More crazy stuff from the world of “You can’t make this stuff up!”

 Commentary by James Shott

Everyone says something dumb once in a while, some more than others, of course, but some people in prominent positions have a real knack for it, and others seem to think they can say whatever they want to, and people will believe them. Worse, though, is that for some of these people, like politicians, there are millions of folks who do believe what they say, no matter how weird it may be, how unlikely to happen it is, or how simply unbelievable it is.

In the most recent example, you may remember that IRS official Lois Lerner was called to testify by three Congressional committees looking into the abuse of IRS power in the intimidation of conservative applicants for 501(c)(3) status, and after making a lengthy statement declaring her innocence then availed herself of the 5th Amendment protections against self-incrimination, and then refused to answer any questions. She apparently forgot that as a hired government worker, she is accountable for her actions to the American people.

The committees had requested Ms. Lerner’s emails months ago, but, Shazam!, the IRS announced the other day that, darn the luck, those emails have just disappeared.

Adding considerable interest to this much-too-convenient occurrence is that Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen testified in March that Lois Lerner’s emails were archived.

Oh, well. Maybe the NSA or Edward Snowden has copies.

Just a couple of days earlier, Hillary Clinton, told the world that when hubby Bill finished his eight years as President of the United States they were broke and in debt.

That fails both the smell test and the laugh test. Is it possible? Yes, but doubtful.

The American taxpayers paid President Clinton $200,000 a year in wages, $1.6 million over his eight years in the White House. Presidents may have to pay for some of their normal expenses, like food, clothes, and such, but there are several expense accounts that enter into the picture, so it is difficult to imagine exhausting $1.6 million in only eight years with all the help presidents get through expense accounts.

On the other hand, given the liberal penchant for spending money they don’t have, it is entirely possible they really were broke and in debt, and if that is true, maybe we ought to remember that if Mrs. Clinton decides to seek the presidency.

Outlandish statements sometimes serve to cover up misdeeds of government employees and burnish the bona fides of politicos. Sometimes it’s difficult to make up things that are more ridiculous than what reality gives us, as we have just seen, while other times making stuff up is precisely what people do to mislead the public for some narrow political end, as the next example shows.

“Since the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, CT, there have been at least 74 school shootings in America.” So states the Website for “Everytown for Gun Safety,” which explains, “Everytown is a movement of Americans working together to end gun violence and build safer communities.”

If you are wondering why you haven’t heard about 74 more Sandy Hooks or Newtowns, it’s because there haven’t been 74 of them. In fact, CNN investigated these claims, and found that only 15 percent of them – 11 incidents – involved “a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school.”

Politifact “quotes a former member of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit as stating ‘[t]here is an ocean of difference’ between what average people consider a school shooting and various episodes in the Everytown accounting.”

Stipulated: Even one shooting in a school is one too many. But the dishonest use of data to try to scare people is intolerable.

Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that the annual number of school-associated violent deaths, and the annual number of homicides and suicides of students ages 5-18 at school, were lower during the 2010-2011 school year than at any time in the last 20 years. And, in fact, they had been reduced by almost half.

Five of the 74 incidents involved accidental non-fatal shootings; and two other incidents were apparent acts of self-defense. Again, any shooting at a school, other than in self-defense or to stop someone from hurting or killing people, is unacceptable. But that is a very different matter than when someone intentionally shoots and kills or wounds kids.

It appears the anti-gun fanatics will stop at nothing, even creating fairy tales to try to persuade people to their point of view. In doing so, however, they prove that their point of view is unworthy of public attention.

“Everytown” is the brainchild of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and unfortunately contains the same absurdities as Mr. Bloomberg’s other manias, like his war on sodas.

If making things illegal actually worked, we’d have no drug problems, robberies, murders or rapes. If limiting the right of law-abiding citizens to own weapons as powerful as those criminals possess made any sense, people would support it.

Does anything say, “Come on in” to a criminal more succinctly than posting a “No Guns Allowed” sign on the door?

Gun violence is the result of the desire to commit violence, not the gun.

Cross-posted from Observations

Obama criticizes Republican "phony scandals," "short-term thinking"

When questions arise about why four American foreign service personnel died at the hands of Libyan terrorists, or why a Border Patrol agent was murdered by Mexican drug cartel thugs possessing US-provided guns, or why the Internal Revenue Service improperly delayed action on some religious and conservative applicants for non-profit status, or any of the numerous other irregularities under this administration, Democrats and the agenda-driven media say, "That's old news. Move on," as if relevance depends upon the calendar, not the substance of the events.

And that is a pretty convenient modus operandi: They avoid coming clean with the American people on legitimate questions of competence for months on end, virtually never hold guilty parties accountable, and then complain that those asking the questions are living in the past and the answers they seek no longer matter. And they do so knowing that millions of people won't care.

All the while President Barack Obama blames every problem in the country on someone or something else, and calls the government's disgraceful handling of the aforementioned boondoggles a bunch of "phony scandals" manufactured by Republicans. It's a great game of Beat the Clock.

But honest Americans realize that their government failed miserably to do its job as dictated by the US Constitution and want to know who screwed up and what penalty they will pay for their gross incompetence and/or illegal behavior. So far, only lip service has been paid to accountability, and some of the most likely culprits have escaped reaping their just reward, while others have been promoted to higher positions.

Several months after Mr. Obama took office the Department of Justice's (DOJ) gun running operation known as Fast and Furious began. Intended to track gun sales to Mexican drug cartels, it backfired and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in 2010 by people possessing two of those guns provided by the DOJ. The Obama administration's response was something like: "Ooops! Gawrsh, we didn't expect any o' them guns to be used against us. Sorry 'bout that. Nothing to see here; keep moving."

On September 11, 2012, after multiple requests to beef up security at the American diplomatic sites in Libya had been denied or ignored, terrorists attacked the facilities in Benghazi, resulting in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Politics demanded that 2 months before a presidential election no screw-ups be under investigation or terrorist activity be fresh in voters' memories, since President Obama had declared the War on Terror over, so the administration concocted a lame excuse that a video that hardly anyone in the entire world had seen, let alone in Libya, caused a spontaneous demonstration at the US consulate. That idiotic story was repeated for weeks by administration spokespersons, including President Obama himself.

Barack Obama, the “news” media, and millions of liberals showed little interest in the inconveniently-timed deaths of these brave Americans.

Unanswered questions persist, but instead of keeping these important events in front of the American people, the media most recently have focused on the shooting of a black high school student by a "white Hispanic" in Florida and the birth of a future monarch in Great Britain. Perhaps if the five murdered government employees looked like Trayvon, Mr. Obama and the media would give a hoot.

Not everyone is as cavalier about these tragic government failures as the administration, Congressional Democrats and the agenda-driven media. A group called Special Operations Veterans, the mission of which is to uncover the truths about the Benghazi terror attack, took its demands to Capitol Hill last week in the form of a 60-foot-long petition, which was unfurled near the steps of the Capitol. It demanded that the government “End the cover-up” of the attack. The petition was signed by more than 1,000 people and called for a special congressional committee to investigate the incident.

Each of us either believes that the deaths of the five government workers are important, or we don't. Apparently, most people don't, or are too-easily satisfied with the partial information provided that doesn’t explain what went wrong.

The Internal Revenue Service targeted scores of conservative religious and political organizations seeking non-profit status with improper questions, and denied action on their applications for up to two years, then tried to blame it on a couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati, Oh. It turns out there were 12 different IRS offices involved. Now the administration tells us that the targeting was actually non-partisan. That's a low threshold; even one liberal organization makes that technically true. But the reality is that 292 were conservative; 6 were liberal.

Each of us either believes that our government must operate honorably and follow the rules set forth for it in the US Constitution, or we don't. There is a shockingly large faction of Americans that apparently don't, because they are not demanding answers to these questions, or that people responsible for these events be disciplined, or that such dishonorable and un-American activities be stopped and government restored to functioning constitutionally.

Which side are you on: Honorable government or the status quo?

Opportunity knocks: the IRS and the tax code badly in need of repair

Good things sometimes result after bad things happen. The growing revelations of wrongdoing at the Internal Revenue Service dramatically illustrate the agency's devolution into near anarchy, and this ought to lead to an operational revolution. It ought to also lead to something else that needs to be done, and has needed to be done for a long, long time: overhauling the current tax system.

An organization known as CCH has tracked the growth of the tax code from 1913 when it was only 400 pages to 2012 when it was 73,608 pages.

An Associated Press story noted, "At nearly 4 million words, the US tax law is so thick and complicated that businesses and individuals spend more than 6 billion hours a year complying with filing requirements, according to a report Wednesday by an independent government watchdog. That’s the equivalent of 3 million people working full-time, year-round."

“This report confirms that the code is 10 times the size of the Bible with none of the good news,” said Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House and Ways and Means Committee. “Our broken tax code has become a nightmare of loopholes and special interest provisions that create added complexities and costs for hardworking taxpayers and small businesses.”

“If tax compliance were an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States,” according to Nina E. Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate. She said that since 2001, Congress has made an average of more than one change a day to tax law, nearly 5,000 in all.

The tax code is a chaotic mess that no one can comprehend. So, replace it with something much simpler that can be easily understood, and doesn't require 100,000 federal bureaucrats, some of whom cannot control the urge to persecute the people they work for.

Without going into great detail, there are two sensible approaches that would vastly improve the tax system. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but both the Flat Tax and the Fair Tax are far superior to the 73,000 page monstrosity we now suffer under. Even substantially lowering tax rates and reducing deductions and loopholes in the current system would improve things.

It has never made any sense to tax people's productivity, particularly when so many are excluded from paying any tax at all. Those who have no skin in the game thus don't mind raising taxes on the people that pay the freight for them.

Taxing what people spend, on the other hand, puts everyone in the game to the extent that they buy stuff subject to taxation, excluding food, medicine, medical care, and perhaps a very few other things from the tax, while protecting charitable contributions, and move ahead with replacing our asinine tax code with something that makes sense, and is immune from malfeasant bureaucrats and politicians. Then, when Congress wants to raise the consumption tax from, say, 10 percent to 12 percent instead of being frugal, nearly everyone will have a reason to care.

The current system enables politicians trying to make political hay to demonize corporations or the wealthy by criticizing the way they pay or don't pay taxes. The most recent example of this manufactured "moral outrage" concerns Apple, Inc., which earns money in the US as well as in foreign countries. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), has leapt to the front of the bandwagon to condemn Apple, which paid nearly $6 billion to the federal treasury in 2012 on money earned in the US, but keeps money earned overseas out of the US due to the high corporate tax rate. But Apple does only what the tax code allows or encourages it to do.

America's corporate tax rate, which at 35 percent is one of the highest in the world, literally drives corporations to keep money overseas that otherwise could be brought here to produce jobs, and be taxed here, if Congress wasn't so greedy. Rather than make an honest effort to fix that problem, Sen. Levin foolishly prefers to label Apple a "tax dodger."

Many Americans agree with him. Those who think corporations are misbehaving by using provisions of the tax code to pay less tax should do a little personal reflection. Anyone who has ever taken a deduction for mortgage interest or other adjustment to earned income is just as guilty of being a tax dodger as Apple.

Managers and employees who lack character and integrity have fatally soiled the IRS. It has violated the most sacred tenet of American government: to honorably serve its citizens. At the very least it must be overhauled and slashed in size and power, but better yet, let's rid ourselves of the need for an agency like the IRS.

A final thought: The Affordable Care Act is a 2,700-page bill hatched in the dark of night by one political party, passed on a partisan vote by elected representatives who had not read the bill, controls 14 percent of the private economy, opens private medical data of every American to government scrutiny, and will be controlled by 16,000 new IRS employees. What could possible go wrong?

The IRS scandal hearing would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearings on Internal Revenue Service malfeasance has produced scenes worthy of a Mel Brooks film, or maybe "Hogan's Heroes" (“I know nussing!”) As of Friday morning, the following had transpired.

Lois Lerner appeared before the committee last Wednesday. She is the IRS director of exempt organizations, which is the office that deliberately targeted organizations with "Tea Party," "Patriot" and other identifiers in their names indicating they were conservative organizations. These organizations not only had their applications for 501(c) tax-exempt status delayed for up to three years, but in many cases were asked for information that is clearly outside the legitimate areas of interest of the IRS, and which crossed the line into unconstitutionality and perhaps illegality.

Ms. Lerner told the Committee in an opening statement that Committee members have already accused her of providing false information to Congress. However, she said, “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations. And I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”

Having thus stated the case for her innocence, she then invoked Fifth Amendment protections against incriminating herself, and refused to answer any questions.

Translation: "I did nothing wrong, but I won't answer any questions that might show that I did something wrong."

Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked her to reconsider, and when she refused he then dismissed her and her attorney from the hearing room. However, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) objected, pointing out that since Ms. Lerner actually testified by making an opening statement, she should have to stay and answer the lawmakers' questions.

"You don't get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross-examination," Rep. Gowdy said. "That's not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement. She ought to stand here and answer our questions," he said.

Ms. Lerner was ultimately dismissed, but with the caveat that she may be recalled. Better late than never, on Thursday she was suspended from her job. With pay.

This is not the first time the long-time federal employee has been suspected of questionable behavior. When she headed the Enforcement Office at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) from 1986 until 2001, there appeared to be politically motivated harassment of conservative groups not unlike what the IRS  did. In the late 1990s, the FEC launched an investigation of the Christian Coalition that ultimately cost the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours of lost work.

However, in addition to failing to prove that the Coalition did anything wrong is the question of whether the FEC even had authority to assert the charges it leveled against the Coalition, which was absolved of any wrongdoing in 1999. Following this suspicious investigation Ms. Lerner was promoted to acting General Counsel at the FEC in 2001.

Next to testify was Douglas Shulman, who was appointed by George W. Bush and headed the IRS during the first Obama term. In 2012 he testified before the Committee, saying, "As you know, we pride ourselves in being a non-political, non-partisan organization." He continued, "There is absolutely no political targeting." We now know that was clearly untrue.

In last week's appearance Mr. Shulman denied that he had discussed targeting conservative groups with anyone at the White House in any of the more than 100 times he visited the White House complex between 2010 and 2011.  “It would not have been appropriate to have a conversation with anyone at the White House about the subject of discriminating against conservative groups,” he said.

When asked if he could recall the nature of any of those visits, Mr. Shulman responded, "The Easter Egg Roll with my kids." Seriously.

In response to questioning from Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Mr. Shulman replied: "I accept the fact that this happened on my watch and I am very sorry that this happened while I was at the IRS. I feel horrible about this for the agency, for the people there, for the great public servants. I am not sure what else I can say." He could have overtly taken responsibility for his agency's malfeasance while he headed it, and apologized to the victims, but he didn't.

Ms. Duckworth, a military veteran, said that she was "deeply disappointed" by his response, explaining that soldiers serving their country know "you can never delegate responsibility and that you are always responsible for the performance, the training, the actions of the men and women under you."

Former President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that read: "The Buck Stops Here." This is a concept foreign to many in this administration. But it is the law of leadership, whether at the department level, or at the chief executive level: Whatever happens on your watch is your responsibility.

Maybe actually holding people accountable for their mismanagement through firings and prosecution will wake up sleeping bureaucrats like Ms. Lerner and Mr. Shulman, and restore the idea of "service" to public service.

#IRS Proposed Legislation Update May 18, 2013

This article will be updated as more proposed legislation surfaces. What appears to be clear, however, is that the Democrats are not quite as concerned about IRS overreach as the Republicans seem to be. But then again, when most of your constituents don’t pay income tax, why even bother, right???

Demand Congress Investigate the IRS Scandal!! And keep demanding until the IRS understands who they really work for!

Write to your elected officials every day until they have memorized your name just from their nightmares. Let Your Voice be Heard

Here’s the proposed legislation so far:

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Tom Price, M.D (R-GA) issued the following statement after introducing the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013 (H.R. 2009) – legislation that would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from implementing or enforcing any provisions of the president’s health care law.

According to Dana Loesch on Red State “This is the action we need to see, and need to see quickly. We can’t trust them to regulate tax exemptions without prejudice, so how can we entrust them to do the same with out health care?”

Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04) announced today that he is introducing legislation that would prohibit a massive expansion of the Internal Revenue Service at a time when many Americans are calling into question the integrity of what should be a non-partisan, non-political government agency. The Prevent IRS Overreach Act would prohibit the IRS from hiring any personnel for the purpose of implementing the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The bill introduction comes on the heels of confirmation that the IRS has purposely targeted applicants for tax-exempt status for having “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names — demanding confidential donor lists and delaying applications in many cases for years.

Explanation of these two bills (above) from GOP FILES BILLS LIMITING IRS OVERSIGHT OF OBAMACARE

Legislation introduced by GA Rep. Tom Price would block the IRS from implementing or enforcing any part of the ObamaCare law. ”When it comes to an individual’s personal health care decisions, no American should be required to answer to the IRS — an agency that just forfeited its claim to a reputation of impartiality,” Price told The Hill. “It has always been an untenable and unacceptable scenario, and we ought to take this common sense step to take the IRS out of healthcare.

Separate legislation filed by VA Rep. Randy Forbes would prevent the IRS from hiring the estimated 18,000 new agents it needs to enforce the health care law. ”The IRS would be better to police its own than to police the millions of Americans who believe this healthcare law to be bad for their families and bad for our businesses,” Forbes said. NV Sen. Dean Heller is working on similar legislation in the Senate.

Taxpayer Nondiscrimination & Protection Act of 2013

Congressman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) introduced the Taxpayer Nondiscrimination & Protection Act of 2013 on Tuesday that would amend Title 18 of the U.S. code, making it a crime for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to discriminate against anyone (individual or group) based on their constitutionally protected rights of political speech and expression.  . .

IRS employees are already prohibited from discriminating against individuals and groups based on protected speech, but this bill would increase the penalty IRS employees could receive. If signed into law, employees, would face a fine of up to $5,000, five years in prison.

Taxpayer Nondiscrimination & Protection Act of 2013, a bill introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that would add criminal penalties for IRS employees who target political organizations, and the Project Against Ideology-Based Targeting Act, introduced by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), that would prohibit the IRS from targeting organizations based on ideology.both.

 

BILL BLOCKS IRS FROM ENFORCING OBAMACARE

According to this article,

Not surprisingly, many House Republicans are enthusiastically backing Price's bill and the congressman said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, intends to introduce the bill on the Senate side. Democrats are not lining up behind the legislation yet, but Price believes some of them might.

Technorati Tags: Congressman Tom Price,Congressman J. Randy Forbes,Congressman Mike Turner,Sen. Marco Rubio,Sen. Jeff Flake,Sen. John Cornyn,H.R. 2009,Prevent IRS Overreach Act,Taxpayer Nondiscrimination & Protection Act of 2013,Project Against Ideology-Based Targeting Act

IRS Huge Revenue Loss: Blame Congress and Unions

by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

The IRS suffered a huge revenue loss for 2008 taxpayer proceeds. The federal budget grows, mindless of the revenue loss, the deficit balloons to unprecedented size, and the Obama administration tells us the nation's health care costs over the past decade are to blame. We need to reject this claim. Let us not let him get away with this blatant lie.

Capitol Hill

Some $138 billion fewer taxpayer dollars were donated to the U.S. government for 2008. That's 34% less than April 15, 2008. This is about the housing bust and not health care. In Obama's haste to bring a Canadian-like health care plan to Americans, we see that he dismisses all Democrat culpability for the real cause of the nation's bankruptcy - both moral and fiscal. Of course, he would dismiss it because 1) he sat in the Senate that continued the lie about housing and 2) he believes that everyone should own a home whether they can pay for it or not.

It's this simple:

When lenders make loans which will fail and when homeowners buy homes they cannot pay for, the lenders will fail, the homes will go into foreclosure, the lenders have no revenue, the once-homeowners file for bankruptcy, the banks will not lend, small businesses fail without their short-term credit lines, employees are laid-off - filing for bankruptcy themselves, and more join the unemployment lines. The small business that fails can no longer pay rent, so the landlord fails, more foreclosures, more bankruptcies - more employees laid off. Supporting industries - perhaps the people that clean the buildings after business hours no longer have a building to clean, the landscape company no longer has a yard to groom.

Then there is the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the auto industry. Just as lenders allowed loans to the unqualified, the auto industry allowed ridiculous perks to union members. Payday for the devil (irresponsible management) has arrived. General Motors who ranked among America's largest employers, has sold it's soul to the U.S. government, and existing shareholders will see their shares worth one penny. Some 1600 GM dealerships will be pulled, more enter the unemployment lines, more homes - even those with qualified mortgages, will go into foreclosure, and the circle of madness continues. In the meantime, Chrysler is closing hundreds of dealerships and the circle of madness widens.

The Obama administration sees health care as "the real deficit" threat due to rising and inflated price increases by the industry, but some analysts are contrarians and believe that the problem is not rising and inflated costs, but more aging people entering the system. This quote from Obama:

At the fiscal summit that we held here last week, the one thing on which everyone agreed was that the greatest threat to America's fiscal health is not Social Security, though that's a significant challenge; it's not the investments that we've made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation's balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It's not even close.

One thing we can be certain of, Obama's determination to bring socialized medicine to America knows no boundaries. That's the goal and he is not ashamed to blame the economic downturn on health care to bring about the socialization of Americas medical opportunities - and there is no doubt, that in this country, there are medical opportunities in abundance - in stark contrast to any other country. While health care is an enormous cost-factor, and growing everyday, our country's leaders continue to squander billions while squalling about the cost of medical care.

We will always have health care costs. We will always struggle with medical care for Medicaid and Medicare recipients, as well as catastrophic medical care, and we should do everything we can to manage them responsibly, but we should never have irresponsible home loans, and we should never have the level of corrupt representation in the House and Senate that we have now.

We must get beyond the housing bust and see that it never happens again. To do that, we must undo all legislation that allows anyone to buy a home simply because they are seen as disadvantaged and so, deserving - regardless of the ability to pay. One giant step toward making this change is to boot Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd out of office - sending a strong message that constitutients will get some reckoning for their misdeeds with the Community Reinvestment Act. This is not likely to happen, so we need moderate Democrats with every Republican, to step-up and work to strike the Community Reinvestment Act from law. Even in the wake of economic disaster, the Community Reinvestment Act lives on.

Health care isn't the culprit.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.