Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The Private Tax Collector Came and Went
My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with, for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel,-and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government.
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
It was impossible to know how it would turn out. Of course, there were a few hints. But they were so subtle that only someone with a bit of brain would have picked up on the clues. And it seemed like such a great idea-turning delinquent taxpayers over to private collection firms that make contributions to politicians instead of letting the Internal Revenue Service attend to that mundane task-that no one would have foreseen the disastrous outcome.
The idea got its start as a result of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. The purpose of the act was not simply to create jobs. It was to transfer to the private sector jobs that had theretofore been performed by the public sector almost certainly a guarantee of success since conventional Republican wisdom is that whatever the public sector can do, the private sector can do even better. (That approach reached its zenith in Iraq where Dick and George turned over lots of the work formerly done by U.S. troops to private contractors who, the two pals believed, could do it more efficiently and cheaply than U.S. government personnel.)
In 2005 the IRS began farming out delinquent tax collections to private collection agencies. Three debt collection agencies were initially used and two of them had special qualifications for the work. They had made significant financial contributions to politicians. Pioneer Credit Recovery came from the district of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds of New York and one of the things that qualified it to be a debt collector for the federal government was that it had given congressional candidates and political action committees $117,450 since 1995. Mr. Reynolds received $16,250.
Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson of Austin, Texas and its employees and spouses gave political candidates and PACs of both parties more than $400,000 between 1995 and the time the program was started. (After 2007 the firm was fired although the government isn’t saying why that is. It might have to do with the fact that the firm made a $2000 donation to the mayor of Mansfield, Texas a month after he was elected or it may have had to do with the vacation it paid for a contract officer in Chicago that got the firm fired from doing work for that city.)
Mark Everson who was the commissioner of the IRS at the time outsourcing tax collection was decided on admitted that outsourcing tax collection is more expensive than keeping it in house. He nonetheless supported the privatization of collection efforts claiming he could not get sufficient funding to permit him to hire more public sector tax collectors. (Following that ill-fated decision Mr. Everson left the IRS to head up the Red Cross where he served only long enough to begin an affair with the member of his staff that resulted in his loss of the job. When he left the IRS and began working at the Red Cross his 18-year old daughter said having left the IRS people would again like him. She was inadvertently prescient.)
According to a report in the Washington Post the program has been a disappointment. The goal of the program was to collect $1 billion from deadbeats owing $25,000 or less. Instead, most of those folks have gotten a tax holiday. Instead of collecting $1 billion, the private debt collectors only collected $49 million. The cost of the program was $98 million suggesting to the mathematically swift that it produced a net loss of $49 million.
Commenting on the program in a statement on the floor of the Senate, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland observed that Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate told Congress that the IRS was losing at least $81 million a year by using private debt collection companies. She observed that if the $7.65 million spent by the IRS to operate the program were spent instead on its automated collection system it would generate $153 million in revenue. Not everyone would agree with her.
Jim Ramstad is the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Oversight Committee. He is unimpressed by the statistics furnished by Ms. Olson. He said the “real choice is whether we use private collection agencies or let these tax debts go uncollected. I hope we don’t take an enormous step backward in our efforts to close the tax gap by eliminating a program that’s working.” He didn’t say what part of the program is working. He’ll probably want to explain to Ms. Olson and Senator Cardin (and Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, another critic) the part that is working since they are apparently unaware of its successes. He may also want to explain it to his constituents.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Hiding Truth
About 60 years ago, I said to my father, “Old Mr. Senex is showing his age; he sometimes talks quite stupidly.” My father replied, “That isn’t age. He’s always been stupid. He is just losing his ability to conceal it.”
— Robertson Davies, New York Times Book review (May 12, 1991)
The wonderful thing about having George Bush as president is that a commentator can write about the same subject repeatedly and it will always be timely and fresh. That is because when George Bush finds a bad thing to do, he does it repeatedly because he’s too sure of his own good judgment to notice that it’s a bad thing. One of his favorite things is hiding facts to protect myths. One of his favorite myths is that the war in Iraq is going swimmingly. Among one of many ways the myth is perpetuated is by not letting journalists photograph service personnel being brought home in coffins as they arrive at Andrews Air Force Base. Another, we have now learned, is not letting members of the press get near burial services taking place at Arlington National Cemetery.
According to a report in the Washington Post, at the burial of Lt. Col. Billy Hall, the family wanted the press in attendance to record the burial of one of the senior officers to be killed in Iraq and, by reporting on it, to honor Colonel Hall’s patriotism and sacrifice. Mr. Bush’s Pentagon believes Colonel Hall’s sacrifice can be better honored privately, the family’s wishes notwithstanding. Accordingly a yellow rope kept the press 50 yards from the grave site. A photographer complained there could be no pictures of the family without the yellow rope being in the way to which an employee of the cemetery responded: “This is the best shot you’re going to get”. When the reporters complained that the pastor’s eulogy, in which he presumably talked about Colonel Hall’s valor and sacrifice, could not be heard, the Arlington official responded by saying “Mm-hmm.” As a result, all the press could report to commemorate this brave man, father and husband was that it could not report anything. Mr. Bush likes it that way.
Another myth in which George Bush believes, is that in a well-run country politics should always trump science. The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report the end of April disclosing that science and ignorance (the latter clothed in garments purchased for it by Mr. Bush and his courtiers) have been in mortal combat during the Bush administration’s tenure and ignorance has proved its worth winning easily in many of the confrontations.
Focusing on the Environmental Protection Agency that has received attention in this as well as other places, the report discloses that in a survey of scientists at the agency, more than half disclosed there had been political interference in scientific decisions during the preceding five years. (George Bush has been president for seven years and presumably the reason for interference during only the last five is that it takes a while for someone like George to figure out those areas in which commonly accepted scientific notions are deficient and should give way to political considerations.)
In the survey fifty five hundred questionnaires were sent out and 1,586 scientists responded. More than half said they had observed political interference in scientific decisions made by the agency. Some said the Office of Management and Budget, interfered for political reasons. As a threshold matter that would seem a singularly inappropriate agency to be interfering in matters scientific until one realizes that if scientific decisions are to be made by the ignorant, it is a singularly appropriate agency to be making those decisions.
The Office of Management and Budget is not alone in thwarting science. According to the Post report, when E.P.A. staff members came to the non-startling conclusion that greenhouse gasses were bad for public health, efforts at creating regulations halted after the White House received its findings. Mr. Bush also caused the agency to weaken its proposed limits on smog-forming ozone, he having apparently concluded ozone is not the problem the scientists believe it to be.
Following publication of the most recent survey, Jonathan Shradar defended his boss, Stephen L. Johnson, E.P.A. Administrator. Mr. Shradar said Mr. Johnson carefully weighs the input of staff in all agency decisions. An example of how Mr. Johnson uses the scale to weigh agency decision can be seen in the decision to deny California the waiver it sought in 2007 to reduce tailpipe emissions by 2016 to 30% instead of to 40% by 2020 as mandated by the December 2007 Energy bill. The staff at the EPA was reportedly in favor of granting the waiver, being possessed of scientific knowledge and unencumbered by political considerations. Placing his thumb on the scientific scale, Mr. Johnson concluded his staff was wrong and denied the waiver. Mr. Shrader told the Post reporter that the findings in the Union’s survey would not change anything. That is very likely true-at least for the next 8 months. Thereafter one can hope that science will once again be recognized as a valid field of study, the findings of which are entitled to at least as much, if not slightly more weight, than the conclusions of politicians led by the Grand Pooba in the White House.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Prostitute and The Moderators-A Suggestion
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul; see, where it flies!
Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus [1604]
Lowest common denominator. That’s what George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson of ABC news were appealing to during the first half of the debate for which they recently served as moderators. That explains the reason for the really dumb questions they not only posed but pursued with remarkable, if mindless, persistency about lapel pins, helicopter landings, bitter people and sermons, none of which has the slightest relevance to determining which of the debaters would be a better president. (George Bush never appears in public without his American flag lapel pin and few believe he was a good president. Hillary Clinton never appears in public with a lapel pin and that does not suggest she would be a bad president). Since appealing to the lowest common denominator was the goal of Messrs. Gibson and Stephanopolous, I have a suggestion for a future program that will draw even more viewers than did the debate and will appeal to an even lower common denominator. They should interview Ashley Youmans for an hour and a half.
Ashley Youmans, now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré is the woman whose face, metaphorically speaking, brought down an empire. Or at least a governorship. Ashley is the young woman at the center of the Eliot Spitzer scandal.
Without casting aspersions on either of the two presidential candidates who debated (each of whom is well dressed and attractive) all would agree that to the extent anything interesting was elicited from the candidates by their inquisitors, it was unrelated to what they were wearing. It is safe to assume, on the other hand, that no matter how pathetic the questioning, Ashley would have made a better visual impression than either of the candidates, especially if she had been counseled to attire herself in such a way as to display those attributes that make her both interesting and successful. Furthermore, she could provide information that would be of interest to lots of viewers, especially those with mildly prurient interests that encompasses more viewers than the viewers would like to admit.
Since the economy is undeniably in a slump, she could have explained how competitive pricing works in the industry in which she is employed, thus introducing transparency to a profession that frequently operates in the dark. It would almost certainly be of interest to the viewer to know and understand why, for example, radio executive, Tom Athans, of Michigan, who is married to U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow and was recently arrested in a Residence Inn near Big Beaver and Interstate 75 (no double entendre intended and apologies to Kurt Vonnegut) paid a woman engaged in Ashley’s line of work only $150 whereas Mr. Spitzer reportedly paid Ashley $4300. It is not adequate to attribute the difference in price to depressed economic conditions in Michigan nor can it be attributed solely to the length of the encounter. As an examination of the rate structure of Ashley’s company set out below demonstrates, for $150 at her employer one would get little more than a cup of water with which to down a Viagra pill.
It would be interesting to hear Ashley explain, in response to questions from the ABC team, the details of the price list formerly displayed on the Emperors Club Website. (The site uses the apostrophe sparingly and inconsistently.) The quality of the services are, as restrooms at gas stations were in days gone by, measured by diamonds and, conveniently, (as gas stations were not) in dollars, euros and pounds so that prospective customers know what to expect. The rates are either hourly or by the day. A 3 diamond encounter of one hour’s duration costs $1000 or 700 Euros whereas a 7 diamond encounter of the same length costs $3,100 or 2200 Euros. (Based on today’s exchange rates it makes more sense to pay in dollars.) Day rates that are described as “dawn to dawn” range from $10,000 to $31,000.
Ashley could have discussed competitive pricing, variation in pricing depending on locales, and how income is shared between Emperors and its subjects.
There will be readers who suggest that such a program would be a waste of time since only those of prurient interest would want to watch. To them I can only say Gibson and Stephanopolous offered so little worthwhile in their one and a half hours that any subject, no matter how trivial, would be an improvement. Would it were otherwise.