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Yes. My priors are that most people, regardless of ideology, act according to plausible, recognizable motives, and that if someone tells me a story about my enemies acting like lizard people, I should perhaps question the details. Your priors are that your enemies are lizard people so any story that presents them as lizard people should be taken at face value, and anyone who questions the details is just pro-lizard people.
Indeed, but you claimed that this was supposedly "common" during the dot bust era. Presumably, even if it happened mostly to rich-but-not-famous people, there would be some examples, and you would be able to explain how it happened (not just handwave vaguely at unrealized capital gains and taxes on unsaleable vested stocks, the problems with which I have already pointed out). Yet you cannot.
I absolutely believe that people can act like Nazis, including the IRS. Indeed, because there are thousands of cases a year, the story of IRS agents holding kids hostage and making their parents sign some strange, probably illegal agreement, strikes me as unlikely but not impossible. I am willing to be persuaded. But you are trying to persuade me of two things:
Whose priors are being flattered here, and who is approaching the issue with more rationality and analysis? I think that fact that you've gone from posting walls of chaff to a bunch of "nuh uh" one-liners is a satisfactory answer.
I think you're right to be sceptical of the story; one of the two sources the book gives (both of which seem inaccessible from the internet unless you have a Washington times archive subscription) is a story from AP entitled 'IRS denies misconduct in Tax Raid at Day Care Centre'. Obviously they would say that even if they had done something wrong, but given that the IRS appear to dispute the story (the title of the WT story is also equivocal 'IRS accused of intimidating families...', and the passage Bovard is qualified with an 'allegedly') and the only actual source we have access to is someone who clearly has an axe to grind I am not really inclined to believe the story as presented.
Do you have any better sources on the incident @The_Nybbler?
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