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They’re from the Government and They’re Here to Help

Club 14 Fitness
 

Opinion

By Dave Scott

9-9-22

I’ve known local resident Fred Borakove for more than 10 years. He’s a very pleasant man, smart, courteous, well-read, and well-spoken. He’s also a retired employee of the Internal Revenue Service, serving full time from 1971 to 2003. Following his IRS employment, Fred served from 2003 to 2012 as a Senior Law Enforcement Advisor for the US Treasury Department, Office of Technical Assistance.

In a nutshell he is loyal civil servant with a lengthy and admirable record. As such he took exception to my criticism of the Biden administration’s mislabeled “anti-inflation bill” that included 87,000 more “armed” agents. The agency currently has 78,000 employees so it will more than double in size.

He objected to me saying they will ALL be “armed” and wrote an opinion editorial defending his former employer. The local bi-weekly News Leader used it verbatim.

In his defense of the agency, he rightly reminded readers that it is the only organization that got the goods on crime boss Al Capone, nailing him for income tax evasion. He cited a number of other notorious criminals the agency successfully apprehended and jailed including Benny Rodrigues,  of the famous “French Connection” heroin ring; TV stars Todd and Julie Chrislyn, who were found guilty of bank fraud and tax evasion; and the Hydra Market the largest darknet marketplace to date. There are many more such successes.

However, as impressive as the agency’s achievements are it doesn’t need 87,000 more employees. These new hires won’t be hunting criminals, they’re coming after you and me.

According to the Daily Caller a recent poll says only about 31% of voters believe the IRS will actually use its new resources to focus on auditing large corporations and rich people. A majority of voters believe that the IRS will now target middle-class Americans and small businesses.

“We wanted to understand whether or not voters believe that the true purpose of hiring 87,000 new IRS agents is to focus on – as the Biden Administration has been claiming – ‘large corporate and high-net-worth taxpayers’ or whether something else is afoot,” Mark Meckler, president of the Convention of States, said in a statement. “Democrats believe that this is the case, and that what they’ve been told by their leaders is accurate. Independents and Republicans strongly believe the country is being lied to, and that this new IRS is going to target either everyday Americans, or those who are political opponents of the federal bureaucracy.”

The IRS’s annual enforcement budget was $5.4 billion this year, and it’s getting $45.6 billion more from the new law. That means more people of all income levels will get audited.

Will Democrats use the IRS as a political tool like they are doing with the FBI and DOJ? Ask Lois Lerner or Merrick Garland. Is it any coincidence that the IRS Union contributes 97% of its political donations to Democrats. By hiring thousands of agents, taxpayers will now pay for their own audits. The Democrats are merely laundering taxpayer money back to Democrat coffers. And a new legion of 87,000 IRS employees will be cheered on by Democrats anxious to fleece us for more money.

Fred’s piece also alerted me to something I didn’t know that’s equally frightening.

“The IRS is not the only government agency that some people may be surprised to find purchasing guns and ammunition for law enforcement officers,” he wrote.

“Other Agencies include the Department of Agriculture, which buys weapons and ammunition for the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Education, which purchases them for its Office of the Inspector General, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration.”

No wonder the Democrats want to confiscate our guns and get rid of the Second Amendment.

***

Get Off My Lawn You Little B…..: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis explained why President Biden’s Thursday, September 1 speech was “one of the most disgusting speeches an American president has ever given.”

Most on the right and even many on the left agree with Governor DeSantis. Even CNN’s White House correspondent asked three times what action Biden intends to take to combat what he says is the MAGA “threat to democracy.” As usual the mental and physical midget WH Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, came up short and was unable to answer.

The 79-year-old choleric demagogue spoke in Philadelphia before a sinister red background with two U.S. Marines behind him. The Marines were forced to listen as the doddering old fool attacked Republicans he labeled enemies of the state. The Marines do what their Commander-in-Chief orders, but they must have been furious listening to such treacherous words and irate at being used as props.

Here’s what our Florida governor had so say about the talk: “Biden’s speech was one of the most disgusting speeches an American president has ever given. He ran as being a unifier, and he’s basically saying to the vast majority of the country that disapproves of him that they’re effectively a threat to the republic. He dodders, he lashes out. But at the end of the day, his policies are why there’s so much opposition to him.”

“He came in and he opened the border, and we’ve seen what a disaster that’s been. He kneecapped American energy. We’ve seen how that’s hurt millions and millions of people across our country. They’ve inflated the currency. We have one of the worst inflations we’ve had in over 40 years. So of course, people are going to be upset at all the wreckage that he’s left in his wake. He is the American Nero. He’s a failed leader.”

There’s nothing Governor DeSantis said that I disagree with as Biden came across like a cartoon figure of an angry old man shaking his cane at the moon.

Biden gave his Nuremberg-style speech in Philadelphia, home of the U.S. Constitution  and a city that earlier this year reported that only 44% of its residents felt safe in their neighborhood after dark. Some 65% said they’d heard gunshots near their homes in the past year. Some 362 people have been killed in the city so far this year compared to 226 in the first eight months of 2019. Meanwhile Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is bragging about how few criminals he’s put behind bars.

Democrats saying Americans are beneath contempt is nothing new. Former President Barack Obama said that Americans who didn’t support him in 2008 were bitter bigots, clinging to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” Hillary Clinton called them a “basket of deplorables.”

The “semi-fascist” label Biden tossed out in his talk doesn’t come as a surprise. What’s surprising is that a sitting president would utter such a vile and disturbing tirade against Americans who didn’t vote for him.

The actual threat is this angry old fool who would spout contemptable comments such as: “There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country. Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.”

***

Overheard At PJD’s Beer & Wine Garden: “Instead of playing ‘Hail to the Chief’, the band should break into the Beatles’ ‘Nowhere Man’ when Biden appears.”

***

Speaking Of Failed Politicians: Fernandina Beach Mayor and City Commissioner Mike “Left Coast” Lednovich scolded me at a chance meeting at PJD’s Beer & Wine Garden last Friday, September 2, saying I should “stop the criticism of the smoking ban on local beaches,” telling me: “You don’t understand it.”

When I suggested that the mayor express his objections and defend the new ordinance on this blog he responded saying: “I’m telling you now.”

He proceeded to “tell” me that the city based its contradictory and controversial ban on a state ordinance. When I responded saying: “You didn’t have to follow it word-for-word” since it’s contradictory and unenforceable, that incensed the California transplant.

He angrily spat: “Do you have grandkids, and if so do you want them stepping on cigarette butts on the beach? “Nope,” I responded, “but I also don’t want them stepping on cigar butts which are not banned under this screwy new ordinance?” The contradictory ban, which local law enforcement officials tell me is unenforceable, also applies to city parks and the downtown marina. Lednovich ignores or is unaware that the city already has a  “no littering” law that applies to the beach.

If law enforcement officials spot smoke swirling from a group of visitors enjoying the beach, do they approach them and ask to see who is smoking? If the smoke is coming from a cigarette, pipe and a vaping device does the officer fine those folks $75 each while giving the stogie smoker a thumbs up? How do they explain that to the confused crowd, who by this time probably think they’re vacationing in Oz? At the least they’ll have a hilarious vacation story tell their family and friends when they return home that begins with “You won’t believe this but…”

Fernandina Mayor Mike “Left Coast” Lednovich

I thought the mayor, who was wearing a yellow vest and baseball cap labeled “police’, was headed to the beach to nab errant smokers. Instead, he had volunteered at the Friday “Sounds On Centre” event to help direct pedestrian and vehicle traffic.

Oh, and in case you missed it in the previous postings, here’s a photo of Mayor “Left Coast” Lednovich, publicly and proudly supporting the militant and Marxist Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization about 20 months ago while at the same time that group was rioting, burning, looting, and shooting and beating bystanders. He supports the violent BLM organization while opposing smoking on the beach, which he says, “violates my rights.” Oh, he’s running for the Commission again. I’m posting this photo as a public service so folks will know who NOT to vote for in November.

In this photo he’s wearing the same Fernandina Police Department “Police” cap he wore when I saw him downtown last Friday. Folks that don’t know better might assume that he’s a member of the local police department and that the department endorses BLM.

Personally, in the District 4 City Commission race that includes “Left Coast” Lednovich, I’m casting my vote for Dr. James Antun, a local chiropractor who along with his Chiropractor wife, owns a clinic in the city. As  a local businessman he’s experienced the same trials and tribulations suffered by other business people at the hands of a boated, bullying, insensitive city bureaucracy. Dr. Antun is a hands-on guy who will give the city a needed adjustment – puns intended.

***

Speaking Of City Hall: The flat millage just approved by the Fernandina Beach City Commission will net an additional $1.8 million into the general fund. What are we, the taxpayers getting for that money?

  1. Three firefighters and an IT technician
  2. What else?

It has been  suggested to all five commissioners that the city issue a statement that clearly shows what this money will buy. Since no one reads the budget book a clear statement would be helpful. Anybody at city hall listening?

***

My ACLU Pen Pal: For some inexplicable reason I received a fund-raising letter from the Executive Director of the ACLU that also asked me to participate in a national survey.

I have no idea why this organization, that I and many others consider to be on one of the most dangerous and contemptable groups in the country, would write to me. Maybe someone in their New York City HQ had time on their hands or had a letter-mailing quota to meet.

There was nothing in the request for funds that surprised me. The director pleaded for money saying that unless their goal was met awful things would happen. He said they needed the money to stem a “growing assault on voting rights, reproductive freedom, transgender rights, classroom censorship and more.” Yikes!

In just the first two brief paragraphs of the two-page plea he used the terms “extremists, vengeance, alarming, volatile, unconstitutional , un-American and downright dangerous” to emphasize their need for more cash.

I was exhausted after that and skipped to the end where a fellow with the quixotic name of Anthony D. Romero signed off adding under his title “Pronouns: he, him, his.” If nothing else these ridiculous and dangerous people are always good for a few laughs.

***

Drinking, Dining & Dancing:  The Tavern’s parking lot behind its 318 Centre Street brew bar and restaurant will be converted into a German-style Oktoberfest Saturday, September 24 from 12-7 pm.

The last day of Oktoberfest is  always the first Sunday of October. Over the years, as Oktoberfest grew in popularity, organizers worked backward to capitalize on September’s warmer German weather.

The original annual Bavarian beer bash evolved from a royal wedding. In October 1810, Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig married Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen, and beer-quaffing locals celebrated in Munich. They’re still at it when not interrupting the festivities to invade neighboring countries.

The local Tavern says its event will kick off at noon with tournament-style games hosted by the “Siegtoberfest” crew, whatever they are, then feature live music from 2-6 pm by the Stevie Trio.

Organizers say there will be “bier, brats, pretzels, and more bier!” All ages are welcome, and admission is free. Beer and food tickets are $7 each, or five for $30.

VIP Packages are available for $80 and include: “early entry at 11 am, an event t-shirt, a refillable 22 oz event mug, exclusive swag, a growler of Oktoberfest Bier (to-go), and five food/drink tickets.”

Stop by The Tavern, call 904-310-6088, or visit AIBC on the Oznr app to purchase VIP packages.

Speaking of beer and bratwurst, the German Beer Garden on South 3rd Street that two local Teutonic brothers wanted to open by July 4, is still shuttered. Why? I hear it’s because the city is continuing to drag its feet on their permitting processes, another example of how the city stymies local enterprise instead of encouraging it.

Read Dave Scott’s Blog regularly


Republished with the author’s permission. Read The Dave Scott Blog– subscribe Free

Veteran reporter, publicist, blogger Dave Scott of Fernandina Beach

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.

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