WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU by The Cosmic Messenger

Ever wonder what our nation's priorities are ? Under the Bush administration and its GOP Congressional crusaders the legislative process has been transformed from a substantive exercise addressing the country's difficulties into a mockery driven by shadow groups and lobbyists buying access to insure their profit tickets are punched. We've gone from a society which values open debate to a country club mindset dividing up the U.S. Treasury in secret based on such treasonable contentions that our national security is at stake. Deplorably, the system of checks and balances governing America since its Constitutional inception is broken, imperiled by inordinate amounts of corporate cash shaping the regulatory process rather than what's indicative of reality. Our leaders have degenerated into corporate pigs, for sale to the highest bidder instead of crafting pragmatic solutions.

The list of instances in which policy has been determined surreptitiously through monetary influence during the past five years is extensive ranging from business tax breaks to the enactment of the Medicare prescription drug plan. As misplaced examples of corporate welfare as these mandates symbolize, an even greater miscarriage is represented by how our politicians have endeared themselves to the energy agenda of the special interests. It's an issue coarsed in back room deals tainted by appointed or elected officials who jaywalk their way past ethics violations, allowing themselves to be buttonholed by ex-staffers who've been hired to peddle the plans of an industry in denial about global warming and who would prefer to be self-regulating.

For example, Frank O'Donnell who's president of Clean Air Watch reported earlier this month American Electric Power is the biggest generator of carbon dioxide in America and responsible for much of the pollution causing global warming. Not only is AEP's President Michael Morris a heavy campaign contributor to the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air George Voinovich, R-Ohio, he serves as chairman of the board of the power lobby industry and has employed two of Voinovich's former personnel to work at AEP to influence energy legislation on their behalf. Their goal is to prevent Congress from mandating limits on carbon dioxide emissions and ensure that whatever controls may be instituted are voluntary complied with.

O'Donnell further cites the recent appearance of the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson at a fundraiser for a Republican congressional candidate in Colorado as a potential ethics violation and conflict of interest. Invitations were sent to the March 9 affair by a lobbyist targeting representatives of the coal, oil and gas industries and trumpeting the attendance of the director of the EPA. A Democrat officeholder in the state was quoted as saying, "This just smells. Regular people don't get this kind of access to the head of the EPA."

Further criticism was voiced when others pointed out federal officials aren't technically supposed to use their titles in a political promotion such as this and Johnson's appearance at the event compromised his ability to represent the EPA's goals objectively. Evidence supporting O'Donnell's contentions were confirmed at the end of March when the EPA announced pollution control limits would be maintained at existing levels rather than strengthened despite its own findings Americans were at high risk from breathing cancer causing vapors released into the atmosphere by chemical and oil production facilities. Additionally, it stated tighter restrictions would be placed on public access to information about how much pollution an industry releases into a community during a malfunction.

Unfortunately, retooling the EPA's mission from safeguarding our habitat to insuring industrial competitiveness through deregulation comes at a time when there's irrefutable scientific evidence sources of pollution must be aggressively restricted by Congress. Time magazine recently proclaimed "The earth is at a tipping point and global warming is to blame. From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us." As the environment disintegrates before our eyes from the harmful effects of greenhouse gases, it's imperative politicians quit selling out to corporate lobbyists and begin devising a strategy to reverse the upward trend of pollution levels in Earth's atmosphere. "There are a whole series of things that demonstrate that people want to act and want their government to act," says Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense.

What can be done to countermand belligerent attempts by the energy industry to underwrite legislation guaranteeing their profit margins aren't jeopardized ? Al Gore editorialized in the San Francisco Chronicle April 4, "Capitalism is at a crossroads. As we confront the limits of our ecological system to hold up under current patterns of use, challenges such as climate change have reached a point where civil society is demanding a response from business and government." The former Vice President believes corporations can be forced to be environmentally responsible through a combination of shareholder activism, government legislation and stringent reporting requirements.

The Apollo Alliance, a project of The Institute For America's Future and The Center on Wisconsin Strategy has devised a ten point strategy outlining methods of change which relies on implementation at both the state and federal levels to achieve energy independence while creating manufacturing jobs for the new economy it envisions.

"Meeting the challenge of the new clean energy economy requires rethinking present policies, redirecting resources, breaking old boundaries and forging new alliances" Apollo contends. "It means abandoning old approaches that traded-off the health of the economy for the health of the environment and sacrificed good jobs and technology innovation."

Details are summarized below:

1. 
   Promote Advanced Technology & Hybrid Cars: Begin today to provide incentives for converting domestic assembly lines to manufacture highly efficient cars, transitioning the fleet to American made advanced technology vehicles, increasing consumer choice and strengthening the US auto industry.
2. 
   Invest In More Efficient Factories: Make innovative use of the tax code and economic development systems to promote more efficient and profitable manufacturing while saving energy through environmental retrofits, improved boiler operations, and industrial cogeneration of electricity, retaining jobs by investing in plants and workers.
3. 
   Encourage High Performance Building: Increase investment in construction of green buildings and energy efficient homes and offices through innovative financing and incentives, improved building operations, and updated codes and standards, helping working families, businesses, and government realize substantial cost savings.
4. 
   Increase Use of Energy Efficient Appliances: Drive a new generation of highly efficient manufactured goods into widespread use, without driving jobs overseas, by linking higher energy standards to consumer and manufacturing incentives that increase demand for new durable goods and increase investment in US factories.
5. 
   Modernize Electrical Infrastructure: Deploy the best available technology like scrubbers to existing plants, protecting jobs and the environment; research new technology to capture and sequester carbon and improve transmission for distributed renewable generation.
6. 
   Expand Renewable Energy Development: Diversify energy sources by promoting existing technologies in solar, biomass and wind while setting ambitious but achievable goals for increasing renewable generation, and promoting state and local policy innovations that link clean energy and jobs.
7. 
   Improve Transportation Options: Increase mobility, job access, and transportation choice by investing in effective multimodal networks including bicycle, local bus and rail transit, regional high-speed rail and magnetic levitation rail projects.
8. 
   Reinvest In Smart Urban Growth: Revitalize urban centers to promote strong cities and good jobs, by rebuilding and upgrading local infrastructure including road maintenance, bridge repair, and water and waste water systems, and by expanding redevelopment of idled urban brownfield lands, and by improving metropolitan planning and governance.
9. 
   Plan For A Hydrogen Future: Invest in long term research & development of hydrogen fuel cell technology, and deploy the infrastructure to support hydrogen powered cars and distributed electricity generation using stationary fuel cells, to create jobs in the industries of the future.
10. 
    Preserve Regulatory Protections: Encourage balanced growth and investment through regulation that ensures energy diversity and system reliability, that protects workers and the environment, that rewards consumers, and that establishes a fair framework for emerging technologies.

With gas prices hovering at $2.70 a gallon, oil fluctuating near $70 a barrel, Detroit producing inefficient vehicles and our global ecosystem in meltdown can there be any doubt about what the President and Congress's precedents are ? Based on political philosophy and its legislative record the past five years, their agenda demonstrates a penchant for maximizing business earnings based on how much a corporation is willing to spend to buy votes while removing most regulatory oversights necessary to make them publicly accountable.

We regret to inform you our system of government has become fiscally and ethically ruined. Who should we notify ?



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DOWN ON THE TAX FARM by The Cosmic Messenger

In business speak a buzz phrase used to describe the successful completion of an agreement is, "it's a done deal." Those words must have been gleefully floating from the lips of IRS bureaucrats March 9 with the announcement the federal agency had been authorized to hire three private firms to assist them in collecting taxes owed by individuals whose debt is outstanding. Despite the statement's optimism proclaiming the move would enable them to potentially reduce billions of dollars in undischarged payments to the government critics oppose the plan based on privacy concerns, oversight management of the program and the project's cost effectiveness. Disapproval about the arrangement is taking place as the President is embroiled in a public dispute over the legality of his domestic spy scheme. Now, objections raised about partial privatization of this IRS function are numerous enough to make Americans wonder whether this Administration and Congress are capable of handling our nation's affairs in their best interest.

Government outsourcing of the procedure, referred to as tax farming by IRS executives isn't a novel idea and was initially tested for suitability approximately ten years ago to determine whether contract workers could obtain payment from individuals more efficiently than the agency's own employees. The concept was given trial runs in 1996-7 but ended after the Government Accounting Office (GAO) discovered contractors had violated regulatory guidelines specified in the, "FAIR DEBT COLLECTION PRACTICES ACT." Bush reintroduced the notion in his budget proposals to Congress for 2004 and 2005 as the Federal Treasury was being depleted due to costs associated with the Iraq war and the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Although the proposal may have political appeal based on the assertion it would lower costs while increasing the public's perception of IRS competency, one of its primary detractors the past decade believes the strategy will be detrimental to citizens.

"This scheme is costly, risky, and would lead to a gross invasion of the privacy of American taxpayers," according to Colleen M. Kelley who is National President of the National Treasury Employees Union. "Privatizing the function is not only the most inefficient way to collect tax debts, it puts private and sensitive taxpayer information at unacceptable risk by making it available to the most complained-about industry in America -- debt collectors."

Kelly's assertions aren't without virtue and raises the question whether the government can safeguard citizen data if it's being given to contractors. Past GAO inspections of the IRS's ability to effectively implement internal controls to protect sensitive information uncovered a disturbing fact. Contractors were given entree to restricted information systems without comprehensive background checks having been completed. Steven Sebastian, the GAO's Financial Management and Assurance director expressed his concern in 2005 when he wrote in an assessment report that the privacy peril was "taxpayer receipts and information could be lost, stolen, misused, or destroyed." A investigative report released in November 2004 by Salon magazine entitled "Privatization Follies," substantiates Sebastian's determinations with similar findings uncovered in an audit paper prepared by a separate government agency.

"A contractor with a history of violating IRS security policies was hired by the IRS to develop software and was given root access for 50 of its employees to the IRS operating environment. Root-level access to a computer system is no trivial privilege. It allows the user to make unlimited and unrestricted changes to any part of the computer system, including the operating system and computer applications. An audit report released by the treasury inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) noted, "In many cases, a user with root-level access could turn the audit trail off and/or erase audit trail data, without any record as to who used the root-level privilege." This means that the contractor or a hacker could have navigated the system and gained access to taxpayer information. The TIGTA report also found that contractor employees had installed third-party e-mail, chat, and instant-messaging software on a third of the IRS computer workstations reviewed. This compromised security by potentially introducing viruses and spyware and allowing hackers to gain access to knowledge of the system's software architecture. Contract workers also lost or destroyed taxpayer remittances worth more than $1.2 billion."

Aside from the security issue, some observers believe hiring private contractors is wasteful and current IRS employees could achieve the objective if given the necessary tools. Former IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti assessed the problem in 2003 and concluded more funding is needed to enable the IRS to hire additional workers. In his analysis, Rossotti estimates an additional $296 million Congressional appropriation would increase staffing of compliance workers with the field and phone skills needed to focus on its Accounts Receivables. He maintains an extra $9.47 billion of delinquent taxes could be garnered this way at a cost significantly less than the President's program. Rossotti argues this approach represents a $31 dollar return for each dollar spent.

The Joint Committee on Taxation agrees and believes even fewer financial resources would be needed. "The Administration’s tax collection privatization proposal would bring in less than $1 billion over ten years. The IRS could bring in that amount in one year with just over $30 million in additional in-house enforcement resources," they reasoned.

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelly adds," I'm a certified public accountant, but this is math my six year old nephew understands."

Despite these reservations, Congressional approval was given on March 9 reauthorizing private contracting and a statement issued by IRS Commissioner Mark Everson claims stronger institutional oversights have been implemented while stiffer fines and criminal penalties were mandated for privacy infractions.

In a separate but related matter, the privacy question became an even more combustible topic for public consideration when it was exposed last week the IRS has proposed allowing private tax preparers to sell an individual's tax information to third parties provided they had written authorization from the person to do so. Apparently, this was an internal decision made from within the agency, which if implemented would violate existing federal law prohibiting such transactions regardless of whether a signature was obtained or not. The IRS position was reached shortly after Congress passed an inadequate consumer protection bill (HR3997) to address the growing problem of identity theft from business databases across the nation.

Instead, the new federal regulatory guidelines actually undermine many state laws already in existence requiring financial institutions and databrokers notify individuals when their personal information has been plundered. HR3997 compels apprisal only if an organization thinks it's severe enough to cause harm to the individual. This lessens their liability significantly and reduces the chance of litigation being brought against them due to malfeasance. Such legislation is consistent with the current trend in Congress to transform laws at the behest of business lobbyists while weakening existing legal defenses for the consumer. In both this instance and cases where the IRS employs private tax collectors, the Internal Revenue Service would be alleviated of informing individuals if the information supplied by them was mishandled in any way.

Just when you didn't think it was possible for your confidentiality to be violated further by the government, these two disclosures have emerged which are more alarming than the illegal wiretaps because in each example there's no effort by federal or elected officials to conceal their intentions. However, three things are common about the unauthorized privacy intrusions whether it concerns covert domestic spying or IRS irresponsibility. In every occurrence we were told the existing law was outdated and ineffectual. Rules were either ignored or attempts made by Congress to alter them to sanction the behavior. Finally, efforts were made to console us with promises the changes would protect our Constitutional guarantees and necessary for contemporary American society.

Sounds to me more like a government run by abusive profiteers for their benefit rather than a society governed by inherent principles. Didn't we fight an American revolution about this once ?

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