By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
The Alabama Constitutional Conservatives attended a special showing of the motion picture, “Unfair: Exposing the IRS” in Trussville on Tuesday, October 14. The Alabama Political Reporter attended the showing.
The single night showing of the film that attacks the Internal Revenue Service and advocates for the Fair Tax occurred in movie theaters across the country. The Fair Tax is a National sales tax. Replacing the IRS would end tax filing, tax audits, and the complex tax code that most of us just assume is how the country has always worked.
The film is narrated by one of its producers, conservative activist Craig Bergman. In the movie, Bergman travels the country in a black motor home interviewing people who have had bad experiences with the IRS. The film also uses a lot of clips from Fox News and other news programs to tell the story of the IRS, which Bergman believes has become a threat to the liberty of the American people.
Bergman says that in order to pass the constitutional amendment that created the IRS in the first place people in western states were told that only rich people in New England would ever pay the tax. At that time the income tax only applied to 2% of the population. Of course, as we all know, the taxation power of the IRS……and the size and scope of the federal government expanded exponentially following that change in the Constitution which allowed the federal government to tax income……something forbidden by the founders of the country.
Tax reform advocate Grover Norquist said, “For most of our country’s history, we didn’t have an IRS and it functioned fairly well.”
Bergman interviewed a couple at an American Legion post that were fined $50,000 by the IRS after the IRS stripped the post of its non-profit status.
Bergman points out that the federal government did not interfere with Churches in this country until the 1960s when the IRS reinterpreted a 1954 law to claim they had the power to strip Churches of their non-profit status if the Church was involved in political activities, even though Churches are specifically protected by the First Amendment.
Bergman interviewed Ralph Reed who was the head of the Moral Majority when Lois Learner at the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) went after their non-profit status. Her efforts failed, but she was rewarded for her efforts with an important job at the IRS.
The movie then tells the tale of how a partisan Learner then used that authority to harass and intimidate people, particularly Tea Party groups, for their political activities while denying those groups tax exempt status. The movie also interviews Zionists, Pro-Life groups, and a family who adopted a child from China that claim harassment by agents of the IRS.
The movie is basically an advocacy piece for conservative opponents of the IRS.
One of the “experts” who appears frequently in the film is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R). Huckabee compares the IRS to the mafia and says that the “Mafia operates with at least the honor of not whacking the women and the children.”
Other pundits who appear prominently in the movie include: Texas Congressman Louis Gohmert, Neal Bortz, Sen. Ted Cruz, South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, and Norquist. The movie was well done, but the music (dark and foreboding while describing the rise of the IRS and its terrors and bright and joyous for the Tea Party and Fair tax proponents) got to be somewhat distracting.
Following the credits Gov. Huckabee led a panel discussion about the Fair Tax.
The Alabama Constitutional Conservatives theater captains were Deanna Frankowski and Terry Richmond. To learn more about their groups visit their Facebook page.
