Joe Stack, the IRS, and Our Congressmen

By now, just about everybody and his house cat has had something to say about Joe Stack fueling up a Piper four-seater and crashing it into a Texas office of the Internal Revenue Service. Stack has been labeled a murderer, a terrorist, a hero, a narcissic loser, a tax protester, and who-knows-what else.
Yeah, he was a murderer. He wouldn’t be a hero to me, and I’d rather not associate myself with anyone who’d consider him one. “Tax protester” as a label is too facile and dead wrong to boot.
The terrorist label came from those who define anyone who commits an act of violence against the government. Ironically, the first use of the word terrorist applied to a government committing acts of violence against its own citizens during the 1920’s. If terror was his motive, then, by definition, he was a terrorist.
Since I couldn’t find his blog on the Internet, and since his critics haven’t seen fit to quote it at length, I have no way of knowing whether he was a narcissist or whether terror fit into his motives. From what has been made available, I’d say that revenge for perceived harassment, rather than terror, was his motives.
Considering that Stack’s bone of contention stemmed from Section 1706 of the so-called Tax Reform Act of 1986—passed by our congressmen in Washington. The word reform, by the way, implies that something has been improved. In a nutshell, Section 1706 pulled the rug from under self-employed computer contractors and gave big businesses a weapon for putting them out of business. Most of them did go out of business or relocate overseas—more American jobs lost because of Congress. For details on this travesty called Section 1706.
For many years, Joe Stack tried to work within, through, and sometimes around, the system that our congressmen created. The bean counters at the IRS just kept on shuffling papers and counting beans, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were dealing with real, flesh-and-blood people.
And how do people react when they’re ready to scream, “I’m as mad as—“? Well, you know the rest. When you push an East Asian too far, he thinks about suicide. When you push an American too far, he thinks about murder. Joe Stack thought about both. Vernon Hunter, who, for whatever reason he may have had for working for the IRS, was also a husband, father, Vietnam War veteran, and murder victim.
Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas 25), an implacable enemy of the small businessman, said that Joe Stack’s act was “a cowardly act of domestic terrorism.” Actually, Doggett’s voting record in Congress closely fits the description of a “cowardly act of domestic terrorism” against small businesses and independent contractors. Before looking at Doggett’s voting record, you’d better get a barf bag:
Spending & tax issues
Government Reform (including government waste)
How does your congressman stack up? Is he an enemy of the hundreds of thousands of “regular Joe’s” who struggle to make ends meet, working long hours as small businessmen and independent contractors? What’s your congressman been doing in that granite-and-marble casino on Capitol Hill?
Check it out. This November, we’ll have our opportunity to drive the money changers from the temple, and your congressman may be one of them.