.

The Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point used regulatory power to intimidate banks into denying financial services to legal businesses, such as payday lenders and gun retailers, that had lost the support of the rulers of the moment. Likewise, the current president threatens burdensome taxes and antitrust investigations on disfavored companies and media operations. Nobody pretends these moves are anything other than punishment for those who have rubbed the ruling class the wrong way.

Funding for these abusive government efforts comes courtesy of the IRS. The tax agency itself has a long history of politicization in high-profile cases, including the recent targeting of Tea Party groups and President Richard Nixon’s harassment of political enemies through the “Special Services Staff.”

“It never occurred to me at the time that the IRS could be used as a political tool,” former Revenue Officer Richard M. Schickel wrote of tips about alleged tax evasion in his self-published 2015 memoir, IRS Whistleblower. “Every case in the IRS is coded as to the source of information. As you can imagine if you got a code that said the case was from the White House or Congress that got top priority.”

Adams, the tax historian, agreed. “The executive branch of the government has used the IRS to harass, punish, and even destroy businesses, prominent individuals, unpopular political organizations, senators, congressmen—just about anybody,” he wrote. “Even more threatening and dangerous to the nation is the abuse of power by the IRS itself against those people it doesn’t like.…Senators Edward Long and Joseph Montoya were both toppled from power when they sought to have the Senate hold hearings on IRS misdeeds.”

“To some employees, the taxpayer is the enemy,” Schickel said.

Given that, it’s no wonder tax collectors are so easy to weaponize. One need merely turn them loose against a population they already despise.

“A system that allows billionaires to exist” is immoral, insists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), who plays to her hipster-socialist base with vows to slap punitive taxes on the prosperous.

“A small group of families has raked in a massive amount of the wealth American workers have produced,” agrees Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), who wants to confiscate part of their accumulated assets.

“I can’t wait to tax Howard Schultz back into the middle class,” tweeted progressive columnist Ian Millhiser after the former Starbucks CEO floated a possible independent presidential run.

“They will be taxed like never before,” President Donald Trump threatened after motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson announced plans to move some production overseas in defiance of the president’s nationalistic economic policies. That echoes his vows to punish Amazon for criticism of his administration published in The Washington Post, owned by the retail giant’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos.

Forget the idea of forced payments for undesired benefits. Here we have malicious political actors threatening to inflict punitive taxes enforced by historically abusive collectors against people they dislike. It’s a weaponized tax system funded by what it extracts from its victims.

A voluntary compliance rate of 81.7 percent and dropping? For a government that has seen a decadeslong decline in measures of public trust, that level of compliance is surprisingly high.

And why are people so willing to turn over their hard-earned income to the tax man? “The power of the IRS is the power of FEAR,” Schickel explained in his book. And fear can go a long way toward propping up unpopular regimes.

But fear will only take you so far.

“A government that shackles its people with grossly inequitable tax laws and despotic enforcement practices loses all moral persuasion with respect to compliance and can hardly complain if its taxpayers resort to all kinds of schemes to protect themselves, including illegal ones,” Adams warned in his book.

So far, taxpayers have chosen to protect themselves in quietly growing numbers, with minimal drama. Unless they’re given reason to reconsider, we should expect—and hope—that their rebellious ranks will grow.

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Welcome to the new and improved Reason.

We hope you’ll find the new site easier and more pleasant to use. While we’re still publishing the same great content you love (or love to hate), the new site should make it simpler for you to find some things you might have missed—including videos, podcasts, newsletters, and even events. (Plus our pals at Stossel and Volokh.)

Astute readers will notice that our longtime blog, Hit&Run, is gone. All the news, views, and abuse you’re used to from Reason staffers will appear as standalone articles from now on. If you’re a diehard for the reverse-chronological feed, you can always pop over to Latest to see what’s new.

A note about how we made the new site: Instead of going to a fancy outside firm, we developed the whole site in-house. (We did the same thing when we redesigned the print magazine a while back.) That decision meant we could build the perfect site for a 50-year-old magazine which also happens to be a prolific video channel, a burgeoning podcast powerhouse, and your favorite online reporting and analysis destination. It also means you can expect to see evolution and improvements over time, so don’t be shy about sending us feedback.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom has made some bold promises about fixing the state’s housing shortage. Unfortunately, most of the Democrat’s solutions are heavy on government spending and light on the regulatory reform that would bring rents and home prices down.

“No one should live in constant fear of eviction or spend their whole paycheck to keep a roof overhead,” Newsom said in his inaugural address. “We will launch a Marshall Plan for affordable housing and lift up the fight against homelessness from a local matter to a state-wide mission.”

A budget proposal released by Newsom on January 10 calls for an additional $1.3 billion in state funding geared toward kickstarting new housing production. Of that amount, $250 million will go to local governments as “technical assistance”—allowing them to hire more bureaucrats, process more permits, streamline existing permitting processes, or alter zoning codes to allow for more density. The state also set up housing production milestones, and another $500 million will be on hand to reward municipalities that hit their targets. The plan also calls for a $500 million one-off funding increase for moderate-income housing.

Zoning law reform is sorely needed in California, but Newsom’s proposal is an outrageously expensive way of going about it. California’s legislature already has the power to force local governments to loosen up zoning. It doesn’t need to bribe them. Indeed, the past two years have seen several legislative attempts to wrest some zoning decisions away from municipalities. So far, Newsom has declined to explicitly endorse those efforts.

In addition to dangling carrots, Newsom is perfectly happy to use the stick. In February, his administration invoked powers under a 2017 state law to sue the Orange County community of Huntington Beach over its failure to zone for sufficient housing. Huntington Beach has countersued, arguing that its status as a charter city allows it to set its own housing policies, Sacramento be damned.

Newsom’s lawsuit might strike some as overkill, but when local control has resulted in so many restrictions on new housing, direct state intervention can be a positive development.

That case will likely drag on for some time, as will budget battles over affordable-housing funding. Newsom’s rhetoric shows a commitment to addressing California’s housing shortage, and he’s even willing to use new legal tools to get the job done. So far, however, he appears reluctant to embrace the types of regulatory rollbacks that would make a real difference.

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A reader was confused by this at first, so it led me to think that some other readers might be, too.

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