Topic: WorldNetDaily
The last time we checked in with Lowell Ponte,he was in permanent meltdown mode over Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in particular. He seems to have gotten better -- only now he's a columnist for WorldNetDaily and co-author of a book with former WND columnist and onetime dubious WND advertiser and business partner Craig R. Smith.
Ponte's July 29 WND column is a weird lament that tax cheats have trouble fleeing the country -- and, thus, their tax debts -- because the IRS can revoke their passports:
A new wall against emigrants has just been erected on America’s borders, but few citizens are aware of this invisible barrier.
This is not the wall President Donald Trump promised. This new wall does nothing to keep illegal aliens out. It also does nothing to prevent invading illegals from collecting social benefits virtually from the moment they arrive – thereby picking the pockets of American taxpayers.
This new wall is a barrier not to immigrants but to emigrants, designed to stop wealthy targeted taxpaying citizens from departing the United States.
President Barack Obama authorized the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the passport of any taxpayer whom the IRS arbitrarily deems to have “seriously delinquent tax debt.”
In our analysis of 19 little-noticed government traps designed to loot American citizens, Craig R. Smith and I in our book “Money, Morality & The Machine” warn the IRS now has the power to capriciously shut off anyone’s passport at the push of a computer button.
Citizens targeted “would not be permitted to leave the United States,” we write. “These citizens would be required to pay the demanded tax and penalties to exit, or live out their lives without leaving the United States under a kind of nationwide house arrest.”
This is not President Trump’s Great American Wall to stop invaders. It is more like the Berlin Wall that the East German government erected to prevent its serf taxpayers from escaping Communism.
It also resembles Communist Cuba, which claims that its citizens are free to leave … IF they reimburse what the Marxist government has paid for their healthcare, housing, food, education and more.
[...]
The IRS has just announced it is about to revoke the passports of 362,000 U.S. citizens it claims owe $50,000 or more in back taxes and penalties. Millions more could soon be denied freedom to travel outside the U.S. over much smaller purported tax debts.
This IRS power, opines ZeroHedge, “shows that you’re not even really a citizen. You’re just renting your citizenship from the government. And when they believe (in their sole discretion) that you owe them income tax, they’ll take it away from you.”
The IRS can now, in effect, confiscate your right to leave the U.S. by claiming you owe taxes. You are guilty unless you can meet the burden of proving your innocence.
Silicon Valley billionaires bought ranches in New Zealand, assuming they could escape there if our society broke down. Did they know President Obama gave the IRS the power to shake them down by instantly turning off their passports and then demanding a huge “exit fee”?
Ponte never explains why tax cheats shouldn't just pay off that "seriously delinquent tax debt" before they leave the country, nor does he prove that the IRS' process is applied "capriciously" or "arbitrarily."
