{"id":59773,"date":"2014-09-03T13:50:42","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T17:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=59773"},"modified":"2014-09-03T09:51:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T13:51:39","slug":"i-didnt-believe-the-irs-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2014\/09\/i-didnt-believe-the-irs-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"I Didn\u2019t Believe the IRS Anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-1124832676\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">September 3, 2014<\/div><hr style=\"border: none; border-bottom: 3px solid black;\">\r\n<\/div><\/div><h4><span style=\"font-size: small;\">By Dennis Miller &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.millersmoney.com\/go\/v7s6n-2\/PIP\">millersmoney.com<\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/h4>\n<p>Lois Lerner\u2019s emails are back from the dead\u2014sort of. The former IRS official\u2019s BlackBerry, however, is still long gone. The IRS intentionally destroyed it in June 2012 (<em>after <\/em>congressional staffers interviewed Lerner about the IRS targeting conservative groups) as the Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel acknowledged in a recent sworn declaration.<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/trk.caseyresearch.com\/f\/?content_id=977&amp;code=PIP&amp;editorial=i-didnt-believe-the-irs-anyway\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve all met someone we just don\u2019t trust but don\u2019t know why. There\u2019s often a pretty good reason to feel that way.<\/p>\n<p>Has someone ever made an insincere attempt to flatter you? Their words might be complimentary, but their body language, tone, and\/or context let you know the compliment is phony. <em>Does this guy really think I\u2019m that stupid?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So, up goes your trust wall. If he\u2019ll lie about this, he\u2019ll lie about anything.<\/p>\n<p>The IRS debacle is a prime example of why we build trust walls. The emails Congress requested had (supposedly) been deleted when several hard drives crashed. I asked my colleague Alex Daley (our in-house technology guru) what the probability was of that happening. Here\u2019s what he had to say:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: .5in;\">Everyone who ever owned a computer knows that hard drives are finicky beasts. In fact, Google uses a LOT of hard drives and so they have published all kinds of research on their failure rates. The gist: there\u2019s about a 1 in 36 chance a hard drive fails in any given month. The math says then that if the IRS was practicing good data center management practices\u2014we have to assume, however silly it might seem, that the agency responsible for holding the most personal information on American citizens outside the NSA is following best practices\u2014then the chance of seven hard drives failing at the same time and wiping out the data on them is about 1 in 78 billion.<\/p><div id=\"inves-2923626004\" class=\"inves-in-content inves-entity-placement\"><hr style=\"border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\r\n<div id=\"inpost_ads_header\">\r\n<p style=\"font-size:10px; float:left; color:#666;\">Free Reports:<\/p><\/div>\r\n<div id=\"inpost_ads\"> \r\n<p style=\"font-size:15px; float:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/1ApBOV\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/investmacro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/graph_techs_PD.png\" align=\"left\" width=\"80\"  height=\"55\"\/><\/a>\r\n\t     <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/1ApBOV\"><b><u>Get Our Free Metatrader 4 Indicators<\/u><\/b><\/a> - Put Our Free MetaTrader 4 Custom Indicators on your charts when you join our Weekly Newsletter<\/p><br><br>\r\n<br>\r\n<br>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:15px; float:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/f3RrHX\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/investmacro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/cot_pie_80.png\" align=\"left\" width=\"80\"  height=\"55\"\/><\/a>\r\n\t    <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/f3RrHX\"><b><u>Get our Weekly Commitment of Traders Reports<\/u><\/b><\/a> - See where the biggest traders (Hedge Funds and Commercial Hedgers) are positioned in the futures markets on a weekly basis.<\/p><br><br>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<hr style=\"border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\r\n<br><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin-left: .5in;\">How rare is that? The odds of winning the Florida Lottery are roughly 1 in 23 million. So it\u2019s 340 times more unlikely than you winning a state lottery. The odds of winning the Powerball are 1 in 175 million; for Mega Millions, the odds are 1 in 259 million.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: .5in;\">Of course, we give the IRS too much credit. The risk of hard drives failing increases with age, and we suspect the IRS, like much of the government, isn\u2019t spending a lot of time rotating hard drives. The odds also increase if you keep all the drives in one place, using old-fashioned persistence techniques. Then a fire, flood, electrical issues, or any other number of problems could easily wipe out the whole lot at once.<\/p>\n<p>At one point there seemed to be only one plausible explanation for allowing so much data to disappear: negligence.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out, however, the data weren\u2019t even gone. As Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton last week:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: .5in;\">Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday [August 22] that Lois Lerner\u2019s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. The DOJ attorneys also acknowledged that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating this back-up system. &#8230;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: .5in;\">There are no \u201cmissing\u201d Lois Lerner emails\u2014nor missing emails of any of the other top IRS or other government officials whose emails seem to be disappearing at increasingly alarming rate. All the focus on missing hard drives has been a diversion.<\/p>\n<p>It sure seems clear why so many Americans feel put down. Does the government really think we\u2019 re that stupid? Maybe. I look at it this way: I suppose it\u2019s possible a dog can eat your homework. It\u2019s still a lousy excuse that no one will believe. It\u2019s no wonder politicians rank so low on our trust scale.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Whom Can You Trust?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The IRS is in our lives, period. If you live here in the US or you\u2019re a US citizen living abroad, you can\u2019t sever the relationship. Here\u2019s the upside, though: for the most part you can choose to conduct your private affairs with trustworthy people.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most common emails I receive is from readers looking for a trustworthy broker or financial advisor. Most come with sad tales: they had to fire their advisor because something felt fishy. Maybe they\u2019d been directed to overly risky investments or high-fee mutual funds. Some couldn\u2019t pinpoint their advisor\u2019s exact offense but just knew in their gut something was amiss.<\/p>\n<p>We should all expect the people we pay to help manage our money to put our interests ahead of their own. One reader said that paying fees to an advisor to put his money into high-fee investments made it almost impossible to end up with the growth he needed. He clearly wasn\u2019t getting the service he deserved and had good reason to look elsewhere.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Female Brain Detects Deception Best<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I recently finished reading <em>The Female Brain <\/em>by Louann Brizendine, M.D. Dr. Brizendine shares quite a bit of scientific evidence to support the existence of female intuition. In brief, women score higher on tests for reading nonverbal communications and on average have more receptors for those cues than their male counterparts.<\/p>\n<p>That explains why my youngest daughter recently fired an attorney. I was quite proud. She explained, \u201cI got tired of feeling like I was being talked down to!\u201d When I asked her to elaborate, she felt he thought she was stupid and should blindly follow his advice without question. She was picking up on the little things that might seem trivial but cause our subconscious mind to take notice.<\/p>\n<p>At one point in my career, I sought advice from a top public speaker. (Maybe I wanted to be more like my daughters.) This speaker had an uncanny ability to \u201cread, sense, and feel\u201d his audience. He did this mostly through nonverbal clues and suggested I read <em>Body Language <\/em>by Julius Fast to help my subconscious mind tune in to nonverbal cues.<\/p>\n<p>I read the book and learned that much of it was based on works like \u202a<em>Kinesics and Context: <\/em>\u202a<em>Essays on Body Motion Communication<\/em> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.millersmoney.com\/go\/v7sdj-2\/PIP\" target=\"_blank\">\u202aRay L. Birdwhistell<\/a>. So I read those books too and worked to sharpen my subconscious mind\u2019s nonverbal recognition skills. Perhaps that also helped me picked up on the suspect explanations coming from the IRS. It\u2019s certainly helped me trust my gut when deciding whether or not to do business with someone.<\/p>\n<p>An attorney, stockbroker, money manager, or certified financial planner can have a great track record and all the requisite credentials you could ask for. That\u2019s not enough. If he or she makes you uncomfortable but you aren\u2019t sure why, don\u2019t ignore your instincts. Switching course and hiring someone new can be an expensive headache, but it can save you over the long run.<\/p>\n<p>For weekly, no-nonsense tips on protecting your bottom line and living rich at any age, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.millersmoney.com\/go\/v7sgk-2\/PIP\" target=\"_blank\">sign up here to receive my free missive, <em>Miller\u2019s Money Weekly <\/em>directly in your inbox each and every Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"xvMdV95u77zU\" style=\"clear: both;\">The article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.millersmoney.com\/go\/v7s3m-2\/PIP\" rel=\"permalink\">I Didn\u2019t Believe the IRS Anyway<\/a> was originally published at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.millersmoney.com\/go\/v7s6n-2\/PIP\">millersmoney.com<\/a>.<\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Dennis Miller &#8211; millersmoney.com Lois Lerner\u2019s emails are back from the dead\u2014sort of. The former IRS official\u2019s BlackBerry, however, is still long gone. The IRS intentionally destroyed it in June 2012 (after congressional staffers interviewed Lerner about the IRS targeting conservative groups) as the Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel acknowledged in a recent sworn declaration. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}