the IRS and bank account snooping

phony class war as pretext for increasing the intrusiveness of the surveillance state

much has been made of the IRS wanting to see all the transactions in most people’s bank accounts.

this unprecedented intrusion into personal privacy is being sold as some sort of means to catch billionaire tax cheats as though it is they and not the people who clean your home and labor to renovate it that are the ones that will be caught by looking at small transactions in small accounts.

this will catch the landscaper, not the lord of the manor.

the 1% get income from w-2’s, 1099’s, and k-1’s, not lots of hidden cash deposits into bank accounts. that is the province of small business and sole proprietors.

whether this is even aimed at these small business people is questionable. the notion that this is simply a surveillance apparatus to see what all americans are doing with their money all the time seems at least as plausible and certainly in keeping with the current political climate.

you may recall that weaponizing the IRS against political foes was similarly popular back when brandon was vice president as well.

if that was an iguana, this is a real live fire-breathing dragon.

the sales pitch on this whole program looks hilariously implausible even by the standards of this gang and let’s face it: that’s a bar so low you could trip over it in the dark.

it seems profoundly unlikely that leadership are so witless as to believe this. rather, the bet seems to be that we are.

watch as baghdad barbie tells us that the opposition to everyone being spied on is just protecting the 1% from paying taxes.

"It should not be lost on anyone that the loudest opposition to these proposals and the biggest ad spending against them is from the biggest banks, who simply do not want to be bothered by additional reporting on inflows and outflows," Psaki told reporters Monday.

"I would note that the top 1% is responsible for $163 billion a year in owed but unpaid taxes," she added. "Let's be clear what this is about. It's about big banks deciding to protect the wealthiest Americans."

because, of course, why else would you demand any privacy at all in your financial matters from an ever more intrusive and ideologically aggressive state, ammiright?

meanwhile:

draw your own conclusions about the disingenuousness of government’s stance regarding privacy on that one…