CNN is quoting a federal official who says that an airplane that hit a seven-story building in Austin was deliberately crashed. Not only that — the plane was stolen, and the pilot had set his own house on fire before taking flight, the channel reports.
Some blogs (including Business Insider) are claiming to have found a manifesto/suicide note by the pilot, Joseph Andrew Stack, that rants against the IRS and sounds a little teabaggy—and a lot communist. (A confusing combination, I know.) Mr. Stack (if he did write this) is angry about taxes, about the broken health care system, about the “vile, corrupt Catholic church,” the rich (“when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes”), and the political system that supports them:
Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.
And:
It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change.
It concludes:
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
Two were reportedly aboard the plane, both killed. (Though sources differ: some sites are reporting one person aboard the plane, some reporting up to three.)
UPDATE
A statement from the IRS:
We can confirm a small plane hit a building in Austin, Texas that includes IRS offices in Echelon Building I that houses about 190 IRS employs. We are still in process accounting for all employees and will update as information is available.
And first reports of casualties come from the Austin Business Journal:
Two victims of the plane crash were admitted and treated at University Medical Center Brackenridge, according to Matilda Sanchez, a spokeswoman for Seton Family of Hospitals.
One person was treated and is in good condition, suffering minor injuries and smoke inhalation. The second patient was treated, stabilized and was sent to San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center to be treated in their special burn unit, Sanchez said.
@49
Yeah, that’s a fair point.
But at this point it’s really no surprise he wasn’t particularly rational or consistent, I guess.
Fnarf – Google gives me no hits – none – for “cause of distress that demands action”.
Here’s a mainstream definition, which supports none of your off-the-rails tirade:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/grievan…
You are ordinarily a font of reason and information in these threads. Why are you being such a dick today?
I’ve twice had some problems with the IRS, having to do with stock options when I worked for that absolutely ridiculous dot com that gave me such lavish options.
Both times the IRS was absolutely fine to work with: Professional and courteous. I owed them money, they put me on a payment plan with very low interest and easy terms. I paid it off, and went on my way.
Either I’ve been lucky, or the people who have such a problem with the IRS are jerks who just don’t want to pay their fair share.
Just to add to Fnarf’s response, because I think he’s nailing it here in terms of putting this guy’s “grievances” in context:
RonK, I appreciate what you’ve said, and I agree that there are legitimate grievances to be made against the IRS. Absolutely. But this man did not make them. We can disagree about this, but I would say his points have to be taken in the context of the entire document. His manifesto is an unhinged rant, and no place from which to begin a serious discussion of any of the issues he mentioned.
And balderdash @45, I agree with what you’re saying; I only wanted to emphasize that it is dangerous to take this man seriously at all. And he will be taken seriously by some. That “rational path” from grievance to violence will be found. This guy needs to be discredited, fast. He and his type (anarcho-socialists, radical libertarians, what have you) have no legitimate place in any serious political argument.
@24, I was raised Catholic and while I have no objection to the belief system, even the most obtuse individual can see that the institution of the Catholic church has been corrupt for decades. Scores of children raped, billions of dollars invested in real estate and stocks and funds… Even on a local level the corruption is obvious: Have you ever seen a priest driving a Hyundai? Of course not, they all have Cadillacs or Lincoln Town Cars. What did Christ have to say about rich people? I don’t suppose you can pass a camel through the eye of a needle, can you?
You’re welcome to your beliefs, but please don’t pretend that the Catholic church is somehow worthy of defense.
Also, taxing churches by a modest 5% would immediately solve all of our country’s budgetary woes. Heck, let’s just tax the businesses owned by the churches, that would make a healthy dent.
Irena, you jumped from (properly) dismissing one of his subsidiary grievances to declaring he had no legitimate grievances at all – making him unique on this planet, far as I know.
As I re-read the “manifesto”, I recognize quite a number of grievances popular in Slogland – as is the glue that holds them together in his worldview: “the game is rigged against me and people like me and people I care about”.
This is almost always rooted in part in ignorance of how things work, in part in ignorance of how things could possibly work in the alternative, and in part on how things really do work. The game is rigged, folks know it’s rigged, and discrediting the obvious doesn’t make ’em any better adjusted.
As I said, we may have to disagree about this. I don’t see much point in further nitpicking, since we’re coming at this from different angles, and I think there is a lot we agree on. I really have no quibble with your arguments per se, only with the kind of discourse they feed into.
My concern is that by displacing blame onto political and financial systems — systems that for the most part work, but can be exploited and corrupted in certain historical and political instances — we redeem this man’s violence. We turn his murderous rage into a rational, justifiable response to a system that is insane, instead of seeing it for what it is: an insane response to a system that is flawed and in need of fixing.
Anyway, I do respect what you have to say, and appreciate the chance to speak my mind.
The moral of this sad event is that he forgot to remember to be nice. Just think for a minute how this story would have changed had he intentionally chosen the option of being nice rather than enraged. Instead, he chose to pile up grievance upon grievance until he was out of his mind. By intentionally being nice he could have amicably resolved those issues as they arose. Did he die in vain? Not if you learned the importance of INTENTIONALLY being nice!
@16: By that (implied) analogy, you must be a Nazi because Hitler also thought that homosexuality was a crime against nature.