Patterico's Pontifications

2/6/2023

What the President Ought to Say on Tuesday

Filed under: General — JVW @ 6:40 am



[guest post by JVW]

I hate the State of the Union address. I know that the Constitution commands (Article II, Section 3) that the Executive “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient,” but “from time to time” certainly doesn’t have to translate to “every damn February,” nor does it require a highly stage-managed appearance at the rostrum in the House of Representatives delivering a ridiculously focus-grouped spiel, much of it completely untrue, broken up by staged applause from the President’s legislative allies. I feel the same way about the usefulness of the SOTU (as the cool kids call it) as the boss does, and I’m willing to bet that Dana doesn’t rearrange her life specifically to witness the spectacle either.

Nevertheless, I naturally have a whole plethora of ideas as to what I would like Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. to tell us this coming Tuesday, shortly after he is announced to the chamber and greeted with a loud “huzzah” — fulsome and sustained from one side of the aisle, and perfunctory and unenthusiastic from the other — and the session is gaveled into order. It seems almost inconceivable that departing head marionette Chief of Staff Ronald Klain did not carefully draft the President’s words before turning in his lanyard and badge, so I expect Mr. Biden’s words to be his usual cocktail of self-serving half-truths, silly exaggerations, and outright lies, puffed up by his penchant for inflating his own meager abilities and making up a autobiographical stories that have scant relation to what actually transpired. I don’t expect our President to suddenly start channeling his inner Ronald Reagan on Tuesday, but given that he will certainly present a heavy dose of Democrat Party orthodoxy, here is what I would like to hear him say should he truly be interested in healing the breach and working with Congress.

The New Congress
“The American people in their wisdom have divided government quite narrowly. While it’s true that our nation has serious divisions regarding the role of government and the best path to prosperity for all of our people, it is equally true that they demand we address our major problems together, both sides listening to each other and seeking avenues of compromise. I pledge to work with Republicans to make this a reality.”

The Budget
[After the expected argument that the Democrat spending orgy is paying dividends and “saved” us from recession:] “I recognize that our nation’s spending must be brought back in line with our revenues and that we cannot continue running thirteen-figure deficits. I am willing to take a look at COVID stimulus money which has not yet been spent and rescind funds that no longer appear to be necessary. Going forward, we will look for legitimate ways to bring spending down, including revisiting the efficacy of the federal government subsidizing certain industries. All options will be on the table.”

China
“For the past fifty years, the United States and other democracies have expanded engagement with China in the hopes that cultivating strong economic and cultural relations would lead to an enduring friendship from East to West. We have never demanded that China change its form of government, only that they begin to recognize human rights and international law as agreed upon by bodies such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, among others. We find ourselves very concerned that China is not a reliable partner in this respect. We continue to engage China in the hopes that our two great nations can reach accommodation, but continued provocations by China will leave us no choice but to seek out cultural and trade partners elsewhere.”

Culture Wars
“One of the most divisive topics today is the question of how much remains to be done to continue our nation’s march towards a path of greater equality, diversity, and inclusion for people of all races, ethnicities, religions, genders, sexual orientations, political beliefs, and other differences which make our nation such a vibrant mosaic. And while my Administration will never go back on our efforts to ensure that all people are accepted and respected for who they are, we do recognize that many times well-intentioned people have gone overboard in their desire for equality for all, and that paradoxically many who demand acceptance of their viewpoints do so by trying to prevent others from expressing their own. My Administration will continue to insist that all voices are heard, especially those who express ideas that often are outside of the Administration’s policies and objectives. Nobody is free to speak their mind unless everybody is free to speak their mind, even if that sometimes causes conflict and hurt feelings.”

Abortion
“My Administration respectfully disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobbs this past spring. We believe the right to full reproductive freedom is a universal human right, for all child-bearing people and their partners. Nevertheless, we accept that the Court has made its ruling. We will continue to sponsor and advocate for legislation which allows pregnant people to exercise their rights, no matter where they live. That said, we also want to work with those who sincerely oppose abortion to see if we can agree upon ways to support young mothers and other birthing people to take care of their children in the important early years. This includes [insert a whole laundry list of parental leave, child nutrition, early preschool, and other lefty initiatives], which we urge Congress to work with us to pass. We also vow to vigorously investigate and prosecute anyone who seeks to harass and intimidate anyone exercising their right to reproductive or prenatal services, whether that is at Planned Parenthood or at the local Catholic Pregnancy Crisis Center.”

Classified Documents
“I am personally embarrassed by the discovery of unsecured classified documents among my personal effects, and I sincerely apologize to the American people for the lapse in judgement. I pledge to fully cooperate with investigators, including the independent council appointed by my attorney general, and I will accept whatever sanctions are proposed at the end of his investigation. I further pledge to work with our Congress and our security offices to enact legislation which will ensure a much more rigorous custodial chain for classified documents, so that the issues faced by me and many of my predecessors will no longer be possible.”

Other Investigations
“As someone who spent over thirty years in the Senate, I respect and appreciate the legislative body’s duty to provide a check on the executive branch. And I know that a part of our system of checks-and-balances is for legislative committees to investigate various aspects of what goes on in the White House, including even with the family and friends of the Chief Executive. If Congress will conduct their investigations in a nonpartisan manner, I promise that my White House will fully cooperate with them. I am confident they will find that my team, my family and friends, and I have conducted ourselves with the highest degree of ethical behavior.”

Reelection
[I would like him to announce that he will not seek reelection, but I know that’s a snowball’s chance in hell, so I would thus like to hear the following:] “I want to announce here that I do plan to be a candidate for a second term as President in 2024. That said, I do understand that my party has a number of dynamic leaders with great ideas for our country, so while I fully intend to convince my party and the nation that I deserve four more years, I will not undertake any efforts to prevent members of my party from challenging me in the primaries. I will not spend a great deal of time on the campaign trail next winter and spring, since there is so much left for me to accomplish on behalf of the American people, but I will vigorously defend my record of accomplishment and my plans for a second term.”

That’s it. It’s all a steaming pile of equine excrement, naturally, but it’s pretty much what I would advise the President to say were I asked. My expectation is that we will hear none of what I have written above; instead the President will be his usual prickly, befuddled, demagogic, logorrheic self, insisting that his Administration has delivered great successes while denying there is anything to the notion that he and his family are a bunch of swindlers enriching themselves while flouting all of the rules that they so piously claim to honor. No way I am going to listen to his nonsense, though I do suspect that I’ll peek into the open thread for the speech.

Share your suggestions and predictions for the speech in the comments.

– JVW

50 Responses to “What the President Ought to Say on Tuesday”

  1. I only wish, JVW.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  2. All I expect

    Horatio (004ab6)

  3. What the President Ought to Say on Tuesday

    “Folks, here’s the deal. I’m not kidding. Seriously, no joke– or I’m a lying dog-faced pony soldier… ‘Corvette Summer’ is airing over on Turner Classic Movies… and that’s a fact, Jack! Change the channel!”

    DCSCA (f5a166)

  4. Things I do not expect to hear:

    “I’ve looked at the charges regarding my son, and I’m shocked, SHOCKED! at what he’s been up to. I promise the American people that these charges will be investigated without partiality!”

    “It is time to begin binding up our wounds, so I’m announcing a program of clemency for all non-violent participants in the Capitol riot.”

    “As of this moment, I declare all federal COVID emergency orders to be ended.”

    “In the past I have said some very unkind and even slanderous things about the Republican Party and some of its members, particularly accusing them of wanting to bring back slavery and Jim Crow. I’m sorry. This was wrong. I apologize and hope to do better.”

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  5. Also not expected:

    “There are those that feel that I’ve been increasingly impaired in recent years and think that I have no business running for re-election. Therefore, I am releasing all of my medical records for the last 20 years, and will submit to a physical and mental examination by independent doctors, with those results to be released publicly.”

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  6. @4 and 5

    I love it when Kevin channels his inner comedian.

    norcal (7345e5)

  7. ‘Course the smart move for Mister Gaffer Machine would be to say nothing.

    Just mail it in.

    DCSCA (994069)

  8. Great post. Boy, if only it were true…

    And no, JVW, I won’t be watching SOTU. Mostly because there won’t be any haute couture to ooh and ah over or critique, so why bother?

    Dana (1225fc)

  9. I pray for some wag– GOP, indie or D– to release a balloon in the chamber mid-speech.

    DCSCA (991dd9)

  10. The important thing is that Biden enunciate and not mumble or slur his words. And no shuffling when he walks. The best image he can project is that he’s not in serious mental decline, even though we all know he’s in serious mental decline.
    As for his content, meh. It’ll be standard Democrat boilerplate, and there’s nothing JVW or anyone else can do about it.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  11. There are those that feel that I’ve been increasingly impaired in recent years and think that I have no business running for re-election. Therefore, I am releasing all of my medical records for the last 20 years, and will submit to a physical and mental examination by independent doctors, with those results to be released publicly.”

    A SOTU message is not the place for that.

    “In the past I have said some very unkind and even slanderous things about the Republican Party and some of its members, particularly accusing them of wanting to bring back slavery and Jim Crow. I’m sorry. This was wrong. I apologize and hope to do better.”

    That might be OK< but he won't say that anywhere.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  12. making up a autobiographical stories that have scant relation to what actually transpired.

    There’s an extra word “a” there before autobiographical. He continues to do so, or at least to repeat old ones.

    And nobody but me says that his claim to have been instrumental in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor was another one of those autobiographical stories that have scant relation to what actually transpired. (he never said it was to stop an investigation – that was the twist Putin’s agents put on it)

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  13. Chutzpah.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  14. SOTU guests:

    House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, whose committee is opening an investigation into Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, announced Friday he’d invite Roya Rahmani, the country’s first female ambassador to the United States.

    RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, the mother and step-father of Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old who was beaten to death by Memphis police in January, will be guests of Nevada Democrat Steven Horsford, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus.

    Missouri Democrat Cori Bush announced Monday that she invited Michael Brown Sr., the father of Michael Brown.

    Rep. Gwen Moore (D), of Wisconsin, invited professional basketball player Sterling Brown, who was tackled and tased by police in 2018 while he was a member of the Milwaukee Bucks.

    Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R), of Oregon, invited Portland police officer Jordan Zaitz, who has served “on the front lines of the homelessness and drug crises in Oregon.

    Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, of New York, announced last week she’d bring Jeffrey T. Smith, a county sheriff from upstate New York.

    Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) invited After the Fire USA CEO Jennifer Gray Thompson.

    Sen. Tim Kaine, of Virginia, will bring the International Vice President of United Mine Workers of America James Gibbs.

    Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, will also promote those laws’ positive impact on workers by attending with Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO.

    Abortion rights activist Kate Dineen will attend with Sen. Edward J. Markey.

    Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) will be in attendance with Army veteran Richard M. Fierro, who charged and disarmed a shooter in Colorado Springs last year.

    Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) invited Henry Lo, mayor of Monterey Park, where a shooting at a dance studio on Jan. 21 killed 11 people.

    Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., will bring professional soccer player and two-time World Cup champion Kelley O’Hara.

    Rep. Brendan F. Boyle, D-Penn., invited Chris DeShields, a Philadelphia bus driver who stopped an attempted carjacking by using his 40-foot bus to box in and scare off the perpetrator.

    Both Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) and Biden himself extended invitations to Brandon Tsay, who is credited with saving lives after he wrestled a weapon away from an active shooter during an attack in Monterey Park, California, on Jan. 21.

    Darrell Woodie, who called 911 after witnessing Rep. Greg Steube’s (R-FL) fall off a ladder, will attend the State of the Union as his guest.

    List compiled from here and here.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  15. Both Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) and Biden himself extended invitations to Brandon Tsay, who is credited with saving lives. . .

    If Biden introduces him during the address should the GOP erupt with chants of “Let’s go Brandon”?

    JVW (e52b83)

  16. Missouri Democrat Cori Bush announced Monday that she invited Michael Brown Sr., the father of Michael Brown.

    Michael Brown the junior was shot dead eight-and-one-half years ago. Can’t Rep. Bush find a more current figure for her obnoxious race hustling? Or have none of the other 2500+ homicides which have occurred in her Congressional district since then involved allegedly racist cops?

    JVW (e52b83)

  17. The important thing is that Biden enunciate and not mumble or slur his words.

    Chances of that from a 50 year history of verbal gaffes- next to nothing.

    And no shuffling when he walks.

    Not a chance- he does all the time now.

    The best image he can project is that he’s not in serious mental decline, even though we all know he’s in serious mental decline.

    The best image he can project is to plagiarized audio of Obama speaking with a hologram from his own 1988 withdrawal from the presidential race.

    DCSCA (d76325)

  18. If Biden introduces him during the address should the GOP erupt with chants of “Let’s go Brandon”?

    Lol.

    Dana (1225fc)

  19. Biden will be juiced and will need to take the rest of the week off. His doctors should get all the credit for getting the ventriloquist/teleprompter reader dummy ready

    steveg (fc7302)

  20. Biden you voted for me to get trump out and keep bernie out. Thats what the rich donor class and corporate establishment and deep state wanted. I did my job. Most voters don’t want me to run in 2024 and that includes most democrats! I am for reparations so I will get the black vote in southern primaries so F-off! Trump will get an all black jury in DC and mostly minority jury in NYC. and will have to run from a jail cell. Hope he doesn’t end up clintoned like jeffery epstein! I will put AOC on the ticket for the latinx vote and reparations so I can bump harris to the supreme court.

    asset (1009d6)

  21. Since you’ve laid out a speech that a lot of Americans are longing to hear –

    Can you think of a Republican who could deliver it?

    John B Boddie (18ca17)

  22. Nikki Haley delivers a good speech

    steveg (8bb0a1)

  23. I know this could be bad for the country in a way, but I kind of wish Biden would drift off into Bidenville rest home mode during the speech so we can see for ourselves how bad/not bad it is behind closed doors in between cycles.

    steveg (8bb0a1)

  24. If Biden introduces him during the address should the GOP erupt with chants of “Let’s go Brandon”?

    The whole assembly will rise as one in a standing ovation for the Lenny Scutnik moment.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  25. I can bump harris to the supreme court

    I would hope that her rating would be “Very Much Not Qualified”

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  26. Nikki Haley delivers a good speech

    But it won’t be her as that would be taking sides.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  27. Can you think of a Republican who could deliver it?

    Lord, I hope not. I specifically stipulated that this would be a Democrat speech and thus would make the case for a generally progressive agenda. I would hope that a Republican would give a speech calling for respect for free speech and freedom of conscience, a reimagining of the role that government ought to play in our lives, and a willingness to rethink foreign entanglements which are not working out as we had hoped.

    JVW (e52b83)

  28. Nikki Haley delivers a good speech

    steveg (8bb0a1) — 2/7/2023 @ 8:36 am

    She has to get elected first. And she won’t make it past the primaries.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  29. Biden SOTU Guests

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  30. SOTU guessing game: Who will be the designated survivor?

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  31. Buttigieg — he’s on leave anyway.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  32. Looking forward to Joey explaining what the generals mean by a ‘domain awareness gap’ in detail to the American people. Joey… is it anything like a mine shaft gap?

    https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/c00b94e5-bbb3-4ea9-a078-7a1a21b87bc5

    DCSCA (7aaf26)

  33. Buttigieg — he’s on leave anyway.

    Kevin M (1ea396) — 2/7/2023 @ 10:25 am

    You do know that happened in 2021, and he only took a couple of months. No family leave lasts that long. My bet is Marty Walsh, since he is leaving.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  34. You do know that happened in 2021

    How can anyone tell?

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  35. Trump probably thinks he takes over in that case anyway.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  36. “Nikki Haley delivers a good speech”

    Heck she can give the SOTU and the response.

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  37. “Nikki Haley delivers a good speech”

    Heck she can give the SOTU and the response.

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 2/7/2023 @ 11:23 am

    LOL!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  38. One initiative I would like to see:

    In an amendment to privacy law notifications, companies should be required to identify the types of information they make available to hackers, and allow customers to opt out.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  39. Heck she can give the SOTU and the response.

    Well, John Kasich could do both of those AND the commentary.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  40. JVW (e52b83) — 2/6/2023 @ 4:08 pm

    Michael Brown the junior was shot dead eight-and-one-half years ago. Can’t Rep. Bush find a more current figure for her obnoxious race hustling?

    She’s perpetuating a lie that Obama’s Department of Justice virtually said was a lie — but tried to do it unnoticeably.

    Based on this investigation, the Department has concluded that Darren Wilson’s actions do not constitute prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 242, which prohibits uses of deadly force that are “objectively unreasonable,” as defined by the United States Supreme Court. The evidence, when viewed as a whole, does not support the conclusion that Wilson’s uses of deadly force were “objectively unreasonable” under the Supreme Court’s definition. Accordingly, under the governing federal law and relevant standards set forth in the USAM, it is not appropriate to present this matter to a federal grand jury for indictment, and it should therefore be closed without prosecution….

    Also:

    There are no credible witness accounts that state that Brown was clearly attempting to surrender when Wilson shot him. As detailed throughout this report, those witnesses who say so have given accounts that could not be relied upon in a prosecution because they are irreconcilable with the physical evidence, inconsistent with the credible accounts of other eyewitnesses, inconsistent with the witness’s own prior statements, or in some instances, because the witnesses have acknowledged that their initial accounts were untrue.

    Obama was honest enough to not want to initiate a political prosecution. But his Administration let people down easily.

    They didn’t release the report until they could find different problems wit the police in Ferguson, Missouri.

    This was the start of the anti-police/Black Lives Matter propaganda.

    And Cori Bush is from Missouri. In the St. Louis area.

    She talks about that the way Donald Trump talks about the 2020 election.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  41. I further pledge to work with our Congress and our security offices to enact legislation which will ensure a much more rigorous custodial chain for classified documents, so that the issues faced by me and many of my predecessors will no longer be possible.”

    That won’t work.

    Some of the documents taken away were Biden’s own notes, take away to analyzed for possibly containing classified information. And classified information appears in the newspapers all the time.

    You could say that about Presidential records. But there needs to be a bright line.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  42. Well, John Kasich could do both of those AND the commentary…

    …and chew food on camera with his mouth open.

    DCSCA (8bd6ce)

  43. The Biden Administration thinks blacks are audited more by the IRS (and wants to stop that) even though nobody, even the researchers who proved that, knows if an individual is black or not.

    It’s not entirely due to the Earned Income Tax Credit. Other factors are lack of business income (the IRS avoids auditing forms with business income because they are more complicated and take longer) or making obvious mistakes in filing returns (like claiming credits that, on its face, they are not eligible for)

    I had the thought that maybe some of it could be the use of certain tax preparers that set up shop in certain zip codes. If atax prparer prepared faulty returns, other tax returns prepared by the same business should be more likely to get audited. But it doesn’t have anything directly to do with race. It can’t. It’s impossible. It isn’t systemic racism. But they are not interested in getting to the bottom of that.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/us/politics/black-americans-irs-tax-audits.html

    The I.R.S. does not detail how it selects returns for audit. But the researchers were able to isolate several apparent explanations for why Black taxpayers are targeted so much more frequently. One is complexity: It is much harder for the agency to audit returns that include business income, because that process requires expertise from individual auditors. Such returns appear to be audited less often than returns from otherwise similar taxpayers who do not report income from a business.

    Black taxpayers are far less likely than others to report business income. And Black taxpayers appear to disproportionately file returns with the sort of potential errors that are easy for I.R.S. systems to identify, like underreporting certain income or claiming tax credits that the taxpayer does not qualify for, the authors find.

    In effect, the researchers suggest that the I.R.S. has focused on audits that are easier to conduct and as a result, finds itself disproportionately auditing a historically disadvantaged group rather than other taxpayers, including high net-worth individuals….

    ….“Historically, there has been this idea that if federal agencies and other policymakers don’t have access to data on race and don’t explicitly take race into account when making policy decisions and allocating resources, the resulting outcome can’t be structurally biased,” said Evelyn Smith, an author of the paper who is a University of Michigan economics graduate student and visiting fellow at Stanford’s RegLab.

    One lesson from the study, she said, “is that absolutely is not true.”

    On his first day in office, President Biden signed a series of executive orders seeking to advance racial equity in the federal government and the nation. One of them included a directive to the White House budget office to “study methods for assessing whether agency policies and actions create or exacerbate barriers to full and equal participation by all eligible individuals.” …

    …The group wanted to use machine learning to improve the federal auditing process, and they wanted to know if that process was infused with racial bias. But they couldn’t easily observe it, because the I.R.S. does not ask taxpayers to declare their race on tax forms, or otherwise track race in any way.

    Instead, the researchers built a way to essentially fill in the blanks on taxpayer race, through a partnership with the Treasury that gave them access to 148 million tax returns and 780,000 audits, primarily from 2014, but ranging from 2010 to 2018.

    They used taxpayer names — first and last — and the census demographics of their neighborhoods to effectively guess the race of any given filer. Then they examined those results in a small sample of returns from taxpayers who had reported their race elsewhere, on state election forms, in order to be confident that their estimates were correct.

    The eventual findings were stark and surprising, the authors said. They saw an immediate correlation between the racial composition of neighborhoods and the audit rates in those areas — vivid signs of significantly higher audit rates for Black taxpayers.

    Black Americans are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage jobs. They are more likely than whites to claim the E.I.T.C. The authors wondered if that prevalence in claiming the credit might explain why Black taxpayers face more audits, because I.R.S. data show the agency audits people who claim the E.I.T.C. at higher rates than other taxpayers.

    But as the research progressed, the authors found the share of Black Americans claiming the E.I.T.C. only explained a small part of the audit differences. Instead, more than three-quarters of the disparity stems from how much more often Black taxpayers who claim the credit are audited, compared with E.I.T.C. claimants who are not Black.

    Treasury officials are aware of the findings. The department started an advisory committee last fall to help it focus on disparities faced by Americans of color. This month, researchers from the department published an analysis of racial disparities in the tax code. It found a wide range of tax advantages that largely help higher-income Americans, like the mortgage interest deduction and preferential tax rates for investment income, disproportionately benefit white taxpayers. It’s not race. This particular thing mentioned here is how things skew, ut they’ll always skew some way.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  44. It seems like “domain awareness” is not yet a formally defined term.

    Surprisingly, the term “domain awareness” is not formally known in Department of Defense organizations, doctrine, or lexicon, nor is it clearly defined in a wider sense, despite its creeping, informal acceptance into modern vernacular.2

    Also:

    There are four physical domains (sea, air, land, space) and one functional domain (cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum [EMS]) encompassed in the MDO/JADO concept, [multi-domain operations (MDO) and joint all-domain operations] which are collectively known as the five operational or warfighting domains (see figure 1).

    Translation, probably: Gen. Glen VanHerck meant that they were not aware of everything they should have been aware of.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  45. “Gap” modified the word “awareness” alone. The combined term modified the word “domain.” The domain was unspecified in the quote.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  46. Gap means that while they detected some balloons, there was a limited amount of awareness of that there.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  47. 43. And the IRS uses an algorithm.

    Democrats, it seems claim the algorithm is racist. They should audit more Republicans and fewer Democrats.

    Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement on Wednesday that the audit rates documented in the study were “unacceptable, but a consequence of algorithmic tools that exacerbate racial biases in our institutions.”

    Mr. Neal said he was looking forward to working with the Treasury on the new enforcement measures — and funding levels — that Mr. Biden set in motion last year. “It’s clear we must address the discrimination at the I.R.S.,” he said.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  48. Sammy. That speaks to the popularity of the phrase “Systemic Racism” even the computers are racists.

    I guess I’d want to know the results of those audits. What percent of the audits resulted in an adjustment in favor of the IRS? I also would want to know the type of audit. If it is a full blown inspection of any and all supporting documents, or was it one of those letters the IRS sends out that tell you they’ve made an adjustment and you owe another $32.14

    steveg (952372)

  49. steveg (952372) — 2/7/2023 @ 1:46 pm

    Sammy. That speaks to the popularity of the phrase “Systemic Racism” even the computers are racists.

    Its’s the algorithms. They are racist even when nobody knows the race.

    I guess I’d want to know the results of those audits. What percent of the audits resulted in an adjustment in favor of the IRS?

    The algorithm would probably pick characteristics that gave more money to the IRS – but within a short period of time. I suspect they used preparer as one factor.

    I also would want to know the type of audit. If it is a full blown inspection of any and all supporting documents, or was it one of those letters the IRS sends out that tell you they’ve made an adjustment and you owe another $32.14

    The IRS counts it as an audit any time they ask for further information

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  50. @27 – “… I would hope that a Republican would give a speech calling for respect for free speech …”

    You mean like supporting the study of Critical Race Theory in our colleges and universities?

    John Boddie (18ca17)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.1039 secs.