Actually, it is Congress' obligation to be extremely specific in the laws they write. The nondelegation doctrine is an important concept in American jurisprudence.

J.W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States helped establish the rules under which power can be delegated, essentially stating that Congress has to establish an "intelligible standard" for the executive or legislative branch.

Congress can't simply tell the executive branch, "Hey, you guys control pollution so we can have a clear sky." Congress has to establish an intelligible standard upon which an administrative agency can build regulations AND Congress has to grant the power to the agency to establish those rules. Typical statutes might read, "...xxx agency is empowered to institute regulations in support of this statute."

The function of the executive agency was not to create rules but, rather, to faithfully enforce the laws of the United States. The fact that Congress has found numerous ways in order to delegate its power to the executive agency doesn't change the fundamental design of the system. This delegation of power is what's lead everyone to believe the executive branch holds more power than it really does.

The most unfortunate thing about Congress' abdication of power to the executive branch using so many specific delegations is that we've created a situation in aggregate where the executive has an almost blanket delegation of Congressional power; a delegation that would be unconstitutional if granted via a single Congressional action.

Just to be more specific on what the IRS does, you can follow this link to see a letter from Leonard Oursler, the national director for legislative affairs for the Department of the Treasury, to the chairman and ranking member of the finance committee.

In the letter, Mr. Oursler indicates that it was Lois Lerner's responsibility to preserve the emails as an official government record, "...the email must be printed and placed in the appropriate file by the employee."

The issue here is that emails related to operations, decision making and a host of other subjects are official government records that must be preserved. These preservation requirements fall well outside standard IT-style email retention policies.

IRM (IRS Manual) 1.15.6 Managing Electronic Records Found here
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1.15.6.6
Standards for Managing Electronic Mail Records ...
3. IRS offices will not store the official recordkeeping copy of e-mail messages that are federal records ONLY on the electronic mail system, unless the system has all of the features of an electronic recordkeeping system, some of which are specified in paragraph 2 above. If the electronic mail system is not designed to be a recordkeeping system, ask an E-Mail/System Administrator to instruct you on how to copy the information from the electronic mail system to a recordkeeping system or produce a hard copy[emphasis mine] for recordkeeping purposes.

4. IRS offices that maintain their e-mail records electronically will move or copy them to a separate electronic recordkeeping system unless their system has the features specified in IRM 1.15.6.6.2 above. Backup tapes are not to be used for recordkeeping purposes.[emphasis mine] ...

6. Offices that maintain paper files as their recordkeeping systems will print their e-mail records[emphasis mine] and the related transmission and receipt data. ...

Exhibit 1.15.6-1
Common Questions about E-Mail

Are there special requirements for retaining e-mail messages as records
The basic requirements applicable to all records apply to e-mail records as well. If they are not in an approved electronic recordkeeping system, then the e-mail messages identified as records must be printed out and placed in the appropriate record system[emphasis mine]. However, there are some specific elements for records sent or received through e-mail which also must be captured in addition to the message to satisfy recordkeeping requirements. You should ensure that...

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There are a bunch of other IRS manuals that discuss printing, filing and retaining records. The issue here is that there is a requirement, formalized by statute and regulation, that all government agencies retain records.

Now about your guarantee; it doesn't say that each and every email has to be printed. It says that if there isn't a suitable electronic recordkeeping system then it has to be printed.

Backup systems are specifically prohibited from playing the role of a recordkeeping system.

Recordkeeping systems are required to maintain all documentation related to the decision making process.

Backup systems are run by the IRS and they can pretty much set their own standards on how to manage their IT organization. Recordkeeping systems standards, on the other hand, are established by law and regulation and managed by the National Archives taking out of the hands of any agency the power to set their own retention periods.

When it comes to email, for example, if the agency does not maintain an adequate recordkeeping system, as defined by the National Archives, then they are required to print each and every email and file them using a very specific protocol.

There is no exception and the IRS is not permitted to invent their own recordkeeping system standards. The IRS has previously certified to Congress and the National Archives that they have appropriate recordkeeping systems. It is up to the National Archives to determine the retention period for documents, electronic and paper, that are retained for recordkeeping purposes.

The fact that emails involved in a decision making process are lost indicates that the IRS does not have an appropriate recordkeeping system. This, by itself, is a violation of federal law.

Correct, these were not tax records, they were emails.

Federal law, general federal agency regulations and IRS specific regulations required these emails be kept for a much longer period of time in a formal recordkeeping system. The IRS, if they truly "lost" these emails, could only do so if their previous certifications claiming to follow the required recordkeeping regulations were untrue.

Where does the 6 months of emails come from? If that's true then the IRS is in violation of many federal laws as well as their own records retention regulations.

From the IRS Standards for Managing Electronic Mail Records:

"IRS offices will not store the official recordkeeping copy of e-mail messages that are federal records ONLY on the electronic mail system, unless the system has all of the features of an electronic recordkeeping system, some of which are specified in paragraph 2 above. If the electronic mail system is not designed to be a recordkeeping system, ask an E-Mail/System Administrator to instruct you on how to copy the information from the electronic mail system to a recordkeeping system or produce a hard copy for recordkeeping purposes."

Other federal regulations require printed and filed copies of electronic records (including emails) unless they are stored in an approved recordkeeping system. All emails related to decision making processes are, by the way, defined as records that must be kept.

This is done now by American Express.

I made some charges on my AMEX card that did not fit my usual pattern. The merchant received a message telling them to call an AMEX phone number for further verification. Almost simultaneously, my cell phone rang with a voice call and I received a text message, both from AMEX. I was able to respond to either one and let the clerk re-scan the credit card to allow it to go through.

I also received a message from AMEX that their iPhone app can handle the authorization extra-step if I chose to install it. During the phone call they even inquired if I was on wifi and wanted to install the app.

I wouldn't argue that government can't do anything right though you probably consider me part of that crowd.

I would argue that the larger the government entity, the less efficiently it can do anything. If there was government ownership of utility infrastructure I would prefer it was done at a local government level where there's some level of accountability to the voters. I firmly believe that federal ownership and management of internet infrastructure would be a disaster.

I've only lived in a couple of places that had actual competition amongst cable TV providers. My experience with government owned infrastructure was no different than that owned by private entities. While we may argue that government should own the last-mile the fact is that whether it's run by a government entity or business the entity has to have a way of covering costs - either through rates or taxes. Again, this comes to size. I'd prefer to deal with a small, local entity than a large, national one.

An issue faced by networking infrastructure providers is that it has, so far, needed to be upgraded on a fairly consistent basis.

The water, electricity and POTS lines have needed maintenance but have, for the most part, been a rather stable infrastructure. Networking infrastructure, on the other hand, has had significant requirements for upgrading over the past 30 years. There will always be a segment of the population that wants the latest and fastest (I'm in that category) and another segment that sees no reason to upgrade (my 83 year old father actually preferred, at one time, when the web page loaded no faster than he could read it). If taxes are required to cover the cost of upgrading infrastructure then you will likely face a large opposition to raising those taxes from people who think the service is "good enough."

Here's a list of 251 publicly owned electric & gas utilities in the U.S. At the bottom of the list are state and federal power agencies.

Everywhere I've lived (approximately 15 cities across five states) the water utility has been owned by a municipality or county. I know there are plenty of others that are privately owned, I just haven't lived there.

The cable and telephone companies that I know used to be owned by municipalities were sold off to private enterprises some time ago though I expect that many still exist.

The document you cite relates to businesses hiring services. There is a different publication that is germane: IRS publication 926 is for household employers; for example, someone getting their lawn cut.

From the document, "A self-employed worker usually provides his or her own tools and offers services to the general public in an independent business."

In fact, the very next paragraph in the publication gives an example that addresses the situation outlined here:

"Example. You made an agreement with John Peters to care for your lawn. John runs a lawn care business and offers his services to the general public. He provides his own tools and supplies, and he hires and pays any helpers he needs. Neither John nor his helpers are your household employees."

This is an important point. A minimum wage hurts the people for whom it is sold as a benefit.

The minimum wage is actually an unemployment law. It becomes illegal to hire someone below that wage.

Now, let's say you have a business and you have a choice between hiring someone who has a "market value" of $7/hour and someone whose value is $15/hour. If the work that needs to be done is $7/hour then you will hire the person whose market value is closest to what you have to pay. If the minimum wage is raised to $15/hour then you will hire the person who has a market value of $15/hour. Why would you hire someone who is worth $7/hour and pay them $15/hour if, for the same price, you can get someone who is worth $15/hour.

Let's look at it from the employee's perspective. The person who is currently worth $15/hour has to contribute $15/hour of worth to their employer, otherwise they would be out of a job. That person is now being offered a job where they only have to contribute $7/hour of worth to their employer for the same pay. Which job will they select?

Perhaps, you would like to argue that by raising the minimum wage to $15/hour then the employer who needs $15/hour worth of value from their employee will need to raise their pay so their $15/hour employee doesn't go and take the job that only requires $7/hour worth of work. Explain to me how that's not wage inflation.

The only real winners here are the tax collectors. The tax tables aren't indexed for inflation. When wages are inflated, the real purchasing power of no one is increased but real tax revenue goes up because more people make above the minimum required to pay taxes causing a broadening of the base that pays taxes.

You essentially have that now, in the U.S., with the number set at $1 million. This happened years ago during the last assault on economic freedom when the tax deduction for salary expenses above $1 million was eliminated. The push was to get more people paid by something at risk and dependent on company performance and, thus, we saw the massive increase in stock options used as compensation.

Now people complain that stock option based compensation is outrageously high. Stock options, in the U.S., by law have no value when issued and only have value if the stock price increases. Whether you think the stock increased because of sound management of the company or because of legal shenanigans is a matter of opinion left to the market to determine.

The bigger issue, economically, with asset prices of anything represented by a fiat currency is the expectation that has been set that hard assets have to increase in price when there's no underlying increase in value. Selling inflation as a means of saving and increasing the value of one's assets is no substitute for increasing the true economic value of one's skills or the stock price representing a company's value.

It is this very manipulation of asset prices via inflationary policies that has us in the discussion about paying people a wage that doesn't represent their market worth and also a discussion about accumulation of assets held by the bankers.

Whether you like to admit it or not, there are a lot of luxury items on your list.

Should we really pay a "living wage" so people can save money, buy life insurance, contribute to their retirement, have internet access, have a phone or a car that's nice enough to require a monthly payment. The student loan isn't looking like that great of an investment, yet we're still encouraging tons of people to get deeper into debt in order to fund the "higher education" cartels.

You mention your spouse and the ability to pay your bills and save for retirement. I think that's great, but why the argument and insistence that a "living wage" be enough for a single person to live alone and have all these things? What's wrong with pooling resources?

I get that you think things are tight for you and, like anyone else, would like things to be easier. But when I look at your list I see a pretty solid representation of things that aren't required to live.

The whole "living wage" thing is a joke because it has no definition. It's nothing more than a slogan to entrap those who can't think beyond their own backyard experiences.

How is a one-time price rise not inflation?

You don't pay employer taxes when you hire a contractor.

As the teen isn't hired as an employee then there's no need to be sure he has a work permit.