Obama Snubs Billy Graham Funeral

It should come as no surprise the World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer has no plans to attend the funeral service for the late evangelist Billy Graham. The best he could muster was a tweet for the fallen spiritual leader.

Contrary to his claims of sharing the faith of Americans, he showed his contempt by referring to working-class voters as, “bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

His administration engaged in an eight-year-long campaign of political payback and heavy-handed bullying and intimidation by the IRS that specifically targeted their political enemies.

One of its enemies was America’s pastor.

The IRS sent agents to review the tax-exempt status of Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in the fall of 2012 because they purchased newspaper ads urging voters to support candidates "who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel."

Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, sent a letter to President Obama outlining how Samaritan's Purse and the BGEA were the subjects of an IRS probe during the 2012 campaign season.

"In light of what the IRS admitted to on Friday, May 10, 2013, and subsequent revelations from other sources, I do not believe the IRS audit of our two organizations last year was a coincidence─or justifiable. I am bringing this to your attention because I believe that someone in the Administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us. This is morally wrong and unethical─indeed some would call it 'un-American.'"

Soon after, Attorney General Eric Holder stated the Federal Bureau of Investigation would look into what was happening at the IRS during the 2012 election season.  Holder failed to conduct a criminal investigation of the IRS or enforce the contempt citation issued against Lois Lerner by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

According to a published report by Forbes, “Congressional leaders fumed when sources indicated no criminal charges would be filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation following a lengthy investigation into tax exempt organization scandal. Reportedly, investigators never found evidence of political bias or "enemy hunting" that are considered to be criminal. No criminal charges were ever filed against any IRS employee or official related to this scandal.”

The report continues, “The DOJ advised Congress that it was closing its investigation and confirmed it would not recommend criminal charges against Lois Lerner or any IRS official. The investigation found ‘substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints’ inside IRS. ‘Poor management,’ said Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, ‘is not a crime.’"

Personally, I’m elated Obama will not attend.  As his legacy edges ever closer to the dust bin of history, his attendance would only show how weak and insignificant a man he is.  If he wonders why our nation is so divided he need only remember his role in those divisions.

The Monopoly™ Man Is All Of Us Today

The IRS will pay Equifax $7.25 million to verify taxpayer identities and help prevent fraud under a no-bid contract issued last week, even as lawmakers lash the embattled company about a massive security breach that exposed personal information of as many as 145.5 million Americans.

Equifax’s former chief executive Richard Smith repeatedly deflected questions from a Senate Banking Committee panel Wednesday about a $7 million IRS contract the company recently received to help prevent fraud and whether the company could profit from the hack that exposed sensitive data of 145 million people.

Smith endured a barrage of tough questions in the second of four congressional committees he is set to visit this week as lawmakers probe the company’s massive data breach and its bungled response. After twelve years at the helm of Equifax, Smith stepped down as CEO last week, and is the only company representative slated to appear before lawmakers. 

Seated behind Smith within camera shot was a critic─Rich Uncle Pennybags.  The mascot of the iconic board game Monopoly™ went full-tilt in the act of mockery dressed in a morning suit, top hat, red bow tie and a bushy white moustache.

Public Citizen, an advocacy group that monitors government accountability, claimed responsibility for sending the board game mascot to the hearing.  The “mascot” also distributed “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards to all one hundred Senate offices.

#ForcedArbitration is a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for companies like @WellsFargo and @Equifax. #RipoffClause https://t.co/x38UQSYJrz

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) October 3, 2017

Quote Of The Day

“President Obama signed a law passed by Congress allowing the IRS to refuse to give passports to U.S. citizens who owe the IRS more than fifty thousand dollars. It’s home confinement. If Al Sharpton says he’s going to leave the country if Donald Trump is elected president, don’t believe him.” — Argus Hamilton, December 27, 2015

Livestreaming House Oversight Committee DOJ Testimony In Lost IRS Emails

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

This hearing has concluded.

Old McBama’s Farm Of Scandals

On Friday, May 31, 2013 Sen. Rand Paul brought the funny while he outlined his vision for the growth of the Republican Party to a sold-out crowd at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.

Moments after taking the podium, he began drilling the Obama Administration over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny last year.

“You know, I hardly know where to start. It’s kind of like Old MacDonald’s farm of scandals,” said Paul. “Here a scandal, there a scandal, everywhere a scandal.”

(My apologies to artist Grant Wood for parodying his 1930 American Gothic painting.  I simply couldn’t resist.)

Hearing from some top Hill sources that IRS scandal about to explode. Low-level agency workers miffed at being blamed. About to return fire.
— Joseph Curl (@josephcurl) June 3, 2013

The Art Of Deceit And The Paid Liar

There was an interesting exchange between House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and CNN’s R2DoubleD2 today on the cable new channel’s “State of the Union” program.

Issa’s bluntness was uplifting.  The scandal surrounding the IRS’s decision to target Tea Party groups was, he believes, “mostly likely the employees in the Cincinnati IRS offices were acting on orders from Washington, DC.

Issa said, “The administration is still—their paid liar, their spokesperson, picture behind, he’s still making up things about what happen[ed] and calling this local rogue.” [Emphasis mine.]

“The reason that Lois Lerner tried to take the Fifth [Amendment] is not because there’s a rogue in Cincinnati,” he added. “It’s because this is a problem that was coordinated. in all likelihood, right out of Washington headquarters.”

On May 21, Carney said: “I think that the tenor of the president’s public comments about it, both in his statement Tuesday night and his public comments the next day reflect his feelings upon learning about the apparent conduct by our IRS officials in Cincinnati.” A day earlier, Carney discussed “matters involving the office in Cincinnati” in an exchange about when the White House learned of the episode.

IRS officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. So, the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati, where IRS official Lois Lerner initially said actions were undertaken by “front-line people.”

An IRS employee was asked if the scandal could be the work of a few local rogue agents. "It's impossible," the employee said. "As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen."

The interrogator then asked: "With respect to the particular scrutiny that was given to Tea Party applications, those directions emanated from Washington, is that right?"

"I believe so," the IRS employee said.

See also:  A smoking gun on IRS scandal? An IRS takeover of health care?

And The Voices That Annoy Him Are Those Of The Founders

Presented for your dining and dancing pleasure—“In IRS Scandal, Echoes of Watergate” by George Will:

The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but 40 years ago this week—May 17, 1973—the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities.

This administration aggressively hawked the fiction that the Benghazi attack was just an excessively boisterous movie review. Now we are told that a few wayward souls in Cincinnati, with nary a trace of political purpose, targeted for harassment political groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their titles. The Post reported Monday that the IRS also targeted groups that “criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution.” Credit the IRS’s operatives with understanding who and what threatens the current regime.

Jay Carney, whose unenviable job is not to explain but to explain away what his employers say, calls the IRS’s behavior “inappropriate.” No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense.

It remains to be discovered whether the chief executive is guilty of more than an amazingly convenient failure to superintend the excesses of some executive-branch employees beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Meanwhile, file this under “What a tangled web we weave”:

The IRS official in charge of the division that makes politically sensitive allocations of tax-exempt status said Friday that she learned from news reports of the targeting of conservatives. But a draft report by the IRS inspector general says this official was briefed on the matter two years ago.

An emerging liberal narrative is that this tempest is all the Supreme Court’s fault: The Citizens United decision—that corporations, particularly nonprofit advocacy groups, have First Amendment rights—so burdened the IRS with making determinations about who deserves tax-exempt status that some political innocents in Cincinnati inexplicably decided to begin by rummaging through the affairs of conservatives. Ere long, presumably, they would have gotten around to groups with “progressive” in their titles.

Remember, all campaign “reform” proposals regulate political speech. And all involve the IRS in allocating speech rights.

Liberals, whose unvarying agenda is enlargement of government, suggest, with no sense of cognitive dissonance, that this IRS scandal is nothing more sinister than typical government incompetence. Five days before the IRS story broke, Obama, sermonizing 109 miles northeast of Cincinnati, warned Ohio State graduates about “creeping cynicism” and “voices” that “warn that tyranny is . . . around the corner.” Well.

He stigmatizes as the vice of cynicism what actually is the virtue of skepticism about the myth that the tentacles of the regulatory state are administered by disinterested operatives. And the voices that annoy him are those of the Founders.

Time was, progressives like the president 100 years ago, Woodrow Wilson, had the virtue of candor: He explicitly rejected the Founders’ fears of government. Modern enlightenment, he said, made it safe to concentrate power in Washington, and especially in disinterested executive-branch agencies run by autonomous, high-minded experts. Today, however, progressivism’s insinuation is that Americans must be minutely regulated because they are so dimwitted they will swallow nonsense. Such as: There was no political motive in the IRS targeting political conservatives.

Episodes like this separate the meritorious liberals from the meretricious. The day after the IRS story broke; The Post led the paper with it, and, with an institutional memory of Watergate, published a blistering editorial demanding an Obama apology. The New York Times consigned the story to page 10 (its front-page lead was the umpteenth story about the end of the world being nigh because of global warming). Through Monday, the Times had expressed no editorial thoughts about the IRS. The Times’ Monday headline on the matter was: “IRS Focus on Conservatives Gives GOP an Issue to Seize On.” So that is the danger.

If Republicans had controlled both houses of Congress in 1973, Nixon would have completed his term. If Democrats controlled both today, the Obama administration’s lawlessness would go uninvestigated. Not even divided government is safe government, but it beats the alternative.

For your ironic reading pleasure: the Nixon Articles of Impeachment watergate.info/impeachment/ar…

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 14, 2013

Obama: I Heard About The IRS Through The Grapevine

Clearly, the nation may witness the appointment of a special prosecutor in the IRS scandal that erupted on Friday, May 10, 2013.

From the New York Daily News, “On Friday, the IRS apologized for what it acknowledged was ‘inappropriate’ targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if those groups were violating their tax-exempt status.

According to Reuters, “When tax agents started singling out non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in 2010, they looked at first only for key words such as ‘Tea Party,’ but later they focused on criticisms by groups of ‘how the country is being run,’ according to investigative findings reviewed by Reuters on Sunday.

“Over two years, IRS field office agents repeatedly changed their criteria while sifting through thousands of applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status to select ones for possible closer examination, the findings showed.”

“At one point, the agents chose to screen applications from groups focused on making ‘America a better place to live.’”

Obama said he first learned about the IRS actions from news reports Friday. He said those responsible for the practice should be held "fully accountable."

The president added that his administration will get to the bottom of what happened at the IRS. "I have no patience for it. I will not tolerate it."

“Politicizing the IRS was one of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon,” noted Doug Schoen, who handles polling for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “That being said, we are still a very long way from that point.” But, Schoen added: “The allegations are very, very serious, and it is simply impossible to believe that it was just Lois Lerner and some low-level employees in Cincinnati who came up with this scheme to systematically focus on Tea Party and ‘patriot’ groups.”

According to Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan writing for the Washington Post:

“What became clear in the first 72 hours of the story was that this (a) wasn’t an isolated, dumb incident by some random field office, (b) was something high-level officials were aware of, and (c) was going to be in the news cycle for quite some time.” 

“The problem for Democrats is that the IRS’s targeting of conservatives plays directly into a long-held belief by many Republicans (and even some independents) that official government arms are being used to carry out political agendas.” 

“’Any political scandal that begins by validating previously held contentions of a political opposition is bound to be trouble,’ said one senior Senate GOP operative. ‘When it includes denials that have been proven false, it gets much worse.’”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) to hold a hearing Friday investigating the IRS scandal.

— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) May 13, 2013