If you are an American taxpayer, you’ve just been robbed. Again. And the theft was carried out by people you trusted, and that makes it hurt worse.
No gun was involved, so no new gun law will stop these crimes. You probably didn’t realize you had been robbed because it was done behind your back, in the dark, and in places so secret that you aren’t allowed in. That place is Washington, and the thieves are officials who were either elected by you or employed to serve you.
Lois Lerner and her co-conspirators ran a division of a criminal enterprise known as the IRS. They used their public positions to bully, harass, intimidate, criminalize and bankrupt innocent citizens who held political views that the government decided should be censored. Think about that for a moment. This is NOT about a private company like Google, Twitter or Facebook picking out views they hate (like pro-life or traditional marriage views, which will often cause the Big Brother Religious Police to shut down users). That is shameful, bigoted and a form of hate, but it’s not illegal nor is it censorship, because people voluntarily do business with private companies — even monopolistic, overgrown, narrow-minded ones.
{mosads}When a powerful arm of the federal government uses its almost unlimited power and budget to target an enemy and shut down that citizen’s First Amendment right of free speech or freedom of religion or association, it IS censorship, but it’s much more. It’s jack-booted bureaucrats run amok and it’s an abuse of power far more frightening than anything Richard Nixon ever did or was accused of. Even Nixon was ultimately held accountable, resigned in disgrace and, notwithstanding a pardon by his successor, may have been prosecuted for obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
Lois Lerner and Associates joked about the stonewalling of IRS applications from groups they hated, then clammed up and claimed the Fifth Amendment before Congress, which had every right to demand an explanation of why government goons figuratively “broke the legs” of groups who were conservative, Christian, pro-life, pro-marriage or pro-Israel. The recent settlement of $3.5 million in a class-action suit filed by Tea Party groups due to the IRS’s bullying activities wasn’t paid out of Lois Lerner’s ample retirement fund that the taxpayers provide. You paid it. I paid it. And I’m seething over it!
Members of both the House and Senate have copped to having harassed, abused, and assaulted junior federal employees. A slush fund of over $15 million was secretly created by Congress to paint over actions that ranged from disgusting to criminal. You and I paid for this fund with our not-so voluntary taxes, but none of the pervs, creeps or predators have been named, nor have the details of their lurid actions been revealed. Some of them are most likely still in Congress, strutting in the halls of marble we provide for them and being treated like princes among the paupers. Yet, who pays the piper for their misdeeds? They don’t pay a dime. They grope their victims and ask you to pay for it. It’s the equivalent of getting a speeding ticket and asking a pedestrian to pay for it.
I’ve long advocated that we enact what’s known as “The Fair Tax,” developed by some of our nation’s leading economists, which would replace the current penalty on our productivity (income, investments, inheritance, etc.) and would collect tax on our consumption. The Fair Tax is NOT a VAT (value added tax) and a lot of misinformation and outright falsehoods been attributed to it because it would be a transformational approach to revenue collection that would actually empower the poorest third of our population the most, and bring real “fair share” to the tax code.
It should be embraced by Democrats for its “fairness,” and by Republicans for its pro-growth dynamics, but the reason it’s a hard sell is because it would eliminate the IRS and all 77,000 pages of the tax code. Most of all, it would eliminate the Lois Lerners of the world, who used her government perch and paycheck to destroy the “little people” she despised. It was also eliminate the writing of the tax code to create winners and losers by favoring some and punishing others with tax laws, and the unelected parasites who administer it according to their own political persuasions.
Lois Lerner and her deputy, Holly Paz, have asked that their sworn depositions be sealed in perpetuity because they are afraid what the taxpayers would do to them if their testimony were made public. I’m pretty sure that every criminal in America would love to have the details of their crimes sealed from public view for eternity, but only God can forgive sin and wipe it clean — and that only happens when we confess, repent and accept the consequences. I knew that Lerner, Paz, et. al. were arrogant, but demanding that the public actions they took to humiliate and destroy others, which were paid for by public funds, be kept private is just too much.
If there are legitimate threats to their safety, tell the police. That’s what the rest of us do who live in public careers and have people threaten us. But if that’s not good enough for Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz, I would like to suggest that, since they are accustomed to living off the taxpayers, we should provide a safe place for them in a taxpayer-funded facility. It’s called a federal penitentiary.
Mike Huckabee served as governor of Arkansas from 1996-2007. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1993, becoming the fourth Republican elected since Reconstruction. He hosted a top-rated weekend show on Fox News from 2008-15, and now hosts a weekend show from Nashville on TBN. He and his wife Janet have been married since 1974, with three children and six grandchildren.