This is momentum. A massive object will keep moving for a long time after what was pushing it has stopped.

Despite Internal Turmoil, NRA Looks Like It’s Winning The Long Game

No observer of contemporary gun politics could fail to notice a jarring disconnect between the two very different trajectories of the gun rights movement today.

On the one hand, more states are allowing Americans to carry weapons in public without permits, and the gun-rights movement could be on the verge of a major Supreme Court victory. On the other, the National Rifle Association, which advocates on behalf of gun owners, faces an existential crisis that’s mostly due to the NRA’s own missteps.

As a political scientist who has studied gun politics and policy for over 30 years, I’m confident that there is no precedent for this contradictory situation. Moreover, there’s no reason to believe that the NRA’s problems will influence how the courts treat gun-rights cases.

Continue reading “”

BLUF:
The co-opting of medicine by woke progressives could turbo-charge all that is dangerous about public health. AHE should worry any patient whose life, health and ease of mind depend on a doctor now focused on concerns other than the patient at hand.

The Pall of Politics Descends Upon American Medicine.

A new guidance document for medical professionals emphasizes critical race theory and social justice at the expense of patient care

Under new AMA guidelines, doctors’ bedside manner is to be replaced with an air of accusation

Politics, and in particular hard-left “wokeness,” is infecting American medicine’s bloodstream. The danger cannot be overstated. It threatens medical professionals, patients, medical science and America’s civic life. Like so many societal pathologies, this one seems to have turned septic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most prominent symptom is a newly released document that is at once laughable and terrifying.

New Language for a New Orthodoxy

In October, two of the most powerful medical organizations in America—the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Association of Medical Colleges—released “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts,” or AHE. Its 54 densely packed pages admonish American physicians to regiment their speech to conform with woke terminology. The document implores doctors to abandon ordinary expressions in favor of politically charged, politically correct circumlocutions.

Medical professionals are now expected to traverse a linguistic minefield, abandoning hundreds of familiar expressions and replacing them with tortured academic cadences. Failure to conform, the document implies, is a severe moral failing.

This is not merely replacing the simple with the sesquipedalian. The doctor’s every utterance must contain an air of accusation. When someone is ill, it is because someone else is to blame. Previously, a caring doctor might have told an African American patient that his lineage makes him especially vulnerable to diabetes. No more. In woke-speak, the word “vulnerable” is verboten. Now, the doctor must refer to the patient as “oppressed,” “made vulnerable” or “disenfranchised.” Someone, or some grotesque societal failing, is to blame for the patient’s higher-than-average risk of diabetes. The explanation for this particular lexical shift is representative of AHE’s tone and worldview:

Vulnerable is a term often used to describe groups that have increased susceptibility to adverse health outcomes. We even describe individual people as vulnerable or not, often based on socioeconomic status.

If we pause to examine our taken-for-granted narrative, we see that vulnerability can be understood in very different ways. In this case, as a characteristic of people or groups. But what if we shift the narrative from an individualistic lens to an equity lens?

In doing so, we begin to ask questions about the structural origins of vulnerability. Vulnerability is the result of socially created processes that determine what resources and power groups have to avoid, resist, cope with, or recover from threats to their well-being.

Instead of stigmatizing individuals and communities for being vulnerable or labeling them as poor, we begin to name and question the power relations that create vulnerability and poverty. People are not vulnerable; they are made vulnerable.

The entire document reads like final exam essays written by a student who forgot to study—endless strings of half-remembered vocabulary words assembled randomly in hopes that the professor will count the words but not read them. Every med student, every doctor in America must endure hundreds of such homilies and conform or be weighed in the balance and found wanting. Doctors must abandon the notion that a patient bears some individual responsibility for his or her health status. Whatever ails you, somebody out there did it to you. In the search for scapegoats, AHE taps into the fashionable academic catechisms of critical race theory and intersectionality and swears fealty to both.

Continue reading “”

Biden to Suspend Vaccine Mandate for Fed Employees.

Details are thin, but Presidentish Joe Biden reportedly will suspend his vaccine mandate for federal workers.

According to a memo issued by the Biden administration, the “White House’s Office of Management and Budget is telling federal agencies they should hold off on suspending or firing federal workers for not complying with the vaccine mandate until after the holidays.”

This is a huge cave for an administration whose remaining anti-COVID effort is focused almost exclusively on the vaccine mandate.

Further lockdowns are out, according to one report. People have lost patience with social distancing and travel restrictions. And it’s probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that “Which famous person isn’t wearing a mask today?” has taken the place of “Who in Hollywood is secretly gay?” as America’s favorite gossip topic.

That leaves the mandate. So for the sake of public perception that Biden is doing something, no matter how ineffective or unconstitutional, he can’t let go of it.

But from here, it sure looks like Biden’s temporary suspension could well become permanent.

Continue reading “”

Note To Biden: Gun Stores Aren’t Responsible For Veteran Suicides

Suicide is a serious problem, but it’s especially problematic among veterans. Many of the brave men and women who fought for our nation and survived find they can’t seem to make it through peace quite as well, so they claim their own lives.

Few people don’t see this as a significant issue. The problem is that we rarely agree on how to address it.

After all, we live in a world where President Joe Biden seems to blame gun stores for those veteran suicides.

The Biden-Harris administration is using veteran suicides to garner public support for their war on gun dealers, whom they blame for skyrocketing violent crime rates in cities historically controlled by Democrats.

“The Biden administration is rolling out a new initiative aimed at reducing suicides by gun and combating the significant increases in suicides by members of the military and veterans,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday. As part of the plan, Biden will order the ATF to “seek to revoke the licenses of dealers the first time that they violate federal law.”

This is nothing new. Biden first announced he was targeting gun dealers in June. The only difference is now he’s doing it for the veterans.

That’s sick – even for Biden – using the deaths of heroes to sell his gun control plan.

The other team doesn’t care. They love the plan. John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, told the AP the administration was “blazing a new path to keep guns away from people who could be a danger to themselves.”

To be clear, gun dealers – even the rogue ones – do not contribute to veteran suicides. The Veterans Administration contributes to veteran suicides. If a veteran decides they need help, they’ll spend months fighting to get the VA to accept that their illness is service-related and that they qualify for care. Democrats want to give away universal healthcare. In my humble opinion, it should go to the people who have earned it. All veterans should have access to immediate care.

It’s true. Trying to navigate the VA healthcare system makes a trip to the DMV look like a visit to a Chic-fil-A driver-through. There’s no way that helps.

So why is Biden trying to pin it on gun dealers?

The answer, of course, is that he’s been looking to blame gun stores for all manner of ills and has since he took office. If he could blame the current inflation on them, he probably would.

Since he despises gun stores so vehement, it stands to reason that he’d try and blame them for veteran suicides.

The problem is, of course, that gun stores aren’t really to blame.

Unless someone walks into the store and asks something like, “Which gun is best for killing myself with?” it’s kind of hard for the dealer to realize there may be an issue there. After all, this is a law-abiding citizen with no felonies and hasn’t been adjudicated as “mentally defective” by the courts. There’s nothing there for a store to see that maybe this is someone who shouldn’t buy a gun.

Blaming the stores doesn’t make any sense.

Then again, little of Biden’s anti-gun jihad has made much sense. Most guns used by criminals are stolen, but he’s focused on straw buys. Now he’s looking at them to pin the blame for suicides on them.

While I agree suicide is an issue, it’s not a gun issue. It’s a mental health issue.

If Biden really wants to reduce veteran suicide numbers, there are some steps he could take. One would be to make sure that the VA doesn’t try to interfere with people’s right to keep and bear arms, as they have in the past. Veterans need to be free to talk with their counselors without fear of their guns being taken. If not, many may hold back how they feel, which means not getting the help they truly need.

Then there’s the issue of access, which was mentioned in the above-linked post. It’s not easy getting your first appointment with the VA and it can take a while on the follow-ups as well.

But none of this is the fault of gun stores and Biden–or his administration, at least–damn well knows it.

November 29

1729 – Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern day Natchez, Mississippi.

1777 – San Jose, California, is founded as Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe by José Joaquín Moraga.

1783 – An  earthquake later calculated at measuring magnitude 5.3 on the Richter scale, strikes New Jersey, to date the most powerful quake in the state.

1847 – Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed at their mission near present day Walla Walla Washington, by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War east of the Cascade mountain range.

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.

1902 – The Pittsburgh Stars defeat the Philadelphia Athletics, at Pittsburg 11–0 to win the first championship associated with an American national professional football league.

1929 – Admiral Richard Byrd leads the first expedition to fly over the South Pole.

1947 – The United Nations General Assembly approves a plan for the partition of Palestine.

1963 – President Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

1972 – Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game.

1999 – Kazuo Sakamaki, a former ensign in the Imperial Japanese Navy, the skipper of midget submarine H-19 which attempted to attack Pearl Harbor, and the first official U.S. prisoner of war in World War II, dies, age 81, in Tokyo.

2009 – 4 police officers are shot and killed in a gunfight inside a coffee shop in Lakewood, Washington by Maurice Clemmons, who escapes wounded and is shot and killed 2 days later by police in Seattle.

Observation O’ The Day
Doesn’t seem too worried about the Omicron variant, either………

Comment O’ The Day
Not surprisingly…one would have to be a boozer to hang out with Joe all these years….

 

It’s long, but you should read the whole thing.

Now you can see why the vaccines were a mistake

From the Guardian:

A first case in Europe of the new variant of Covid-19 has been identified in Belgium in an unvaccinated young adult woman who developed mild flu-like symptoms 11 days after traveling to Egypt via Turkey.

The patient did not report any links with South Africa or other countries in southern Africa. None of her family members have developed symptoms. The patient was said to have a high viral load at the time of diagnosis by researchers at the universities, KU Leuven and UZ Leuven.

This means it’s already everywhere. And it should be pretty obvious that the vaccines don’t work against this: Israel reported a positive case in a 32 year old woman who received her third shot two months ago.

The important thing to remember is that you don’t need a virus that evades 100% of the vaccine induced antibodies for the vaccine to fail. The vaxx developers are in full damage control mode on Twitter now, insisting that this is not necessarily a big deal. All evidence however suggests that the vaccines are going to fail against this variant. Of course you’ll still have some immunity against this variant from these vaccines, but there’s the problem: You always have some immunity. You already had some immunity from other corona viruses, but we know that some immunity isn’t going to do the trick.

If it evades most of your antibodies then it’s like sending off an army faced with overwhelming odds. These vaccines through original antigenic sin will prohibit your body from generating a more effective immune response. The spike protein now looks pretty much completely different and it’s now responsible for the majority of cases in South Africa, this took place at a speed far exceeding the rise of Beta and Delta.

Vaccinated people are now stuck with this mediocre immune response, that’s intended for a variant that no longer exists. This really looks like the scenario where you’re worse off being vaccinated than you are if you’re unvaccinated. And if this is somehow not yet the big one, the one that uses everyone’s highly identical immune response against the Wuhan version of the spike protein to its own advantage, then you can rest assured that when it grows dominant, it will be giving birth to descendants that will do the trick.

Let me grab an old study from Japanese scientists, who tried to answer the question: Under what circumstances do we see antibody dependent enhancement? That is, a situation in which the virus uses your overall vaccine induced antibody response to its own advantage, leaving you worse off than if you had never been vaccinated in the first place. They determined it’s pretty easy: You take Delta and you add these four mutations:

K417N, N439K, E484K and N501Y.

If you throw those four mutations into Delta, you have a version that uses your vaccine induced antibody response to its own advantage.

Does that ring a bell?

So let’s see:

-K417N: Bingo!

-N439K: No, but we have N440K which is a neighboring mutation and should perform the same trick of interfering with the antibodies.

-E484K: We have E484A, which means you have a mutation at the same spot, but resulting in a different amino acid, Alanine instead of Lysine.

-N501Y: Bingo!

In other words, its mutations look pretty much identical to what the Japanese scientists were warning would allow Delta to use your vaccine induced antibody response to its own advantage. Oops.

Continue reading “”

Connecting Two Disparate Dots

Yesterday afternoon I had a long phone conversation with a childhood friend I grew up with in Vancouver and his wife. We spent much of the time talking about Covid and the insanity around it. He then asked me why I was skeptical about being vaccinated. I responded that I was not at all against vaccinations. In fact, I willingly got a tetanus shot a few weeks ago. What am I adamantly against are vaccine mandates and penalties for anyone who refuses the jabs. The logic behind this insistence hasn’t stood up against even the simplest questions.

Then a very different topic ran across my mind and I said, “I’m now going to explain the #1 reason I’m skeptical of the Covid jabs but will come at it from a completely different angle. See if you can connect the dots before I explain.” Shortly afterwards, this video appeared on my YouTube feed and Carl Benjamin parallels what I said very closely:

In point of fact, with my friends, I mostly focused on how the Waukesha tragedy had been memory-holed (hidden) within 48 hours after it happened. Why? Because it didn’t fit the media’s narrative.

Does it surprise anyone that the same despicable people who have so easily spit on the graves of those murdered on November 21st, would have any moral qualms about spinning a wide web of lies, half-truths, and obfuscations about a pandemic that occurred nearly two years ago?!? I will forever listen to everything they say with great skepticism. And, as I’ve done all of my life, will politely ask questions about anything that doesn’t make sense to me. Questions like these, for example.

  1. Can fully vaccinated people contract Covid?
  2. Can fully vaccinated people give others Covid?
  3. Statistically, are children more at harm if they contract Covid or if they get the Covid mRNA jab?
  4. Why has Japan turned away from vaccinations in favor of giving its citizens Ivermectin?
  5. Since Japan made this decision, what has been the result?
  6. Tell me what you know about the yellow star program in the 1930’s.
  7. Would you have been in favor of treating homosexuals differently during the AIDS crisis in the 1980’s?
  8. Are you in favor of “othering” those who have chosen not to get the Covid mRNA jab?
  9. If you are fully vaccinated, then could you explain to me why you are worried about being around unvaccinated people?
  10. If the Covid booster program continues for some time to come, are you prepared to continue to get a jab every 3 to 6 months?

In early colonial times, some colonies often ordered the populace to bear their weapons to work and even to church services. Even farther back than that, in medieval Europe, the practice of being armed at certain public functions finally devolved into carrying huge, ornately decorated ‘Bearing Swords’ which was more an indication of class status. The bigger and more expensive, the higher up the ladder you- or the master a squire was carrying for -was.
The city council of this town wants everyone attending council meetings to bear arms…. if they want to.
I rather like the idea.

‘Legally armed’ rule has critics gunning for New Mexico town

ESTANCIA, N.M. (AP) — Mayor Nathan Dial said a recently approved rule requiring people to be “legally armed” to attend an Estancia Town Council meeting is just a way of sending notice that the town is not going to let the state dictate what it can and cannot do.

“Rural New Mexico is just tired of being pushed around,” Dial told the Albuquerque Journal as he sat in town hall with a snub nose .357 on his hip. “This is not just about the Second Amendment. This is about all civil liberties.”

Continue reading “”

Casper man shoots person trying to forcefully enter a home

ACasper man shot a person who was attempting to forcefully enter a home in Cheyenne, police there said.

The man who was shot fled the scene. Officers later found him at a Motel 6 in Cheyenne, suffering from a gunshot wound, police said. He was taken by ambulance to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center.

The shooting occurred at about 9:30 p.m. Friday at a home on the 3800 block of Greenway Street on the city’s east side. Police were told a 51-year-old man from Cheyenne tried to force his way inside a home through the front door.

The Casper man, identified only as a 33-year-old, ordered the suspect to leave several times, police said. The 51-year-old man, whose name was not released, refused to comply, and when he continued to try and force his way inside, the Casper man retrieved a gun and shot through the door.

That, police said, prompted the suspect to flee. Authorities did not detail his injuries or condition.

The case remains under investigation, police said.

‘A word to the wise should be sufficient‘. This is a standard practice of all parties; That of carrying a legal ‘non provocative- plausibly innocuous’ item for use as a weapon. Of course, we now have a court case where the jury recognized that a skateboard was used as a weapon capable of inflicting death of serious injury, so that knowledge could prove valuable.

Antifa Appears To Have A History Of Using Skateboards As Weapons

LOS ANGELES, CA - MAY 31: A man attempts to break the window of a store with a skateboard during widespread protests and unrest in response to the death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020 in Santa Monica, California. Protests continue in cities throughout the country after Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis. The National Guard has been deployed in Los Angeles and other major US cities to attempt to stem the tide of rising violence and unrest, with President Donald Trump blaming ANTIFA and tweeting they will be designated a terrorist organization. (Photo by Warrick Page/Getty Images)

Far-left groups such as antifa appear to use skateboards as tools of destruction, videos captured at protests and riots show.

Anthony Huber, one of the men fatally shot by Kyle Rittenhouse during the 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, had gained attention for the use of his skateboard to attack Rittenhouse.

Skateboards have also been used to violently smash through windows or to assault police officers.

Skaters appear to have a history of participating in protests a well as utilizing the slogan “skate and destroy” to summarize their involvement in protest culture, according to a blog post from skater magazine Jenkem.

“Things are replaceable; life is not. No building nor brand no matter how luxurious should be valued at anything even approximating a human’s life, no matter what human,” the article said.

In the post, titled “A Skater’s Guide To Attending A Protest,” the writers break down the approach and necessary supplies needed for attending a protest. One of the tools they specifically mention is a skateboard, explaining how “it’s pretty cool how many uses a skateboard can have in a protest.”

Skateboards allow protesters to write protest slogans on the grip, and can be used as a “tried and true device for quickly dipping out of tricky situations,” the article said. They are also effective in self-defense and can make a shield and even “if you get enough skaters on the frontline you can link together to form a phalanx on some gladiator kind of tip.”

Updated update on the updated Tisas Tanker ‘Commander’ 1911 pistol.

Earlier I figured I had gotten to a stopping point, but as someone once observed. ‘You never know’.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a seller on Ebay advertising manufacturer overrun parts with a stated non-disclosure agreement on source. The prices were quite reasonable, so, I decided to splurge and bought a 416R stainless steel barrel with link & bushing – that to me happens to look a lot like what Springfield Armory uses, but whatever – which pleasingly dropped in with no fitting, locked up tight and cycled dummy rounds with no problems.

Weather and physical conditions of all parties concerned finally intersecting, Dad & I took a day trip Saturday afternoon to the backyard range of a friend to try it – and several other guns – out.

Every type of ammo I shot, factory 230 gr FMJ from several manufacturers and Remington 185gr JHP, which is our standard load when carrying a .45 for self defense,  I was able to keep on 6 inch round steel at 20 yards, standing, off hand, without any sight adjustment. Accuracy has been improved and reliability was not effected, so this appears to have been a worthy endeavor .

“When in danger, When in doubt, Run in circles, Scream and shout!”

Quote O’ The Day

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before”
—demoncrap Rahm Emanuel

“It’s Coming” — New York Gov. Hochul Declares State of Emergency Due to Omicron Variant

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D for demoncrap) declared a state of emergency due to the new “Omicron” Covid variant spreading in Africa.

The declaration goes into effect on December 3 and gives the Health Department the power to limit “non-essential” procedures (will likely be enforced through the lens of equity) at hospitals.

“We continue to see warning signs of spikes this upcoming winter, and while the new Omicron variant has yet to be detected in New York State, it’s coming,” Hochul said……………….

South African medical association says Omicron variant causes ‘mild disease’

JOHANNESBURG: The new Omicron variant of the coronavirus results in mild disease, without prominent syndromes, Angelique Coetzee, the chairwoman of the South African Medical Association, told Sputnik on Saturday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) identified on Friday the new South African strain as one of concern, as it is reported to carry a high number of mutations — 32 — which possibly makes it more transmissible and dangerous. The WHO has dubbed it Omicron, the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.
“It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well. So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home,” Coetzee said
The official noted that hospitals have not been overburdened by Omicron patients and that the new strain is not been detected in vaccinated persons. At the same time, the situation might be different for the unvaccinated.
“We will only know this after two weeks. Yes, it is transmissible, but for now, as medical practitioners, we do not know why so much hype is being driven as we are still looking into it. We will only know after two to three weeks as there are some patients admitted and these are young people aged 40 and younger,” Coetzee added.

The chairwoman also criticized the decision by some countries to ban flights from South Africa is premature as there is not enough information on how dangerous it is.

Following the reports about the new variant, the United States, the European Union, Canada, Israel, Australia and other countries have restricted travel from several southern African nations over the health concerns.

November 28

1785 – The first Treaty of Hopewell is signed, where the U.S. acknowledges Cherokee lands in what is now eastern Tennessee.

1794 – Former Continental Army Inspector Major General, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben dies, age 64 at his estate in Oneida County – later Steuben – New York.

1821 – The nation of Panama separates from Spain and joins Gran Colombia.

1895 – The first American automobile road race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.

1908 – An explosion in the Pittsburg Buffalo Company’s mine in Marianna, Pennsylvania, kills 154 men, leaving only 1 survivor.

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee.

1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people

1943 – During World War II, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, to discuss war strategy.

1967 – The first pulsar, PSR B1919+21, is discovered in the constellation of Vulpecula by astronomers Jocelyn Burnell and Antony Hewish at the  Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge, England.

1994 – Jeffrey Dahmer completes his life imprisonment term for multiple murders by being murdered himself by another inmate.

2016 – A chartered Avro RJ85 plane carrying 77 people, including the Chapecoense football team, crashes near Medellín, Colombia.

 

‘Despite’? ‘DESPITE?’
It’s BECAUSE…………

Biden Wants To Empower the IRS Despite Its Track Record of Trampling Rights and Undermining Privacy

President Joe Biden’s plan to beef up IRS enforcement and snoop on Americans’ bank accounts will require hiring more than 80,000 additional tax cops—expanding a federal bureaucracy with a long track record of flouting due process and undermining privacy.

As part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, the IRS would get $80 billion in additional funding over the next 10 years. The bulk of those new funds, nearly $45 billion, would be directed toward enforcement actions with the goal of doubling the number of annual audits of small businesses. By comparison, the bill spends a relatively meager $1.93 billion on improving taxpayer services, including education and filing assistance.

In short, for every new dollar the IRS will spend helping Americans understand the endlessly complicated federal tax code, the agency will spend roughly $23 new dollars on enforcing those same rules.

Everyone should pay the taxes they owe, of course, but the IRS’ track record suggests that more enforcement will also mean more trampling of Americans’ due process rights.

“It’s a systematic practice at the IRS to violate due process and to abuse taxpayers,” says Isabelle Morales, a policy specialist for Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative nonprofit that opposes tax increases. Biden is proposing to boost funding “for an agency that needs reform,” Morales tells Reason, “and that will only lead to us fueling their bad practices.”

In 2017, for example, an inspector general report found that IRS agents investigating so-called “structuring”—legal cash deposits that the agency believes to have been part of an attempt to skirt tax obligations—routinely failed to follow well-established procedures meant to protect the rights of individuals being investigated. Among other things, targets of IRS investigations are supposed to be told of the reason for the investigation and read their Miranda rights before an interview with an IRS agent. Of the 229 interviews reviewed by auditors, however, there were “only five” cases where targets were informed of their rights before speaking to investigators.

“Individuals and businesses who are not engaged in unlawful conduct may be less guarded in speaking with law enforcement about their banking transactions, and the absence of information about what their rights are might lead them to make statements that are later used against them,” auditors wrote in the report.

Morales points out that the 2017 audit report is just one data point in a long line of similar behavior. The most well-known example of the IRS abusing its power, of course, is the 2012 scandal in which the agency was caught applying stricter scrutiny to conservative nonprofits.

But even when the IRS isn’t engaging in outright political favoritism, there are reasons to worry about what expanding enforcement capabilities might mean for individuals and businesses. A 2016 inspector general report found that the IRS had lost track of more than 1,000 computers that might contain sensitive taxpayer information. A year later, an audit found that the IRS had recently rehired at least 200 employees who were previously fired for conduct or performance issues.

Biden is pitching his plan for enhanced IRS enforcement by promising that it’s all about ensuring billionaires pay what they owe.

That’s disingenuous. As the details of his proposal make clear, enhanced tax enforcement will mean hoovering up more data from crypto wallets, bank accounts, and third-party payment providers such as PayPal and Venmo. And that comes after Biden already ordered the IRS to give greater scrutiny to transactions in the so-called sharing economy. In total, Biden’s plan envisions the IRS carrying out 1.2 million more audits each year, according to the House Ways and Means Committee’s analysis of the Build Back Better plan. About half of those audits would target households making less than $75,000 annually.

Combined with a separate effort that makes it more difficult to shift assets overseas, Biden’s plan amounts to total financial surveillance, as Reason’s Matt Welch has written.

That surveillance would be carried out by an agency that has a long history of disregarding the guardrails placed on its power. What could go wrong?