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IRS Spent $60,000 Producing Star Trek Parody
An anonymous reader writes According to the AP, the IRS is being "scolded for spending $60,000 dollars on an elaborate parody video that played at a 2010 conference. 'The video features an elaborate set depicting the control room, or bridge, of the spaceship featured in the hit TV show. IRS workers portray the characters, including one who plays Mr. Spock, complete with fake hair and pointed ears. The production value is high even though the acting is what one might expect from a bunch of tax collectors. In the video, the spaceship is approaching the planet 'Notax,' where alien identity theft appears to be a problem.' You can find the hilarious and/or nausea-inducing video on YouTube."
Well, this is better than some of the things our government spends our tax dollars on...
Can we talk about the billions we're wasting on the F-35 instead?
They spent all that money, and they still couldn't get the right uniforms.
Unlike the AP, the IRS has a sense of humor!
It's that they created something so horrific, and unleashed it on the internet.
Anybody who thinks those stupid little wastes of money amount to anything in the deficit is a moron.
IRS Spent $60,000 Producing Star Trek Parody
Analysis shows it's best value for their (our) money they've gotten in years.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The IRS decided to produce videos in house instead of spending more money to hire outside contractors. Before they could start producing actual videos for use in training, public information, etc., they had to get up to speed with using their new video production facility. They had to make some dummy video during that checkout/internal training phase, so they chose to make parodies of Star Trek and Gilligan's Island. Big deal.
Oops I left off the other 000.
They are raping us for 10,000,000x more than this. So just forget about it.
Every single federal employee could throw a party like this and it would still be much cheaper than the bailouts.
I'd love to know the name of the IRS manager that approved production of this.
Anyone who is willing to drop 60k on fluff like this should have the opportunity to address the fans of their work.
First, like many have stated, this video could be done for ~ around $1,000 USD for the same production quality and add an additional $200 USD could have been better.... but what caught my mind is how they uploaded it upscaled at quality that would look crappy even on a 2" screen.
So basically a bridge full of vampires from Vulcan? Humorless, emotionless, greenblooded inhuman bloodsuckers?
it's for training.. and training is big bucks. bottom line, does it teach anything? and would an effective alternative have been cheaper?
had a good screen presence. With a little training, he might be as good as William Shatner.
Best 12 hoour sleep i had on my chair!!!
I'll bookmakr it for the next insomnia.
thanks
Look at the Star Trek cosplay, not the firearms we're stocking up on!
(not that it's much compared to the DHS)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The captain is Black, the comm officer is Caucasian... but she's... still... Uhura??? I'm mostly finding this funny. Like WTF is the Enterprise? Is that some kind of book that IRS people would recognize?
There is a chance, however remote, that if we tweet this link enough the IRS will get enough views on YouTube the recoup costs and make a profit to help pay on the order 1*10e-10 percent of the debt. I'll get on it right away captain...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
They FAA is shutting down 149 control towers, supposedly as part of saving $637 million due to the sequester, at the same time Obama is asking for $500 million for the corrupt oligarchy running the Palestinian Authority.
But they still seem to be able to fund the TSA's security theater. But you know who won't have to go through the grope lines? People from Saudi Arabia. You know, the country that produced produced 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers.
And of course, there are the billions in green crony subsidies.
Your tax dollars at work...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Looks good to me; not my tax dollars, am from UK, but if it were I'd be happy to see this come out of a gov dept; at least they're trying to think of new ways to ENGAGE (lol unintended ha ha) the public :-)
If even one of the production crew had been a real Trekkie with half a clue, they could have contacted James Cawley and the Phase II/New Voyages crew and rented their elaborate sets and maybe even their assistance for a fraction of what it cost them... AND it would've had dramatically better production values.
The cost of the video is so high because they haven't achieved a scale of production. We need them to produce entire series of Star Trek, then IRS Voyager, Next Generation Income Tax... then Star Wars, Mission Impossible, etc If enough auditors spend enough time producing enough of these videos, the cost per video will go down, which means the "rate of increase" of IRS spending on videos could go down.
At least until the auditing period for the 1040 I'm working on today is expired. Then pull the plug.
Gently reply
It was funny !!!!
AccountKiller
Wonder when they'll receive the DMCA take down notice? I know they called it "parody" but I don't think they where trying to be funny. Plus, I've seen better parody videos fall victim to dmca. Either way, I hate what this video implies, our tax code needs updated and the IRS needs to go away.
Since the production value of that parody equals that of a silly cat video, it would be more convincing if majority of that money was spent on Viacom copyright license. Instead of risking violation of copyright law by invoking "Fair Use", legal cost alone may have made it worth $60K.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
The US govt budget in 2012 is, roughly, 3.5 trillion dollars
That is 3.5 e12
And congress upset about 6e4 ???
simple math: assume there are 200 working days per year.
IF congress investigated the ever popular waste fraud and abuse every single day, how much would they have to save each day, to equal 1% of the budget ?
well, the answer is
step one 3.5e12/100 = 3.5e10
step two 3.5e10/200 = 1.75e8
That is, if congress found *one hundred and seventy five million dollars of waste, EVRY SINGLE DAY, it would be 1% of the us budget.
tell me again why we are even thinking about 60K ???????
Don't pay attention to that. Pay attention to the practice productions of their new in house training video program that will hopefully end up saving money instead of contracting it out.
There was also a Gilligan's Island video which so far the IRS has kept private.
This is the IRS we're talking about. I doubt Paramount is that brave to take on the IRS. There's decades of questionable accounting that suddenly could be scrutinized.
The film was made at an IRS studio in New Carrollton, Md., a suburb of Washington. The agency said it uses the studio to make training films and informational videos for taxpayers.
Why does the IRS even have a film studio?
From an agency that's not even culpable for the advise it gives to the taxpayers, why are they even producing videos for training that's not legally binding as far as the information it provides?
High time we abolish the current tax system and replace it with something like the Fair Tax that would allow us to destroy most, if not all, of the IRS.
that was taxing to watch.\]
Research is what I doing when I don't know what I am doing - Werner von Braun
The IRS employees almost 100,000 people. That works out to about .65 cents per employee. Not very much for a training budget. Nice troll from the subby though.
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Somebody needs to work on their reading comprehension skills:
Q Why does the IRS even have a film studio? ...to make training films and informational videos for taxpayers.
A
If you'd even browsed you'd find out that they have one for training videos because they found out they could do them cheaper in house than farming them out. It's not too surprising if you have either (a) a large number of videos to produce or (b) in-house technical staff with surplus time. I suspect (a) is correct as the congress changes tax law - Every Fucking Year - and all of the agents need to be retrained. Sending in-person trainers is even more expensive.
You'd be surprised at how many large companies have their own film and sound studios for in-house work. It doesn't take too big an operation to justify having one over paying a contractor to do it every time you need something updated.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJPqrVVtjNE
With actual Star Trek actors.
Big fucking deal. Everyone who wants to jerk their knee, can jerk their knee.
This $215 video production cost $60,000 because the guy playing Spock forgot to itemize his deductive reasoning.
The video is a public service reminder to itemize your deductions or get stuck paying the bill for stuff like this.
Better than Abrams' Star Trek
58,416,118 paid zero or negative income taxes (i.e. 40.9% of the 142,892,051 returns filed resulted in $0 in taxes or credits paid to filers).
So 0.07 cents per taxpayer. But that's hardly the point. The "fraction of a cent" argument can be made for virtually all federal spending. For instance the 2009 Iraq war spending ($95.5B) was about $1.13 per tax paying household. On the other hand, the 2010 $521 billion cost of Medicare was funded by grabbing $6167.43 on average from each tax paying household.
... quite funny.
Then again, if that had been done with my tax money, maybe I would object...
What about the unmeasurable savings achieved by financing this video? The IRS deals with, I am assuming, many billions of dollars? Possibly hundreds of billions?
IRS staff probably take constant crap because their wage costs taxpayers therefore they are often labelled a waste of space. Let's say this video lightens the mood, and lifts morale a little. If those staff work 0.5% more efficiently you are talking massive indirect savings. Maybe they put in that little bit of extra effort and catch a few more fraudsters and return a few million in tax that was evaded?
My mayor squandered most his time in office distracted by small problems - his enemies created small BS distractions and his OCD did him in. Plus side is some jerks were fed up and quit and he fired some people -- all needed it; but again, it was largely inconsequentially small.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Dear...God....
KHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNN you believe the taxpayer paid for this?
*head explodes*
The IRS is trying to break out of being the bad guy, the antagonist. Since taxes pay for schools, police, infrastructure, etc., and the IRS are just the ones that collect it. $60,000 is FAR less then most advertising campaigns, (and you can really tell). Hell, a single superbowl ad costs a Billion just to air. On a real shoot, $60,000 wouldn't even cover the cost of the gophers. Next we're going to find out they spend $60,000 for 3 cars, so auditors can actually get to where they need to go, and you know, audit. $3,600 a year so 3 offices can have a tv in their break rooms.
It could take millions of signed letters in some weird campaign, but we as Slashdot could bring it back from an ignominious defeat. Come On Gang! I'll go first by posting as an anonymous coward!
This video criticizes money laundering ... I think this video defines money laundering
"I wish they were dead, Jim"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They did paperwork for $60 000 of expenses.
No chance that that was what they spent.
Tax people are familiar with the difference.
I suppose it's not just about 'waste'. Morale is useful. Drop 65k on a video that jacks up moral and people work 1% harder. Let's say the average salary of those employees is 30k/yr (lowballing it, they're accouting ppl after all). 1% of that is 3 million a year. Not a bad return on investment. You could make 20 of those videos and still come out ahead if even 1 of them works.
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I for one checked the box on my tax return that said do the video. Didn't you guys all do that? Make sure you do next year; i hear they are making "The Wrath of Uncle Sam"
Public servants don't understand 'service'. If they did, they wouldn't be tramping around acting like they're a private business, without any purpose of service.
Do any of the people criticizing the IRS know how much it costs to shoot anything? It takes cameras and lighting and wardrobe and actors and food for everyone involved and someone to edit the whole thing together, not to mention several other things. Commercials, TV shows, films, and music video are all commonly shot on much higher budgets than this, and judging from glimpses at the video in question it does look quite low budget. If anything they should be praised for trying to be interesting while keeping it inexpensive, assuming the $60,000 figure is accurate.
"With a... little training... he might be... as bad... as William... Shatner.
FT... FY!
Despite the "C" designation it does not seem to be much of a cargo plane, that may be a secondary ad hoc role. It seems to be more of an executive transport aircraft. Although wiki does mention it is sometimes used to transport wounded rather than VIPs, liaisons, attaches, staff, etc. There also seems to be a reconnaissance version for signals/electronic intelligence.
Maybe it should get a "U" designation for utility like some Army helicopters.
Portraying it as an "all or nothing" proposition does a great disservice to all the people out there fighting for a small/lean and responsible government.
Any Libertarian or Constitution party supporter who has a clue what their allegedly preferred political affiliation means would tell you it's important to never lose sight of the fact that government is inherently evil -- yet quite probably a necessary evil.
When you create any kind of central authority, you give those people power -- and power corrupts. The founders of the USA pretty clearly tried to place as many checks and balances on the system as possible, to help prevent or slow the natural growth of this power and with it, corruption.
So no, I don't like many things about our current police system -- but that doesn't mean I'm supposed to blindly accept it, since "the alternative is no police force at all, or a corrupt privatized security force". Maybe it means we need to question how many officers we need in each city, and make some cutbacks? Maybe it means we need to allow the general public to have more input, by way of voting police chiefs in or out of their position on a regular basis?
And no, I don't want a country with "no water system", but maybe I'm open to the idea of regular review of public utilities, to determine if we've reached a point where it's feasible for private businesses to step in? For example, not THAT long ago, it was believed we had to have a govt. regulated monopoly on our nation's telephone system, since it wouldn't be feasible to have competitors all running their own copper wire on poles to the same homes and businesses everywhere. Then cellular came along and changed a lot of assumptions.
Anybody who thinks those stupid little wastes of money amount to anything in the deficit is a moron.
Quite the contrary. Anyone who thinks they are irrelevant is the moron. These isolated incidents may point to a widespread culture of wasteful spending. If stuff like this was not the norm, expected to be non controversial, someone probably would have put a stop to it. When you start to consider the enormous size of the government and the huge number of small groups engaging in their own stupid little projects then it all adds up to real money, F-35 sized money.
When the tax code is so complicated that you need to create Star Trek parodies to explain it to the people implementing it, it might be too complicated.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I always thought that the IRS had rigorous screening procedures to detect a sense of humor in any life form and eject the invader into space, but I guess they shut that program down and replaced it with this. That thing was better than most $300 million prodsuctions coming out of Hollywood these day. Polish up the writing and acting just a tiny bit, and the US government will have a new profit center!
won't do you any good when somebody else decides to wage REAL war... a lesson the American people keep learning, forgetting, and having to re-learn... and why so many Americans are determined to break that pattern by insisting that we LEARN it and always be ready and capable. (not to be confused with the position of Bush which was to go off and fight a war in Iraq without solid PROOF and without being properly prepared)
and wake-up about just how much President Obama's $800+Billion stimulus cost those same households. Add-in the auto bailout and the insane Bush bank bailout (whose costs are blamed on Bush and counted in the last Bush deficit, but whose benefits are claimed by Obama)
There's a major problem in America. Everything is either left or right, with us or against us.
I'm not making any judgement calls, I'm pointing out basic math. Unfortunatly the majority of the country lacks basic arithmetic skills ad just accepts what they're told.
Think for yourself occasionally before spouting talking points that collapse when someone in the 4th grade looks at the claim and realises its internally inconsistent.
...instead of thinking "they spent $60,000 of our tax dollars on this?" You think, "Why are they using Next Generation uniforms on an Original Series set?"
Does this
The producer/director mixed up the TOS environment and TNG uniforms. How can I to take them seriously with such a flagrant oversight?
No sig for you! Come back one year!
he's imploded from dumb Jim.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Why only "scolded"? This is just more government nonsense that encourages such fraud. What needs to happen is that each person involved in the video should have their pay docked to pay their fair share of the costs. The resulting $60K should be put back into the federal treasury and not back into the IRS budget. If we want real change in the government, both elected and unelected officials need to be held personally accountable.
There's taxmen on the starboard bow starboard bow starboard bow. There's taxmen on the starboard bow starboard bow Jim!
Considering the amazing quality of some of the fan films I've seen on youtube, I'm amazed at how awful this was given the $60k budget.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle