When Caesar Needs Help Getting You to Render

I think most of us are familiar with the Biblical story told in chapter 22 of Matthew, verses 20-22* ...

"20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

21 They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

22 When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.

This story is the basis of the separation, in Christian tradition, of temporal and spiritual authority. "Rendering unto Caesar" is sometimes used as shorthand for paying taxes to the various temporal authorities who are legally entitled to dip their sticky fingers into our pockets.

But what happens when Caesar isn't able to enforce all the rendering he's expecting? There's an empire to run, after all ... somebody has to make sure we're doing all the rendering we're supposed to do.

And that's why the Internal Revenue Service, suffering from years of budget cuts and benign neglect, mostly from tax-hating Republican members of Congress, has decided it needs help, and has announced plans to contract with four commercial debt collection agencies to go after those who have insufficiently rendered unto Caesar.

Yes, folks, after years of the IRS warning you that it would never contact you directly by phone to demand payment of taxes, it is now contracting with professional debt harvesters who are authorized to contact you directly by phone to demand payment of taxes.

This is not good, and not only because it will make it far more difficult for the average citizen to differentiate between legitimate tax collection and the ubiquitous scams in which despicable thieves call citizens directly and demand payment of an alleged tax debt.

When I was working as a contractor for the Air Force, I learned about the concept of inherently governmental functions. What this meant in practical terms was that there were certain things that I, as a contractor, was not permitted to do. I could, for instance, go to meetings as a representative of the Air Force office I supported, but could not define an official Air Force position on an issue or commit the Air Force to any expense or course of action. I was permitted only to take notes and report back to my government customer, who would then decide what to do and take the appropriate action.

One definition** states that an inherently governmental function is “a function so intimately related to the public interest as to require performance by Federal Government employees.” In my opinion, for what it's worth***, the collection of taxes - the ability of an agency of the federal government legally to seize my wealth and punish me if I fail to give it up - is the very definition of an inherently governmental function. In what universe is it appropriate for a commercial entity to wield such power?

So, Dear Readers, be very careful in the future when somebody calls you on the phone and says they're representing the IRS and demanding payment of a tax debt. Supposedly, the IRS will have first sent you a letter telling you to expect contact from a collection agency before anyone calls you. This means that now, not only do you have to worry about scam phone calls, but you also need to carefully review and confirm the authenticity of any letter you receive that claims to be from the IRS.

And that, friends, is an inherently personal ass-covering function.

Have a good day. Beware of scammers.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* King James Version.

** In The Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act of 1998. 

*** Not much, I can tell you.

Algocracy

Here's an interesting new word (new to me, anyhow) that popped up on WordSpy a while back: Algocracy (n): rule or government by algorithm*.

I hadn't thought about it before, but our lives are governed more and more by the results of algorithms - broadly defined as "step-by-step procedures for solving a problem or accomplishing some end, especially by a computer."

Our federal government has become an algocracy. Both of our political parties use algorithms to parse voter registration data and combine it with the use of sophisticated mapping technology to support the despicable process of gerrymandering, by which a party in power seeks to maximize the borders of Congressional districts to its advantage. That's why the so-called "Freedom Caucus" will be able to strangle government forever ... none of them will ever be voted out of their gerrymandered seats unless it's by someone even more intransigent than they are.

Big business is an algocracy as well. Specialized data mining and interpretation firms hoover up vast quantities of data and use algorithms to package and sell it to those who want to tailor their products or messages to specific audiences ... a much easier practice now that the GOP has empowered ISPs to freely sell your online browsing histories**. Consider the junk mail you receive (both online and via snail mail), the trash robo-calls you get, and the ads that appear on your browser as you surf the Internet - it's all designed and targeted by firms that collect and study information about you and use algorithms to sift it into useful guidelines for the delivery of advertising aimed specifically at you***.

Is this a good thing? I guess it depends.

For purposes of government, and specifically for the partisan manipulation of voting districts, I think it's terrible. For purposes of business, each of us has to make our own decision ... there is some value to having businesses be able to make us aware of products and services in which we might be interested, but that value comes at the cost of a loss of our privacy. I'm sure some people are okay with that, but I'm not.

But like it or not, the algocracy is here to stay. Better keep close tabs on your browser history.

Have a good day, by the numbers.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* You may have thought an algorithm was a song sung by a former vice president, but you'd have been wrong.

** “Any Member of Congress who thinks this bill is a good idea ought to release their personal browsing history to their constituents. It's only fair.” (Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN))

*** For instance, if you belong to AARP, chances are you'll get a lot of ads for Medicare supplemental insurance, prescription drugs, and long-term care insurance ... and funeral services and cemetery plots for when those don't work for you.

Big Brother is Watching, Listening, and Storing. And He Doesn't Always Work for the Big, Bad GovernmentTM

On June 6th, 1949, George Orwell's classic novel 1984 was published. Orwell established the date of the title by reversing the last two digits of the year he wrote the book - 1948. He died in 1950 without knowing that he set his story of a society based on universal government monitoring and surveillance and control about 29 years too early. The leader of the government was the almost mythical figure of "Big Brother," and citizens were always reminded that "Big Brother Is Watching" ...

This past week, with the revelation that the National Security Agency* is working with communications and internet service providers to vacuum up the billions of telephone calls, e-mails, tweets, and other electronic communications that fly across the country every day, there are outraged cries from Congress and the public about the arrival - 29 years late - of the total surveillance culture described by George Orwell.

As you might suspect, I have a few ideas about that.

We Americans have a long history of distrust of government, going all the way back to the time of the Revolution. The Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution - grant all of us a wide range of rights and freedoms not granted in many other countries**, including a right we believe we have, but that isn't actually guaranteed under the Constitution ... the right to privacy.

That's right.

You have no Constitutionally-guaranteed right to privacy. What most people think of when they think of a right to privacy are the rights guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

You are guaranteed protection against unreasonable searches, which is not quite the same thing as being guaranteed privacy. And although there are many legal safeguards, invisible to most of us, that are intended to prevent abuse of the government's ability to compromise our privacy and protect us from unreasonable searches, the fact remains that we live today in a surveillance society ... and not all of that surveillance is carried out by the government and executed under legal controls intended to prevent (or at least, minimize) abuse.

Every time you scan your "preferred customer" card at the local supermarket, every time you place an order online, every time you make a cell phone call to a business, every time you cross a busy street or sit in a public place, you are allowing yourself to be scanned, recorded, imaged***, bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated. The telephone number and other personal data you write down on the warranty registration for your new appliance is sold, resold, packaged, analyzed, and parsed by dozens of individuals and data mining companies who are not restricted by the Fourth Amendment. The jerky video of you jaywalking across the street because you were too lazy to walk down to the crosswalk is maintained in a database somewhere, where someday a face-recognition program may decide that you look like a person wanted for some other, more heinous crime. The other day a friend of mine posted this on his Facebook page:

"Yesterday I did a post congratulating someone for earning her Master of Divinity. Today an ad popped up offering me Master of Divinity programs. Coincidence? I think not."

No, it isn't a coincidence. Big Brother is, indeed, watching. And he doesn't always work for the Big, Bad Government^TM.

There are a great many questions - both legitimate and asinine - being asked about what the NSA is doing. These are accompanied by the predictable howls of outrage from the left and the right for someone's head on a plate****. Nevertheless, it was not an out-of-control intelligence community that started all this ... it was Congress, in its speedy passage and routine renewal of the Patriot Act and other well-intentioned (yet, in hindsight, perhaps Constitutionally questionable) legislation, that established the foundation for all the actions that are now being questioned and villified. You can read the whole story here (and you should).

The next time Americans are killed in a terrorist attack (and it will happen, this being that kind of world), representatives of the intelligence and national security communities will be sitting in front of the cameras being thundered at by irate members of Congress for not predicting the attack and doing something in advance to prevent it. For all their faults and often questionable provisions, the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are some of those things we've chosen to do. Let us not throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

And if you can't have a right to privacy, why not just settle for the right to be left alone ...

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Because of its penchant for extreme secrecy, often jocularly known as "No Such Agency."

** Try exercising your freedom of worship in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, or your right to bear arms almost anywhere else in the world, and you'll see what I mean.

*** One day, on a whim, I decided to count the number of surveillance cameras that were taking my picture between the time I left my house and the time I arrived at my office in the Pentagon. I stopped counting at 25.

**** Prefereably the President's, from the GOP perspective ... which conveniently forgets that the Patriot Act was enacted under a Republican president, and still has plenty of members of Congress of both parties supporting the routine extension of some of its more controversial provisions.

A Permanent Reminder of a Temporary Feeling

There are a great many things I don't understand, such as color television, Republican economic policies, the mind of Kim Jong-un, and the appeal of the Kardashians. Another is the desire on the part of many otherwise intelligent people to get tattoos.

There are very few tattoos, especially on women, that I find attractive, especially when - after a few years - the colors have faded and the skin has sagged so that what might once have been a work of "art" is now a fadded, blurred smear on the canvas of the body. Most tattoos are, in my humble opinion, hideous, and do nothing to enhance the beauty of a lady or the handsome appearance of a gentleman. On his album Beach House on the Moon, Jimmy Buffett sings a song about tattoos called "A Permanent Reminder of a Temporary Feeling," which pretty much sums it all up.

I thought about the subject of tattoos yesterday when I ran across this article on CNN: "Suffering from 'Tattoo Regret'." The article was written by plastic surgeon Dr Anthony Youn, who has a great deal of experience in removing tattoos from men who finally realized that they really didn't love Annabelle forever, or women who came to understand that the lengthy quotation they had inked on their arm was less intellectual than visually tacky (and, often enough, misspelled*). Dr Youn tells the story of a lady who, when she was a free-spirited young thing in her 20's, got a tattoo on her lower abdomen that she came to regret many years later when she became a grandmother and needed to set a positive example for her grandchildren. ... the tattoo read, "Dinner is served."

A tattoo is one of those things that probably seems like a great idea when one is drunk or stoned, but isn't quite so appealing in the bright light of day. If you need a tattoo, try this one ...

not this one ...

Ladies, please think twice before you get that tacky tattoo**. Invest in some nice clothes instead. You'll thank me later.

Have a good day. More thoughts later.

Bilbo

* In a hilarious skit on the old Smothers Brothers TV show, comic Pat Paulsen was horrified to learn that the huge new tattoo across his chest read "Born too Loose" rather than "Born to Lose."

** Consider what happened to Maud Adams in the 1981 movie Tattoo.