Austin Plane Crash
When I first heard of the crash this morning I paid attention. We used to live there. Turned out we lived about 2 miles from the crash site for a while. After reading Joe Stack’s screed and looking at his website on the Internet Archive it’s clear he was mentally ill. His illness is not an excuse for what he did, but it helps to understand it.
He was upset about some IRS rulings and changes in the tax code that made it harder for independent contractors and helped “body shops” or contracting houses. He felt singled out in this and it affected him personally and financially. Those changes affected probably well over a hundred thousand people, myself included. Most of us just adapted our business models. That’s life. The world changes around us and we adapt. That’s how it works.
Stack complained about financial problems. He owned a house, a plane, and rented a hangar. Many well-off pilots rent or share plane ownership. So Stack wasn’t lacking cash at all. Yet he still felt persecuted.
He felt that politicians and big business were riding roughshod over small business people and taking advantage of taxpayers. Basically Stack seemed to think that decisions were being made without considering their affect on most people. True enough perhaps. But his actions were abhorrent and vile.
He decided to burn his house, and attack an IRS office with his plane. He didn’t consider the effect of his actions on his neighbors, his wife and daughter, nor the innocents in the IRS office, nor the other offices, nor the owners of the building, nor anyone else at all. He’s exactly guilty of what he accused others of doing.