{"id":52929,"date":"2015-04-22T12:35:15","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T17:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=52929"},"modified":"2015-04-22T12:35:15","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T17:35:15","slug":"our-passive-aggressive-overlords-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=52929","title":{"rendered":"Our Passive-Aggressive Overlords"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The IRS, beset by scandals over the agency&#8217;s politicization under <del>Chairman<\/del> President Obama, slashes its customer-service budget even as it rolls in taxpayer revenue:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has blamed the IRS&#8217;s &#8220;abysmal&#8221; customer service on congressional budget cuts&#8211;funding is down $1.2 billion from its 2010 peak&#8211;but a new congressional report points the finger back at the IRS. While congressional funding for the IRS remained flat from 2014 to 2015, the IRS diverted $134 million away from customer service to other activities.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the $11 billion appropriated by Congress, the IRS takes in more than $400 million in user fees and may allocate that money as it sees fit. In 2014, the IRS allocated $183 million in user fees to its customer service budget, but allocated just $49 million in 2015&#8211;a 76 percent cut.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>John Koskinen may be the biggest weasel in all of &#8220;public service&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The IRS, beset by scandals over the agency&#8217;s politicization under Chairman President Obama, slashes its customer-service budget even as it rolls in taxpayer revenue: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has blamed the IRS&#8217;s &#8220;abysmal&#8221; customer service on congressional budget cuts&#8211;funding is down $1.2 billion from its 2010 peak&#8211;but a new congressional report points the finger back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[255],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-racket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52931,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52929\/revisions\/52931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}