[BloombergBusinessweek] Today The Hill reports that Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who head the Senate Finance Committee and are working on a complete rewrite of the U.S. tax code,
| ...which won't be any more comprehensible than the current tax code... |
have assured their colleagues that any of their requests to preserve a loophole will be kept secret by the National Archives for 50 years. The details of the story, all true, read as if they were dreamed up by a 10-year-old after watching Thunderball: "Each submission will also be given its own ID number and be kept on password-protected servers, with printed versions kept in locked safes," The Hill writes. Until 2064.
| SELECT * FROM TABLE exemptions_requests | mail -s 'Good stuff' grurkka@gmail.com; All it takes. Good luck with your secret servers when the tables get accessed. Information wants to be free, baby! |
"Hey, Joe! Ya got that yet? The safe's been locked for at least five minutes, ya slowpoke!"
"Yeah, yeah. They changed their passwords again, so I had to play with it instead of just using the backdoor. So does the AG want us to release Senator Cotton's notes or what?" |
It isn't clear who holds the key to the safes, or whether, as in a nuclear silo, there are two key-holders to prevent actions of conscience. Or whether the server will be protected with a password that must contain at least one number and one capital letter.
| And a hieroglyph, and a haiku, and a dollop of McDonald's secret sauce... |
Or whether that password will be written down, and if so, if that paper will be troweled into the repairs underway on the Washington Monument.
| Doesn't matter. One improperly groped female federal employee, or not groped enough, and he/she gets access to the server, pissed enough to screw over as many people as possible. See Manning, Bradley and Snowden, Edward, et seq. Let the good times roll. Obama showed us there's no law and there's no secrets, so good luck with this one. |
| This is something I'd actually like to see Wikileaks get hold off... |
An aide explained to The Hill that Baucus and Hatch's promise of 50 years of secrecy is "standard operating procedure for sensitive materials including investigation materials." Tax negotiations, then--Congress's basic constitutional responsibility--are to be held to the same standard of secrecy as the investigation of the Warren Commission. | Tax negotiations have the same security level as investigating the assassination of a President? Okay, it was the Cold War and he was a telegenic Democrat with a telegenic family. Camelot, and all that. But still... |
| Promise good until the next election. About the same promise of, "Of course I'll tell my wife, and then we'll divorce. Have I ever lied to you, darling?" As for standards, with the Obama regime, standards went down the crapper with the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, and now with Obamacare. |
Secrecy is a feature of our democracy. Sausage is gross, and backroom deals are necessary.
| That's why Democrats and the rest of the liberals shed tears about the good old days when Republicans were moderate and "bipartisanship" reigned supreme. The backroom deals were hidden away like (and barely outnumbered) JFK's sexual antics. Deals were made and the boodle flowed at all levels of politics. Now? You get Detroit. |
But these secrets, the scraps of paper on which Senators write their wishes, vouchsafed in a hope chest at the National Archives, are so precious that they can't even be trusted to a back room.
| Put them into an envelope marked "Benghazi secrets" and the press will never touch them... |
Senators are scared. Some tax loopholes are just indefensible to voters. There is no way to pretend that they help our kids, or jobs. They just go to people and companies that donate money. That's what this secrecy is for. The only possible reason for it to exist is to prevent senators from having to defend their choices to the public.
| Helluva lot more reasons than a public relations problem. No congressman whose name gets plastered on a federal building somewhere wants it out that he/she took millions in exchange for favorable treatment in the tax code. Let the diminishing of criminal liability begin after the lawmakers are dead. Bad news: Congress has passed ex post facto laws before so in 60 years clawback from relatives can begin. Bills of attainder? That's law and there is no more law, thanks to Obama and his congressional allies. |
So here's what we know about Baucus and Hatch's "blank slate" process, which wipes the tax code clean, forcing senators to justify every loophole they ask to have written back in.
| Justify and then keep secret forever... |
We know that some of the loopholes just aren't defensible, so toxic to voters that not only can we not know them, we may not ever know them. I will probably not live to 2064; the genes aren't as good on my father's side. I would, however, like to be able to decide how to vote in 2014. Senators have to please both constituents and donors. I get it. Money is speech. But any senator with a tax plea so secret it has to be physically locked away is definitely, absolutely not requesting it for the voters. | Here's an idea, although a quixotic one: Vote out the incumbents next year. Rinse and repeat in 2016 and 2018. |
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