90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

New IRS spy software is ultimate Big Brother…

One of the reasons identify theft is considered by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to be the crime of the century is because of the IRS. The Internal Revenue Service makes growing demands for information about people’s businesses and private lives every day. There is no such thing as personal privacy these days. That the IRS sends citizens a so-called “Privacy Act Notice” in all its mailings is a farce. The IRS lays claim to your data without court authority more so than any other government agency. And to make matters worse, they share the data with any other federal, state or local government agency claiming an interest, including foreign governments.

A river of data

In 2019, there will be about 152 million individual tax returns filed with the IRS. There will be roughly another 100 million business tax returns filed. There will be millions more miscellaneous tax returns, including trust, estate and gift tax returns. On top of that, over 3.6 BILLION information returns (Forms W-2, 1099, etc.) will be filed. There is quite literally a river of data flowing into the agency. The flow cannot be stopped, and as far as the IRS is concerned, they need even more.

For example, one of the six “Strategic Goals” presented in the IRS’ 2018-2022 Strategic Plan is to increase its access to data, and use that data more effectively to drive its agency-wide decision making, as well as case evaluations and selections for enforcement purposes. See: IRS Publication 3744 (4-2018). This is consistent with the IRS goal of becoming a “data driven agency.”

The IRS is awash in data. The 2018-2022 Strategic Plan boasts that the IRS’ volume of data was 100 times larger in 2017 than it was 10 years prior. In 2018, the IRS Criminal Investigation unit alone collected 1.67 terabytes of data from various sources. A terabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, or 1,024 gigabytes of data. I’m told that approximately 900,000 plain text files can fit into a single gigabyte. The number of users in the IRS with access to that data has increased 23 times (Strategic Plan, p. 19) in the past 10 years.

Managing massive data

How do you manage, process and assimilate such a massive amount of data to the point where it becomes usable? The 2018-2022 Strategic Plan expresses the goal to “invest in analytics and visualization software and tools, and develop processes to support analytics in IRS operations” (p. 20). The end game is presented in these words:

Advancements in how data is collected, stored, accessed and analyzed will allow us to deploy data better. We’ll standardize our data processes and protocols and encourage collaboration among all IRS business units. Increased interoperability of data systems and sources will enhance the secure and seamless flow of data to enable greater authorized access to information. We’ll invest in training to develop more advanced analytics skill sets across the IRS, and use data to improve our business processes. (Strategic Plan, p. 19.)

The investment in analytics was recently undertaken – in a big way.

Big Government, meet Big Data

On Sept. 27, 2018, the IRS entered into a contract with Palantir Technologies of Palo Alto, California, to handle the task of data assimilation. The contract calls for Palantir to...

Limbaugh: NRO Pushed Covington Hoax to Win ‘Approval of the Mainstream Media’

Rush Limbaugh identified National Review as a news media outfit that prioritizes the pursuit of “approval [from] the mainstream media” over veracity in reporting, offering his remarks on Monday’s edition of his eponymous show.

Limbaugh highlighted recent news media narratives framing a group of Covington Catholic High School students as “racists,” including agreement from ostensibly conservative news media outlets and personalities.

LISTEN:

Limbaugh said:

One of the biggest problems that we as conservatives have was on full display all weekend long, continuing into this morning — and that is, quite simply, we have a lot of people who would rather lose gracefully with the approval of the mainstream media than simply use their heads and understand who our opposition is.
…
When we see a picture of a teenager who’s white wearing a Trump hat, a “Make America Great Again” hat, and he’s standing there smiling while some aging Indian leftist activist is beating a war drum, what do we do?

We immediately condemn the kid, without even thinking! Without even learning anything, without even taking a few minutes to understand what happened! Instead of using our instincts! “Okay, we got a left-wing Indian activist there. We’ve got the media jumping all over it.” The red flags should have gone up immediately, and everybody on our side should have called ’em out for what this was! But instead, we had people on the right condemning the kids.
…
These people are scared to death of the media and the first and only thing they care about is media approval. They don’t want to be lumped in with the kids! So you have a bunch of kids from a Catholic high school standing around minding their own business, being assaulted by a militant, leftist black group and then having...

Native American Who Cried ‘Harassment’ Exposed as Democrat Activist

The Native American man who falsely claimed “harassment” by a group of peaceful pro-Trump Catholic students has been exposed as a Democrat activist with a history of race-related public relations stunts.

Several video feeds surfaced over the weekend showing far-left activist Nathan Phillips banging a drum in front of a group of students outside the Lincoln Memorial for the pro-life march, which the mainstream media then egregiously claimed was an act of racism by the Catholic students in attendance.

Infowars.com reports: The media demonization campaign resulted in the Covington Catholic school students receiving death threats, prompting several students and their parents to release lengthy statements setting the record straight.

As liberal figures and publications backtrack their accusations in light of additional videoshowing the full picture, more information is coming to light about Phillips and his history of “drumming up” racial division.

In 2015, Phillips accused a group of Eastern Michigan University students of racism after confronting them for wearing Native American garb for a theme party.

“For me just to walk by and have a blind eye to it,” he told local media. “Something just didn’t allow me to do it.”

“They had their face painted,” he added. “I said what the heck is going on here. ‘Oh we are honoring you.’ I said no you are not honoring me.”

Additionally, the media is reporting that Phillips served as a Vietnam veteran, but the validity of those reports remain in question given Phillip’s claim that he was a “Recon Ranger” is a nonexistent operational force.

Phillips also made his politics known in 2012 when he appeared in a Skrillex music video called “Make It Bun Dem,” which demonizes law enforcement.

In further evidence that Phillips supports the left’s agenda, he also protested the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock reservation in...

Authorities say they have arrested a man they believe is connected to four killings that have shaken Northern Nevada and put residents on edge over the past two weeks.

Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam says Wilbur Ernesto Martinez Guzman, a Carson City resident who is either 19 or 20, was taken into custody Saturday afternoon on suspicion of burglary, possession of stolen property and immigration law violations. He’s being held in the Carson City Detention Center under 24-hour watch from medical and mental health personnel.

“At this stage in the investigation, we feel confident we have the evidence that will link him to all four homicides,” Balaam said at a Sunday afternoon press conference, adding that deputies don’t believe there are additional outstanding suspects.

The killings began in Gardnerville, the Douglas County community about 50 miles from Reno, when two women, Connie Koontz, 56, and Sophia Renken, 74, were killed inside their homes earlier this month only miles apart. The two victims were found Jan. 10 and Jan. 13 — within four days of each other.

Days later on Jan. 15, authorities began investigating two killings in Reno after Gerald David, 81, and Sharon David, 80, were found dead in their South Reno home. Gerald David was a former president of the Reno Rodeo, the Reno Gazette Journal reported.

Given the similarities between all four killings, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began aiding in the probe last week, the Associated Press reported. All of the killings relied on a firearm, appeared to target elderly victims and at least two involved property stolen from the homes.

Carson City Sheriff Kenny Furlong said law enforcement had received tips in the cases from Jan. 10 to Jan. 19 and deployed a multi-agency surveillance team on Friday to put Martinez Guzman under 24-hour surveillance.

They later learned from immigration officials that Martinez Guzman was likely in the country illegally and could be detained on those grounds. Furlong said activities that raised concern for public safety prompted immigration officials and Carson City deputies to take him into custody Saturday afternoon a few blocks south of the state capitol.

Officers also seized control of an apartment on Menlo Drive in Carson City, two vehicles, another family member and another apartment resident without incident, Furlong said.

Authorities say Martinez Guzman did not have interactions with Carson City deputies in the year he was apparently in the area. Officers declined to offer much about a motive, and did not elaborate why they zeroed in on Martinez Guzman except to say the investigative process and a tip led them to him.

Northern Nevada businesses selling guns and alarm systems told KOLO news that they saw an uptick in sales in the days following the killings.

“I want you to know we feel strongly we have...

A-ha!

You could almost hear the collective glee of social justice warriors and identity politics aficionados this weekend when a video emerged that appeared to show a teenage white boy in a Make America Great Again red cap smirk disrespectfully as a Native American stood in front of him—beating a drum—at the Lincoln Memorial.

Finally, they had a piece of proof that supported their cherished narrative: that most Trump supporters were bigots and racists who backed the wall and other initiatives because of their racist views.

And they took no time before gleefully dancing on the reputational grave of these teens. Here’s CNN commentator Keith Boykin:

The MAGA-hat wearing Covington Catholic High School students mocking Elder Nathan Phillips at the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington are direct descendants of the white privilege that empowered white kids to mock Elizabeth Eckford at Little Rock Central High School in 1957. pic.twitter.com/tQroBf6aPb
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) January 19, 2019

The Atlantic’s James Fallows compared the boys of Covington Catholic High School to those who protested desegregation, writing:

The crowd members’ names don’t matter, any more than the names of the crowd members you see in the photo below, from North Little Rock in the 1950s. The young men from Covington Catholic High School should know that they will be immortalized, the way the angry young white people you see below were: as a group, a movement, a problem, beyond their identities as individuals.

Activist Shaun King likewise made the issue about race:

I am so deeply grieved and angry by this as young kids in MAGA hats surrounded and mocked a beloved Native American elder yesterday.

When your power is centered in your whiteness, mocking others who are unlike you makes you feel strong.

But it’s weak. And despicable. pic.twitter.com/38FtzGtowL
— Shaun King (@shaunking) January 19, 2019