Moron the IRS

            Let’s talk about quality control.  If you’ve been anywhere near it, you know that quality auditors use a combination of random samples (that cannot be predicted and therefore thwarted) or scheduled samples, such as a part that passes a certain point in the process of its manufacture, or is sampled for correctness at a particular time.  It may be every so-many items using a random interval.  In some quality or accuracy testing, a double blind selection is used to prevent compromise.       

           All sampling involves targeting.  When it’s a quality sample, the word ‘target’ rarely has the connotation of ‘singled out for unfair punishment.’  But that is the meaning that news media are nailing to the IRS’s sampling of 501c(4) applicants.  You and I cannot yet know if that meaning is accurate.  Around here, we start from a position of doubt, simply because it’s so inflammatory.  Who knows what selection methods are used at the IRS? Do you?  So far, we can be reasonably certain something stupid happened, and that the news media are sensationalizing it.

            So, TARGET is meant to get emotional attention in the context of news reporting.  Whereas, in quality control, it is innocuous.  This alone should get your lie detector humming.  Hearings will produce a parade of information and mis-information, calculated to attract more emotional attention.  This is a good time for consumers of news to park their emotions and ferret out the facts.  The unspun, un-fooled-around-with facts.  When the whole story is out and the facts have been heard, there will be emotion enough.  In the meantime, be emotional about not getting jerked around.