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WHAT WAXMAN, KERRY AND PUTIN HAVE IN COMMON

October 31, 2007

Security firm Blackwater has been drawing fire from politicians looking to score points in the Iraq war debate. They congresscritters see Blackwater's tax filings as a point of attack. For example:

Waxman Accuses Blackwater of Tax Evasion

Kerry Demands Investigation of Blackwater Tax Filings

Obama, Durbin, Kerry Call for Investigations of Alleged Blackwater Tax Dodge

There's something creepy about politicians urging the taxman to go after their political targets. That works out badly in other countries:

New York, October 30, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces a lengthy prison sentence handed down today by an Azerbaijani court to independent editor Eynulla Fatullayev. Fatullayev is already serving a two-and-a-half-year prison term for allegedly defaming Azerbaijanis in an Internet posting he says he did not write, and has been sentenced to another eight-and-a-half years.

Judge Mekhdi Asadov of the Azerbaijani Court of Heavy Crimes in the capital of Baku convicted Fatullayev on charges of terrorism, incitement of ethnic hatred, and tax evasion.

Putin's Russia is also adept at going after opponents through the tax law - most famously using trumped-up tax charges to imprison wealthy opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky and sieze his oil company.

Could it happen here? Actually, it did. The Franklin Roosevelt administration attempted to trump up tax crime charges against wealthy opponents, most prominently Andrew Mellon; this is spelled out in chilling detail in Amity Schlaes history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man. While it would be nice to think that institutional safeguards would keep that from happening today, the political nature of the Justice Department in recent administrations is hardly reassuring.

It's very dangerous for politicians to be accusing opponents of tax evasion. Given the complexity of the tax law, and the great lack of understanding of it by our political class, it's grossly irresponsible. It's disturbing to see American politicians so quick to borrow from Putin's playbook.

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