The 16,000-IRS Agent Lie

Wait, they’re not going to need those 16,000 IRS agents? Republicans just fired 16,000 hard working Americans! How dare they! Next thing you know, the Republicans are going to fire Grandma!

“Distortions like this chip away at the credibility of Republican critics of health reform. ”

Credibility? ROFLMAO!

Better yet: Credibility with whom?
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Dems already knew this was a lie.
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Independents aren’t paying attention, or will attribute this to the usual “he said, she said” that the media loves to promote.
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The Reps think FactCheck.org is controlled by George Soros and the Trilateral Commission, and they’ll continue to repeat the lie as gospel truth.

Thanks so much for this, Kate Pickert.
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Your readers are greatly helped in their understanding of events by this sort of reporting –in which fact can be sorted from rhetoric.

There’s no need for commentators and Republican leaders to take these cheap shots based entirely outside the realm of fact.
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Kate, were YOU thinking of Rusty, Freep, and other right-leaning commentators here when you wrote that? They do that all the time so I’ll understand if your snark / frustration slipped out just a teeny tiny bit. It’s okay, really. We’re here to offer commiseration if you need it.

Let’s leave the credibility of FactCheck and Erza (paid WH HC hack) and take them at their word.

So there is no enforcement or collections for this bill that encompasses 16% of GDP. The pride and joy of the left written under the cover of darkness an dpushed through to meet arbitrary deadlines has no way to truly collect the penalties or fees that will not only help budget woes but holds the entire plan together. We seriously want have a bill by people that missed this.

Or is it the same gotcha nonsense. The number is not 16,500 but may be 15,900 so its a lie? Now that is the credibility I would ascribe to FactCheck and Klein.

Dang beat to it. I was rolling on the floor too long.

There’s no need for commentators and Republican leaders to take these cheap shots based entirely outside the realm of fact.

True, but you cannot put a reasonable argument on a bumper sticker.

Agreed.
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And while I recognize that there’s an element of needing to be “new” in the news, there can’t be too many stories about this. This lie has legs, and it’s going to take a lot of people pushing back against it.
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We’ve already seen one nut attack an IRS building, and this only will motivate more nutjobs to do the same. Liars like Gingrich need to be called out and held accountable before someone else gets killed.

Would “Republicans lie” count?

Or how ’bout “Trolls suck”?

Distortions like this chip away at the credibility of Republican critics of health reform.

I happen to agree wholeheartedly. There are areas of policy where Conservatives could actually contribute. Their worldview didn’t develop in a vacuum and if there weren’t some basis for their ideas they wouldn’t have gained the currency they now have. But it’s becoming increasingly clear ever since McCain claimed that our economy was ‘fundamentally sound” that reality need no longer apply when it comes to debating issues. For each idea that’s been discredited based on actual practice, the response has been to ignore evidence and double down on the feelgood BS story line.

As someone who misses having sane people to debate with, I find the whole situation depressing.

Freep, the number is $5 billion not $10. The percentage of IRS agents is 15% not 100%. At worst, 50% of the budget goes to salaries, not 100%. So it’s really 16,000 * 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.15 = 600 new IRS agents that would be a reasonable approximate – and that’s likely a high number.

This is not the “pride and joy of the left”.
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It is the triumph of the center.

These ‘wingers have gotten so adept at MSU (making…up) that they believe their own lies.

“The president wasn’t born in the US” is on the clock.

Please pay attention. The GOP has embraced and repeated so MANY lies that no one with a lick of sense thinks they have any credibility. Michael Steele might believe that they do, but why do you?

Useta be that their stories had a shred of truth to them. Now “experts” can go on Fox and blather on, fooling a few million people. Then a teeny amount of them get so charged up they threaten/carry out violence.

Agreed, Stuart.
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In my bitterness over the current state of the media, I sometimes forget to acknowledge good reporting.

Dirks, I’d call it willful insanity. I’m sure they really would like to achieve their far-right fantasy world, but in lieu of that they can simply shriek about phantom threats, losing whatever credibility the party once had with the unindoctrinated.
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Sadly, what they (unintentionally?) accomplish is center-right tepid legislation that does very little to challenge entrenched interests, Reagan dogma, and what appear to be overwhelming hurdles to American solvency going FWD. With a humongous assist by our 4th estate.
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IOW, at a dinner party when two people dominate the discussion and one of them is foaming at the mouth or speaking in tongues, and the other is calmly delivering eloquent albeit innocuous platitudes w/out foundation, a majority, seeing this juxtaposition, will fancy the latter. Shorter IOW: Crazy = a narrower Overton window

Freepy, see 2.1 above.

TPM has the DOJ’s timeline of devices planted up for our Tyler Texas wheel chair bomber arrested today.
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/documents/2010/04/doj-timeline-of-devices-allegedly-planted-by-larry-north.php?page=1&ref=fpa

Here’s what’s great:
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We have between now and November for the confused Fox crowd to notice that there are no roaming bands of armed IRS agents, no death panels, no large insurance increases, no fines and that guy behind the counter at the convenience store with that incessant cough isn’t coughing anymore.
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Had this failed, people might think reeper and the right wing are sane.
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(reeper and the right – weren’t they a band in the mid 70s?)

They’ve closed the loop — if you check Fox News against Rush Limbaugh against NRO, then, hey, everyone agrees this is happening!
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You know things have gotten bad when a conservative like Tom Coburn has to chide town hall audiences that they need to start listening to sources outside their usual suspects.

freeinpa,

The problem with the Republicans is that they do not rely on facts, but conjecture, innendo and erroneous assumptions. The idea of “16,000″ is simply right-wing urban legend that has gained legs. Recently someone claimed Sarah Palin was owed an apology because some commentator made a statement which was extrapolated to equal “death panels”. Get real!!

As far as your source for “news”, that notorious liberal-socialist Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma told people at a town hall that only getting your “news” from Fox was a mistake, because of Faux’s bias.

Erza (paid WH HC hack)
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You’re thinking of the wrong administration. It was the Republicans that paid newspaper columnists to spread the party line.
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Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 by the Bush administration to promote NCLB.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56330-2005Jan7.html
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Maggie Gallagher was paid $41,500 by the Bush administration to hype its federal marriage amendment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36545-2005Jan25.html
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You say that Ezra Klein is a “paid White House health care hack.” That’s a damning charge, with zero evidence to back it up. Care to offer any, freeinpa?

I think he’s confusing Ezra Klein with Jonathan Gruber.

It’s another way falshoods get injected into our discourse – simple confusion accompanied by unjustified certainty.

16,500 more IRS agents needed to enforce Obamacare
By: J.P. Freire
Associate Commentary Editor
03/18/10 4:32 PM EDT

New tax mandates and penalties included in Obamacare will cause the greatest expansion of the Internal Revenue Service since World War II, according to a release from Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.

A new analysis by the Joint Economic Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee minority staff estimates up to 16,500 new IRS personnel will be needed to collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses in the ‘reconciliation’ bill being taken up by the U.S. House of Representatives this weekend. …

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/16500-more-IRS-agents-needed-to-enforce-Obamacare-88458137.html#ixzz0kVTqvmhz

ok after reading Klein’s piece and listening to Newt’s interview lets try some common sense:

1. $5 to $10 billion over 10 years… but the real question do we NEED to give the meanest bast@rds in the government, the IRS, another $7.5 BILLION to torture us for not having health insurance???
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2. if it IS 1/2 the Newt number, 8,250, and 20% are agents that means 1,650 new agents…with at least badges and maybe 9MMs too
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3. all of this to audit, police something that I already have and am happy with.

Its always great to get the full band of the knee-jerk defend at any cost liberal response to anything that may cast a shadow on their beliefs.
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Forgottenlord

Nice math exercise but what evidence that your numbers are any closer. I see the same math exercise for every entitlement program; low estimates higher reality. And that is a fact.

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patrickturd

Nice distraction with you looney lib cracks but as usual you dealt with non of the issues.

Glad to see mom let you off early today

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moment

The left is comfortable with some sites and the right is comfortable of others. Both are wrong on occasion. It is the left that continually bashes the right using the same we are smarter crap And despite Kevin’s typical well Bush and we are pure. BTW Kevin Klein was paid by the WH wrote about HC and did not disclose it. Proof check the sacred archives here I believe KT wrote about it. And the left wildly defended that it was pure. So yes cred is fleeting.

It amazes me how one group of folks liberals never lie never cheat commit crimes. How do you carry such a weight of all knowing perfection- the stress must be unbearable.

No the biggest lies are to yourself and you spend most of your lives deluded that you really think you are better ans smarter than everyone.

HAHAHA It’s April Fools everyday for you all.

Did you read the link from Fact Check that Kate provided? It is at the first red Here’s.
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Note that your information comes from a Republican congressman’s press release (another Texas congressman Ron Paul made similar statements) and a quote from the Joint Economic Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee minority staff. This is all Republican takes on something they don’t like. Picture Chuck Grassley saying the bill would pull the plug on grandma. If I were running against him, I’d send a video of that lie to everyone in his district.

FactCheck Cred

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/17669

I am sure the liberal response will be this is a lying conservative site. Goes back to just keep lying to yourself

Honestly who cares how many IRS employee’s/agents may or may not be hired to enforce this law?

To me one of the major issues here is that both sides play the numbers game and everyone should be able to see through it by now. This law is so large and complicated that no one really can tell you for sure what is in it, out of it or what it will do en toto. Screaming that it is just “bad” or just “good” does nothing.

To me the ultimate issue here is the cost. If we assume for arguments sake that the numbers we’ve seen on this bill are 100% correct then over the next 10 years we should save somewhere around $139 billion dollars on health care nationwide.

Now $139 Billion is a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared to government expenditures, and since it’s over 10 years that’s $13.9 Billion per year nationwide; a drop in the proverbial bucket. Obama’s own budgets call for trillion dollar deficits in some years. That means that over 10 years we can cover 13.9% of ONE year of this sort of deficit spending. That of course assumes that congress doesn’t get it’s grubby paws on that money and spend it for something else which they have a history of doing.

Further, a not so careful examination of this law shows that it’s 10 years on increased revenue to pay for 6 years of the full blown program.

So if the numbers are 100% accurate in 2020 we’ll have this law running at full bore and it will have been for 6 years. We’ll have had 10 years of “increased revenues” (i.e. taxes of one form or another such as on medical devices etc) and this results in $139 billion in the “bank”.

So we don’t spend that $139 billion (hence it reduces the deficit either by $139 billion in 2020 or by $13.9 billion for each year 2010-2020).

Now what? For the years 2020-2030 we have ten years of taxes to pay for ten years of services when we already know that ten years of taxes only pays for six years of service. At that point you either have to cut services or raise taxes again.

The solution? I think the Wall St. Journal got it right months ago: a V.A.T. of 10-20% on top of the income tax at the state and federal level, on top of state sales tax (in most states, not all have it) and on top of property taxes.

(Note, a 1% VAT is assumed by most government and non government economists to bring in $100 billion per year. hence 10%=$1 trillion.)

Of course adding this VAT to the current system (because there’s no way to take away the income tax without having the VAT be 30-40%) will kill economic growth, create long lasting high unemployment and lower the standard of living in the United States… but that’s about on par for government work.

There’s only two options, you can’t create a third: cut government expenditures or increase taxes significantly. Also note that approximately 50% of the U.S. population currently pays no federal income taxes.

Charts of government expenditures here:

Overall: http://www.usaspending.gov/

Broken down by program for FY2005: http://www.truthfulpolitics.com/images/us-spending-by-program.jpg

Also from usaspending.gov the % of total government spending received by these agencies For FY2009:

Dept. of Defense: 0.2%
Dept: of Agriculture: 1.1%
Dept. of Justice: 0.3%
Dept. of Education: 7.3%
Dept. of Transportation: 3.1%
Dept. of Energy: 0.7%
Homeland Security: 23.4%
Dept. of HUD: 3.0%
Dept. of Labor: 2.0%
Dept. of State: 0.1%
Veterans Affairs: $6,075,108 so low it doesn’t get a %
same goes for NASA and The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Dept: of Transportation: 3.1%

Dept. of HHS: 19.1% or $363,627,368,390 a year.

Do we REALLY need more money for HHS than the Depts. of Justice, Education, Energy, HUD, Labor, State, Agriculture, Transportation, NASA and the VA combined?

Also note: HCR savings $13.9 billion over ten years. HHS budget for 2009: $363.6 billion. 13.9/363.6= .038% So ten years of savings is less than 1/10th of what HHS spends every single year.

Would you really try to redeem a coupon for .038% off the purchase price of something? What’s the point when the savings are that small?

Was this press release written by Time magazine personality Kate Pickert for the Democrat party or was it written by the Democrat party for Time magazine personality Kate Pickert?

I am very shocked at the suggestion that the Republicans are repeating something that isn’t true.

Next thing you know, it will turn out there aren’t any death panels or FEMA camps; that we still have nukes; that more than 49% of the economy is still private; that the census is a constitutional requirement; that the ACORN tapes were edited; that most climate scientists believe in global warming; that Obama was born in the United States; that nobody shot at Eric Cantor’s office; and that middle-class taxes went down this year.

It will be like living in some kind of crazy Bizarro world.

Freep, that math exercise I did in 1 minute after I read Ezra Klein’s crib sheet detailing the faulty logic.
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So let’s detail this logic, slowly.
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From CBO (as noted by Ezra Klein) re HCR: “probably include an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years for administrative costs of the Internal Revenue Service.”
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From Ezra Klein re: 16000 figure: “First, Republicans are using $10 billion, not $5 billion”. Alright, I can possible fault the 5 vs 10 as a reasonable exaggeration since we’re comparing two ends of the scale – so I’ll remove that 0.5 factor there and say 1200. But alas
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From Ezra Klein: “simply divided the spending … by the current average payroll cost for the entire IRS workforce”
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As Ezra Klein, this results in an exclusion of all administrative costs. As I said, you probably are looking at only 50% of your budget being salaries – as demonstrated by oh-so-many companies. So that second 0.5 factor stays.
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Finally, the CBO said “administrative costs” for the IRS, not “collection”. That includes everything from bean counters to management to secretaries and possibly a few IRS agents. As noted by Ezra Klein: “IRS revenue agents make up only 15 percent of the IRS workforce.” I’m assuming, of course, that you would have approximately the same ratio of IRS agents being hired relative to other types of staff as the rest of the company. Personally, I suspect a lower ratio. Regardless, that’s your 0.15 number.
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So all together now: 16,000 * 50% * 15% = 1200.

re HHS, those numbers don’t exactly match the numbers at http://www.hhs.gov/budget/05budget/centersformed.html, but the $250B number seems to exclude Medicare but include Medicaid ($180B), plus of course the FDA, the CDC, and the NIH.
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(But agree with you about the basic innumeracy at the heart of these discussions.)

Kate Pickert, Time magazine, Ezra Klein and the ludicrous, so-called, self-described “factcheck.org”! Just think: The mind-numbed fools who rely on such political activists cancel the votes of the thinking pro-America community. The world’s most frightening nightmare ….

“Nice distraction with you looney lib cracks but as usual you dealt with non of the issues.”
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“Had this failed, people might think reeper and the right wing are sane.”
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So, if you and the Republicans are sane or not is a non-issue.
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Interesting.

“all of this to audit, police something that I already have and am happy with.”
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You missed the point.
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Your employer, or, if you are self employed, you will pay a tax, or you will hand in a piece of paper – probably smaller than you car insurance card/car registration – and be relieved of paying the tax.
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Somebody at the IRS has to look at all of those papers to understand if this is a valid insurance company or something you printed up on your computer. They are the ones who get hired in addition to a few more people to answer phones and explain this to people.
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Additional guns, if any are needed, would be for building security at the IRS building to protect it from angry people who sent in the wrong piece of paper and want to shoot somebody handling paperwork on the ninth floor.
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$5B over ten years is $500 mil per year which is about $1.67 per American per year. Maybe the wealthiest will have to pay $20 more per year.

FactCheck has provided compelling evidence that the story if false.
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While no organization has a 100% track record, they are right far more than they are wrong, and they provide the information used for their conclusions.
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If you have any evidence that the story is true, other than you’re febrile paranoia of anything Obama, please provide it.

“The mind-numbed fools who rely on such political activists cancel the votes of the thinking pro-America community.”
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What????? So did McCain win the last presidential election?
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Or do you mean to say the majority of Americans who voted Obama as President are non-thinking anti-Americans?

“FactCheck has provided compelling evidence that the story if false.”

But if they are indeed fact checking shouldn’t the “Compelling evidence” be found the first time. And what forces them to go back and find this compelling evidence?

As far as sources once again the left gives the flimsy “nobody’s perfect” but condemns out of hand any source from the right.

I am sure that there are a lot of unemployed right now that would love to have a Federal job.

I wonder how many unemployed are turning down Federal jobs?

But if they are indeed fact checking shouldn’t the “Compelling evidence” be found the first time. And what forces them to go back and find this compelling evidence?
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What in God’s name are you talking about?
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They fact checked it once, and pointed out all the lies then. They were never “forced” to “go back” and find it again.
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Let me second this suggestion:
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If you have any evidence that the story is true, other than you’re febrile paranoia of anything Obama, please provide it.
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But you can’t, can you? All you can say is FactCheck had to go back a second time (a lie), or maybe it’s not 16,500 maybe it’s 15,900 (another lie), or maybe the libtards don’t know what they’re talking about (a giant dose of projection).

BTW Kevin Klein was paid by the WH wrote about HC and did not disclose it. Proof check the sacred archives here I believe KT wrote about it.
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Uh, no:
http://search.time.com/results.html?N=0&Nty=1&p=0&cmd=tags&srchCat=Full+Archive&Ntt=ezra+klein+karen+tumulty&x=0&y=0
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You’re a liar. And you’re not even very good at it.

Shulman said: “What we’re going to do is try to make sure people are educated, there’s information, that we process payments quickly.”
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He said the IRS hadn’t yet figured out what staffing levels would be required, and he didn’t deny that some new agents might be hired.

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The amazing part of this stupid blog posting by Kate Pickert, a fledgling self professed reporter are the following statements from her that fully discredits not only her ill-informed claims, but those of her “FactCheck.Org” source.
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Dear little Katie says…
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“I was planning to write about the ridiculousness of Republicans claiming the health reform law will require 16,000 new IRS agents, but many others beat me to it.”

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The reason they beat you to it, is because Ezra and FactCheck don’t even know what will happen so far as IRS employees, how many will be hired and what their job titles will be. The FACT is that there WILL be IRS employees which will not only oversee the unconstitutional mandate, but collect penalties, access business records in order to find out who is insured and who isn’t. “Just like the 1099′s that banks send to the IRS”.
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While your OPINION of “cheap shots” by the Republicans are no different than your own and the other neo-Liberal lame stream media HACKS right here on TIME.com.
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You see Kate Pickert, in my opinion, you are nothing but a left wing HACK. Want to go “fact-check that”?

Here’s a small tip:
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A press release is not the best source for facts. Press releases are all about spin. Each side puts their own perspective on things, each side gets alarmist, each side goes overboard.
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(And a press release from a congressman whose previous claim to fame was getting arrested for a DUI is probably even more suspect.)
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Read the FactCheck piece. This has no basis in reality. None whatsoever.
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The Republicans are hoping people are too gullible to question their assertions. Ask yourself if you are.

Thanks so much Kate Pickert….
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The suck-up to TIME.com shills and hacks is nothing short of one big pukefest. Disgusting.
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It is so laughable that Liberals go all goo-goo gah-gah when someone in the media, a known liberal reporter such as Kate Pickert attacks conservatives. The tiny voices from the libtards come flocking out of hiding to cheer and jeer alike.
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This site is so bogus it is not even funny anymore.

Consider this scenario:
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It’s the fall of 2002, and President Bush is laying the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq. Of course, he’s going to use our volunteer military force.
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But then some relatively obscure liberal Democratic congressman — say, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard — says that if we go to war, we’re going to need a lot of troops. She cites Gen. Eric Shinseki’s testimony before Congress about the troop levels we’ll need, and then — on her own initiative, mind you — says, well, this means we’re going to need 400,000 troops, and since we don’t have them, that means President Bush is going to bring back the draft!
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A complete lie. A guess by a lone congressman with no basis in reality.
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It’s the exact same thing here.

I don’t go around thinking I’m smarter than other people.
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Except when I read your mouthbreathing comments here, of course.
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Listen, it’s simple — if you don’t want to be sneered at for being stupid, stop being stupid.
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You’re welcome.

Yes, FactCheck.org is so left wing … that Dick Cheney cited it to defend himself in the 2004 VP debate.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FactCheck

Anyone else picture Rusty parading around his basement reading these insane rants of his out loud to himself?
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So sad.

This site is so bogus it is not even funny anymore.
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Tell me about it.
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There’s this one commenter here who actually posts under multiple names — pathetic ones that sound like they were dreamt up by a preteen shut-in, like “rustyreturns” and “newfreedomblog” — to try and pretend like other people share his stupidity.
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Totally bogus, man. Totally.

Rusty,
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Did you see what’s been going on?
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It’s like that kids game, telephone.
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You see, one Republican propagandist starts with saying that they think that there will need to be more IRS agents.
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The next one starts tinkering with the numbers to try and say that CBO is biased and didn’t include number.
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The third Republican adds on the concept that there will be 16,500 IRS employees paid for with that money.
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The fourth one then adds that they must be Armed agents, not just employees.
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It’s just like end of life care at a hospice, became, mocking it, end of life counseling to counseling people on how to commit euthanasia to death panels.
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It’s all about the incestuous nature of the right wing parts of the media along with right wing politicians.
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You, clearly, have no idea and are just sure that you are battling evil.
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Someday you’ll be so embarrassed that you’ll never get involved promoting a political point of view again.

Patrick, I think Jon Stewart described it nicely when he said that Fox is a “cyclonic perpetual emotion machine”
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That description is fits most of the right wing here including freeper, and rusty “survival seeds” blog.
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They tend to go with their emotion, keep ignoring all the facts thrown at them, and pick up more and more rubbish as they go along.

Distortions like this chip away at the credibility of Republican critics of health reform.
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I know numerous others have pointed this out in this comment thread, but honestly, Pickert, how did you manage to miss the entirety of the HCR debate?

Can one chip away at something that drove off the cliff in flames years ago?

Has anyone else wondered why Rusty/newfie loves his diminutives so much?
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It’s always “dear little Katie” or “little Cliffy” or the “little liberals.”
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It’s kind of weird, like he doesn’t understand that the Internet is made of symbols and electrical impulses.

Exactly.
I mean, did she forget about the time Obama went and talked to the House Republicans for a while, and at the end of the session they were still offering up the same “socialist government takeover” arguments as the beginning of the session?
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Did she miss Paul Ryan offering up a budget proposal that privatizes Medicare?

Rusty parading around in a bath towel, waiting for The Former Never Was A Maverick?

Or the former half-term governor and her death panels? Why does anyone listen to the party of grifters, quitters and bull-sh*tters?

socialist government takeover
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My House rep, the allegedly moderate Dave Reichert, is still sending me emails about the “government-run health care system” that the Democrats just created.

After shutting the Left out of the health bill I think it is hilarious that the Democrats are now being called socialists. Couldn’t happen to a better pack of lying fools.

“There are areas of policy where Conservatives could actually contribute.”
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Absolutely. Nobody cuts taxes for rich people, deregulates industry, denies basic human rights and starts more wars than “Conservatives”.

Thanks you Kate Pickert for telling the public the important truth; made important, as usual, by Republican lies. Personally, I enjoy your sense of humor as well. Republican “credibility” indeed.

Now officially Friday (EST at least) glancing back at today’s threads, I can only wonder WTF happened to no feeding Thursdays?

Ah sh*t, you’re right, I broke the cardinal rule.

Barring PW’s resurrection, I’d say you’re granted a reprieve. We all know she’d string you jokers up by your loins.

Art Pepper;

You’re looking at the FY2005 numbers from HHS. That’s why they’re off a bit.

Also, Full Disclosure on my innumeracy: The $13.9 billion over ten years is not less less than 1/10th of what the HSS spends in a year. The $13.9 reflects one year of savings, not ten. Hence 1 years savings is .038% of HHS annual budget while $139 billion over then years is .382 or 38.2% of the yearly HHS budget.

My bad, sometimes I get ahead of myself.

Interesting that no one took me to task on this one… I guess “Rusty” gave them all something more to chew on.

I was remiss in not giving Katie kudos for having the journalistic courage to call this what it is.
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It feels weird and pathetic to even have to say that. It feels weird and pathetic that we need a factcheck.org. But It has always amazed me how few in the US media ever seem to have the will to uncover the lies told and expose the manipulation by Republicans.
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To be fair the US media has the same aversion to separating fact from fiction when it comes to centrist democrats, corporate propaganda or which ever politician they happen to want and desire a lasting loving relationship with.

My thoughts exactly, JC.
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We all know that “Whack-a-Mole” is a silly game, but at the end of a long week and the right thread…it’s hard to resist taking a few shots.

Stuart Z, in the Swamp, said it best when the topic of Republicans who believed various untrue things about Obama including fascism. When asking for a definition of fascism – since associating any known definition of fascism to this administration is absurd. He said something like (forgive me if I am partially inaccurate) “Some people think Hitler was the arch enemy of communism. But, others think that he was the Easter Bunny.”:
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With this article as one of the few, bold exceptions, MSM tends to treat all statements as having equal weight.
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It is a knowable fact if there will be 16,500 armed IRS agents or, the truth that the IRS will hire about 5,000 new people with less than 200 of them being IRS enforcement officers who are, like the existing ones, bound by all of the standard rules of law enforcement. So, in many of these “debates” Republicans have a totally fake set of facts.
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I’m not saying that Democrats never bend the facts a little here and a little there so that it is only 90% correct, but, over the past couple of years Republicans seem to create an alternate universe for themselves.

So it’s only 15,000 agents needed. Big deal. Obama has been searching for a way to create his own Gestapo. This may be it.

Retardomax,
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At most 200 agents , probably fewer.
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Learn to read!!!

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

No offense patrick, you’re usually pretty reasonable, but can’t we agree that no one actually knows the numbers on this, just like everything else the government does and therefore this is all exactly what it is at this point: total speculation?
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Or would you prefer that ricardo turns around and calls you a liar when it (hypothetically) turns out to be 1000 or 2500 agents? Sure, that’s a lot less than the GOP claimed but a lot more than Dems did too.
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I’ve never seen a number quoted by the government of we will need x number of people or dollars or whatever that didn’t get adjusted up, and generally adjusted up drastically over time. Doesn’t

Look at the other posts.
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CBO had said that, for paperwork, 5,000 total new employees will be hired for the IRS.
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Another entry points out that the enforcement division is 3%.
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3% of 5,000 is 150.
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The CBO did not give any known reason why there would be the need for even one additional enforcement officer.
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So, the number of additional enforcement officers could be as low as 0.
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To be average, there would be 150.
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I then came up with an extreme maximum number of 200 even though this would be 133 1/3% more than the average and said that that would be the extreme maximum.
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Read through and you’ll see that 200 is a very high estimate since there is no reason to believe that tax evasion will increase for businesses due to this bill and, since it does not change the tax structure at all for individuals (individuals who are not, also, a business) there is, also, no reason to believe that tax evasion will increase for individuals at all, either.
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So, my best estimate is 0 and rounded it up to 200 for a worse case scenario.
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Make sense now?

I never questioned your math. Which appeared to be impeccable and leaning towards the higher number for a reason that I understand.
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I only question the honesty of the government officials who provided the numbers to the CBO. While the CBO is non-partisan they do only work with what you give them, sort of like a calculator: garbage in, garbage out.
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Both sides have a reason to input garbage to the CBO on this topic; the GOP on the high side, the DNC on the low side.

“The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates there were 29.3 million nonfarm business tax returns in 2004; however, this number may overestimate the number of firms, as one business can operate more than one taxable entity.”
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http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/aboutsb/sbfacts/sbnumber.html
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Estimate of 5,000 employees, 40 hours per week 50 weeks per year.
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40 hours multiplied by 50 weeks equals 2,000 hours per year.
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5,000 multiplied by 2,000 hours equals ten million hours.
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29.3 Million forms taking 10 million hours to read and enter…
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10 million hours times 60 minutes equals 600 million minutes.
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million divided by a million equals one.
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600/29.3 = just over 20 minutes each.
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So, that means that each and every employer in the United States will get to chat with IRS CSRs for twenty minutes each with that number.
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Sure, the logistics of the IRS are probably much different than just one person reading the form and taking phone calls about it, but, it sounds very reasonable to me.
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See how this makes sense but people with guns running around makes no sense at all?