Another American Who Is Complaining About The IRS

While Mac Johnson is unaware of just how terribly the NSA has invaded his privacy, he is only too familiar with how the IRS intimidates American citizens with the fear of complete ruination if they fail to capitulate to its strong arm demands.

The following article describes some very unpleasant experiences that Mac has had with the IRS. However he does not seem to be familiar with the fact that the IRS is in reality operating illegally, and not even part of the US Federal Government. He mentions the IRS as an agency, yet it is a privately held offshore corporation which operates as the collection arm of the privately held Federal Reserve Central Bank -- both of which are operating in a criminal capacity within the United States.

The NSA Can’t Invade Our Privacy -- It’s Under IRS Occupation Already
by Mac Johnson


Like most folks, I live in constant fear that my phone calls to Pakistan’s Tribal Territories are being intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA). And don’t even get me started about my emails to Yemen!

Well, not really. But I doubtless would worry about such things if I listened to privacy “advocates,” the ACLU, the New York Times and assorted other whiners and malcontents who want me to believe that overseas eavesdropping operations violate my obvious expectation of privacy when blabbing away to Waziristan on my satellite phone.

Allegedly, such eavesdropping is a crisis of lost civil rights soon to be investigated by a Congress near you. It’s a little hard for me to take those complaining about all this seriously, though, since A) they will be the first ones screeching about an “intelligence failure” after the next terrorist attack, and B) every one of them seems perfectly unbothered by the income tax.

Let’s compare the privacy consequences of these two government programs for your average citizen and judge where the true Big Brother threat exists. The NSA eavesdropping program threatens me with the prospect of having my communications with central Asia or Londonistan scanned for innocent phrases like “martyrdom operation,” or “Ammonium Nitrate.” If I call my buddy Omar to talk about farming and current events, this could result in my harmless private communication being tagged for later analysis. This is the NSA’s big threat to the privacy of the innocents.

On the other hand, the income tax and the Internal Revenue Service (the domestic intelligence agency charged with enforcing this tax through a never-ending campaign of record keeping and data-mining) threaten me with the prospect of financial ruin and imprisonment if I do not surrender, in writing, on time and in proper format, proof of every significant financial transaction I’ve ever made.

Through the IRS, the government wants to know where I work, how much I am paid, how much money I owe on my house, and whether I received or gave cash gifts to family or friends. They must be told who lives with me, what my relationship to them is, and whether we had any major medical bills (and for what, as well as to whom the bill was paid and when). I must tell the IRS if I sold stock, when I sold it, when I bought it and how much money I made or lost in the process. I must account for all my property, to show that I did not keep that part of my income paid to other governments as property taxes and fees.

Since I am a writer deducting expenses, the IRS wants to know how many inkjet cartridges I bought, how large my writing space is, who provides my web services, how many books I read, and what those books are about. (Strangely there is no outcry about this from the civil libertarians so apoplectic about unmonitored access to porn and Al Jazeera at the public library.)

For other people with other businesses, the IRS must be told everything from how much your shirts cost to whom you ate lunch with and when -- and what was discussed. They must be told where you travel and how often, and why you go there. They will want to know about your phone use -- both landline and cell phone, and not just calls to Somalia.

The IRS demands to know who takes care of our children while their Mommies are at work and how much they are paid. They want to know what organized causes and charities we support and where we go to church. They collect information on our bank accounts directly from our bankers and information on our paychecks directly from our employers. They tabulate and data-mine this and other information and, should we come under suspicion of failing to supply correct information, we will be forced to prove what we spend our money on down to the smallest personal item -- so that our spending may be judged to be in line with our reported and recorded incomes.

That we may be more easily traceable, we are assigned an ID number and our earnings and tax history attached to the number for life. And of course this ID (our Social Security or Taxpayer Identification Number) then provides the basic infrastructure for all other manner of government and industry to track and data-mine our every move. (Assuming you are an honest citizen, that is. For the criminal class, there is no reliable national ID system, since they are not seen as milkcows for the tax system.)

Nearly everything significant we do in our lives is tracked by the IRS, yet we are supposed to be worried about our overseas phone calls and emails being monitored by the NSA?

Worrying about the NSA overseas while the IRS exists here at home is like complaining mostly that your rapist left the toilet seat up when he fled. It shows a certain inability to grasp the scale of the various offenses committed against you.

If you care about privacy, you should detest the income tax -- the most onerous intrusion of government into our personal lives in the history of our nation. And if you support the income tax, don’t bother whining to me about your text messages to Istanbul.

It’s not the War on Terror that has grown government into a super state constantly spying on It’s own people; it’s the War between the Classes. And as usually happens, the powers gleefully given to government to persecute the few have crept in scope until now the entire population lives under the suspicious eye of the IRS, obediently showing their papers on command.

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Mr. Johnson, a writer and medical researcher in Cambridge, Mass., is a regular contributor to HUMAN EVENTS. His column generally appears on Tuesdays. Archives and additional material can be found at www.macjohnson.com.