The country’s chief tax collector pushed back Monday against assertions that working for the Internal Revenue Service has become more dangerous as a result of growing anti-government sentiment and the recent passage of President Obama’s health care plan.<\/p>\n
“No, the risk has not increased,” IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said. “There has been a lot of stuff in the press about increased threats, which is actually inaccurate.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Some liberal groups and bloggers also have raised fears that anti-tax and anti-government rhetoric employed on talk radio and by protesters within the “tea party” movement could incite violence against IRS agents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Which was really what it was all about, all of it – the specious claims of racist slurs and threats, the victorian vapours about the tiny fringe of Tea Partiers with objectionable signs, and conservative talk radio as a whole – without exception; impugning dissent.<\/p>\n
It’s kind of good to see, actually.\u00a0 I remember how depressing it felt to realize that Bob Dole’s only campaign message in 1996 was “I’m not Bill Clinton”; about the only thing the Dems have so far going into November is an albatross of a “health care” plan, and constant chants of “teh teabaggerz are teh crazee, and we not be they”.<\/p>\n
And that’s not so bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The IRS notes that the wave of Tea Partier threats and violence against that most intrusive and divisive arm of government, the IRS… …well, isn’t: The country’s chief tax collector pushed back Monday against assertions that working for the Internal Revenue Service has become more dangerous as a result of growing anti-government sentiment and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slander-files"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892","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=9892"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9901,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892\/revisions\/9901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}