Let Us Tell You How It Will Be

So we pay for all this stuff, but we can't see it. Even though there's a Court order requiring the IRS to release it. Nice. AP (01.08.06):

"The Bush administration has illegally stopped making public detailed tax enforcement data, which has been used to show which kinds of taxpayers get the most and toughest audits, a noted tax researcher says. Syracuse University Professor Susan B. Long said in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle late last week that since Nov. 1, 2004, the Internal Revenue Service has violated a 1976 court order requiring the release of the data." IRS Said to Improperly Restrict Access

Susan is a co-director of Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC):

"The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people -- and institutions of oversight such as Congress, news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars and lawyers -- with comprehensive information about federal staffing, spending, and the enforcement activities of the federal government. On a day-to-day basis, what are the agencies and prosecutors actually doing?" TRAC: About Us

That does, of course, assume that the agencies and prosecutors actually know what they're doing. Susan has some experience in the area, having "researched and written about federal tax administration for more than 30 years". Back in 1976, she used FOIA to get a court order "directing the [IRS] to provide her regularly with its data on criminal investigations, tax collections, the number and hours devoted to audits by income level and taxpayer category and other enforcement records." Things were going along fairly well. Until recently that is. "Despite filing regular FOIA requests for the material, the last data Long received arrived Nov. 1, 2004 and covered only the first six months of fiscal year 2004, through March, 2004, she said in an interview." This may be, in no small part, due to some of TRAC's recent reports, such as the one from April, 2004, which "found that business and corporate audits were substantially down and that criminal enforcement of the tax laws was at an all time low." The IRS says it doesn't think it's violating the court order. Seeing as how TRAC has filed a motion to compel the release of this information, both parties will have an opportunity to explain it all to a judge. This isn't the first time TRAC has encountered a growing reluctance on the part of the Feds to share government data with us. Washington Post (12.14.05):

"Breaking a tradition of openness that began in 1816, the Bush administration has without explanation withheld the names and work locations of about 900,000 of its civilian workers, according to a lawsuit filed last week. Since 1989, TRAC has posted a database on the Internet with the name, work location, salary and job category of all 2.7 million federal civilian workers except those in some law enforcement agencies. The data are often used by reporters and government watchdog groups to monitor policies and detect waste or abuse." U.S. Workers' Names Withheld

Maybe it's just us, but it kinda sounds like a pattern is developing here.