The Prop 8 ruling & Civil Rights.

Today's Supreme Court Ruling is a mixed bag .

The Supreme Court gave a mixed bag this week How we got to this point is that people had to put the Government to define a subject that had been for the most part was never the Government's business.Liberals have a long history of invading bedrooms across the United States and liberals usually applaud their intrusive practices. Striking down Prop 8 was inevitable because it violated rights of certain individuals . DOMA was Bill Clinton's puppy   By a margin of 5-4, the Supreme Court has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. Seventeen years after President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, the gay civil rights movement will reach a pivotal milestone this week when the Supreme Court hears arguments in two momentous cases on same sex marriage. Prop. 8 was found unconstitutional by Northern California District Judge Vaughn Walker after a lengthy trial, and also by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The star legal team of David Boies and Ted Olson, who battled each other in Bush vs. Gore, are asking the Supreme Court to rule bans on same-sex marriages unconstitutional in all 50 states. "DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty,"the decision reads. If you can imagine a bunch of Supreme Court Justices sitting around, banging their gavels and going ‘No, no, no!’ then you have a visual of what it has been like for the last 24 hours in DC.  Many are still puzzled about the Court’s overturn of a clause in the Civil Rights voting act, the act which gave people of color a right to vote without prejudice or institutional blockades targeted at harming and impeding their right to vote.  . The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — the map that determines which states must get federal permission before they change their voting laws. Civil rights activists called the decision devastating, and a dissenting justice said it amounted to the “demolition” of the law, widely considered the most important piece of civil rights legislation in American history.The act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson. Congress has renewed it four times, and the 2006 renewal won a huge majority in the House and passed the Senate 98-0. That renewal extended the law through 2031.The problem with the law is that it singled out southern states and prevented gerrymandering, only when it came to black districts. Since black folks, almost always vote democrat, it had the practice effect of increasing the number of democrats elected. Now southern states will be free to gerrymander and redraw district lines to weaken the democrat hold on certain districts, i.e. not because they are populated by blacks, but because they are overwhelmingly democrat. This is no different than what northern states controlled by democrats do in order to weaken the chances of republicans to get elected in districts. The NAACP statement . “This case comes on the heels of an election year in which our nation witnessed the greatest assault on voting rights since the Jim Crow era,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP. “Section 5 is the heart of the VRA. Shelby County v. Holder threatens to erode the essential protections that Section 5 provides for all Americans. “



NOTES AND COMMENTS:

ON Civil Rights: The Nation’s Ari Berman, who covered the hearing and has reported extensively on the battle for voting rights. Berman says overturning Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act "would open the floodgates to more voter suppression laws, more legal challenges, and it would make it difficult to enforce the voting rights laws that are on the books. ... It would be one of the most radical and consequential decisions made by the court in a very long time."-------------Civil rights activist Rev. William Owens, who is founder and president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, said Tuesday there is no comparison between the civil rights movement and the gay community’s fight for same-sex marriage. -Owens said there is no comparing the gay community’s fight for marriage equality and the black community’s civil rights movement.

“They are not suffering what we suffered, and I sympathize with people who face discrimination. Every person should be treated with dignity and respect, but what they’re going through does not compare to what we went through,” Owens said.

ON Prop 8 ruling & DOMA : Justice Antonin Scalia lashed out at the Supreme Court for intervening in the gay marriage debate. When it came to protections for minority voters, Scalia had no patience for democracy, specifically noting that the court should overturn the law because it is too popular to overturn in Congress. But as far as protections for gay and lesbian couples are concerned, Scalia would prefer the court stay away.

Scalia's dissent is less a legal argument and more a plea for recognition that there are "good people on all sides." In it, he repeatedly played the role of victim, complaining that it is unfair that his opposition to gay marriage is no longer considered legitimate. "It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race," Scalia wrote, accusing the majority of "declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency ... In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us."

American Healthcare "crisis" coming.

Will the AHA create long lines at the soon to be
opened " Exchanges" ?

Our American Healthcare system is heading into a "crisis" .The U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world. Americans spend about $8,200 per person on health care annually. Canadians, by contrast, spend about $4,400; and the French, about $4,000. An average hospital stay in the U.S. is about $18,000; in Canada, the Netherlands and Japan, the next priciest countries, comparable costs are $4,000 to $6,000 less. Sure enough when the "Affordable Healthcare Act"  kicks in . We are all going to see perhaps "millions of people" kicked out of their "public health plans that are provided by their employers " . Seems sarcastic , and my be over bearing statement ? Health Care costs have been doubling for Public employees for the last decade . Its becoming harder and harder for collective bargaining or any type of negotiations  to go with a flat rate for their members since pricing of medical benefits is completely out of the hands of most (school districts for example ) other public workers . We as a nation has know for a long time what the driving machine is that is pushing for costs . Most "employers" see the writing on the wall when deductibles have tripled . The AHA ( Obama-care for short) will by 2018 taxing employers and employee benefits . One part of Obamacare that has become newly controversial applies to its taxation of employer-provided health insurance policies that offer extremely valuable benefits. Dubbed the Cadillac tax, this rule doesn't take effect until 2018, but when it does, the impact could be draconian. Let's take a closer look at exactly what the Cadillac tax does and how it could affect you.The way Obamacare will impose the Cadillac tax is deceptively simple. Under the law, if an individual health-insurance policy costs more than $10,200, the employer has to pay a 40% excise tax for any amount above that $10,200 threshold. For family policies, the corresponding threshold is $27,500.Given those high dollar amounts, you might imagine that not many policies would be subject to the Cadillac tax. But initial projections estimated the potential revenue from the Cadillac tax at $137 billion over the next decade, and even though the Congressional Budget Office recently reduced that estimate to $80 billion, that tax corresponds to $200 billion in additional insurance-value above the Cadillac tax thresholds. Moreover, even though the threshold figures are indexed for inflation, rising health care costs that have historically climbed more quickly than the Consumer Price Index could leave an increasing number of employers having to pay the tax.  ** New taxes  hikes already on the books, taking effect in 2013, fall mainly on people who make lots of money and on the health care industry. But about half of Americans benefit from the tax-free status of employer health insurance.Workers pay no income or payroll taxes on what their employer contributes for health insurance, and in most cases on their own share of premiums as well.It's the single biggest tax break the government allows, outstripping the mortgage interest deduction, the deduction for charitable giving and other better-known benefits. If the value of job-based health insurance were taxed like regular income, it would raise nearly $150 billion in 2013, according to congressional estimates. By comparison, wiping away the mortgage interest deduction would bring in only about $90 billion.So we have a very real possibility of prescription costs rising significantly should the ACA be reversed by the Supreme Court; the rising costs of health care as Americans live longer and longer; and the indirect costs associated with giving away care to the uninsured paid for by the insured. Each of these factors will contribute to the coming crisis. Between now and 2018, you'll want to keep a close eye on your insurance coverage. With a growing number of employers making major modifications to their health-insurance plans, you might find yourself bearing an increasing burden of the cost of your health care in the years to come. By the end of the decade you will see long lines of people standing and waiting outside of the new exchanges . Most of them poor "immigrants" , and some if not many of them public employees................. 

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

***Obamacare has plenty of far-reaching effects beyond the Cadillac tax. The Motley Fool's new free report "Everything You Need to Know About Obamacare" lets you know how your health insurance, your taxes, and your portfolio will be affected.Click here to read more.The article How Obamacare's Cadillac Tax Will Affect You originally appeared on Fool.com.

Hollywood's Dark Materials ....

Holly Wood can't put out movies as they did without remaking a film , can have a goof film known  as a "reboot".Rebooted movies have appeared in theaters with a very regular frequency over the past few years: Casino Royale, The Incredible Hulk, Star Trek, a reboot every year or so. This summer that frequency has skyrocketed to ridiculous levels. Three of the summer’s biggest movies are all reboots: The Amazing Spiderman, Total Recall, 

and The Dark Knight Rises. I was a bit disappointed  with the new Superman movie called Man of Steal . Seeing the film was like  Déjà vu, yes I have already seen this before ............in a movie called the Dark knight . General Zod was a splitting mirror image of Bane the bad guy of the Dark Knight film . The Darkness won't end there . I have noted many remakes coming out of Hollywood with the title DARK . Star Trek : Into Darkness is another "reboot" with a more darker , and violent edge into the film . What get's me is that the action films that incorporate violence these days use a lot of CGI , and most of all they  turn the actors into computer enhanced characters based more and more on video-games than live action . The basic philosophy here is that the "re-imaging" of old films that were good 20 years ago now into the classic edge as the Christopher Reeves "Superman". This  was a gentler and milder hero . Case in point with Tim Burton's Batman drew heavily from the 1960's , and 1940's was not a reboot, but a more successful rendition of Batman , and yes the Joker played by Jack Nicholson was a film stealer. You can't compare any of the "reboot" films.  The most disappointing thing about reboots, in my opinion, is that they seem to have inspire people to really, mean spiritedly bash the originals.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

Movie remakes are nothing new (Siskel and Ebert were complaining about them way back in 1976), but since the world economy has become a battlefield of increasing uncertainty, Hollywood has tried to wrestle some sense of security and certainty from the jaws of chaos, by focusing on movies that feature familiar titles and brands. The theory is that fan nostalgia is its own brand of effective marketing – though that theory is getting more and more questionable with each new movie season,  most remakes pretty much suck. when these once cult classics implement CGI, they ALWAYS end up UN believable. 

Should Assad stay , and why?

Is he really that Bad ?

As of today the spotlight is on Syria .The news pouring in indicates   American intelligence analysts now believe that President Bashar al-Assad’s troops have used chemical weapons against rebel forces in the civil war in Syria, an assessment that will put added pressure on a deeply divided Obama administration to develop a response to a provocation that the president himself has declared a “red line.” I  want to just STOP here for a moment . Tuning in on news channels CNN and FOX give or take two remarks from senators who were interviewed it seems that the Obama Administration is upping "support" for military aide for the "rebels" .The Obama administration is attempting an overly ambitiously and subtle policy of simultaneously helping the good rebels with clandestine lethal arms and $114 million in aid even as it prepares for possible drone strikes on the bad rebels. Nice idea, but manipulating the rebel forces via remote control has little chance of success. Inevitably, aid will end up with the Islamist s and air strikes will kill allies. Better to accept one's limitations and aspire to the feasible: propping up the side in retreat. America is being drawn into a dangerous conflict . America is sending 200 more troops to Jordan to bolster its defenses  a Jordanian minister announced. US and other special forces are already believed to be based in the country. Russia is now supplying weapons to Syria  for Assad's forces to fight the rebels .  First of all just who are the Rebels? Al-Qaeda insurgents have now crossed into Syria in an effort to bring down the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. The armed presence of the terror group raises new concerns over what factions within the Syrian anti-government coalition will emerge triumphant if and when Assad falls. I for one don't want Al-Qaeda . Why is that for no reason that beat's a logical spin is that the United States wants soo badly to get rid of Assad? It just makes no sense . But isn't Al Queda bad? Didn't they commit 911? Why is America helping them, what the hell is going on here?Welcome to reality! The Us government has been supporting Al qaeda since day one! All these "rebel risings" all over the middle east all have Ties to al qaeda, and we help train them and arm them! even before 9/11 we supported islamist terrorist groups we gave them money and resources to help prevent the spread of communism during the cold war, then they turned around and used those weapons on us.While Western countries have called for Assad to step down, Russia, China and Iran – which all back the Syrian regime – continue to advocate for negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition forces.I feel that our American foreign policy is really bad towards Syria . America is jumping to conclusions regarding helping the rebels. Assad might be right when he said : "The West has paid heavily for funding al-Qaeda in its early stages," he said during a rare appearance on state television. "Today, it is doing the same in Syria, Libya and other places, and will pay a heavy price in the heart of Europe and the United States." Mr Assad added: "There is no option but victory. Otherwise it will be the end of Syria, and I don't think that the Syrian people will accept such an option.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

But do American officials really believe that the Syrian opposition is sufficiently well organized to assume full responsibility for governing? Or that the Free Syrian Army can establish security across the country? And how would the United States stop sectarian reprisals with no troops and limited leverage — or prevent those reprisals from producing a new spiral of killing? America will also have to contend with the influence of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in a post-Assad Syria. Both countries have a much better understanding of Syria and its politics, as well as ties to rebel commanders there, including some that Washington considers terrorists.

NSA's leaks . A reality .

 Edward Snowden, may have given more than
 just "secrets" by compromising American
Security.

Well It's finally been reveled who was leaking all the top secret stuff were not supposed to know about.WASHINGTON — Calling America's spying capabilities "horrifying," a 29-year-old former CIA employee revealed himself Sunday as the primary source of unauthorized disclosures of highly classified U.S. telephone and Internet surveillance systems that were among the intelligence community's most closely held secrets. Edward J. Snowden gave them his consent to reveal his identity as an analyst for the National Security Agency, which is America's largest spy organization and conducts cyber-spying. Both papers have published a startling series of top-secret documents in recent days.The exposure of the secret programmes has triggered widespread debate within the United States and abroad about the vast reach of the NSA, which has expanded its surveillance programmes dramatically in the last decade. US officials say the agency operates within the law. "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which was done in their name and that which is done against them," the Guardian quoted Snowden as saying. WELL it might seem a bit ODD that SOME at FOX NEWS are defending this guy . Yes , it's all dandy that Snowden "revealed"  something that every educated American should have known since September 11th 2001. The Government of the United States has been conducting a vast program of intelligence gathering . Yes, yeas... we have been spied on by Uncle Sam for years . I believe that we have  been  under the radar since the 1990's when President Clinton was in office . The point here is putting Edward J Snowden on the "hero's" list is so miss begotten.  I can't believe Glenn Beck   , Rush Limbaugh ,  or Micheal Moore   . The fact that Snowden lived in Hong Hong which practically he lived within China .A lot of people in the US media are asking why America's most famous whistleblower, 29-year old Edward Snowden, hied himself off to the city state of Hong Kong, a wholly owned subsidiary of the People's Republic of China, to seek at least temporary refuge. There is so much on my speculation if he had any connections to the recent "hacking" into  U.S. Defense  systems recently? of course Snowden is beginning to look like a defector now . He's going to Russia . Russia offed him political asylum , yes they need him too .What is stunning is the timing. Now that the USA is about to denounce China for reckless stealing of military information, here it comes this "freedom fighter" to say it's all the same. Very suspicious.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

The two U.S. programs we learned about from Snowden’s revelations are (1)Boundless Information, which allows the NSA to examine huge amounts of communication metadata around the world to look for trends, and (2) a secret list of potential targets abroad to hack as a way to preempt some threat against the U.S.

Jerry , hold on that 3 billion dollars!

A state with money is a little like a mule 

with a spinning wheel. No ones knows how they

 got it and dang if they know how to use it. -Lyle Lanley

A long time ago . The State of California had a surplus of 20 billion dollars to be exact ( some say it was  $12.3 billion )  .The New York Times reports the state is expecting a surplus between an estimated $1.2 billion and $4.4 billion dollars. This surplus comes just three years after the state was in a $60 billion deficit.  During the Gray Davis era of governorship . The sate had huge surpluses of money.  Back then we had much lower taxes than we do now , but the spending was just beginning to get out of control . Well the Governor Davis plan like Jerry Brown's plan was to to boost spending on education . As usual the California Department of Education has no money . Gov. Davis said back then ,  he would resist the "siren song" of special interests seeking to enlarge the budget with permanent spending. "I will stand up to anyone who tries to convince the Legislature that they should spend most or all of this money in ongoing expenses." Jerry Brown This year, with the state receiving billions of dollars in new revenue from temporary new sales and ** income taxes and an improving economy, Brown declared that all of the extra money would have to go to schools, the single most popular form of government spending. By law, most of the surplus revenue goes to public schools and community colleges because of the Prop 98 funding guarantee. The LAO estimates “only several hundred million dollars” will be left for other general fund programs. I urge restraint on the Governor to spend any surplus until the state get's it's surplus back to the level it was under Gov. Gray Davis  . I am sure everyone  wants a piece of the pie. The Education system want's pretty much all of it . California's own budget,  half of it occupies education spending , and next to it  ##10 billion a year on 'illegal immigration' . If all else there is that 90 billion dollar high speed light rail train that still has not gotten on track . Yes, California the state with all the broken roads that need repair............... " a penny saved is a penny earned"- Ben Franklin.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

** Bloomberg reports its possible more than expected high-income residents sold their investments last year to avoid an increased tax rate. California has the highest federal tax for those making a million dollars or more at 13.3%.

## hosting America's largest population of illegal immigrants, California bears a huge cost to provide basic human services for this fast growing, low-income segment of its population. A new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) examines the costs of education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens, and concludes that the costs to Californians is $10.5 billion per year.

Among the key finding of the report are that the state's already struggling K-12 education system spends approximately $7.7 billion a year to school the children of illegal aliens who now constitute 15 percent of the student body. Another $1.4 billion of the taxpayers' money goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens and their families, the same amount that is spent incarcerating illegal aliens criminals.

Big Brother. BIG Obama.

Spying on US Citizens is nothing
new . Obama made it better.

Big Brother is obviously watching us . The new 'revelations' of Government surveillance is nothing new . It's just now it's gotten a wee bit bigger because of our new technological advances  The Nation  is reeling from the explosive discovery that the Obama administration has been spying on all Verizon phone customers by surveying their phone usage on a daily basis for the last several years, it was revealed that Barack Obama has, for years, and with the knowledge of the U.S. Senate, been seizing billions of records about the private telephone calls made by tens of millions of Americans.The Government was not just spying on Verizon alone , but every phone and internet data line carrier as well . ( My emphasis ) What is getting everyone screaming is that American Citizens were being spied upon all in the name of 'Home Land Security ' . The Average citizen was now a major security risk to the government . It eats me up to think with all that surveillance we have had , our nation was still vulnerable to a terrorist attack like the Boston Bombings ? Did all this surveillance keep us any safer?There is no evidence of any critical threat to justify the Bush-Obama Big Brother spying operation. Of course, the government can always claim that such a critical threat exists, but is being kept top secret, but that’s not the way things are supposed to work in a democracy. Americans cannot be responsible citizens when the truth is kept from them – whether that truth is about electronic surveillance or about terrorists. Well the President spoke about this recently when he visited my home state of California , for the most part Mr. Obama's answer was obvious that there was nothing to worry about it's all standard government procedure . I swear , I deeply felt that the President was lying to us . It was first exposed by The Guardian which has published the secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all phone call data on an "ongoing, daily basis."As the Guardian writes: Under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk -- regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. Starting today, American journalists have the opportunity to correct for their self-centered focus on the government’s spying against journalists, and focus on Barack Obama’s larger surveillance network. The Guardian, a British newspaper, has obtained records that prove that assertions by Barack Obama that he is not using the FISA Amendments Act to indiscriminately search through Americans’ private communications have been lies. Note: It’s been said by some that this massive seizure of Americans’ private papers – records of their daily private conversations – took place under authorization of the Patriot Act, rather than the FISA Amendments Act.That’s not at all clear, actually, given that the court order was issued by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was established by the original FISA – Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FISA Amendments Act was necessary to amend FISA to create retroactive immunity and ongoing electronic surveillance over Americans.There’s another essential point to make about this court order – though the people in Congress who crafted the FISA Amendments Act and renewed it all promised that the only phone calls that would be spied upon would be those between people in the United States and those in foreign countries.That’s why they call it the FOREIGN Intelligence Surveillance Court!Yet, this court order that the Obama Administration obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court gave the National Security Agency authorization to grab private records of phone calls “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls”. this is a REALLY big deal. The spying system that was supposedly set up to target foreign spies in foreign countries is now being used by Barack Obama to target Americans in the United States who are not even suspected of being spies.We’ve got LOCAL calls being grabbed – like people within one village calling people in the same village, So, please, now is not the time for you to log points of order with Irregular Times, as if WE are the problem. It would be much more useful, and dare I say less tiresome, for you to call up your U.S. Representative, or your local Democratic Party headquarters, and register a few points of order there.

San Jose California the New Oakland .

San Jose Ca . Is no longer a "safe City" anymore.

Gun violence has been escalating right in the once peaceful suburbs of San Jose California . You NORMALLY would hear about 2 or 3 shootings a day from Oakland Ca . NEVER you would think that the violence would soon be creeping at your door step. San Jose has dubbed itself the "Capital of Silicon Valley" and has for years prided itself on being one of the safest big cities in America.Yet, it is on pace for more than 50 killings in 2011, a rate not seen in about 20 years. Police identified two men slain in separate incidents last week as San Jose residents Filipe Banderas, 19, and Danny Brito, 35. Banderas was shot to death about 5:21 a.m. Thursday near the intersection of Santee and Audubon drives near an elementary school in East San Jose. His slaying came at the end of a violent night that saw four incidents of gunplay in various locations around the city. It was the fourth homicide of the week and the 20th of the year. Brito was fatally stabbed in the 2900 block of Magliocco Drive near Winchester Drive on Friday night. He was pronounced dead at a hospital about 10:35 p.m. Police have no suspects in either of the homicides. There has been a surge in gum shootings all over the Bay Area as a note . San Jose now has become slowly a mirror image of Oakland.Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose,  Last year or so, sent a letter to acting San Jose police Chief Larry Esquivel earlier saying CHP officers would help deter violence in the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Campos sent the letter following five recent murders in San Jose, the latest of which came on Friday night when a 35-year-old man was fatally stabbed in a carport in west San Jose. The homicide was the city’s 21st of 2013.. AS FAR AS CRIME  it's self the largest spikes occurred in Antioch, Santa Clara and Oakland, and only four of the region's 15 big cities -- Concord, Fremont, Santa Rosa and Vallejo -- were immune from overall escalating numbers in murder, rapes, robbery and aggravated assaults, FBI data shows. Crime experts warn, however, that a year worth of statistics does not necessarily reflect a trend. And the local crime stats mirror a jump in violent crime nationally, a first since 2006. Nationally, violent crime increased by 1.2 percent -- with the western region experiencing the steepest increase -- after declines of 4 percent in 2011, 6 percent in 2010 and 4.4 percent in 2009. The preliminary data released Monday compares crime from 2012 to 2011 in U.S. cities with populations of 100,000 or more. A full report released in the fall will include smaller cities.In an effort to calm the recent violence, the police force will have 35 to 40 extra officers on the streets through Sunday, including teams that focus on drugs and gangs. The officers will focus on areas plagued by gang violence, and will check on people who are on parole and probation. Punctuating a yearlong increase in overall crime, normally quiet San Jose,witnessed eight homicides in 11 days last month.Amid a mix of gang shootings and domestic violence slayings, and the killing of a homeless woman. It seems no end .

The Fall of the IRS.

Could the IRS go away ? Time for Tax reform.

With the IRS scandal looming . This might be the kicker that starts reasonable tax reform , and the official dismantling of the IRS itself . The fall of the IRS. The Internal Revenue Service has had a terrible month. That month, which has been low-lighted by its apology for targeting tea party groups for increased scrutiny of their tax-exempt status, has sent the agency’s approval ratings into free fall. A Fox News poll released last week found 57 percent of registered voters profess “not much” or no confidence at all in the IRS. We still don't know how much the Obama Administration knew about the IRS targeting , my last post said it was "grainy" . Many eye's are looking for a "smoking gun" to link the White House to the scandal .Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday said the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative organizations could be “fatal” for the Obama administration if it turns out that anyone in the White House was aware of it. Announcing the resignation to reporters Wednesday, President Barack Obama said the agency's misconduct was "inexcusable." Poor Steven Miller was asked to resign his post as acting director of the Internal Revenue Service. But he’s just a fall guy. One thing about Miller, though: he was only acting director. The White House hadn’t bothered to actually nominate a full director. In fact, five years into Obama’s presidency, they’ve never nominated their own director for the IRS. They let Bush’s guy hang around for awhile and then made Miller the acting director. But nominating the director is one of the only ways the White House has to actually affect the IRS. It’s time they took advantage of it. The main problem with the IRS is that the whole system is corrupt beyond repair.Fifty-four House Republicans on Thursday reintroduced legislation that would terminate the IRS and replace the system of income taxes on people and corporations with a consumption tax  ##The FairTax Act, from Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.), would abolish the 16th Amendment, which was ratified 100 years ago this February. That amendment gives Congress the power to impose income taxes without having to spend the revenues evenly among the states. Woodall’s bill, H.R. 25, would replace the current tax system with a 23 percent consumption tax on all new goods and services. He said Thursday that this change would eliminate the need for a complicated tax code, and would be the kind of tax reform that helps reinvigorate the economy. But there's another issue here, one that's getting significantly less attention though it's also important: Why are tax-exempt groups spending tens of millions of dollars on political advertising? And why has the IRS turned a blind eye to this practice for years?Our tax code is nothing more than a bazaar where tax exemptions are traded for campaign contributions.The huge juggernaut of our government is riddled with corruption and will stay that way until it is chopped down to a manageable size. The IRS, many of whom claim is not a legal entity (not to mention the whole idea of taking your pay before you ever see it)  should be disbanded right after the tax code is simplified down to a real basic flat sales, tariff or anything but a huge income tax system riddled with so many deductions, exclusions and complicated laws.The truth is the IRS routinely violates the Law, the Regulations and the United States Constitution. The IRS is an operation that is more representative of the Gestapo than the American Constitution, routinely trampling the rights of innocent citizens. The IRS is the most un-American agency in the country today.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

## There is only one plan — currently with 70 co-sponsors in the House — that eliminates all forms of taxation on income and eliminates the IRS. That plan is the FairTax (H.R. 25/ S.13). Look into it. Under the FairTax, you will see a 29% or greater increase in your take home pay. Prices of goods and services will come down when taxes are no longer built into production costs. You will pay federal taxes only at the cash register, and only on NEW goods and all services. Used goods and education are not taxed. A “prebate” feature protects the poor, and the FairTax extends the lives of SS and Medicare.