[editor’s note: This article is by Donald Meinshausen and was posted on his behalf - TLK]

As we all should know by now the state survives and grows by getting information through informants. It was estimated that East Germany had at least half the population informing on the other half.

Turnabout is fair play. Let us create a hotline where IRS employees can call, anonymously if they wish, and give us information about their associates, bosses, and targets. This could be a website as well. To advertise in this service (yes, it is a service) to describe the bureaucrats we could leaflet IRS offices, conferences and any place they might hang out such as a nearby bar, which could be a good source of information in itself.

Not many people stay in the IRS for a long time. According to a Wall Street Journal article, IRS agents are so despised that they are forced to marry each other since no one wants to be associated with them or be open to their snooping. It is also common knowledge that while IRS employees are forbidden to go into tax accounting for a couple of years after leaving the government many do so surreptitiously.

The IRS is the only part of the government that needs to show a profit, i.e., collections. Therefore there is much pressure, hard-heartedness and valuable knowledge to be gained about their tactics and targets.

That this is why Operation Wolf Watch is not just a great political strategy — it is also an income producing opportunity as well. As we all should know by now there are a great number of libertarian financial newsletters and advisers in web sites. Providing the service of where the IRS is going is very valuable to upper-middle income people and firms who have some money but little power and access to decisionmakers in government.

This information can be supplemented and confirmed by people who follow tax court decisions and other data miners on the web. Victims, tax lawyers, accountants who want publicity and a chance to strike back are also good sources. Advertising from such people is another possibility.

Even postmortems of failed tax strategies are viable since it is important to know what doesn’t work. A good, even recognized legal concept often fails through bad wording, shifting rules, etc.

For all this to come together one has to understand that a strategy like this will mean repercussions from the IRS against those who organize it. It is therefore imperative to have this done with as much legal planning beforehand on the civil liberties issues involved as possible. It might be done with much anonymous help or done through overseas web sites and contact people. You’ll know how much this idea works by the hostility from the state it arouses. There is much we can learn here.

It is important to have the right attitude about this. Many in the IRS as well as other parts of the government believe that if only certain superiors or associates were disciplined and other reforms put into place that the situation could be made fair — whatever that means.

The point is not to belittle, condemn or ignore such critiques. We need not endorse such attempts but reforms and reformers can act as a bridge to a higher consciousness. Any dissatisfaction, as long as we can report it, will be to our advantage. And there’s plenty of dissatisfaction out there. Can you remember talking to a government employee who was happy in their work?

Perhaps through Operation Wolf Watch we can form an outplacement office for former IRS agents. It is far better to recruit an enemy than to fight him. Recruiting people to help in this project should be no problem since everyone hates the IRS. The more we know about them the faster they will fall.