This case, if followed through right, might be trouble. True the Vote and the multi-agency harassment.

May 20th, 2013

First off, Governor Perry needs to step in.  He should have his people open an inquiry into the case with all the powers of his State.  Second, the House should open an investigations and directly subpoena every agent and supervisor up the chain (and trust me, the feds live by the chain of command) until they get to the one who can’t explain why they did what they did.

This is the kind of stuff Nixon and others were hated for. I hate seeing it.  The agents on the ground, who can’t find a terrorist posting his hate on Youtube, seem to be able to find a woman in Texas who just wanted to stop voter fraud.

Come on guys, really?

Catherine Engelbrecht’s tale has all the markings of a classic conspiracy theory: She says she thinks that because of her peaceful political activity, she and her family was targeted for scrutiny by hostile federal agencies.

Yet as news emerges that the Internal Revenue Service wielded its power to obstruct conservative groups, Catherine’s story becomes credible — and chilling. It also raises questions about whether other federal agencies have used their executive powers to target those deemed political enemies….

….In July 2010, Catherine filed with the IRS seeking tax-exempt status for her organizations. Shortly after, the troubles began.

That winter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation came knocking with questions about a person who had attended a King Street Patriots event once. Based on sign-in sheets, the organization discovered that the individual in question had attended an event, but “it was a come-and-go thing,” and they had no further information on hand about him. Nevertheless, the FBI also made inquiries about the person to the office manager, who was a volunteer.

The King Street Patriots weren’t the only ones under scrutiny. On January 11, the IRS visited the Engelbrechts’ shop and conducted an on-site audit of both their business and their personal returns, Catherine says.

“What struck us as odd about that,” she adds,“is the lengths to which the auditor went to try to — it seemed like — to try to find some error. . . . She wanted to go out and see [our] farm, she wanted to count the cattle, she wanted to look at the fence line. It was a very curious three days. She was as kind as she could be, and she was doing her job . . . [but] it was strange.”

Bryan adds: “It was kind of funny to us. I mean, we weren’t laughing that much, but we knew we were squeaky clean. Our CPA’s a good guy. And who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor: I got a little bit of a refund.”

Two months later, the IRS initiated the first round of questions for True the Vote. Catherine painstakingly answered them, knowing that nonprofit status would help with the organization’s credibility, donors, and grant applications. In October, the IRS requested additional information. And whenever Catherine followed up with IRS agents about the status of True the Vote’s application, “there was always a delay that our application was going to be up next, and it was just around the corner,” she says,

As this was occurring, the FBI continued to phone King Street Patriots. In May 2011, agents phoned wondering “how they were doing.” The FBI made further inquiries in June, November, and December asking whether there was anything to report.

The situation escalated in 2012. That February, True the Vote received a third request for information from the IRS, which also sent its first questionnaire to King Street Patriots. Catherine says the IRS had “hundreds of questions — hundreds and hundreds of questions.” The IRS requested every Facebook post and Tweet she had ever written. She received questions about her family, whether she’d ever run for political office, and which organizations she had spoken to.

“It’s no great secret that the IRS is considered to be one of the more serious [federal agencies],” Catherine says. “When you get a call from the IRS, you don’t take it lightly. So when you’re asked questions that seem to imply a sense of disapproval, it has a very chilling effect.”

On the same day they received the questions from the IRS, Catherine says, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) launched an unscheduled audit of their machine shop, forcing the Engelbrechts to drop everything planned for that day. Though the Engelbrechts have a Class 7 license, which allows them to make component parts for guns, they do not manufacture firearms. Catherine said that while the ATF had a right to conduct the audit, “it was odd that they did it completely unannounced, and they took five, six hours. . . . It was so extensive. It just felt kind of weird.”

That was in February. In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration paid a visit to Engelbrecht Manufacturing while Bryan, Catherine, and their children were out of town. The OSHA inspector talked with the managerial staff and employees, inspecting the premises minutely. But Bryan says the agent found only “little Mickey Mouse stuff, like, ‘You have safety glasses on, but not the right kind; the forklift has a seatbelt, but not the right kind.’” Yet Catherine and Bryan said the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it.

Not long after, the tab arrived. OSHA was imposing $25,000 in fines on Engelbrecht Manufacturing. They eventually worked it down to $17,500, and Bryan says they may have tried to contest the fines to drive them even lower, but “we didn’t want to make any more waves, because we don’t know [how much further] OSHA could reach.”

“Bottom line is, it hurt,” he says. Fifteen thousand dollars is “not an insignificant amount to this company. It might be to other companies, but we’re still considered small, and it came at a time when business was slow, so instead of giving an employee a raise or potentially hiring another employee, I’m writing a check to our government.”

 

You have to ask yourself what were the agents on the ground thinking?  I know, they were following orders, they make a good living and they have a family to feed. I get that.  But at some point somebody had to look at their partner and go “WTF?”

Nobody in the FBI signed up to harass citizens on the orders of their superiors. Nobody at the ATF really wants to inspect machine shops they know don’t make gun parts.  They want to catch bad guys. They did not go to school, go through all the hassle of being an agent, for the opportunity to suppress fellow citizens’ right to speak freely.

So I suggest the House and the State of Texas ask them, under oath, what they were thinking, why they were there and more importantly who sent them. They are law enforcement. And unlike the IRS, there are some very specific and limiting rules/laws/regulations that restrict their actions.  As it should be.

I’m willing to bet as this starts to blow up an agent is looking at his partner across the table and saying “Oh crap. I TOLD YOU!” Then he is going to start getting his paperwork in order.

Don’t let this one go.  It has a good face, a good story and arcs through different agencies- which means a paper trail. Just go up the chain until you get to the guy going. “uhhh….funny you mention that.  I can explain…”

He’s your guy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WH says the woman in charge of the IRS during the scandal is innocent. No proof she did anything wrong. Oh, man let me try!

May 19th, 2013

You can’t make up the arrogant chutzpah of the White House!  I love these guys.  I do.  Here they say Sarah Hall Ingram has no part of any of the IRS scandal, even though she personally ran it during the scandal.  The White House fired her replacement who was there for what, eight days?  But SHE is innocent.  And there is no proof she had anything to do with the scandal…maybe except her 2009 speech where she outlined what turned out to BE the scandal.  One thing about arrogant liberals is they love to talk.

Here is the outline of how she, and one could assume her staff, “sees” the rights of a citizen concerning good governance. Mary Katherine Hamm finally jumped on the speech over at Hotair.  However, even she doesn’t see what is there.

What did Sarah Hall Ingram promise?  The she believed in “good goverance” and sadly no one has asked her yet what exactly is her definition of good governance?  Let’s go to the speech.

She starts out:

Today, I want to say how happy I am to be back at TE/GE  working with you and the rest of the tax-exempt sector. And just as in my Tax One class so many years ago – we won’t say how many – we are here to discuss the policy give and take whenever Congress seeks to shape behaviors and human beings seek to use or police the results.

Hmmm… Congress seeks to shape behaviors?  That’s their job? How exactly? I mean, I get the CAFE standards and such, but this is free speech. And remember, the democrats were calling for behavioral modification big time!

Ms. Ingram gets to the heart of the matter. Remember, she’s been in this position, doing this kind of work forever.  This is her deal.  She went to school and got a degree in it.  She doesn’t see that she could be wrong. In fact, I’m willing to bet it is the exact opposite.  Ms. Ingram is a true  believer. Here she lays out who she thinks should occupy the tax-exempt arena.

We want the sector to do well. We need the sector to do well. We expect much of it. We want it to be populated by those who believe in, who are driven by, the concept of service. This is a concept that, of course, can be expressed in many ways. Those who aid the poor and the distressed, those who educate, who perform scientific research, who enliven our arts and our cultural life, who cure the sick, who provide religious leadership in our churches, synagogues and mosques – all are serving others. And all are an essential part of our national fabric and collectively reflect our diverse and creative nation.

What is missing from her list?  We have artsy people, curing sick people, educating people, even religious people (assuming their prayer content is acceptable by the IRS of course). But what don’t we see?  We don’t see people who want to educate other citizens about Constitutional rights.  Because folks, that’s not charity.  Remember, this is from her worldview.

Here is her take on what she thinks is important a little thing she likes to refer to as “Good Governance.” Pay attention, the clues start here.

What does “good governance” mean? I think it would be useful, as a beginning, to sketch out what I mean when I say “governance” or “good governance,” since there isn’t a universally accepted definition and everyone probably has his or her own idea of what the term ought to mean.

 

I’m using the term “governance” in a somewhat limited way. I’m not interested in trying to usurp the business judgment of an organization’s officers or board of directors or trustees. Nor am I a micro-economist concerned with whether an organization is maximally efficient in the way it provides its charitable services to the public. I do think, however, that a tax-exempt charity should actually provide charity; it should provide some meaningful and measurable benefit or service to

the public.

 

And Congress can’t find out who started the effort? A mystery is it?  Let’s try that again. Good governance = actually providing charity.  Now we could be cynical, knowing full well the Obama’s brother’s  “charity” as fast tracked through.  We could be a little skeptical about the fact liberal groups were given a pass. But remember, this is from her view of the world.

 How does Ms. Ingram gets past the unequal treatment. Well, you see, it isn’t like they are trying to be mean, but certain organizations may not be like others.  Or as Orwell pointed out; “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Nor do I believe that the Service should try to lay down or enforce “one size fits all” rules about governance. Governance, after all, is not mathematics. There is not only one right answer or way of doing things. In my view, one of the great strengths of the non-profit sector is that it is a great engine of experimentation and new ideas. There can be, and should be, many varieties of good governance, many right answers.

 

Nor do I mean the IRS should intrude on areas under the jurisdiction and supervision of the attorneys general or charity officials of the states. So if that is what good governance doesn’t mean, what do I understand that term to mean from a federal tax perspective? When I speak of governance, I am speaking of a number of key organizational and operating principles that the IRShas already articulated, and that find their origin in the Internal Revenue Code. They are not expressly laid out in the Code, nor do they need to be, but the principles of governance that are of concern to the IRS should derive from the requirements for tax exemption, and should aid an organization in meeting them.

 

That crazy Orwell fellow, he seems to be able to predict human behavior over and over.  Maybe it is because we aren’t any different now than we were five thousand years ago. We just wear a fancier suit of civilization over our still basic failings like arrogance, lust for power and greed.  One reason the founding Fathers worked so hard to build a system of government that is designed to thwart the efforts of a weak man.

Anyway, back to the architect’s outline.  Ms. Ingram continues.

 

A foundational principle is that the organization should clearly understand and publicly express its mission. This helps assure that the organization provides a public benefit and does not drift away from a charitable purpose. It helps an organization avoid practices that are inconsistent with tax-exempt status. Equally important is the principle that the organization’s board should be engaged, informed and independent.

 So the IRS thinks it a good idea the “charity” because that is what she thinks qualifies in this area, should not drift away from its charitable purpose.  Several things here.  Tax exempt political organizations have been around for a long time. Yet, she does not address them at all.  Second, she lumps all of these into public good/charitable entities and then claims the IRS has jurisdiction over whether they are staying on course or not.  In truth, that is a lot of assumptions and a serious position change for the head of the division.

I especially like this next part, because at some point, if thing go as I expect, Ms. Ingram will be facing one of these.

Transparency is another key principle. I believe that board decisions should be reflected in minutes, that records supporting decisions should be retained for reasonable periods, that whistleblowers should be protected, and that each year’s Form 990 should be complete, accurate and prepared in good faith. My vision of governance is not of a vast scheme of rules, but of a more compact set of guiding principles. Not a battleship bristling with guns, but a sturdy lighthouse with a bright and steady beam. Others have certainly advanced the discussion – for example, the principles of good governance that Independent Sector and others within the tax-exempt community have articulated and proposed for adoption. For our part, the IRS has identified the principles we are most concerned with in the governance section of the Life Cycle tool on the Exempt Organizations website. They are also embedded in Part VI of the new Form 990.

Whistleblowers.  You know, those people who come forward and tell you things like “I was following my supervisor’s orders.” or “Hillary knew all along.”     The ones who are supposed to be lauded for their bravery but are often savaged by the Left if they dare tell their story about a Liberal.  You know, those guys.

Understand, in no way am I saying Ms. Ingram is a bad guy. She’s not.  I’m willing to bet she is liberal, hard-lined in her beliefs, certainly set in her ways of big government, and is a federal career employee living in a big house, driving a new car, making the right friends, going to the right parties and funding her 401K to the max every year.

 But she IS government.  And she doesn’t thinks she is wrong.  But she is. Why? Because she forgot her place. She is a civil servant. She works for the people. They don’t work for her. But that got lost somewhere along the line. Like an out of control police officer or prosecutor or judge.  Probably after years and years of doing what she wanted and never being questioned. The difference is there are still good checks and balances on the law enforcement side of the law. Who watches the IRS?? In my old career I followed two principles 1: First do no harm.  2. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Ingram forgot both.

I’m willing to bet she is going to be questioned now.  Not everybody in public service sees their job as a crusade or a nanny or as an authoritarian. Some people remember why they are there, to protect citizens from abuse.

But how was Ingram going to get from “A” (the concept) to “Z” the execution?   She is kind enough to lay it out for us. She even titled it.

 

IRS Promotion of Good Governance

 

Somewhat controversially – at least to some – we have advanced the notion that there is a link between good governance and tax compliance. This concept seems intuitively true to many people. I certainly believe it; it does not seem like a controversial statement to me. But some have challenged this association of good governance and good compliance – not by pointing out cases in which well governed organizations nonetheless seriously violated the Code and put their tax-exempt status at risk – but simply by saying the point has not been proved.

 

These critics often note that effective governance arises from intangibles – the dedication and diligence of responsible officers and board members – rather than from the adoption of

numerous rules and procedures. These, in their view, can pile up on top of each other to such an extent that they prevent good governance rather than promote it . Knowing who is right in this discussion is not easy. We have set out to collect some information on the point. We are going to start asking agents, at the end of each examination, to fill out a check sheet about certain of the examined organization’s governance practices and internal controls. The check sheet is intended to identify instances of noncompliance found during the exam, and also to gather information about whether the organization had, and used, any internal controls. For each instance of noncompliance found – excessive compensation, political intervention, inurement, private benefit, material diversion of assets – the agent should ask, who made the decision to do it or to allow it? Was there a policy in place concerning the transition or activity, for example, and if so, was it followed?

Note the issue of political intervention.  She believes, rightly or wrongly, that tax exempt status should be limited to charities.  Real charities.   However, her ultimate boss, Barack Obama and his friends are very liberal and like progressive organizations. So, if she wanted to clamp down on all of them where do you think she’d end up? Certainly, not the head of the Obamacare/IRS division.  (Or course this could be all cover and she’s a flaming liberal.)

Now Ingram wants you to know that her intentions are good.  But you do have to comply with her needs first before you are approved.

 

Let me be clear – we will be gathering objective data, not subjective views. And we will do this over time. As we collect enough information to be interesting, we’ll share it with the community, and everyone can have a go at it. I appreciate that this is not a statistically valid way of proving anything about good governance. With unlimited resource s we would undertake a study that would meet that standard. But this tally by our agents will tell us something, and we will read the results in conjunction with the studies that various members and observers of the tax-exempt sector have undertaken. I’ll talk about several of  them in a moment.

 Again, that good governance standard. A standard she claims doesn’t really exist in Code, but does exist in the minds of the agents at the IRS.  Think about that for a second, you are a “good citizen” if they feel you are.  Talk about your shades of Mao!

 This is from his Red Book about correct way to handle contradictions among the people.  Note some similarities. This is not saying she’s a communist.  This is saying that the idea of conformity to a big government is universal in the minds of many big government types.

In the political life of our people, how should right be distinguished from wrong in one’s words and actions? On the basis of the principles of our Constitution, the will of the overwhelming majority of our people and the common political positions which have been proclaimed on various occasions by our political parties and groups, we consider that, broadly speaking, the criteria should be as follows:

(1) Words and actions should help to unite, and not divide, the people of our various nationalities.

(2) They should be beneficial, and not harmful, to socialist transformation and socialist construction.

(3) They should help to consolidate, and not undermine or weaken, the people’s democratic dictatorship.

(4) They should help to consolidate, and not undermine or weaken, democratic centralism.

(5) They should help to strengthen, and not discard or weaken, the leadership of the Communist Party.

(6) They should be beneficial, and not harmful, to international socialist unity and the unity of the peace-loving people of the world. Of these six criteria, the most important are the socialist path and the leadership of the Party.

Dude! Sound familiar, just a little?

Ingram believes her division should be in charge of identifying good and bad tax exempt organizations.  If one falls out of compliance, then it is punished.

Now, like I said, she can’t hammer progressive organizations even if she had a mind to. Obama’s people would fry her in oil!  So, if she is sincere she will go after the ones she thinks are still not charities and do the what damage she can.  In truth, I’m sure she is more  a willing order follower than a mistake prone ideologue. There is WAY too much history in her thinking to imagine another answer might be valid.  I was being nice.

It gets worse. Again I can’t see why people are still wondering who the architect is.

She continues,

 

*********************************

A second step we have taken in the direction of good governance has been to emphasize the importance of transparency and accountability in maintaining the public’s confidence in the integrity of individual organizations and of the tax-exempt sector as a whole. We have done this in a variety of ways. A number of years ago, we collaborated with Guides tar to make Form 990 information accessible on the web.

 

 More recently, other players have also obtained and analyzed data. We revised the Form 990 so that the public, and the Service itself, will have access to more complete information about tax-exempts, presented in a more coherent fashion. Part of that effort was Part VI of the Form which includes 28 questions related to the size and independence of the board, to policies on conflict of interest and joint ventures, and to other areas such as gifts and compensation. We are just starting to receive the new 990s with their new information, and look forward to seeing what we and the public might learn.

 Who would be the other players? Harry Reid? Pro-Publica? Apparently, yes!

But Ingram is far from finished.

 

Our third step is in the determinations area where we encourage applicants for determination letters to consider incorporating some principles of good governance into their organizing documents. And we used our experience in developing the governance section of the 990 to design an educational tool on governance for charities. This is the Life Cycle tool I mentioned a moment ago, which we released in February, 2008.

 

Additionally, when the Cyber Assistant comes on line on January 1 – we’re on track for that schedule -it too will offer applicant s for tax-exemption an opportunity to consider adopting what we consider to be basic tenets of good governance. Cyber Assistant is an electronic tool that will help walk applicants for tax-exempt status through the determination letter process. By the way, in talking about the determination stage, I have been using the word “consider” deliberately. We may encourage applicants to incorporate principles of good governance into their organizational structures, and thereby reduce their risk of something going wrong later, but we are not requiring adherence to a particular set of rules. I’ll discuss in a few minutes the training we have begun offering to our determination specialists to make sure they understand this difference.

 Of course she wants to help citizens decide what is good and what is bad. This may result in questions being asked by IRS agents about what kind of prayer you may say or demanding a list of what kind of educational material you might provide another citizen or have read yourself.  And once again, understand Ms. Ingram thinks this is okay.

She even cites the fact that many States and the leadership within them like the idea of the IRS monitoring charities.  I’m thinking that statement won’t hold water after the smoke clears here. She may not be able to make that argument with states like Texas or Florida or Ohio.

 

On the more enthusiastic side of the scale is Independent Sector, which has led the tax-exempt sector in embracing the adoption of good governance principles. Commissioner Shulman has spoken in praise of Independent Sector’s efforts, as did Steve Miller when he was the Commissioner of TE/GE. As you know, prominent members of the Senate Finance Committee are also sitting on the enthusiastic side of the scale. The reaction of the states has been interesting to us. notwithstanding that we have long had a very good relationship with them, we wondered if the states might push back against our efforts to some degree or another. We wondered if they might see our work as a raid on their authority and jurisdiction, an overstepping of bounds on our part. But by and large that did not happen.

 That is an argument she can make.  What she can’t do is pick and choose “good citizens” engaging in “good governance” according to her rules. But I will again state if you ask her she’d be shocked there is such a row about this.  It is a MINDSET!

Also note Mr. Shulman spoke in praise of the effort.  That’s the same Shulman who now acts like he is suffering from “Dain bramage” and can’t remember anything.  Here is a version of his testimony.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unD_lJjQfqc

Ms. Ingram continues on…and frankly on and on.  Here is one of the remaining key passages.


So, what are my guiding principles on governance? I’ve been reviewing with you the IRS’s current stance on the issue of governance. Let me now shift the focus toward the future by speaking for a few minutes about how I see the concept of good governance fitting into our overall program. Then I will identify what I believe are some key guiding principles on governance. Good governance as a tool for managing the risk of non-compliance]  I said earlier that I viewed good governance as a tool–

a tool for managing against the risk of non-compliance, of an organization or person going astray.

 

Now let me explain, in a broad sense, how that tool works within the context of Exempt organization’s traditional determinations and examinations programs, and its new compliance tools, the Review of Organizations unit, which we call “the ROO,” and the Exempt Organizations Compliance Area, the “EOCA,” which, among other things, has allowed us to introduce and greatly expand our use of compliance checks. As part of our own effort to be efficient, to be wise stewards of the public funds entrusted to us, we need to concentrate our efforts where they will do the most good.

 

It’s something we as responsible managers want to do, and it’s something those who look over our shoulder – the IRS Oversight Board, or the Treasury Inspector General, for example – insist that we do as well. As a practical matter, we cannot subject every application for tax-exempt status to a painstaking, leave-no-rock-unturned review.

I’m going to call bullshit and throw the flag here. Her division did exactly that.  When the reports started coming out that this division was out of control you couldn’t find one government middle manager or commissioner who could explain what happened. Truth is, they knew, they all knew.  It was a matter of doing what the current government wanted- which was to screw with the other side.

And nobody in government really as a problem keeping down the groups that want to cut their jobs back.  Seriously, where’s the money in that?

So some will claim it was accident or a couple of out of control agents in a local office.  I’m hoping those local agents have copied and saved all the emails that say otherwise.  This speech from Ms. Ingram was a major policy speech put up on the IRS website. There is no ignoring they truly feel that they have the right, because they feel they have the responsibility, to monitor and modify citizens behavior they believe violates their definition of “good governance.”

Remember this. The woman who gave this speech was rewarded and promoted to the IRS/Obamacare division.  She will be in charge of setting the tone for the division that will decide whether or not you are in compliance with Obamacare and the resulting fines and penalties. Or if you are a good enough citizen to get care.

Now that should make you shudder.

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Benghazi and the missing emails. Not the real issue, but why?

May 19th, 2013

Charles Krauthammer wants the Republicans to quit calling it a “gate” and I agree.  This event has three levels that need to be tied together but are separate within themselves.

1. The run up to the attack where Obama was doing victory laps and selling his vision of how great AND SMART a President he is. After all, he managed to topple a dictator without actually getting mired down and losing Americans.  Plus the “Arab Spring” he supported was all about democracy and freedom. Obama’s people intentionally ignored the threat and the actual attacks on the Benghazi compound. They didn’t want to answer questions like “If you say things are so safe and secure in Libya right now, why did you send fifty heavily armed men with Ambassador Stevens when he went to Benghazi?”   Because that would make them admit the Islamic militias had run out everybody else and were very dangerous.  That would lead to the obvious, “so things are so wonderful as you claim?”

Of course we know Obama’s victory lap was all political bullshit.  Benghazi exposed that bull.  Obama’s political wing (including someone like Ben Rhodes) went to work covering up the failure.

2. The actual successful attack was caused by two things- 1. The opportunity was made available by the White House/State Department insistence on calling the revolution a success and refusing to admit the danger on the ground was still very real.  They (the White House and Hillary) were hoping nothing went wrong while they played with the lives of the men and women on the ground in Benghazi.  It was a “hope this holds” kind of fix in place.  Well, it didn’t hold.  2. The response to the attack was based solely on the political calculation they could handle any inquiries by controlling the narrative.  If they had sent in the Seventh Fleet (figuratively speaking) they would not have been able to control the narrative.  I believed they hoped the attack was over after Stevens was killed. That they could control.  A quick assault with no way to responded, feign a little outrage, promise to hunt down and get those responsible and move on.

Unfortunately for them, the attack continued to drag out, more people were killed and the whole thing looked like amateur hour.  Which was why the administration went into cover up mode.

On the contrary. Just hours into the Benghazi assault, Hicks reported, by phone to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself, on the attack with absolutely no mention of the demonstration or video that was later to become the essence of the Susan Rice talking points that left him “stunned” and “embarrassed.”

But Hicks is then ordered not to meet with an investigative congressional delegation. And when he speaks with them nonetheless, he gets a furious call from Clinton’s top aide for not having a State Department lawyer (and informant) present. His questions about the Rice testimony are met with a stone-cold response, sending the message: Don’t go there. He then finds himself demoted.

Get the facts and get them out? It wasn’t just Hicks. Within 24 hours, the CIA station chief in Libya cabled that it was a terrorist attack and not a spontaneous mob. On Day Two, the acting assistant secretary of state for the Near East wrote an e-mail saying the attack was carried out by an al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia.

What were the American people fed? Four days and twelve drafts later, a fiction about a demonstration that never was, provoked by a video that no one saw (Hicks: “a non-event in Libya”), about a movie that was never made.

The original CIA draft included four paragraphs on the involvement of al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists and on the dangerous security situation in Benghazi. These paragraphs were stricken after strenuous State Department objections mediated by the White House. All that was left was the fable of the spontaneous demonstration.

That’s not an accretion of truth. That’s a subtraction of truth.

And why? Let the deputy national-security adviser’s e-mail to the parties explain: “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities” — fancy bureaucratese for “interests of the government agencies involved.” (He then added, “particularly the investigation.” But the FBI, which was conducting the investigation, had no significant objections. That excuse was simply bogus.)

Sure it was.  This was no longer about truth, this was about not giving Romney a leg to stand on.  When he did manage to get on one, Candy Crowley kicked it out from under him.  (And yes, she is still employed and still making excuses. If you want this to end, people need to pay the piper for their actions. )

3. The cover up, which included preventing Congress from seeing or talking to the actual witnesses/victims on the ground.  It also included months of denying there was  a State Department/ White House influence on the talking points. Recently the White House reluctantly released a ton of emails (the classic document dump) and then claimed all was well in the land of Obama.  Some have asked why in all these emails why wasn’t the first days of the exchanges included.  Silly rabbits! Are you not following the script here?  The administration will give you just enough stuff to make you go away. And some, like Chris Matthews and his buddies, are looking to do just that.

Benghazi has legs.  The scandal only gets worse as the White House keeps lying.  But they have no option here.  Either they- 1. admit they are amateurs and wrong or 2.- they admit they are liars or 3.- they keep digging hoping to get out of sight of Congress and the rest of America.

But then things got worse — the cover-up needed its own cover-up. On November 28, press secretary Jay Carney told the media that State and the White House edited nothing but a single trivial word. When the e-mail trail later revealed this to be false, Carney doubled down. Last Friday, he repeated that the CIA itself made the edits after the normal input from various agencies.

That was a bridge too far for even the heretofore supine mainstream media. The CIA may have typed the final edits. But the orders came from on high. You cannot tell a room full of journalists that when your editor tells you to strike four paragraphs from your text — and you do — there were no edits because you are the one who turned in the final copy.

This is why Benghazi is easy to follow for journalists. They know the White House and Hillary are lying.  Worse, it appears they sent out Jay Carney with the orders to pick option three.

 

 

 

 

 

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Mark Steyn and the National Review spend time pointing out what the guy in Ohio already knew: The government is out of control.

May 19th, 2013

Look, it’s simple.  Infiltrate over a number of years an organization with a bunch of like minded folks and you are going to get a beast, that with the power it holds, will guarantee its own survival. Put in people who agree with that philosophy and you will end up with exactly what happened.

The long awaited leaders of the new America. Big centralized government. With them in charge.

What is this IRS thing all about?  It is about a group of individuals working in a powerful agency that collectively see another group of citizens as a threat to the first group’s existence.  Luckily for the first group, and unlucky for the second, is the first group has REAL POWER over the second group.  Thus, the first group attempts to cripple or destroy the threat.

The Tea Party says smaller less powerful government.  The IRS and almost everybody else in big government from HHS to DHS to FBI to DOJ to TSA to….on and on and on… BELIEVE the real threat to their power and survival doesn’t come from a bunch of ragtag Islamic terrorists getting welfare from the State while plotting to detonate a bomb.  Seriously, what are the chances that bomb goes off and gets one of the members of the alphabet soup agencies in D.C.?  BUUUTTTT… a President with a VP that hates big government and  supporters who want to trim back its sails a tad, now THAT is a threat!

So, as Obama rails and his buddies rail about the danger of the Tea Party, his little minions of like mind do his bidding.  Everybody is looking for a smoking gun.  I’ll argue the entire rant starting with the Supreme Court to Beck to Rush to the Tea Party IS THE SMOKING GUN!!   As I pointed out in a post, another writer gave us an example of a king’s rant about his former friend and how that ended up with the murder, by loyalists to the king, of that friend.  The example was Thomas Beckett back in 1170!  So the idea a leader can persuade his minions to do his bidding without actually picking up a phone (there were none in 1170!) is well established. I won’t even go into how Chairman Mao did the same thing. History is replete with examples.

Mark Steyn is his usual witty self.  This time his humor and ability to make connections may be cute, but the subject is just too chilling.

Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.” Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.” Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers. Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up. But no doubt the fact that he’s wiretapping the Associated Press was also entirely unknown to him until he read about it in the Associated Press. There is a “president of the United States” and a “government of the United States,” but, despite a certain superficial similarity in their names, they are entirely unrelated,…..

Did Obama know? I have a long back and forth with a friend about that. As though getting a hold of an email or a recording will put the dot on the “i” here.  Or course Obama knew.  But unless the guys in the “Chicago Way” led White House suddenly went brain dead, you won’t find an email or an audio recording or a witness (not one that will last long at least!).  As I said to a friend the real tragedy is we are spending too much time on looking for one specific tree when in this case the WHOLE FOREST COMMITTED THE CRIME!

Are we to think the DHS coming out with lists explaining the real threat to America are those right wingers and small government types is somehow unrelated to an orchestrated effort by the IRS to cripple those same people while harassing Romney donors and leaking IRS information to pro-Obama sources?  And the fact those pro-Obama sources turned around and made new reports out of the information and fed it to the willing press was just by accident?  You have to appreciate the efficiency of the administration.  And they only won by several million votes.  One has to wonder what would have happened if the truth had come out…

Steyn relates to one case in particular that should make all of us just shudder.  The big example was the Romney donor Vandersloot, who suffered audits from the IRS and also from another alphabet soup agency- the Department of Labor. But what happened to the small citizen is what caught my eye.  A woman who wrote an article about Obamacare suddenly found herself in an audit (PS- if you are looking to arrest someone this is the case. You can flip the auditor and roll up the chain- just saying…)

If you believe this, there’s a shovel-ready infrastructure project in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. In April last year, the Obama campaign identified by name eight Romney donors as “a group of wealthy individuals with less than reputable records. Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law, others have made profits at the expense of so many Americans, and still others are donating to help ensure Romney puts beneficial policies in place for them.” That week, Kimberley Strassel began her Wall Street Journal column thus:

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. . . . The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

Miss Strassel wrote that on April 26, 2012. Five weeks later, one of the named individuals, Frank VanderSloot, was informed by the IRS that he and his wife were being audited. In July, he was told by the Department of Labor of an additional audit over the guest workers on his cattle ranch in Idaho. In September, he was notified that one of his other businesses was to be audited. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never previously been audited, attracted three in the four months after being publicly named by el Presidente. More to the point he attracted that triple audit even though Miss Strassel explicitly predicted in America’s biggest-selling newspaper that this was exactly what the Obama enforcers were going to do. The “separate, sinister entity” of the government of the United States went ahead anyway. What do they care? If some lippy broad in the papers won’t quit her yapping about it, they can always audit her, too — as they did to Miss Strassel’s sometime colleague Anne Hendershott, a sociology professor who got rather too interested in Obamacare and wrote about it in the Journal and various small Catholic publications. The IRS summoned Professor Hendershott to account for herself, and forbade her husband from accompanying her, even though they filed jointly. She ceased her political writing.

The point here is don’t over think this. Don’t look for one particular smoking gun when all Americans are staring down the barrels of the 16inch cannons mounted on the big government battleship!

I often argue here and with my friends have we reached a tipping point.  Actually, in a nation there are probably thousands of smaller individual tipping points where actions by government or by individuals in government have an outcome that results in an inability to reverse course like a ship that is run aground and flounders.

Maybe we need to start adding up the number of beached ships across the landscape and ask ourselves have the collective efforts caused the big tipping point?  As we speak we have very confident “that nothing will happen to them” federal employees lying, deflecting and saying out loud that targeting individual Americans for their beliefs-  because those beliefs are contrary to the big government mindset of its survival above all else- is legal.  Maybe a bit tacky, but still legal. Think about that.  Think back, if you are old enough, to anyone else ever saying that out loud and with such confidence.

With that, I’ll argue this President, as I predicted four years ago, was the catalyst that makes the answer yes.  A resounding, destructive and horribly frightening YES!

How many becomes too many?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The nightmare every police officer faces. Shoot or don’t shoot.

May 19th, 2013

The police train for it.  The police talk about it. The police wish for it to never happen.  But they also know life is a risk.  Sometimes innocent people just  get caught up in monstrous events and there is nothing and no one that can fix it.

Hofstra student John Kourtessis described a chaotic scene of fear and horror when a crazed parolee in a ski mask took his friends and him hostage in a gunpoint siege that ended with the death of a pretty co-ed.

“Somebody in this house f–ked up and owes this Russian guy $10,000,” yelled Dalton Smith, who was on the run after violating parole last month.

“I was trying to calm everyone down, like, ‘Don’t worry, just give the guy what he wants and we’re going to get out of here,’ ” Kourtessis recounted to The Post.

But there was no averting tragedy. Minutes after the incident began, Smith and Andrea Rebello, 21, were dead.

For some reason the bad guy let one of the kids go. The kid called 911 and the police came. It was the best thing to do. The kid cannot beat himself up with this.  The bad guy, a career criminal who should have been locked up, was crazed, homicidal and would have probably killed all of them before he left.  As he said he didn’t want to go back to jail. That means no witnesses.

Moments later, in the house, Andrea, Jessica and John heard a noise outside. Thinking Shannon had returned, Jessica went to the door. Instead, Jessica found police officers — so she ran to safety.

Realizing the police had arrived, Smith freaked out.

“I can’t go back to jail! One of you, get over here,” Smith said, according to Kourtessis’ account.

“So I get up and come over and he puts me down with the gun to the back of my head,” Kourtessis said. “He said, ‘Show them your hands and tell the cops to get out of there.’ Then he does the same to Andrea.”

Smith, whose rap sheet lists robbery and assault charges dating to 1999, asked for a way out of the house.

Kourtessis offered an escape route. “Crawl and show me,” Smith commanded.

Slowly, Kourtessis made his way down the stairs, making a left at the bottom.

“I see an officer there, with his gun out, standing by the steps. So I’m thinking, ‘Good, there’s a cop there,’ ” he said.

“I run behind the L-shaped couch and I see the cop pointing his gun toward the TV.”

Smith also made his way down the stairs — holding Andrea in a headlock and using her as a human shield, police said. The officer began talking to Smith, saying, “Put the gun down and let the girl go.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Smith replied. Kourtessis ran into a bedroom. Then he heard the shots.

“I hear ‘pop, pop’ — two shots,” he said. “I run out and I run toward where they are.”

By then the cop had maneuvered the criminal into the basement area of the home, said Kourtessis. He then watched as the officer shot twice more. He saw other officers outside, and dropped to the floor.

“Andrea! Andrea!” he screamed.

But Andrea didn’t answer.

Both Smith and Andrea were felled by bullets fired by a Nassau officer, cops said.

Records show Smith, 30, was released from prison in February after serving more than 8 years in the slammer for attempted armed robbery, and cops said he quickly violated parole, prompting a warrant for his arrest.

No one wins here.  The officer fired at a man pointing a gun at him.  Could he have backed off?  Maybe. Or maybe he was caught in a position, at that second, where he was trapped too.  Regardless, that police officer will have nightmares for the rest of his life. He will second guess his decision over and over, even if it is found to be a good shoot.  The hardest thing for a good cop to deal with is the “what ifs” of the job.  What if I had driven a little faster. What if I had waited for more backup.  What if I had waited a few second longer.  What if I had not pulled up where they could see me.  What if….

The other day a young beautiful woman died, choking on a hot dog at a ball game.  Another died last month during a base jump where her chute failed to open…she was pregnant.  Another pretty girl worked the late shift at a convenience store and was taken, never to be seen again.  Being pretty and a woman and living a good life just isn’t enough to survive in this world.  That is why everybody needs to be prepared. Everybody needs to do their best to learn how to survive.

And this is a good moment to ask had one of the kids been armed, inside the house, would it have turned out differently. Or maybe we will start accepting the fact that there is a certain element in our society, once identified, should never EVER be let out of prison.

Maybe some parent will take on that mission.

 

 

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“A bad man in a powerful position can do great harm.” The warning came true. Strassel from the WSJ makes the point.

May 18th, 2013

I said that in the fall of 2008 after the elections.  My soon to be ex-partner and I were talking about the election of Obama. I feared his influence on the system, he felt the Republicans and the natural friction of the system would keep him under control.  My dad had grown up in the Chicago area part of his life.  He knew how things worked there.  Nationalizing their method of operation would overwhelm any natural friction, and well, the Republicans can hardly be thought of as brave.

It turns out I was right.

The image of a man who knows he got caught! Now what smarty pants!

Kim Strassel tries to get those hugged in close looking for that single clue to step back and just observe the entire crime scene.  It isn’t the tree that did it, it is actually the forest which committed the crime.

Was the White House involved in the IRS’s targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an “independent” agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. “He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?” asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a “wealthy individual” with a “less-than-reputable record.” Other donors were described as having been “on the wrong side of the law.”

This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.

The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn’t account for what the president’s vilification has done to his business and reputation.

The Obama call for scrutiny wasn’t a mistake; it was the president’s strategy—one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as “less than reputable” to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn’t need a telephone; he had a megaphone.

I know of other cases, one I’m convinced was a variation of a “swatting.”  Again, for the hundredth time, you have to remember the only rules they follow are the ones which let them win.  Everything else is free game.

One wonders now if John Roberts had received a visit or a call or heard a whisper after Obama attacked the Supreme Court over Citizens United.  Some are convinced his last minute switch was unnatural.  I think Roberts did us a great service by forcing the argument back into election politics. I can’t hold him responsible for Romney or the fact the voters didn’t show up or the demographics had changed. (Although we can now suspect the efforts of Obama’s people on the conservative get out the vote effort DID!)

That said, you still have to wonder.  When it comes to making that late night phone call, I have no qualms in believing that if they could they would.

 The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, claiming that it “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests” (read conservative groups).

The president derided “tea baggers.” Vice President Joe Biden compared them to “terrorists.” In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. “Nobody knows who’s paying for these ads,” he warned. “We don’t know where this money is coming from,” he intoned.

In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: “All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation.”

Understand, the cult of personality that is Obama carries great weight.  I would LOVE to see the personality profiles of the men and women who actually did the deeds, as well as all of their political leanings.  I think the “why it happened” would be answered.

An article I read talked about another such situation in our history.  This is not the first time people surrounding a leader did what that leader wanted them to do, without being directly ordered.   We all know Mao’s method (more similar to Obama’s than many want to admit) but there was another one;

After the Supreme Court ruled against the administration in Citizens United (the case that some defending the IRS are claiming was the cause of the new scrutiny, despite the fact that it started before the caseloads began to increase), President Civility lectured them, a captive audience at the State of the Union speech, lying about the ruling to their faces (well, all right, to be fair, he may not have been lying — President Constitutional Scholar may have just been ignorant on the nature of the ruling). This undoubtedly made many in his government think that it gave them license to fight the ruling in the trenches against the sudden growth in enemies of the state it had spurred, since their president had said it was wrong.

Let me (as the president would say) be clear. I will be in no way shocked if emails are discovered showing that the White House actively ordered IRS officials to go after Tea Party groups, while green lighting his political allies. My only point is that, sadly, it wouldn’t have been necessary for them to do so.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170, it wasn’t done at the direct order of King Henry II. It didn’t have to be. All it required was for the monarch to muse, aloud, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

But sadly, while we have badly needed a better president for over four years, the real problem isn’t the men and women running the system, and it wasn’t a failure of the system — it is the system itself.

The Founders, in their wisdom, understood that the key to good government lay not in hoping that the governors would be angels, but to restrict its power, knowing that they would never be. We can fire employees, we can even jail them, but the problem won’t be solved until the power of the “service” is reined in vastly. Step one might be to re-ban government employee unions, including that of the IRS, because that’s part of the system we can fix, and this deserves that death penalty.

Yep.  Pretty much. If you want to see big government acting out in its natural way in its natural environment, this is a classic moment.   And it is why many of us small government people worry.  Frankly, it is frightening.  And remember, the woman who designed this is in charge of your healthcare.  Oh, yeah, and  the government wants to control your access to guns. Great.

Seriously, what could go wrong?

 

 

 

 

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Another example of why we can’t win against Islamic radicalism. They are raised different.

May 18th, 2013

Happy Mother’s day…  Here is a mom from the other side of the War on Terror.

Umma Nidal. Mother of the Caliphate.

One Islamic radical mother laid out the issue concisely-  “I advise you to raise your children in the cult of jihad and martyrdom and to instil in them a love for religion and death.” That was from the wife of  Ayman al-Zawahiri.  Another jihadists said it as clearly as he could as he hurtled down a road trying to kill others and himself in an act of martyrdom.  “We love death.”  Here is the description of the episode.

A harrowing 911 call captured a terror suspect with ties to Al Qaeda screaming a final prayer to Allah during a 100 mph suicide run across the Whitestone Expressway.

“There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger!” defendant Adis Medunjanin howls in Arabic during the 33-second recording from January 2010.

The unrattled police operator replies, “Hello? Do you need the police, fire department or the ambulance?”

Medunjanin, 27, who survived the run, faces trial this April as a co-conspirator in a subway bombing plot set for the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He bolted from his Queens home in his Nissan Ultima within an hour after an NYPD detective detailed Medunjanin’s alleged ties to Al Qaeda and the bomb plot.

Officials believe he was trying to martyr himself when he flew down the roadway at 100 mph before slamming his car into another vehicle. Nobody was killed in the crash.

In the 911 recording, Medunjanin — the sound of traffic in the background — tells the operator, “This is Adis. We love … we love death.”

“He wants to know what?” the operator replies.

“You love your life!” he shouts in Arabic. “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger!”

The call goes dead after the operator asks for Medunjanin’s location.

Medunjanin, a Bosnian-born U.S. citizen, pleaded not guilty to charges in the plot. His attorney, Robert Gottlieb, opposed the public release of the 911 call from his client’s cell phone.

Of course the lawyer didn’t want an audio recording of his client screaming he loves death there is no God but Allah while attempting to run people down in the street.   Jeezz…. Somebody at the federal level might hear this and think “Gee, maybe we should tighten up that description of what a terrorist is, these guys could be dangerous! Heck, maybe we should look at the bombers’ mother as an inspiration for their beliefs…you think?”

Now how can a farm boy from Iowa volunteering to serve is nation, shipped over to a foreign land and handcuffed with the ROE’s stop this madness?

This love of death is instilled in children. A Muslim child preacher recently taunted those he has been taught to hate most: “Oh Zionists, we love death for the sake of Allah, just as much as you love life for the sake of Satan.” This young man’s mother was probably much like the quintessential mother from hell, Mariam Farhat, or Umm Nidal (mother of Nidal), a Palestinian parliamentarian who died in March. No one more fully embodied the Hamas ethos — and the ethos of infanticide that permeates contemporary Palestinian culture as a whole — than Umm Nidal, a mother who willed the death of her own children and the children of others.

The New York Times in 2006 called her “the mother of three Hamas supporters killed by Israelis.” This was a highly tendentious appellation, as the Times report itself made clear when it said that “she bade one son goodbye in a homemade videotape before he stormed an Israeli settlement, killing five people, then being shot dead. She said later, in a much-publicized quotation, that she wished she had 100 sons to sacrifice that way. Known as the ‘mother of martyrs,’ she was seen in a campaign video toting a gun.” Umm Nidal’s oldest son Nidal was killed in 2003, and his brother Rawad in 2005 — both as they were involved in jihad actions against Israelis. Muhammad Farhat was the first of her sons to die. In June 2002 he stormed the Atzmona settlement in Israel, firing indiscriminately, murdering five teenagers and wounding twenty others before he himself was killed.

Umm Nidal cried out “Allahu Akbar” when she learned of Muhammad’s murders and his own death; she “prepared boxes of halva and chocolates, and handed them out to his friends.” To those who would reproach her for being heartless, she responded:

…”We cannot stop sacrificing just because we feel pain. What is the meaning of sacrifice? One sacrifices what is precious, not what is of little value. My children are the most precious thing in my life. That is why I sacrificed them for a greater cause — for Allah, who is more precious than them. My son is not more precious than his God, he is not more precious than the places holy to Islam, and he is not more precious than his homeland or his Islam. Not at all. “…

And Obama and his equally silly Harvard educated liberals think they can actually deal with these people.  Much like Neville Chamberlain, he will get us in such a pickle only a war that crushes Islam and the land it inhabits will get us out.  The longer we allow them to gain strength and land, the more dangerous it will be for our citizens.  GWB got that. He didn’t like it, but he got it.

 

 

 

 

 

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Explanation in a cartoon

May 17th, 2013

About right.

Big Dawg 590 LI

 

 

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Who is she? The head of the IRS during the scandal is in charge of Obamacare.

May 16th, 2013

She also received over a hundred grand in bonuses.  Will someone explain to me why the IRS gets bonuses and under what conditions?  The number of conservatives thwarted?  The big question is who is she and why was she was put in charge.

She believes she should decide if your behavior meets her definition of good governance. Yikes!

I think if charges are forthcoming, you may find her name on the lips of the lower level employees who don’t want to go to jail.

Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harrassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.

More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency’s Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS’ regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.

Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year, for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.

 

The 2010, 2011 and 2012 bonuses were awarded during the period when IRS harrassment of the conservative groups was most intense. The newspaper obtained the data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., described the Ingram awards as “stunning, just stunning.”

Earlier Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported that the IRS paid out more than $92 million in bonuses during the four-year period of Ingram’s awards to her and nearly 17,000 other agency employees. Those bonuses averaged more than $5,500 per employee.

There has to be more to this story, like how Cheryl Mills is the right hand man for Hillary and Bill’s impeachment lawyer back in the 90′s.   These people don’t go away, they stay loyal and simply recycle.

Who is Sarah Hall Ingram and why has she been given the power? Here is a speech from 2009 about good governance.  The PDF form didn’t copy perfectly over to the post .

 

What does “good governance” mean?I think it would be useful, as a beginning,to sketch out what I mean when I say“governance” or “good governance,” since there isn’t a universally accepted definition and everyone probably has his orher own idea of what the term ought to mean.
I’m using the term “governance” in a somewhat limited way. I’m not interested in trying to usurp the business judgment of an organization’s
officers or board of directors or trustees. Nor am I a micro-economist concerned with whether an organization is maximally efficient in the way it provides its charitable services to the public. I do think, however, that a tax-exempt charity should actually provide charity; it should provide some meaningful and measurable benefit or service to the public. Nor do I believe that the Service should try to lay down or enforce “one size fits all” rules about governance. Governance, after all, is not mathematics. There is not only one right answer or way of doing things. In my view, one of the great strengths of the non-profit sector is that it is a great engine of experimentation and new ideas. There can be, and should be, many varieties of good governance, many right answers.Nor do I mean the IRS should intrude on areas under the jurisdiction and supervision of the attorneys general or charity officials of the states. So if that is what good governance doesn’t mean, what do I understand that term to mean from a federal tax perspective? When I speak of governance, I am speaking of a number of key organizational and operating principles that the IRS has already articulated, and that find their origin in the Internal Revenue Code. They are not expressly laid out in the Code, nor do theyneed to be, but the principles of governance that are of concern to the IRS should derive from the requirements for tax exemption, and should aid an organization in meeting them. Let me identify several of them.
A foundational principle is that the organization should clearly understand and publicly express its mission. This helps assure that the organization provides a public benefit and does not drift away from a charitable purpose. It helps an organization avoid practices that are
inconsistent with tax-exempt status. Equally important is the principle that the organization’s board should be engaged, informed and independent. The board should have real responsibility and authority. It must, for example, be able to implement, in the life of the organization, the rules against in
urement and self-dealing.
Another set of key good governance principles are those relating to the proper use and safeguarding of assets. These principles are supported by policies and practices that address executive compensation, that protect against conflicts of interest, and that support independent financial reviews.
Transparency is another key principle. I believe that board decisions should be reflected in minutes, that records supporting decisions should be retained for reasonable periods, that whistleblowers should be protected, and that each year’s Form 990 should be complete, accurate and prepared in good faith.
My vision of governance is not of a vast scheme of rules, but of a more compact set of guiding principles. Not a battleship bristling with guns, but a sturdy lighthouse with a bright and steady beam. Others have certainly advanced the discussion – for example, the principles of good governance that Independent Sector and others within the tax-exempt community have articulated and proposed for adoption. For our part, the IRS has identified the principles we are most concerned with in the governance section of the Life Cycle tool on the Exempt Organizations website. They are also embedded in Part VI of the new Form 990.
I especially like the whistleblower protection statement.  I hope she feels the same way when her subordinates give her up.   Read the whole speech.  She likes the idea of no real rules just guidelines they can manipulate in order to make sure everything fits their definition of “good.”  This does explain the letter the one group got that they could be tax exempt if they didn’t protest abortion.
No wonder she is in charge of your healthcare. Imagine her applying her theory to you life?  Have you been a good citizen?  Or do I have to refuse you care?
Yep, lovely.
Oh here is HOW the IRS should find out who/what/why for an organization. I think if you read the whole thing you will see THIS is the outline the IRS used.   She has some explaining to do Lucie!  Just saying…
IRS Promotion of Good Governance
Somewhat controversially – at least to some – we have advanced the notion that there is a link between good governance and tax compliance. This concept seems intuitively true to many people. I certainly believe it; it does not seem like a controversial statement to me. But so me have challenged this association of good governance and good compliance – not by pointing out cases in which well governed organizations nonetheless seriously violated the Code and put their tax-exempt status at risk – but simply by saying the point has not been proved.
These critics often note that effective governance arises from intangibles – the dedication and diligence of responsible officers and board members – rather than from the adoption of
numerous rules and procedures. These, in their view, can pile up on top of each other to such an extent that they prevent good governance rather than promote it . Knowing who is right in this discussion is not easy.
We have set out to collect some information on the point. We are going to start asking agents, at the end of each examination, to fill out a check sheet about certain of the examined organization’s governance practices and internal controls. The check sheet is intended to identify instances of noncompliance found during the exam, and also to gather information about whether the organization had, and used, any internal controls.
For each instance of noncompliance found – excessive compensation, political intervention, inurement, private benefit, material diversion of assets – the agent should ask, who made the decision to do it or to allow it? Was there a policy in place concerning the transition or activity, for example, and if so, was it followed?
Let me be clear – we will be gathering objective data, not subjective views. And we will do this over time. As we collect enough information to be interesting, we’ll share it with the community, and everyone can have a go at it.
So SHE and her people have charged themselves with the task of monitoring whether or not an organization is too political or off track according to THEIR set of standards.  And if out of compliance, the groups can be punished.
Nice.
Can I officially put on my tin hat and hit the paranoid button??

 

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National Review points out what some of missed. Lerner at the IRS may have released the story intentionally.

May 16th, 2013

It was coming out. She knew it. So she had an “accidental” question asked so she could admit to the error AND EXPLAIN IT INNOCENTLY before the report came out.  Nice.  Very nice.

Lie No. 1: Lois Lerner’s apology last Friday was a spontaneous reaction to an unexpected question from an unknown audience member. In fact, the question came from tax lawyer and lobbyist Celia Roady. Ms. Roady has some interesting career highlights: She was part of the 1997 ethics investigation of Newt Gingrich, but, more to the point, she was appointed to the IRS’s Advisory Council on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities by IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman. She is a longtime colleague of Lerner, who is director of tax-exempt organizations. Ms. Roady has declined to comment on whether her question was planted, but it obviously was. The IRS had contacted reporters and encouraged them beforehand to attend the otherwise un-newsworthy event, and it had an entire team of press handlers on hand. So what we have is the staged rollout of what turns out to be — given the rest of this list — a disinformation campaign.

Do not underestimate the deviousness of this administration. The question is did someone above her think of it?  Damage control isn’t always AFTER the damage. It could occur before.  Here are the highlighted cuts from the rest of his article.  Well done.

Lie No. 2: Lerner said about 280 organizations were given extra scrutiny, about 75 of them tea-party groups or similar organizations. The actual number of organizations that were targeted is closer to 500. …

Lie No. 3: This was the work of low-level grunts in Cincinnati. In truth, very senior people within the IRS, including its top lawyer, were aware of the situation…

Lie No. 4: Lerner says that the situation came to her attention through allegations from tea-party groups carried in media reports. In fact, the matter has been under both internal and external investigation for some time.

Lie No. 5: Lerner says she put an end to the practice as soon as she found out about it. In fact, the IRS continued to do precisely the same thing, only monkeying a little bit with the language…

Lie No. 6: She says that the commissioner of the IRS didn’t know about the targeting project. While the targeting was going on, Ms. Lerner’s boss was being asked some very pointed questions by Congress on the subject of targeting tea-party groups. He enthusiastically denied that any such thing was going on, in direct contravention of the facts. Ms. Lerner says he didn’t know about the situation, because it was confined to those aforementioned plebs in Cincinnati. But given that this was not the case, her explaining away the commissioner’s untrue statements to Congress is a lie based on another lie — a compound lie…

Lie No. 7: Lerner says she came forward with her apology unprompted by any special consideration. In fact, an inspector general’s report was about to be released, making the matter public.

Lie No. 8: When Congress was investigating complaints from conservative groups, Lerner told them that she could not release information about organizations with pending applications. But her group was in fact releasing such information — to the left-leaning news organization ProPublica…  (which I might add hurried to the microphone to get ahead of this saying it was the IRS’s fault. See my posts about lawyers and mines- ed.)

Lie No. 9: Lerner says that there was no political pressure to investigate tea-party groups. In fact, Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) repeatedly pressed the agency to investigate conservative groups falling under Lerner’s jurisdiction.  (along with a number of others including Schumer and Baucus.   No way the White House didn’t have a hand in this.- ed)

This can get ugly and is a crime.  People will start making deals as soon as the weight of jail time shows up.  Grab some popcorn and a drink and sit back.  This is going to get interesting. Even Obama is looking to “get to the bottom of it.”  That translates to “You guys take the hit, fall on the sword, do the time.  I’ll be over here feigning outrage.  Cool?”

We’ll see how that plays with people like Lerner. She isn’t the jail type.

 

 

 

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