Thursday, June 29, 2006

How Was Our Financial Privacy Violated?

Sachi on Big Lizards asks why such turmoil about monitoring international bank transfers, when all along our banking system has been providing much more detailed and personal information to the IRS and FBI to track money laundering by drug dealers and to catch tax evaders.

The IRS knows I received $10.84 last year in interest on my credit union checking account, and I will be in deep kimchee if that $10.84 doesn’t show up in the total interest earned summarized on line 8 a. of my 1040. The IRS also knows about the embarrassingly dumb investment I made in MicroStrategy a couple of years ago, the same day it lost 90% of its value, because Charles Schwab sent the IRS a detailed summary of my trading and dividends earned. If I ever get called in on an IRS audit (please God, no), I expect the IRS auditor will rib me about the MircroStrategy investment even if it has nothing to do with the audit.

Is there a reason why the Left’s media, New York Times and Los Angeles Times, has kinks in their undies about using bland international bank transfer information to identify, track, and thwart terrorists, yet doesn’t care that the most detailed and personal information about American citizens is passed to the IRS and FBI? It can’t be that the Left thinks that only Republicans are drug dealers, money launderers, and tax evaders.

Perhaps I typed too soon, and they do. But I don’t think so. I think they have the biggest cases of Bush Derangement Syndrome ever recorded, and anything Bush does to fight terrorism will be looked on as a dangerous infringement of privacy. Why would that be? Simple. Bush’s programs might be very successful, terrorism may be sharply reduced, and Bush and the Republicans would get the credit. The Left can’t have that.

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