Intrepid reporter Patrick Howley now claims that after 500 days he is still refusing to pay his taxes over his mistaken belief that because he doesn’t agree with the IRS, somehow he is excused from paying them. His complaints against the IRS are pretty vivid but not very lucid. Just because you don’t like the IRS or its tax system, or even those who have led the agency in the past, doesn’t give you or anyone else a free lunch or a free pass to not pay your fair share of taxes due. Of course Howley has a litany of complaints, none of which I might add measure up to getting a pass from paying taxes owed no matter how large or how small they are. According to Howley, if we all somehow disliked the agency or those who run it we can all just say screw the IRS and walk away from having to pay them without any consequence at all.
What has happened in these last 500 days, since I first started covering the “phony” IRS scandal and realized that these faceless bureaucrats harassing the president’s political enemies were maybe not worthy of my hard-earned $619 that they claimed I owe to them in 2014? What happened in America in these 500 aggravating days?
Just because shit happens Howley, it doesn’t mean that you get a free pass. Again, Howley doesn’t produce one iota of law that gives him a free pass. Instead he lists his main complaints about the IRS:
The government shut down because of Obamacare and Republicans got blamed. The Obamacare website was screwed up. ISIS beheaded three Western journalists. The “knockout” game ravaged pedestrians in major cities. Vladimir Putin seized Crimea. Guatemalan children poured across the border. John Kerry let Iran keep having nuclear power plants. War raged between Israel and Hamas. Armed federal agents stole a rancher’s cattle and then it was all okay because the rancher said something racist. Ebola broke out. A Malaysian plane got lost. Racial tensions spilled over in Ferguson. Obama’s Gallup rating dropped six points, from 49 to 43.
Robin Williams died. So did Joan Rivers. Top-rated Jay Leno was forced off The Tonight Show and replaced by lame, unfunny overachiever Jimmy Fallon. David Letterman announced his retirement and CBS picked Stephen Colbert to replace him. “Big Brother” became the highest-rated entertainment program even though nobody knew it’s still on. Tucker Carlson fell asleep on television. Jon Stewart directed a movie. Tyler Perry created three TV shows.
Then it gets really weird when he takes it personal, which shows the real reasons he isn’t paying his taxes which is because he is dead broke, and people beat him up, and he has had a bad hair day more than once. I guess he doesn’t make very much money producing bile for The Daily Caller, so his chief complaint seems to be that life hasn’t treated him very well, so instead of looking deep within himself and taking on a few extra jobs and crawling out of his self imposed sewer, he decides instead to rally round the flag and interpret the constitution and rules of law to say that he, and only he, doesn’t have to pay his taxes because he is upset at the IRS. And if you follow him you don’t have to pay them either.
The reality here is that eventually he will go to jail for tax evasion, but not until it reaches a larger limit of taxes owed which he refuses to pay so far. For now its all just grist for his mill. I guess he believes that other conservatives will stand up for free speech and all when he is hauled off to the grey bar hotel while he claims he was jailed over his refusal to follow Obama’s law or some such thing. Problem with that meme is that it won’t happen. But right now he doesn’t seem to care.
500 days ago, I lived alone in a crappy apartment in the depressing Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., six Metro stops from work. Now I live with a roommate I’d never met before in a crappier apartment in the even more depressing neighborhood of [redacted], seven Metro stops away.
I got into some fights, verbally: on Twitter, with my landlord, with my bank manager, with people who work for the Washington Area Metro Authority, with a guy on the street who said he was going to beat my ass for wearing a sportcoat. I got mugged. My glasses got broken. I had to go to the free community health clinic. I found out that my lungs are all screwed up due to smoking. I refused to quit smoking. PNC Bank frequently fined me for not having any money. I was the victim of identity theft. My computer and phone were repeatedly hacked into (and they’re still in there….I’m on to you, Holder).
The Democratic National Committee led a boycott against me. Many journalists tried to get me fired. Someone named Dave Weigel called me “impotent.” My friend, former Caller editor Will Rahn, left to go join a lame liberal mainstream publication called “The Daily Beast.” I don’t know how to create viral content like college kids can, which is going to end up being pretty bad for me in journalism. Truth-challenged flack Jay Carney, meanwhile, got a job at CNN.
So how does this narrative give someone a free pass for not paying their fair share of taxes? It doesn’t. All Howley is doing is trying to stir up long ago discarded resentment for the IRS and how they supposedly treated conservatives, none of which were him I might add. Boo Hoo.. Talk about falling on your sword for the wealthy conservative elites. These conservatives have people falling all over themselves to go to jail for their pious phony we are being attacked narratives. Well, Howley good luck with that stupid meme. Better get yourself a tax attorney and figure out a way to pay your share before the dreaded hooded IRS tax man comes via his black helicopter to haul you away.
sounds like this guy needs to get a refill on his meds.
most likely he doesn’t actually owe that much money because he probably didn’t make enough. he’s just too lay, too stupid to keep receipts and take deductions like the rest of us working schmoes to every single day. he might consider investing in turbotax for soem help addressing his issues.
i doubt however, he wants help. he is just complaining because he’s entitled, as a sovereign fuckhead, to not have to bow down to the federal government because #FreeDumb.
fuck him.
Well it can’t be his sunny disposition keeping him from getting a real job or a real friend, so clearly it’s an unwed gay Muslim Obamaplot that’s blocking this guy’s success at every turn.
If that were only the case. I don’t believe in you, therefor you get no money from me. Really, if everyone could get away with this they would. Who is this tool kidding?
Kinda sounds like Tim Geithner, Charles Rangel, Claire McCaskill, etc. Good thing they aren’t politicians or appointees.
I love that he threw in the deaths Robin Williams and Joan Rivers in there. This might not be the most coherent anti-IRS and anti-government rant that I’ve ever read, but it certainly ranks among the funniest ever.
I was thinking the same thing! If he wanted to “experiment” with something like this, starting with more lucid and relevant thoughts might be a good way to go. I don’t need to hear about everything that happened during the 500 days if it isn’t related to the IRS and his tax situation.