Politicians and Government Cringe Thread

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
The Left already have control of the DoD and DC, in pretty much every way that matters. Ground troops also don't make policy, and it is policy that matters most.

Also, notice I am not one of them saying that their will be a 'purge' of Lefties if the Right regains control?

That's because I am not naive enough to think the GOP would actually have the balls to do such a thing, or that it would actually do so effectively if attempted.

I just am willing to admit that as far as non-violent resistance to the illegit regime in DC goes, shunning of Feds and Fed employees is one method that has some real potential to hurt the ability of the illegit regime to carry out it's oppression or justify more use of force.

There is no fixing this state of affairs from the inside the machine/system; fish rot from the head.
The enlisted do all the work.
They make up the military. The NCO Corps does everything for the army for instance.
The officers do not consist of the majority, they are the minority, and what they do policy wise isn't changing shit honestly. It is just things we go through and nod on through.
Have you gone through BLC?
Bave you gone through any of the leadership courses?
Taken anything the military, specifically from my experience, the Army?
no? Then what th fuck do you know?
I am gonna have to SEVERELY DISAGREE that the DOD is doing their job my guy.
Oh?
Alright, do you know what we are actually doing besides what you read from biased sources?
 

Free-Stater 101

Freedom Means Freedom!!!
Nuke Mod
Moderator
Staff Member
Of course it's personal.
Indeed, so both you and @Bacle cease and desist because I see nothing productive emerging from this mud slinging.

Bacle isnt going to listen to you and you arent listing to him regardless of who started it or who is the worst party in this discussion.

It's pointless.
 
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bintananth

behind a desk
More on IRS cannonfodder


The IRS is basically asking accountants to be SWAT. An accountant is far more dangerous when sitting behind a desk piled high with stacks of paper than SWAT with a no-knock warrant can ever be to someone who doesn't get the books right.

The FBI couldn't nail Al Capone for his illegal activities. The IRS did because his tax returns did not include the "other income" he got from his illegal activities.

You don't have to say where the money came from. You just have to report it and "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's".
 
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Cherico

Well-known member
The IRS is basically asking accountants to be SWAT. An accountant is far more dangerous when sitting behind a desk piled high with stacks of paper than SWAT with a no-knock warrant can ever be to someone who doesn't get the books right.

Ive said this before this is a completely different skillset.

What the tax man does is very different from what a police officer does, if you try to train in both you end up less competant in both. This is basically asking for lots of dead innocent people.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Ive said this before this is a completely different skillset.

What the tax man does is very different from what a police officer does, if you try to train in both you end up less competant in both. This is basically asking for lots of dead innocent people.
Bingo.

It's not quite the same but when I'm designing a complicated room renovation where the walls, ceiling, and floor have to come off I'm going to call an architect because, while I know what got removed and needs to be replaced, I don't know what the correct paint color is and "match existing" is a shitty spec.

Similarly, an architect will occasionally ask me about a highly insulated pipe they'd like to relocate on a similar type of project. If it's high pressure steam the answer is along the lines of "moving that breaks your budget".
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Bingo.

It's not quite the same but when I'm designing a complicated room renovation where the walls, ceiling, and floor have to come off I'm going to call an architect because, while I know what got removed and needs to be replaced, I don't know what the correct paint color is and "match existing" is a shitty spec.

Similarly, an architect will occasionally ask me about a highly insulated pipe they'd like to relocate on a similar type of project. If it's high pressure steam the answer is along the lines of "moving that breaks your budget".

Arrogance and Envy I think are the two forces that are fucking up the world.
 

Airedale260

Well-known member
The IRS is basically asking accountants to be SWAT. An accountant is far more dangerous when sitting behind a desk piled high with stacks of paper than SWAT with a no-knock warrant can ever be to someone who doesn't get the books right.

The FBI couldn't nail Al Capone for his illegal activities. The IRS did because his tax returns did not include the "other income" he got from his illegal activities.

You don't have to say where the money came from. You just have to report it and "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's".

Ive said this before this is a completely different skillset.

What the tax man does is very different from what a police officer does, if you try to train in both you end up less competant in both. This is basically asking for lots of dead innocent people.

Speaking as someone who deals with fraud and financial crime on a daily basis, I call bullshit.

But also that there are a few *massive* misunderstandings and misconceptions over the past few pages of this thread regarding the IRS, and specifically IRS-CI. I'll cover those first, and then get into a bit of a summary as to why an in-depth understanding of financial crime is actually crucial for any criminal investigator, whether local, state, or federal.

1) The photos of "new IRS hires" which are actually not. They're a group of 24 college students who got to do a day-long project with agents from CI's Newark office...in 2017.


2) Following on that, there are two main types of "IRS agents": Revenue Agents and IRS Special Agents.

Revenue Agents are civilian employees who do audits and other tax stuff. They're the ones most people think of, but it's important to note that, despite having "Agent" in their title, they are not law enforcement officials (that is, they don't do criminal investigations). Audits and tax investigations are not treated as automatic criminal cases. Now, if they *do* come across stuff that moves it from "some irregularities but nothing serious" to "actual evidence of criminal misconduct", then such a case gets punted to:

The IRS' Criminal Investigations Division, more popularly known as IRS-CI. These guys (and girls) *are* sworn LEOs, classified as 1811s (Criminal Investigators, same as the FBI, ICE-HSI, DEA, USSS, NCIS, etc). They go through training down at FLETC (both basic and IRS specific).

They've been around for more than a century and are the ones who actually nailed Capone. They handle criminal tax cases, sure, but also deal with non-tax fraud, money laundering & terrorist financing, and so forth. It's why you see certain cases involving "FBI and IRS agents" -though that's mainly CI doing the technical stuff and the FBI is just there to provide extra hands and also take the credit (partially joking here). In any case, CI agents are recognized as the foremost authorities in federal law enforcement on financial crime (ICE-HSI is also big in this, but they also have a much wider brief and competing priorities). CI agents serve on task forces around the country -and there are a handful at embassies and consulates overseas as well- because of just how proficient they are at following the money.

Anyway...this whole fuss about "armed IRS agents" is overblown because some idiot on the Internet saw it and either didn't know that it pertains to a very small subset of the IRS as a whole or else did but figured they could gin up some misplaced outrage. Notably, I knew off the bat the tweet a few pages back was bullshit -CI agents have to be physically able to do the job, same as any other cop, so anyone in a wheelchair is disqualified. And federal agents, as a rule, are generally in their late 20s at least, since the feds tend to prefer people with prior experience as opposed to hiring kids right out of college. (And I also knew it from the horseplay in one of the photos with the "red guns" as they're called -that is an absolute no-no at FLETC and can get you thrown out).

Anyway...as to financial crimes and cops. What, exactly, is the point of engaging in a criminal enterprise? Why, it's to make money. What's one of the most effective ways to nail down how said enterprise works from the outside? Follow said money. And when you can follow the money, you can figure out how to cut it off and shut the bad guys down.

There is a growing emphasis in law enforcement (actually it's been there for quite some time and now is encompassing cyber crimes as well) on financial/accounting experience to be able to track and shut down illicit flows of money. Cut it off? Can't buy drugs or guns. Can't finance WMD programs. Can't finance terrorist attacks. Can't bribe officials. Can't do all sorts of things.

And that's the sort of stuff CI is actually focused on. The 87,000? I expect most of them to be revenue agents rather than CI hires -the latter have announcements every year and get a LOT of applicants that they have to screen through and can be picky. But CI also doesn't get involved in minor stuff -they focus on actual criminal activity, not someone who made a couple of mistakes on a tax form.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
At until the Powers-That-Be decide you're an enemy of the state because you disagree with them.
Or the accountant wants to know why you put down 17hrs on a Friday where you left at noon to take a 2-week vacation.

That was a fun Saturday morning conversation. We bill by the hour instead of the 6 minutes lawyers use. About four hours spread out over five* of that was me and my colleagues coordinating "here's what's up". The remaining twelve were me fielding calls from clients who didn't read their email or listen to the "I'm on vacation, please call so-and-so" voice mail greeting.

* The first hour is for breakfast. That usually occurs on a Monday and we rotate "who's it" because asking our secretary - who get's paid six figures, BTW - to wake up early and bring breakfast for everyone is an excellent way to irritate her and get yourself fired.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
They're hiring thousands of new agents, putting out ads that say you need to be armed and comfortable using lethal force, and doing practice raids on suburban homes. And considering that poor people get audited way more than rich people, and that during the Obama administration they abused their power against conservative groups, I'm going to not give them the benefit of the doubt.
 

Ixian

Well-known member
They're hiring thousands of new agents, putting out ads that say you need to be armed and comfortable using lethal force, and doing practice raids on suburban homes. And considering that poor people get audited way more than rich people, and that during the Obama administration they abused their power against conservative groups, I'm going to not give them the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, the argument would hold more weight if the government didn't already have a history of abuse and violation of civil rights.

I'm at a point where if the government wants something, especially a small army, I don't want them to have it, regardless of their official stated reasons.
 

Sobek

Disgusting Scalie
"Actually the vast majority won't be armed" is cope, plain and simple.

Even if only one of them is given a gun to be a office security guard that is still a IRS that is fucking doubling in size and aiming at fucking sapping americans of their hard earned money to pay for extravagante pie in the sky government crap.
 

King Arts

Well-known member
Ive said this before this is a completely different skillset.

What the tax man does is very different from what a police officer does, if you try to train in both you end up less competant in both. This is basically asking for lots of dead innocent people.
This is actually not true hell the treasury department has widely diverse duties from dealing with money, all the way to protecting the president’s life. Yup secret service works for the treasury.
 

Airedale260

Well-known member
They're hiring thousands of new agents, putting out ads that say you need to be armed and comfortable using lethal force, and doing practice raids on suburban homes. And considering that poor people get audited way more than rich people, and that during the Obama administration they abused their power against conservative groups, I'm going to not give them the benefit of the doubt.

I think you're addressing three different things at once here -not sure about "training to raid suburban homes" but if so that's not exclusive to the IRS; if you're an 1811 (criminal investigator, i.e. Special Agent), you go through tactical training alongside HSI, USSS, NCIS...basically every single law enforcement agency except FBI and DEA trains together. It's like the military: The basic training is done with a mix before they get sent off to agency-specific training, which is mainly classroom stuff on topics like learning the tax code forwards and backwards, money laundering, and other technical stuff.

They've been hiring criminal investigators for over a century now and only *now* is it becoming "controversial" because Biden and his friends are pushing for an expanded IRS (more on this in a second). What happened is almost certainly an ad that was poorly timed but no hiring announcement yet (note that 1811 announcements are hands-down *the* most sought-after announcements and there are a number of message boards and threads dedicated to tracking them from potential/hopeful applicants to current 1811s giving advice). As this is a position where one is a sworn LEO, this is a very competitive and difficult job type to get into. But CI *does not do audits* and never has: All audits go through what are called Revenue Agents, and only if the RAs discover evidence of criminal misconduct (like a business with a track record of consistently understating its income over several years) will the case get transferred. Criminal investigators aren't interested in getting into a drawn-out argument over loopholes or gray areas; they're looking for slam-dunk cases. Like a couple of years ago when they nailed the (now former) mayor of Baltimore for not reporting income from the sale of a series of children's books she was writing and selling (with one of her biggest customers being, totally by coincidence and surely not corruption, the Baltimore school district), or nailing the biggest union boss in Pennsylvania for corruption and tax evasion. I'd also note that all the CI agents *themselves* all get audited as part of the hiring process and then every single year thereafter.

"Actually the vast majority won't be armed" is cope, plain and simple.

Uh, no it's not. Like, it's one thing to complain about the IRS getting a ton of new personnel, especially since the states purpose is to hire more Revenue Agents, i.e. the people who do the audits and everyone loves to hate. And yeah, I am fully aware that this is mainly directed at screwing the middle class, like pretty much everything else Biden and his friends do. And complaining about this is a fair criticism.

Look, given the crap with Lois Lerner and her friends, being skeptical is entirely warranted (especially when the Democrats voted down an amendment to not allow this to be targeted at lower income voters) What's pissing me off is people claiming that this is going to lead to armed people shooting innocent taxpayers if they screw up, because some idiot somewhere took something out of context YET AGAIN and caused a stir over nothing. They're two separate divisions, and the armed ones aren't the ones you actually need to worry about unless you are, in fact, engaged in years of deliberate tax evasion that's cheated taxpayers out of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

And it's even more important to note there's a serious division in terms of points of view between field offices and HQs in Washington -for example, there's a reason that all the fiascos are being directed out of HQs rather than the local field offices, who generally hate this shit because it makes it harder to do their regular jobs.

Even if only one of them is given a gun to be a office security guard that is still a IRS that is fucking doubling in size and aiming at fucking sapping americans of their hard earned money to pay for extravagante pie in the sky government crap.

Again, you're confusing two different divisions with the IRS. The LEOs aren't the ones engaged in that.

Also, the IRS doesn't handle hiring security guards: Those are all under the Federal Protective Service (which is part of DHS).

This is actually not true hell the treasury department has widely diverse duties from dealing with money, all the way to protecting the president’s life. Yup secret service works for the treasury.

While I agree with the spirit of your post, USSS was shifted to Homeland Security in 2003, along with the Coast Guard and the Customs Service (though there was discussion of Trump and Munching moving USSS back to Treasury, which given the USSS' main job makes a fuck of a lot more sense).
 

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