Do you know whose taxes are easy: mine. I don’t make enough money for there to be any questions. There is the amount of money I make. There is the standard deduction. There is the money that I owe (or as is generally the case, don’t owe). Whose taxes are complicated are people like Mitt Romney — with all the shenanigans that his tax people get up to long before he’s even acquired it all. And what this means is that it really isn’t hard for the IRS to police me. In fact, they could have a computer do it (and probably do). But to police the Mitt Romneys of the world, the IRS needs well trained and experienced agents.

Thus, it isn’t surprising that conservatives like the idea of gutting IRS enforcement. Most of them will admit that they want to destroy the IRS. Doing so would turn the United States into a kind of banana republic where those who are currently at the top would stay there and have even more power. Poor people might like the idea of not having to pay taxes, but an end of the IRS would decimate the economy. I would be surprised if it didn’t turn the Land of the Free into the Land of Mad Max.

Chuck Marr, Joel Friedman, and Brandon DeBot wrote a really interesting paper over at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, IRS Funding Cuts Continue to Compromise Taxpayer Service and Weaken Enforcement. It starts with a stunning fact, “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) budget has been cut by 18 percent since 2010, after adjusting for inflation.” This has the effect of providing far less and inferior help to ordinary tax payers like me who are forced to do our taxes ourselves. But more important, this has a huge effect on the finances of the government:

They also note that the Republican budgets out of the House and Senate would make further cuts to the IRS, even while they claim to be all concerned about balancing the budget in ten years and other ridiculous ideas. The truth is that these Representatives and Senators are looking at eliminating their own jobs. This reminds me of the Nazis after they took over the government, they effectively destroyed the Reichstag. A large segment of the Republicans in Congress did not come to fix the government but to destroy it. They are radicals — things totally outside the American tradition.

What are we going to do about this? I really don’t know. It seems that all a Republican has to do to get sent to Washington is to say that abortion is baby murder and claim that she would nuke Iran if given half a chance. Meanwhile, the real work of these Republicans is not what they say publicly. These people are so dangerous, that we would be better off having representatives from General Motors and Walmart. Grover Norquist was apparently wrong. It isn’t necessary to make government small enough to kill in a bath tub. It can be done gradually, just by defunding the IRS. And in a short time, only the little people like me will be paying taxes. And Norquist and his conservative allies should be fine with that.

Lee Fang reported something that bothers me a whole lot, In New Video, Congressman Explains Why His Fellow Lawmakers Couldn’t Be Trusted with NSA Oversight. The main thing is that Representatives Alan Grayson and Morgan Griffith were not allowed to see information they requested from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). This is a perfect example of a troubling situation in the United States because it involves both a Democrat and a Republican. This isn’t about partisanship. This is about unelected government employees trumping the will of the people. It is, in a word: undemocratic.

In the video, Representative Jim Langevin claims that they were refused access because they didn’t have the right security clearance. It makes it all sound like a secret club. And indeed, the members of the HPSCI are known to be very cozy with the intelligence community. So the only way that we — the people — are ever going to get true oversight is if our elected representatives are allowed access to what is going on. This country hasn’t existed all these years without a religious test only to enact a backdoor security test. Our country’s politics are already overrun with boy and girl scouts. I don’t want to make it any worse.

Eventually, Griffith (the Republican) was granted access to the information she wanted — although it took over three months of pushing. Grayson (the Democrat), on the other hand, was never granted access. The committee claims that it has this right. Grayson disagrees, “The committee has no authority to make those kinds of distinctions. They’ve created two tiers for members of Congress. I’m not aware of any statutory authority for such a distinction; but it’s just a power grab as members of Intelligence and I have the same constitutional authority.” Of course. That’s the point. And remember: the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives claim to be “Constitutional Conservatives.” But they are just entirely typical authoritarians.

Every time there is a major security leak, as we got with Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks, what we see is that the secrets have little or nothing to do with security. They are usually just embarrassing things and, above all, things they don’t want the American people to know. We’ve seen the same thing when old security documents are declassified — in the United States and in Russia. I understand that a certain level of secrecy is necessary in the world. But it is clear that we have far too much secrecy and that it is being used as a weapon against democratic control of the country. At the time of this nation’s formation, the concern was that the military would control the country. Now it seems we have the intelligence services controlling the government. And we don’t even know who or where they are.

There are obvious solutions to this problem. But they all depend upon the people of the United States waking up to the threat. Instead, they seem actively opposed to doing anything about it. We saw this last year when the people of Colorado decided to replace the excellent Mark Udall with the wingnut Cory Gardner. Well played people; well played.

The always great Max Fisher thinks that, This Is an Astonishingly Good Iran Deal. I don’t know that I’m astonished, but I agree with him that it is a really good deal — for everyone. Well, for everyone who is interested in the well-being of the the world. I know that there are a lot of conservative politicians who will be very unhappy with this deal precisely because it is good. But I don’t think we need to worry too much about the fact that the Republican Party is unhappy because it’s suffered a political defeat. But I’ll admit: I don’t think the Iranian regime is especially interested in acquiring a nuclear weapon — but they’ve got to be pleased that the idea of it has provided leverage to allow this deal that will be good for its people. And this deal ought to make westerners who are not like me feel safer about any Iranian threat.

Fisher quoted nuclear proliferation expert Aaron Stein as saying that the inspection regime represents something of a Platonic ideal. Of course, this is just the framework deal. There is still the chance that those who will only be satisfied with war will mess the whole things up. God knows they have done their very best to do it up until now. Thankfully, conservatives have a long history of incompetence. In fact, it more than ideology is what most defines them. But there is still one real issue that could cause problems: trust. Neither side wants to go first. Iran wants the sanctions lifted first. I don’t see that there is a problem here, but you never know.

As for what is in the deal, well, it is impressive. Iran is giving up 70% of its centrifuges. And not just any centrifuges. It is giving up the best ones. The ones that remain will be the most basic 1970s models. It is also giving up 97% of its enriched Uranium. Finally, it will get rid of its Plutonium plant and replace it with a plant that cannot enrich weapons grade Plutonium. As Fisher noted, “Iran would simply not have much of its nuclear program left after all this.”

Of course, I know none of this matters to conservatives. In their minds, Iran is like a James Bond villain: super intelligent, sneaky, and totally untrustworthy. In other words, the Iranian leadership has been totally dehumanized by the conservatives. And that means they aren’t thinking straight. A good example of this is the claim I seem to be hearing everywhere that after this agreement, Iran will be able to create a nuclear weapon in just a year. What is never mentioned is that by the same calculations, Iran could currently create a bomb in two or three months.

If we listen to the conservatives who hate this deal, there is only one option: war with Iran. But as I discussed in, We Need to Think Before Bombing Iran, full-scare war with Iran would be a huge mistake, even if it were politically viable. But if we are just planning to bomb the nuclear facilities, we would have to do it constantly. And in the end, it probably wouldn’t work because the Iranians are not idiots.

But that is the key to what most conservatives in the US want. They don’t want a deal. They don’t really want to go to war. They just want to pose as the hard men (even the women) they think they are. It reminds me of Tom Clancy Combat Concepts. It’s all about presenting an image of themselves. Don’t get me wrong: we all care about that. But these are traitors who care more about looking like they are being strong for the country than they do about actually protecting the country.

The central focus of this agreement is the inspection regime, which is rigorous. As Fisher detained, the only way that Iran can build a nuclear weapon is to do it completely apart from its existing nuclear energy program. And that would be almost impossible to do without detection. And note: it would be just as possible — if not more so — if we went the route of the bombing campaign that conservatives in this country and Israel are so keen on.

What’s really interesting about this deal is that it is better than even supporters had hoped. Needless to say, it is far better than those arguing against had hoped. For example, one of the criticisms was that it wouldn’t include weapons delivery systems like ballistic missiles. But it turns out it does. Will that matter to critics? Of course not. Being against this deal is the starting point for critics; the reasons are just details added later. But it looks like the critics have lost this one — at least until the start of 2017.

Dean Baker made an important point in a recent blog post, Ben Bernanke and the “Ask Nicely” Strategy for the Trade Deficit. Everyone knows that a big problem with our economy is that US exports are not as competitive as they should be because China keeps its currency pegged lower than it should be compared to the dollar. But there is this ridiculous notion that somehow we can force China to change this policy. That was what Donald Trump talked about when he fake ran for president in 2012: he was going to talk to China like they were contestants on The Apprentice and make them change their policy. But even with sophisticated thinkers like Bernanke, the idea seems to be that if we ask nicely or whine or just let them know how much it means to us, they will allow their currency to rise.

This isn’t true, of course. China has that policy because it is good for China’s economy: it keeps the people of China working. But as Baker noted, “They would of course be open to ending currency interventions if they got something in exchange.” And that’s perhaps the biggest problem with trade deals like the TPP: they use what negotiating chips we have to do other things that are at best less important and at worse are bad for the economy. The ultimate example of this is the use of these trade deals to strengthen patent and copyright protections. These don’t add jobs in the United States; all they do is increase profits to make the already rich even richer.

And so in the TPP, there is nothing about currency values. But there is a lot in it about tightening intellectual property protections. These deals are not pushed by our government because they are seen as improving the American economy. They are instead about improving the profits of corporations that are only nominally in the United States. And just look at what great “citizens” these corporations are: they ship jobs overseas if they can save a penny; they hide profits overseas so they don’t have to pay taxes; they distort our political system; they blithely pollute; and they have a time horizon of three months. They are a pox on our country. They would be called traitors if they were human beings.

Baker related an anecdote that explains pretty much everything that is going on, regardless of whether the party in power is nominally liberal or conservative:

This is why these deals are such a problem. Even I have a tendency towards dismissing them, “Well, it isn’t going to cause that much damage.” But the issue is really not the trade deals themselves. The issue is the opportunity costs — which are huge. Our government is passing up deals that would improve the lives of American workers. And in so doing, they are making future deals that do this harder. No Trade Deals Until Our Economy Is Fixed!

On Wednesday, Digby wrote a article in which she countered this ridiculous new conservative meme that liberals are the real intolerant people because they object to conservatives bigotry (which the conservatives claim is actually “religious freedom”). I don’t have much to add. The entire time I’ve been following politics, the main conservative argument to any complaint has been, “I know you are, but what am I?” I don’t say that lightly. Conservatives have correctly learned that the mainstream media are determined to present the “controversy.” So if John Boehner walked into a McDonalds and murdered everyone, it would be reported, “Democrats claim John Boehner murdered a bunch of people, but Republicans say he didn’t. We report, you decide!”

But Dibgy presented an example of what real political and religious intolerance looks like in this country. It took place back in 2008 during a New York Yankees baseball game. A spectator at the game, Brad Campeau-Laurion, went to go to the bathroom during the seventh inning stretch. Since 2001, the MLB has dictated that “God Bless America” be played at that time. When Campeau-Laurion tried to make it to the bathroom, the police stopped him — telling him that he couldn’t go until the song was over. When he said that he didn’t care about the song, the officer, and another called for help, brutally ejected him from the ballpark.

As they shoved him out of the stadium, one of the officers said, “Get the hell out of my country if you don’t like it!” What’s more, Campeau-Laurion’s friend, who was still at the game, overheard the two officers talking to each other. One of them said, “We got to watch ourselves. One day we’re really gonna get in trouble.” And they were spreading rumors that Campeau-Laurion had said, “This country sucks.” It sounds rather like the thugs as police officers in A Clockwork Orange.

I suspect that the officers did hear, “This country sucks.” Among a lot of Americans, not reverentially standing during “God Bless America” is exactly the same thing. As it turns out, Campeau-Laurion was more bothered by the “God” than the “America.” But it hardly matters. As I wrote here recently, this is a typical conservative idea of freedom of speech: you can say whatever you want to, as long as you don’t. In this specific case, there really is no more perfect example of what a sham the First Amendment is: official government officers brutalized and humiliated someone because of his political and religious beliefs.

About six months after this happened, the ACLU of New York State filed a case, Campeau-Laurion v Raymond Kelly, The New York Yankees Partnership, et al (Challenging forced patriotism at Yankee Stadium). The court found rather quickly for Campeau-Laurion and made New York City pay him $10,000. But to me, that’s not nearly enough. To begin with, that’s not even chump change for the city. But more important, it is likely that the police officers are to this day unaware that their behavior was publicly criticized. Personally, I think the officers should have been found and fired.

I don’t say this out of a sense of vengeance. It is just a matter of sending a message to all law enforcement personnel: you are being watching. The government is great at doing things that have a chilling effect on journalists — so they don’t do their proper job. But somehow, the idea of having a chilling effect on police officers doing things that are not supposed to be part of their jobs is just a bridge too far. The police in this country can’t be held accountable at all.

If a police officer was caught disturbing a Christian praying before eating her hot dog, the case would be the talk of the nation for the next decade. But an atheist getting brutalized by the police for not having reverence for “God Bless America”? Most Americans just yawn. The mainstream media can’t be bothered to report it. But a bigoted baker who doesn’t want to put two male figurines on the top of a wedding cake is a martyr to liberal intolerance? Give me a break!