Putting the IRS in charge or Obamacare seems like a mistake of epic proportions, especially with the recent knowledge that the IRS has been harassing Tea Party groups, pro-constitution groups, pro-life organizations, Pro-Israel, and religious institutions.

I foresee the following happening.

Patient to Obamacare IRS office: I need medical attention.

Obamacare IRS office: Yes, I can help you with that. I just need you to fill out these forms.

Patient: Holy crap, I’m going to need treatment for carpal tunnel too after filling these out.

IRS office: You’ll need to fill out a different set of forms for those, let me get those for you. *hands patient a stack of paperwork twice the size of the first one*

Patient: *begins filling out paperwork* Hey, why do you need to know what political party I’m registered too? AND who I voted for last election?

IRS office: It’s standard procedure.

Patient: Okay…wait, you need to know what books I’ve read in the last year?!

IRS: With a summary of the content as well, yes.

Patient: You want a book report?

IRS: Standard-

Patient: -Procedure, I know. Hey, you can’t ask me if I own guns. That has nothing to do with my medical needs.

IRS: We can ask anything we want and you’ll answer if you want those braces for your kid.

Patient: What? That’s ridiculous and why do you want the logins for all my email addresses?

IRS: And websites, if you have any. Also any dates and times of future family reunions and copies of any family newsletters/Christmas cards you send out.

Patient: That’s a violation of my privacy!

IRS: Standard procedure.

Patient: But why does any of this matter to you? I’m just trying to go to the doctor!

IRS: Well we have to make sure you deserve to go, we can’t just let anyone get treatment.

Patient: Screw this, I’m going to go pay for my own healthcare. I don’t need insurance.

IRS: Okay, that’ll be $695 -

Patient: That’s outrageous, you didn’t do anything for me. Why should I pay you?

IRS: A year. Hey, we could always put you in prison for tax evasion, remember Al Capone?

I know what you’re saying in response to this, you’re saying “but that was just a couple of low level employees in a Cincinnati office doing that.” You would be wrong of course.

First, their were letters sent to organizations being harassed that came from Washington DC and two Californian IRS satellite offices. I’m sure Cincinnati routes their mail through other offices all the time though right?

First of all, if it was just a couple of low level employees at one office, why did the acting director of the IRS resign over it?

Oh and then there is this little gem of information:

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and isnow the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

- ABC

But surely she wasn’t being told to do this, she was definitely working alone and wasn’t being told to do this by anyone.

Except that she received $100,000+ in bonuses, starting in 2009. 

What else started in 2009 I wonder? Oh yeah, a surge in Tea Party activity that was working to get new conservative voices into Congress and block the, wait for it, …..the healthcare bill. The healthcare bill that Ingram is now in charge of enforcing.

Anyone else smelling something rotten in Denmark (more like DC actually) because I’m getting nauseous from the smell of all this bullshit.

Bachmann’s repeal pass the house. You go girl!

Luckily this abuse of power from an organization that is quite possibly giving out bonuses for people that target people who voice dissent about the current administration and is supposed to fairly and equitably enforce Obamacare legislation (yeah, sure, that’s gonna happen) is being noticed and appropriately pointed out in Congress.

The U.S. House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Thursday night, its 37th vote to defund or dismantle the law, or portions of it, since Republicans took control of the House in 2011.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann sponsored the legislation this time around, the first time one of her ACA (“Obamacare”) repeal bills has seen floor action, though she has co-sponsored several others. Her argument against the law had a new angle to it this week: In the wake of the Internal Revenue Service’s admission that it had targeted conservative political groups’ tax-exempt status applications, the American people shouldn’t give the agency more power, she said (the IRS issues health care subsidies and imposes penalties under the law).

“Could there potentially be political implications regarding health care — access to health care, denial of health care — will that happen based upon a person’s political beliefs or their religiously-held beliefs?” she said at a press conference Thursday morning. “These questions would have been considered out of bounds a week ago, but today these questions are considered more than reasonable and more than fair for the American people.”

- MinnPost (emphasis added)

 

Photo: Huma Abedin, left, a longtime confidante of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Pool photo by Susan Walsh

By Raymond Hernandez

The New York Times

The State Department, under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, created an arrangement for her longtime aide and confidante Huma Abedin to work for private clients as a consultant while serving as a top adviser in the department.

Ms. Abedin did not disclose the arrangement — or how much income she earned — on her financial report. It requires officials to make public any significant sources of income. An adviser to Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines, said that Ms. Abedin was not obligated to do so.

The disclosure of the agreement that Ms. Abedin made with the State Department comes as her husband, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat, prepares for a mayoral run in New York City. Politico reported the arrangement on Thursday afternoon.

Ms. Abedin declined a request for an interview, but the picture that emerges from interviews and records suggests a situation where the lines were blurred between Ms. Abedin’s work in the high echelons of one of the government’s most sensitive executive departments and her role as a Clinton family insider.

While continuing her work at the State Department, in the latter half of 2012, she also worked for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm, which was founded by Doug Band, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. Teneo has advised corporate clients like Coca-Cola and MF Global, the collapsed brokerage firm run by Jon S. Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey.

At the same time, Ms. Abedin served as a consultant to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and worked in a personal capacity for Mrs. Clinton as she prepared to transition out of her job as secretary of state.

It is not clear what role Mrs. Clinton played in approving the arrangement. Some good-government groups have been critical of such situations, saying public employees’ loyalty should be solely to the public and their government work, rather than private firms and figures.

Ms. Abedin reached her new working arrangement in June 2012, when she returned from maternity leave, quietly leaving her position as deputy chief of staff and becoming a special government employee, which is essentially a consultant. A State Department official said that change freed her from the requirement that she disclose her private earnings for the rest of the year on her financial disclosure forms. Still, during that period, she continued to be identified publicly in news reports as Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.

Officials in the State Department and Clinton circles seem especially sensitive about the arrangement, and no one would speak about it on the record. Earlier this month, Mr. Weiner released a copy of the couple’s 2012 tax return showing that they had income of more than $490,000.

But when pressed on the matter, Mr. Weiner declined to discuss what, if any, income Ms. Abedin derived from work done outside the State Department.

An associate of Ms. Abedin’s said on Thursday that the arrangement allowed her to work from her home in New York, rather than at the State Department’s headquarters in Washington, and to spend more time with her child and husband. She earned approximately $135,000 from the department during 2012.

It is not clear how much Ms. Abedin was paid by Mrs. Clinton privately, or from the Clinton Foundation and Teneo. The Clintons have described Ms. Abedin as a surrogate daughter to them.   

Ms. Abedin, who is one of Mrs. Clinton’s most trusted advisers, ended her consulting practice in March, when she moved on to become director of Mrs. Clinton’s transition office.

Melanie Sloane, executive director of CREW, an ethics watchdog group, said the arrangement that Ms. Abedin had seemed unusual. “If she was being held out as a deputy chief of staff, it would be highly unusual for her to be a part-time employee or a consultant,” she said. “Being a deputy chief of staff at the State Department is generally considered more than a full-time job.”

Benghazi is the biggest farce, as the scandal surrounding a truly tragic incident has devolved into being not actually about anything. No one is arguing anything important to the actual event, or even anything important to the administration’s reaction to the event. The worst thing Obama has stood accused of – and it’s worth noting that this is still in dispute, and in some places has disintegrated into an argument over semantics – is not calling the incident an act of “terror” soon enough. It has also come down to accusations that the administration may have “air-brushed” its talking points, and its accusers are grasping so hard and reaching so far as to call this a more significant event than Watergate, and saying Obama will eventually have to resign, which makes their argument even more preposterous. Klein writes:

We’re long past the point where it’s obvious what the Benghazi scandal is supposed to be about. The inquiry has moved on from the events in Benghazi proper, tragic as they were, to the talking points about the events in Benghazi. And the release Wednesday night of 100 pages of internal e-mails on those talking points seems to show what my colleague Glenn Kessler suspected: This was a bureaucratic knife fight between the State Department and the CIA.

As for the White House’s role, well, the e-mails suggest there wasn’t much of one. “The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails, which were provided to congressional intelligence committees several months ago,” report The Washington Post’s Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung.

The AP phone records scandal, while not as preposterous, does not actually include any wrongdoing or law-breaking. While this is true – and, in fact, because its true – what is troubling in this case is that something like this could happen without a law being broken. As a Washington Post heading stated, “the real scandal is what’s legal.” It seems like something must have gone wrong here. But from a legal standpoint, using this as an attack on the Obama administration does not hold water. Again from Klein:

This is the weirdest of the three [scandals]. There’s no evidence that the DoJ did anything illegal. Most people, in fact, think it was well within its rights to seize the phone records of Associated Press reporters. And if the Obama administration has been overzealous in prosecuting leakers, well, the GOP has been arguing that the White House hasn’t taken national security leaks seriously enough. The AP/DoJ fight has caused that position to flip, and now members of Congress are concerned that the DoJ is going after leaks too aggressively. But it’s hard for a political party to prosecute wrongdoing when they disagree with the potential remedies.

Insofar as there’s a “scandal” here, it’s more about what is legal than what isn’t. The DoJ simply has extraordinary power, under existing law, to spy on ordinary citizens — members of the media included. The White House is trying to change existing law by encouraging Sen. Chuck Schumer to reintroduce the Media Shield Act. The Post’s Rachel Weiner has a good rundown of what the bill would do. It’s likely that the measure’s national security exemption would make it relatively toothless in this particular case, but if Congress is worried, they always can — and probably should — take that language out. Still, that legislation has been killed by Republicans before, and it’s likely to be killed by them again.

The only current scandal that is actually troubling is the IRS scandal. On either side of the aisle, no one is comfortable with the idea that an often-draconian agency could be using their prerogative oversight power to pick on people based their beliefs, that our ideology could affect our tax status. And I’ll be the first to admit that this stands in direct contradiction to the philosophies of governing expressed in the Constitution, that it is discrimination above and beyond the role of the IRS (though they are allowed to make certain judgements in 501(c)(4) cases, that is a different conversation). But to look at it purely as an indictment of the Obama administration and its policies is both facile and plainly incorrect. The corruption – if we can call it that – didn’t extend to the White House, and didn’t even extend to the top of the IRS. The ranking IRS and department heads tried to correct the problem as soon as they found out about it, not once but twice. Based on current information – and this, of course, could change as more information is revealed – there was nothing hinting at conspiracy, definitely not the sort of wide-ranging conspiracy that could implicate the White House. Again, from Klein:

The IRS mess was, well, a mess. But it’s not a mess that implicates the White House, or even senior IRS leadership. If we believe the agency inspector general’s report, a group of employees in a division called the “Determinations Unit” — sounds sinister, doesn’t it? — started giving tea party groups extra scrutiny, were told by agency leadership to knock it off, started doing it again, and then were reined in a second time and told that any further changes to the screening criteria needed to be approved at the highest levels of the agency.

The White House fired the acting director of the agency on the theory that somebody had to be fired and he was about the only guy they had the power to fire. They’re also instructing the IRS to implement each and every one of the IG’s recommendations to make sure this never happens again.

If new information emerges showing a connection between the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from here.

However, all of that being said, these assertions are based on the substance of the argument, or rather the lack of substance to the opposition’s argument. But the fact that there is no there there never matters as much as how it appears in a soundbite or news headline. So all these scandals could have huge effect on people taking them at face value, and considering the large percentage of the population we know vote a straight, party-line ticket at election time, this could be bad for the entire Democratic party, both in the 2014 midterms coming up and in the 2016 election. That’s fairly obvious. What’s not as obvious is how this could be equally bad for Republicans. From Ronald Brownstein, writing for the National Journal:

These confrontations’ most predictable effect will be to enrage the GOP base, which will strengthen the party factions most dubious about any compromises with Obama. In that way, these storms will likely weaken not only the president but also Republicans who believe the party must reboot to restore its competitiveness for the White House. “The base of the party is going to go ballistic on this, particularly the IRS [issue],” says Tom Davis, the former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “It makes it harder for [GOP legislators] to go along with Obama on things in general.”

The Clinton impeachment captures the dynamic. After voters returned Clinton and GOP House and Senate majorities in 1996, the two sides reached a sweeping balanced-budget deal in 1997. As historian Steven M. Gillon recounted in his eye-opening 2008 book, The Pact, Clinton and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich privately envisioned centrist follow-on agreements that included a major Social Security reform plan. But with many conservatives already bridling at the budget deal, the impeachment push made further compromise untenable for either side. Congressional Republicans faced insurmountable pressure from the right not to provide accomplishments that could fortify a president they considered illegitimate, and Clinton could not risk angering liberals he needed to defend him from impeachment by making policy deals with Gingrich. Impeachment destroyed “any possibility of them moving to the center,” says Gillon, now at the University of Oklahoma.

A drumbeat of congressional hearings on the IRS and Benghazi, whatever they reveal, could easily reproduce that progression. Like Clinton, Obama may feel constrained about reaching agreements with Republicans (on entitlements for instance) that anger liberals if he needs their support against GOP investigations.

Republicans may feel greater effects. Even before these disclosures, congressional Republicans had dramatically escalated their resistance to Obama’s second term. While the House is voting yet again this week to repeal the president’s health care law, Senate Republicans have blocked consideration of Obama’s nominees for Labor secretary and Environmental Protection Agency administrator. As in Clinton’s era, the approaching cycle of investigation, media leak, and hearing-room confrontation over the IRS and Benghazi will deepen a sense of unstinting partisan conflict that will further narrow the space for serious legislative negotiations.

The backlash of this most recent assault on the integrity of the Obama administration could spur the already polarized factions of government to even further polarization, the opposite direction from where each need and most want to go, and would damage both extensively. Again from Ezra Klein:

The smarter voices on the right are also beginning to counsel caution. ”While there’s still more information to be gathered and more investigations to be done, all indications are that these decisions – on the AP, on the IRS, on Benghazi – don’t proceed from [Obama],” wrote Ben Domenech in The Transom, his influential conservative morning newsletter. “The talk of impeachment is absurd. The queries of ‘what did the president know and when did he know it’ will probably end up finding out “’just about nothing, and right around the time everyone else found out.’”

Hopefully the smarter ones will listen to him, for everyone’s sake, and let the government get back to the business of (not) governing. But I’m not holding my breath.

Over the Years I have seen how people and things have changed, and you know what, people have gotten very Lazy and Greedy, they have changed the laws to protect Criminals and their rights, they have put legal American Citizens in harms way of criminals to kill, injury, and scam (no enforcement), and what has happen from this, if YOU can not see it by now, THAN YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

I am turning Seventy and have seen what has happened with the mentality of the youth of today, they have gotten Lazy and Greedy, they want money and not work for it, they want every thing and they want it now, they are always in a hurry to get no where, they don’t have time to sit down and look at what they are doing, or for their kids in the future (but always talk about it but do nothing), and what the outcome is going to be, because they can not wait.

 Look at what has happen here recently, they want a health care that they don’t even know what is in it, or what it is going to cost, now or in the future, just because it has been painted as a pretty picture, they think is good, but this is one of the problems, they don’t listen, they let some one else do their thinking for them, because they are in to big of a hurry, they could care less on what could happen.

Back in the early sixties and before people knew their neighbors, some got together and had group picnics, we would all go to a Federal, State, or City park, or we would just get together and have a big breakfast party on Saturdays if the weather was bad, what do you see to-day, GREED, and Laziness, and not wanting to get together unless there was a profit made from it.

Years back and when this country got started, people worked together, sure they made mistakes, but who doesn’t, but look at what happen when they made those mistakes, today we are paying the price, by laws that were passed to protect the greedy by allowing Slavery, Prostitution, and Drugs (which they now want to pass so they can profit on), and what has happen, we are now paying the price for it, because they did not think about what will happen in the future.

Look back at Prohibition over Alcohol, they were enforcing that law, then stopped because of the rich and a profit (better known as I will scratch your back if you scratch mine) and now they are going to do the same thing with Marijuana, and what other Drugs for their profit, (maybe drug wars here for control of it) but not for the safety of the American people.

Alcohol has Killed Thousands of people and kids today and over the years and what have they done about it, now you have to worry about more drugs and gang violence on the streets, and people behind the wheel on drugs, and now the Government Agencies are wanting to profit from it, and how many more people are going to be killed by it in drug wars (and it will happen), here again no one is looking in to the future at the possible out come from their actions.

People today had better sit down and start taking care of this Country, or there will be nothing left to take care of but bending over to kiss some Dictators ASS to stay alive.

This is not what our Ancestors fought for, just to see Lazy Greedy YUPPIES destroy what they worked for to leave for their children in the future, but today College Education is bringing down this Country, it has done nothing but produce a Lazy Greedy society, people back then had more education then they do today, they knew how to use their brains, and they did not sit on them.

Take a look at this article, House votes to repeal Obamacare — for 37th time, we would not be doing this again if people would have taken the time to read and under stand it before they let it get passed, but NO they believed that the Democrats are for the American people, they are not, NO Politician is for the people, they are in it for their own pocket-book today, and the Rich, NOT YOURS.

Where I live, we are working to get packages to our Troops who have been there for a while, but the funny thing that we have run in to, is that even the Military is not interested in helping without making some thing out of it, we have been working on this for over a month, and every one we talk to never get back to us, is this what our dignitaries in this Country think of our troops, and is this why they get spit on when they come back home. I HOPE NOT, these guys leave their families to protect you freedom, and this is what you show them and how you treat them.

These people are not Military scum as the way you think of them, they are Americans, they are your Neighbors, they are not the Enemy they are Protectors who have Volunteered to protect your Freedoms that you enjoy, would you have these freedoms if they waited until the war came over here, look at what we have now, a Government that thinks that it can not happen over here, YOU BETTER THINK AND LOOK  AGAIN at what has just happened on 911, Boston, and the ones that they have stopped.

Democratic state Rep. Craig Eiland said Friday his party would submit a counterproposal to the latest offer on the table. Senate negotiators claim their new framework restores $4 billion of public school funding that was cut two years ago.

Shortly before midnight, Senate leaders were spotted walking to Eiland’s office. Dewhurst predicted a deal would be struck by Friday afternoon.

Eiland said Friday that differences remain. One issue Democrats have with the Senate offer is $630 million that would be removed from a fund created to help low-income families pay utilities bills.

The Senate wants to refund that money and count it as tax relief.

(© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Also Check Out:

• 6 Dead After North Texas Tornado Outbreak
• West First Reponder Posts Erratic Facebook Messages
• Duncanville Teacher On Leave After Student Viral Video Rant
• Nordstrom No Longer Tracking Customer Phones
• Severe Weather Pictures: May 15, 2013

[cbs-olapic gallery_id="189971133"][/cbs-olapic]

MOST VIEWED GALLERIES

• PHOTOS: Your Pet Pictures
• PHOTOS: Dallas St. Patrick’s Day Parade
• PHOTOS: Pope Francis I

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service apologized to Congress on Friday for his agency’s tougher treatment of tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. He said they resulted from a misguided effort to handle a flood of applications, not political bias.

“I want to apologize on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service for the mistakes that we made and the poor service we provided,” Steven Miller, who has been acting IRS commissioner, told the House Ways and Means Committee as the panel held Congress’ first hearing on the episode. “The affected organizations and the American public deserve better. Partisanship and even the perception of partisanship have no place at the Internal Revenue Service.”

At a hearing that saw lawmakers from both parties harshly criticize his agency, Miller conceded that “foolish mistakes were made” by IRS officials trying to handle a flood of groups seeking tax-exempt status. He said the process that resulted in conservatives being targeted, “while intolerable, was a mistake and not an act of partisanship.”

Though Miller and another top IRS official are stepping down, the chairman of the committee said that would not be enough.

“The reality is this is not a personnel problem. This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too powerful, too intrusive and too abusive of honest, hardworking taxpayers,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich.

Camp also said the tougher examinations that conservative groups encountered seemed to be part of a “culture of cover-ups and intimidation in this administration.” He offered no other examples.

Camp’s remark about cover-ups drew a sharp retort from the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan. Levin said if the hearing became a preview of the 2014 political campaigns, “we’ll be making a very, very serious mistake.”

The administration has been forced on the defensive about last September’s terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, and the government’s seizure of The Associated Press’ telephone records as part of a leaks investigation.

Republicans are hoping to link the issues in an effort to raise questions about President Barack Obama’s credibility and make it harder for him to press a second-term agenda.

Friday’s hearing is the first of what are expected to be many on the subject by congressional panels. Underscoring the seriousness of the episode, Miller was sworn in as a witness, an unusual step for the Ways and Means panel and one that could put Miller in jeopardy if he is later shown to have misled lawmakers with his testimony.

Levin said that the IRS’s mistreatment of conservative groups meant the agency “completely failed the American people.” He said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that makes decisions about tax-exempt groups, should be “relieved of her duties.”

Miller said the IRS struggled to efficiently handle growing numbers of applications for tax-exempt status.

The agency has said between 2008 and 2012, the number of groups applying for tax-exempt status as so-called social welfare groups more than doubled. Along with that was an increase in complaints that such groups were largely engaging in electoral politics, which is not supposed to be their primary activity.

“I do not believe partisanship motivated the people” at the IRS who engaged in the harsher screening for conservative groups, Miller said.

In recent months, Republicans on the Ways and Means panel had repeatedly asked the IRS about complaints from conservative groups that their applications were being treated unfairly.

On Friday, numerous Republicans wanted to know why Miller and others never told them the groups were being targeted, even after May 2012, when the IRS has said Miller was briefed on the practice. Miller was previously a deputy commissioner whose portfolio included the unit that made decisions about tax-exempt status.

“I did not mislead Congress or the American people,” Miller told Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., R-La., one of several Republicans who challenged him about why he hadn’t mentioned the targeting in the past.

Also testifying Friday was J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration.

In a report he issued this week, George said IRS officials reported they were not politically pressured to target conservative groups. Asked about that conclusion, George said Friday, “We have no evidence at this time to contradict that assertion,” but in prepared testimony to the committee he said he is continuing to investigate that question.

George’s report concluded that the IRS office in Cincinnati, which screened applications for the tax exemptions, improperly singled out tea party and other conservative groups for tougher treatment. The report says the practice began in March 2010 and lasted more than 18 months.

The report blamed “ineffective management” for letting IRS officials craft “inappropriate criteria” to review applications from tea party and other conservative groups, based on their names or political views. It found that the IRS took no action on many of the conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status for long periods of time, hindering their fundraising for the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Republicans have spent the past few days trying to link the IRS’ improper scrutiny of conservatives to Obama. The president has said he didn’t know about the targeting until last Friday, when Lerner acknowledged at a legal conference that conservative groups had been singled out.

Many of the groups were applying for tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations, which are allowed to participate in campaign activity if that is not their primary activity. The IRS judges whether that imprecise standard is met.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said the FBI was investigating whether the IRS may have violated applicants’ civil rights.

Obama has rejected the idea of naming a special prosecutor to investigate the episode, saying the investigations by Congress and the Justice Department were sufficient.

Obama has named Daniel Werfel, a top White House budget officer, to replace Miller.

Also Thursday, Joseph Grant, one of Miller’s top deputies, announced plans to retire June 3, according to an internal IRS memo. Grant is commissioner of the agency’s tax exempt and government entities division, which includes the agents that targeted tea party groups for additional scrutiny.

Grant joined the IRS in 2005 and took over as acting commissioner of the tax exempt and government entities division in December 2010. He was just named the permanent commissioner May 8.

When asked whether Grant was pressured to leave, IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Grant had more than 31 years of federal service and it was his personal decision to leave.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

“If the federal government should … make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people … must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.” –Alexander Hamilton

Scandal lineup — Obama, Holder and that low-level guy in Cincinnati

It was a bad week for the president. Of course, opposition to his agenda is nothing new, and neither is his history of using scandal and crisis to maintain his perpetual campaign. What made this week especially bad is that his Leftmedia sycophants suddenly got a dose of his medicine.

The IRS targeting groups with “Patriot” or “Tea Party” in their name was the big news of the week, but we’ve endured four-and-a-half years of this kind of scandal and crisis exploitation by Barack Obama — Benghazi, Operation Fast and Furious, Newtown, the BP oil spill, crony “stimulus” deals, EPA political favoritism (more on that below) and HHS fundraising (also more below), just to name a few. For the IRS, Obama tells us that no special prosecutor is needed. He’s got it; no worries.

In every case, plausible deniability is the name of the game. Obama is always careful to use bureaucratic managers who act as cutouts to take the perceived fall for his misdeeds — those “low-level employees” in Cincinnati, for example — but the community organizer in chief has cultivated corruption in government since 2009. You can take the politician out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the politician.

Former adviser David Axelrod offered his explanation of the problem: “Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government’s so vast.” Yes, he said this in defense of the president. In reality, that’s the best case anyone could make for constitutionally limited government. As Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) observed, “The more power any government has, the more power it will abuse.”

In related news, another IRS scandal is brewing. A HIPAA-covered data management company is suing the IRS after agents seized the personal and confidential medical records of more than 10 million patients in 2011. The IRS had a search warrant to obtain financial information of a former employee of the data management company, but according to the legal complaint, “It did not authorize any seizure of any healthcare or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter. This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power… No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search.”

By the way, we learned yesterday that Sarah Hall Ingram, who headed up Obama’s IRS office in charge of tax-exempt groups during its period of conservative persecution and was paid $103,390 just in bonuses during that time, is now in charge of enforcing ObamaCare at the IRS. And we’re supposed to trust this government with our health care or with background checks for gun purchases or with countless other unconstitutional encroachments in our daily lives?

The Leftmedia finally began to understand — or at least to feel the brunt of — the problem when the Justice Department seized phone records on more than 20 separate lines used by the Associated Press in April and May of last year. Trafficking guns to Mexico that result in the deaths of two federal agents and hundreds of Mexican citizens? Not interested. Leaving four Americans to die in a terrorist attack in Benghazi and then lying about what happened to ensure re-election? Got better things to do. Listening in on AP phone calls? Outrageous!

Yet the AP investigation is entirely different from the other issues, except that it appears, as was the case with the Benghazi cover up, to be yet another attempt to promote Obama as having conquered al-Qa’ida. According to Fox News, “The government would not say why it sought the records. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an Al Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.” It’s likely that cover was blown for an inside source as a result.

Those who leak information that is classified or that exposes intel methods should be caught and prosecuted, notwithstanding the general media belief that they’re above the law. Perhaps now the Leftmedia will shake off their Stockholm Syndrome and begin to take seriously this administration’s habitual abuse of power.

(Speaking of things classified, the U.S. Marshals Service lost two “known or suspected terrorists” from its witness protection program. Oops!)

Finally, we note again that it’s no small irony that Obama delivered a commencement address at Ohio State University two weeks ago, where he counseled graduates, “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn … that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”

Reject them, he says — because they’re telling the truth.

Quote of the Week

“Obama recently warned some college graduates against being all worried about government tyranny, and Obama has good reason to warn you against that because worrying about government tyranny is the exact sort of thing that will get you audited. Or, when Obamacare is in full force, it will be the attitude that gets you denied life saving health care. So have faith in government. Or it will get you.” –humorist Frank J. Fleming

This Week’s ‘Non Compos Mentis’ Award

“They make so much of these issues because this president is such a great president.” –Nancy Pelosi

Government and Politics

Hope ‘n’ Change: Solicitation and Cost Increases

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reached out to various health industry officials to solicit financial and material donations to aid in the implementation of ObamaCare. On top of other flashier scandals this week, it was revealed that she made phone calls and wrote letters to industry executives, community organizations and church groups to prompt them to give until it hurts. Presumably, the larger the group, the more is expected of them. House and Senate Republicans are opening formal inquiries into whether Sebelius broke the law, but naturally HHS claims she acted within her authority because Congress hasn’t provided “sufficient” funds and implementing ObamaCare is proving to be more daunting than anticipated. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) gave a succinct response to the HHS defense: “This isn’t a complicated thing. If the administration asks for $5 and Congress appropriates $4, that’s what they get. If the government creates a subterfuge by going outside the government, to raise money through a private entity, that’s a violation of the law.”

Meanwhile, remember that big selling point of ObamaCare bending the health care cost curve down? Well, there’s more confirmation that it’s not going to happen. The Congressional Budget Office says the total cost of ObamaCare over the next 10 years will be $1.8 trillion — twice what Democrats told us four years ago. Furthermore, a new House Energy and Commerce Committee report notes that insurance premiums will rise 100 percent on average, and in some cases, as high as 400 percent. Small businesses will see hikes of 50 to 100 percent. This report was based on internal documents compiled from 17 of the country’s largest insurance companies. The report also notes that the misery of sky-high premiums will be felt across the board from college grads to older adults. Just remember, though: Obama “cares.”

From the Left: Pay Inequality in the White House

Barack Obama issued a memo last Friday calling for the Office of Personnel Management to analyze the federal workers pay system. He expressed concern that women aren’t receiving comparable pay at the federal level, and he wants OPM to assess any differences in wages, job responsibilities and advancement opportunities between male and female employees. OPM is also ordered to recommend how to make the pay system more “equitable” and “transparent.”

Obama isn’t exactly the best spokesman for this issue, however. About 70 percent of top-tier employees at the White House are male, and they earn 13 percent more on average than his female employees. And when Obama was a senator, women on his staff were paid only 78 percent of what men were paid. We’re sure once he finds out about that by watching the news, he’ll remedy the situation.

Income Redistribution: Revenue Up, Debt … Up

The U.S. Treasury reports that federal tax revenues hit an all-time monthly high in April, pulling in roughly $406 billion in individual, corporate, employment and other taxes and fees. This is a whopping 28 percent higher than in April 2012, and it’s thanks to the (temporary) influx of revenue from Obama’s January tax hikes. The federal government ran an April surplus of $112.9 billion, but it’s still deep in the red for fiscal 2012, with a seven-month deficit of $487.6 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office also presented some fleetingly optimistic news, noting that the budget deficit shrank faster than anticipated. According to CBO figures, the deficit for this fiscal year will be $642 billion, about $200 billion less than they projected just three months ago. The revised figure will be equivalent to roughly 4 percent of GDP. In 2009, the $1.4 trillion deficit was 10 percent of GDP. Economists attribute the dramatic drop to higher tax payments and point out that the sequester had a negligible impact in the reduction. There is concern, however, that the drop in the deficit will take the heat off Republicans and Democrats to fix Washington’s long-term spending and entitlement problems — the debt continues to grow. In any event, the dip in the deficit will be short-lived as the Obama administration has cleverly back-loaded a whole host of fees and spending actions related to ObamaCare to kick in after the president is beyond the wrath of the voters. In other words, this is little more than accounting tricks.

Economy

Regulatory Commissars: The Cost of ‘Free’ Information

In January we alerted you to the impending resignation of EPA head Lisa Jackson and speculated it was because Barack Obama would approve the Keystone XL pipeline despite her objections. Months later, though, we’re not digging for a pipeline and the review for Jackson’s successor threatens to take as long as Obama’s Keystone dithering.

Gina McCarthy, Obama’s nominee to replace Jackson, was asked by Senate Republicans to respond to hundreds of written questions, causing Democrats to chafe at what they consider excessive scrutiny. Yet one question that also needs to be answered is why the agency had a differing standard of transparency and Freedom of Information Act fee waivers depending on the political persuasion of the group making the request. (That, of course, sounds familiar.)

The pro-business Competitive Enterprise Institute, a frequent EPA critic, outlined the problem: According to CEI Senior Fellow Christopher Horner, who tracked the information over a 14-month period, CEI was denied the request in 14 out of 15 requests for such waivers. Meanwhile, pro-environmental groups received a fee waiver in 75 of 82 cases. “EPA’s practice is to take care of its friends and impose ridiculous obstacles to deny problematic parties,” said Horner. “This is a clear pattern of favoritism.”

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who is leading the charge against confirming the former assistant to Jackson, noted the developing FOIA scandal at the EPA “is really no different than the IRS disaster,” and vowed to add this to his line of questioning. The game of obfuscation continues.

Around the Nation: States Seek to Take Advantage of Resources

Most of those who know the field will tell you that securing our own energy and reducing our need for foreign resources are attainable goals if we would only open up the process. The extraction of energy within the borders of states like Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania has created thousands of new jobs and billions of new dollars enriching state coffers, just as Alaskans enjoyed the bounty of their resources a generation ago.

Now a group of coastal-state governors, including two who already are reaping the rewards of oil exploration — Alaska’s Sean Parnell and Texas’s Rick Perry — called on the federal government to allow their states to further explore offshore drilling. Speaking at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Parnell and Perry were joined in this plea by the governors of Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina as well as other representatives from Louisiana and Virginia. Proposed exploration in all of these states is stymied by Obama’s intentional hindrance after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. New drilling is severely curtailed in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska, and states bordering the Atlantic endure an outright ban since the spill disaster three years ago.

So far their pleas have fallen on deaf ears, although Barack Obama is quick to take credit for the increased oil production (ahem, on private land) during his tenure.

Detroit May Go Bankrupt

According to Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, the Motor City is on the verge of bankruptcy. Orr, a Washington-based turnaround expert and bankruptcy attorney, was appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder in an effort to stop the city’s downward spiral. Currently, Detroit has a $162 million negative bank account balance, and its long-term debt is in the neighborhood of $14 billion.

No one needed Orr to tell them the city, which has for decades been run exclusively by Democrats, is in big trouble; it already lost a quarter of its population between 2000 and 2011. However, he did find that at the root of Detroit’s problems are (shock and surprise!) overspending and corruption. What is not the problem is revenue. Detroit ranks ninth in highest taxes among America’s largest cities.

Now that Orr has identified the disease, he’s eager to administer the medicine. There will be painfully large cuts across the board, including the city’s bloated public sector contractors. He’s currently in the process of negotiating with Detroit’s many creditors. This is usually the point at which Big Labor steps in and tries to strong-arm whoever is threatening their interests, but Orr has statutory authority to unilaterally alter, or even cancel, union contracts. And thanks to Michigan’s right-to-work status, unions have to sing for their supper, rather than taking their dues directly out of workers’ paychecks.

While Orr and others try to stem the bleeding, the Obama administration chooses to double down. Recently, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that the Feds will contribute $25 million to Detroit’s new light rail. Too bad there won’t be any residents to ride it.

Security

A Question the Commander in Chief Has NOT Been Asked … Yet

This Saturday, May 18, is Armed Forces Day, first set aside in 1949 by President Harry Truman to recognize the unification of the Armed Forces under the Department of Defense, and to acknowledge the extraordinary dedication and sacrifice of America’s uniformed Patriots, standing ready to defend our nation at home and around the world.

However, there will be no traditional air demonstrations across the nation because the Armed Services have been ordered to ground their precision flight teams — one of the most visible (and audible) recruiting tools at DoD’s disposal.

As we reported in March, among the many highly visible cuts associated with what Obama calls “the Republican Sequester,” his administrative minions at DoD ordered the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels to stand down. Not only were all their public schedules canceled, but Obama also canceled the traditional graduation/commissioning flyovers at our nation’s prestigious service academies.

So here’s the question nobody has asked Obama or his spokesman Jay Carney: How does Obama justify canceling flyovers to honor the commitment and sacrifice of the next generation of young military officers taking their oaths to “support and defend” our Constitution while their commander in chief is using the most expensive luxury jet in the world to ferry him around for political events at enormous expense to taxpayers?

For the record, the $181,757 per flight-hour operating cost of Air Force One does not include the enormous cost of support personnel, facilities and additional support aircraft. Nor does it include the enormous cost to states and local government treasuries for “dignitary visits,” or the significant inconvenience to other air travelers or local commuters.

We do not suggest that Obama should be shopping for bargain coach tickets online, as we commoners do (though maybe that would be a good idea). However, the disparity between all the sequester rhetoric, including cancelation of flyovers at academy graduations, is irreconcilable with the expense of using Air Force One and all associated resources for political junkets. The commander in chief is thumbing his nose at the troops! (Kind of like when he forced a Marine to violate regulations and hold an umbrella over Obama’s head at a press conference.)

And a footnote: Author Robert Keith Gray notes in “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” that the $1.4 billion tax dollars spent on the Obamas last year, including “the biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever” and Air Force One’s “running with the frequency of a scheduled air line,” has increased dramatically over previous administrations.

Benghazi Trouble Rolls On

Last week, Mark Alexander presented a comprehensive analysis of the Banghazi debacle along with key questions this administration refuses to answer. We now have a clearer picture of how the cover-up went down in the days following the attack. On Wednesday, the White House released more than 100 pages of emails that were intended to squelch the resurfaced scandal but have instead mired Obama’s regime deeper into the controversy.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the “talking points were edited to remove a mention of al Qaeda and to delete sentences referring to previous warnings about extremist threats in Benghazi.” What originally read “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda” was dumbed down to read “Islamic extremists,” and finally to just “extremists,” notes Stephen Hayes at The Weekly Standard. Also scratched were the “half dozen references to terrorists — both in Benghazi and more generally.” And how’s this for a non-shocker: You won’t find any mention of the now infamous YouTube video mocking Mohammed on which then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice, Obama and other officials tried to blame the attack.

Additionally, both White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outright lied when they claimed that, first, the talking points didn’t undergo major revisions and, second, the CIA was primarily responsible for the final talking points. Carney claimed in November: “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points … were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility,’ because the word ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.” Clearly, that’s a load of horse pucky. In January, Clinton testified that the “intelligence community was the principal decider about what went into talking points.” On the contrary, the biggest changes were made because of State Department objections. House Republicans are moving forward with creating a special panel to investigate, and the emails further prove that there is still more to this story than this administration will admit.

Finally, Obama is slated to give Rice the biggest promotion of her political career — Rice leads the contenders for the next National Security Advisor. We suppose it’s only fitting that Obama would reward Rice, who was willing to take the hit to help ensure Obama’s re-election.

Immigration Biometrics Amendment Defeated

On Tuesday, senators on the Judiciary Committee considering amendments to the immigration reform package defeated an attempt by some Republicans to require biometric identification, such as fingerprinting or iris scanning, for tracking those entering and leaving the country. The amendment, proposed by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), would have required the U.S. to establish a biometric system before any illegal alien could obtain permanent residency or citizenship.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is a central member of the so-called Gang of Eight pushing immigration reform, expressed his disappointment in the defeat. His spokesman, Alex Conant, said, “Immigration reform must include the best exit system possible because persons who overstay their authorized stay are a big reason we now have so many illegal immigrants.” We in our humble shop would point out that the actual reason we have so many illegals is because people are overstaying their unauthorized stays — but who are we to quibble. Interestingly, four other members of the Gang of Eight, two Republicans (Flake and Graham) and two Democrats (Schumer and Durbin), voted against the amendment. All this seems to indicate that any significant changes to the Gang’s original immigration reform bill will probably be defeated.

Quite naturally, privacy groups have always opposed this type of centralized, federal database of people’s biometric information, fearing it would lead to government abuse. And given this week’s revelations about recent IRS and Justice Department abuses, that fear is well founded. The last thing Americans need is an Obama regime that can more easily track their every movement, text, call, visit, purchase, or whatever, any time of the day or night.

Culture

Gosnell Convicted, Sentenced to Life

Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was sentenced this week to life in prison — a stark contrast to the sentence given to those babies born alive after failed abortions only to be brutally murdered by Gosnell. After being found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, Gosnell waived his right to appeal in order to avoid a possible death sentence. Not surprisingly, but still grotesquely, the pro-abortion lobby is falling over itself to blame Gosnell’s atrocities on abortion restrictions. “The numbers don’t lie,” NARAL Pro-Choice America tweeted, “Gosnell is [the] result of anti-choice attacks on abortion access.” And Kate Michelman, co-chair of WomenVote PA, a program of the Women’s Law Project, stated, “The tragic circumstances that led to women choosing to go to Gosnell’s clinic over reputable health service providers are a foreshadowing of the future if opponents of women’s reproductive rights succeed in legislating reproductive care clinics out of business.”

The verdict — which, as CNS News reports, was reached by a jury in which 9 of the 12 members were “pro-choice” — prompted Heritage Foundation’s Sarah Torre to write, “Justice has been served for a few infants and one mother whose lives were taken” in Gosnell’s clinic. National Review Senior Editor Ramesh Ponnuru isn’t so sure, however: “The question that should haunt us now,” he wrote, “is not how many victims Gosnell killed, which we will never know, but how many more Gosnells there are in our country.” Indeed, as mounting evidence shows, there are many. Even beyond Ponnuru’s question, though, is the question of how much longer pro-abortion advocates, legislators and the lobby that they serve will turn a blind eye to the systematic murder of babies even outside the womb.

This Week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ Award

“Your baby will thank you.” –ad put out by Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion provider

Faith and Family: More States Redefine Marriage

In the last month, Rhode Island, Delaware and Minnesota became the 10th, 11th and 12th states, respectively, to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. Illinois could be the next domino to fall, while Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington, as well as Washington, DC, have already done so. Rhode Island passed its bill this year after years of trying — it was introduced every year since 1997. Minnesota nearly passed a constitutional amendment to retain the traditional definition of marriage; the rapid turnaround came in just six months.

The issue, of course, is a difficult one for social conservatives to battle because the raw emotional appeal of the Left is difficult to overcome. As Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee put it, “I am proud to say that now at long last, you are free to marry the person you love.” The Left intentionally co-opts the language of Liberty when in reality they are undermining it. What the increased prevalence of same-sex marriage means is that the issue will likely be “settled” by the Supreme Court, much as abortion was “settled” there. In other words, it will become more politicized than ever. It also means that religious leaders and institutions, as well as private businesses who object — say, a florist who won’t provide flowers for a same-sex wedding or photographer who won’t take pictures of one — will face increased pressure to conform or face “discrimination” lawsuits. The homosexual lobby has shown remarkable persistence in their fight to undo cultural norms and to radically re-engineer the fundamental building block of human civilization. Don’t expect them to relent.

And Last…

Amid all the scandal this week, the IRS found itself too busy to keep one event on their calendar — their Friday softball game with Sen. John Cornyn’s staff. The IRS canceled the game and has not rescheduled. The problem could be that the IRS doesn’t specialize in softball, but rather hardball. Lost amid this larger story, however, was one detail we found utterly appropriate: The IRS team’s nickname is “the Cheetahs.”

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

If you are shocked at all by the political application of IRS power to intimidate opposition into compliance you have not even begun to think about how that IRS power will be used to intimidate the U.S. population when it comes to their medical records and access to health care.  And if you don’t think it will happen then you are simply a fool waiting for the slaughter.  I can see for myself that the ONLY reason the Socialist Democrats wanted to create this new health care law and force compliance through the IRS  would be to eliminate all of their opposition to their continued advancement of socialist/communist policies via the intimidating application of health care.

You ain’t seen nothing yet!  The only answer is to eliminate the IRS wholly, totally , completely and permanently.  Until the IRS is eliminated the corruption will continue to grow.  Eventually, no one will escape it.  All will feel its intimidating power and all will learn to fear it.  This is no longer America.  But then again, Obama did promise to bring transformation to America.  Didn’t he?

(9) Directions to your doctor’s office include “Take a left after you enter the trailer park.” 

(8) The tongue depressors taste faintly of Fudgesicles.

(7) The only proctologist in the plan is “Gus” from Roto-Rooter.

(6) The only item listed under Preventative Care Coverage is “an apple a day.”

(5) Your primary care physician is wearing the pants you gave to Goodwill last month.

(4) “The patient is responsible for 200% of out-of-network charges,” is not a typographical error.

(3) The only expense covered 100% is….”Embalming.”

(2) Your Prozac pills come in different colors with little M’s on them.

AND THE NUMBER ONE SIGN YOU’VE JOINED OBAMA’S HEALTH CARE PLAN:

(1) You ask for Viagra, and they give you a Popsicle stick and duct tape.

WE. HAVE. TO. WIN. IN. 2014!!!

Nothing. Else. Matters.

That is the North star we must follow no matter what fake scandals are strewn in our path. Apathy and Complacency taught us a huge lesson in 2010, whose ramifications stall our progress now. Many of us failed to appreciate how recalcitrant entrenched plutocratic power is. So we have to defeat the GOP and their brand of UNAMERICAN callousness toward the 99% of this country’s population. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. Republicans do NOT care about this country’s welfare, only to grab for their monied friends. Period.

As President Obama said on election night 2008 “the road will be long, our climb will be steep, but America, we will get there.” Every one of those predictions has been borne out. Good news is we conquered them in 2012. But we have more fight on our hands. Today’s 37th repeal Obamacare vote should remind us that Republicans never give up on eroding our rights. They keep gnawing and gnawing and gnawing at our rights until they can wear us down and chip away till we have only empty shells left.

We all know the following cases in point: Reproductive Rights of women, Section 5 of Voting Rights Act, Personhood Amendment bills, Separation of Church and state, Workers Rights, Consumer Protection, Environmental protection…and on and on..! Also, what everyone including corporate media thought initially was the 3rd rail of politics – Not touching Social Security & Medicare – is now shrugged at, thanks to Paul Ryan’s thrice-voted on budget . That is what they do, move the Overton Window ever rightward!

The charade we’ve been seeing from Republicans since President Obama’s reelection that reached an absurd climax this past weekend is ALL ABOUT mobilizing their base for 2014. Actually, the ramped up hatefest is a sign of panic. They have aborted their own plan to “reach out” to constituencies they lost, even before they implemented it. The entire Priebus review was a sham intended to massage the centrism fetish of corporate media lackeys and Independents. Republicans know that they CANNOT change.

So with backs against the wall they are returning to the Southern Strategy that failed to win them 2012, this time on steroids. Insane. Yes. But it is the insanity they know best. They will double down on kamikaze tactics because their base is in nihilist mode. Burn down the darn house! The Conservative puppetmasters are desperate to weaponize that nihilism for their greedy benefit, since they don’t have to give their base anything tangible in return, save the adrenaline rush from heightened Obama-hate. Our side’s resolve to govern will be tested even more.

The narratives will get worse. Why? That’s because the Republican base is not interested in the veracity of any of their fake “scandals.” In fact whether the Republican leaders or moneybags themselves believe them is beside the point. The “scandals” are simply trigger points in a larger scheme to prime their base psychologically for peak wingnuttiness at election time. For this phase, the real ploy is to generate noise warfare. The narrative is simply a soundtrack doubling as a cattle call. The Republicans KNOW their base well. And that base is only motivated by one thing and one thing ONLY: Grievance. And by golly the power hungry Conservative puppetmasters are going to stroke every darn erogenous zone of their base to grab power using every trick in their Atwater book taken to the nth degree.

Actually the more the basis for their outrage is proven to be WRONG, the more consolidated their feelings of being besieged. It is a well-choreographed and calibrated strategy to prime grievance to the point where it is automated and actionable even without anything to launch it, just like cyber worms. We saw it in the run up to the hellish summer of “Death Panels” in 2009. What we saw the teabagger caucus led by Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Michele Bachman, plus Mitch McConnell do yesterday outside Congress is intended to launch death panels 2.0.

The Good News, we’ve seen that movie before. The hate may be ultra-rabid, but there’s something stale about it. So what do we do practically and pragmatically to defeat them?

****

My next series of Posts will be ACTION DIARIES: Here’s how we start:

Rule # 1: Don’t waste energy & bandwidth on the Professional Left (me included). In spite of their dangerous fecklessness, the Professional Left is not our target. The GOP is. The corporate media too deserves our unrestrained scorn. The PL has media bark, The GOP has legislative and electoral bite. Focus on the GOP.

Rule # 2: FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS. We have limited time and resources in the fight to kick GOP House out and safeguard Senate in 2014. Go full bore on the few House Wingnuts in swing districts. Attack ALL GOP senate candidates like we did Romney. No mercy.

****

Our task:

1. We have to defend 20 Democratic Senate seats like our lives depend on it. They do. Even the most conservative Democrats have a modicum of integrity and sanity to govern in our interest (e.g. Manchin, Landrieu, Kay Hagan).

2. We must win 17 House seats to gain majorities

3. We must take back as many of 30 GOP controlled governorships as possible. 2010 electoral lapse cost us Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Maine, Florida. 2012 cost us North Carolina.

4. Reverse GOP supermajorities in State legislatures that have eroded women’s rights and voting rights
SCOTUS SCOTUS SCOTUS: This should be the subtext and overtext to everything we do. If this SCOTUS is gonna be giving us CU and venal corporate-siding rulings every single time, then we just have to get Democrats especially in the Senate confirmation process to get us the SCOTUS we want.

****

ACTION #1:  Get signed up in your state (or any state) to work our butts off for these Senate Seats that we are defending to maintain our majorities:

Seats to Retain:

Mark Begich (D-AK)

Mark Pryor (D-AR)

Mark Udall (D-CO)

Chris Coons (D-DE)

Brian Schatz (D-HI)

Richard Durbin (D-IL)

Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

Mo Cowan (D-MA pending Markey/Gomez election)

Al Franken (D-MN)

Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

Tom Udall (D-NM)

Kay Hagan (D-NC)

Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Jack Reed (D-RI)

Mark Warner (D-VA)

****

6 Democratic Open seats: Iowa, Michigan (Dem Gary Peters contesting), Montana, New Jersey (Dem Cory Booker contesting), South Dakota, West Virginia

****

GOP seats to fight for: Susan Collins (R-ME) We should fight for this

****

Rule # 3: Remember to KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) when talking to voters about electing democrats to support our President to govern

****

What has Obama done for you? Here’s a start:

Democrats: Passed Obamacare. Saved GM. Killed Bin Laden. Ended Iraq War. Created 6.8M private sector jobs. Restored your 401(k).

— Betsy (@bbkenn92) May 17, 2013

****

a) HEALTHCARE

It’s. The. Law. #ObamaCareInThreeWords, twitter.com/whitehouse/sta…

— The White House (@whitehouse) May 16, 2013

****

****

Read more here on health reform

****

Preventative Care (see here)

b) Tell the Independents and moderates this: “In September 2008 did you look at your 401k/403b statement? And the next one in December 2008? Good. Who was in power at that time? Have you looked at your recent statement? Yep. PBO saved your 401k.

c) Republican family member or acquaintance who is worried about “debt” and “gover-nnnnnn-ment spending”. Show them the CBO report released on Tuesday May 14th. For kicks ask them whether putting 2 wars and billionaires’ tax breaks on the nation’s credit card was the moral thing to do.

d) To an Emoprog whiner: “So you are disappointed with this President after 4.5 years in office and you will sit out the 2014 elections like you did in 2010? Great. How did that work out for the liberal agenda from 2011 till now? You know how long the wingnuts have been unhappy? Since FDR. They have never stopped fighting to turn the clock back. Talk about intestinal fortitude!!!

e) And the one who says all Dems are corporatist schmucks “I’m not prepared to vote for the lesser of two evils….yada, yada yada…”, you say “Sure, Not voting for the lesser of two evils gets us the worse of two evils. How’s that for a batting average?

****

As an addition to the roll of blog tyrants, I welcome more suggestions for future ACTION Diaries. We have to prime our pump.

Hearing on IRS Scandal – Live Updates – Washington Post

LIVE streaming on C-Span 2

IRS targeted Americans for their political views, especially conservatives and members of the Tea Party movement. IRS used other government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to investigate and harass Americans as potential terrorists after they applied for tax exempt status for political organizations. An example was given of a woman who is a small business owner, started a local Tea Party and asked for tax exempt status. She was repeatedly audited by the IRS, investigated and harassed by the DHS and FBI.

I’m a slightly left-leaning voter registered as an Independent. I agree with liberal Democrats on about 60% of the issues mainly social and personal, while agreeing with conservative Republicans on about 40% of the issues mainly economic and government.

I dislike the Tea Party movement, but the actions taken by the IRS against the Tea Party and other conservatives is wrong. People at the IRS who are responsible for that should be sent to jail, not just fired.

This is a significant event in US history, which could result in significant changes.

I do favor abolishing the IRS and going to a simple 10% sales tax to raise money for the government – 2.4% for cities, 2.4% for counties, 2.5% for states, 2.5% for federal/national. For reducing the size of government, and for other reasons, many far-right members of the Republican Party and the Tea Party also favor abolishing the IRS, to replace it with a smaller, fairer, and more efficient agency for collecting taxes. That might be one of the real reasons why the IRS has targeted them.

When Bill Clinton was President, he ordered double tax refunds one year for people below the poverty line in income. I was on the line that year, so I didn’t request it on my tax form. The IRS insisted I’m entitled to double my refund, and sent me the check anyway. Then 2 years later the IRS claimed I failed to report 1 hour of income for that year, amounting to $6 for a temp job I did on the side, and never actually got paid for but was reported by the temp agency anyway. That $6 put me over the line. Then the IRS fined me about $2,400 in interest and penalties in addition to paying back the tax refund over-payment. The normal refund would have been only bout $200 but then was about $400 that year for people below the poverty line at about $12,000 per year of gross income. So $6 that I didn’t get paid, but was reported by a bad temp agency, put me over the line, costing me the $200 difference paid back, plus $2,400 interest and penalties. So I hate the IRS.

+

UPDATE 10:30am CT

The hearing has now revealed the IRS also targeted churches and religious organizations.

+

Additional personal note

The reason I dislike the Tea Party and some far right Republicans, is because they want to abolish Social Security. The Social Security Administration is independent and self-sustaining, not part of the national debt. All of the money I’m receiving is money I paid in from 30 years of employment for retirement but get sooner for disability. It’s my money. If it were not for that, then I’d become homeless and die quickly because of bad health. Members of the Tea Party and Republican Party believe Social Security money belongs to the government and can be better used for Tea Party and Republican interests than for sustaining people too old to work or who have become disabled and are not presently able to work. They believe if you don’t work than you don’t eat. No exceptions. Some have said to my face that it would be better for me to kill myself rather than to accept government aid for any purpose and to be a burden to their society. Their health care plan is “Please die quickly.” I don’t like the health plan of the Democrats, but at least they don’t want to kill me. Medicare is useless as is and should be abolished or changed.

Look. There isn’t anyone with a speck of sense who truly believes this [IRS] scandal was confined to a sub-unit in Cincinnati, and to a pair of previously-punished rogue employees. But like the “spontaneous demonstration to a YouTube video” cover story that the Administration used to buy time on the Benghazi disaster, attempts are being made within the government — and once again, with the help of either a credulous or complicit media invested in Obama and progressivism — to pretend that what is an institutional failing is in fact the work of some shadowy characters acting alone. Sadly, the glory hounds in Congress — in both parties — enjoy using the IRS to harass those who cross them, so the institutional pressure to truly get to the bottom of the scandal isn’t there, particularly if a dozen or so operatives can be sacrificed on the altar of showy justice.

After which, things will return to “normal” — which history shows us is more of the same: a politicization of the IRS that is both institutional and specifically at times directed by Presidents and members of Congress. To that end, I worry about parts of Obama’s statement last evening, particularly where he noted that the rules need to be fixed — which immediately had me concerned that he’d use this scandal to try to figure ways to re-configure the political landscape after Citizens United. [BOB: As an unwise, dickheaded midget once said: "Never let a good crisis go to waste].

But that’s just me being paranoid and unhelpful and Visigothy.

The reason I included the feckless GOP Leadership [aka: the Quislings] under the label ‘The Leftist Pattern’ because they act like Leftists in almost all of their actions — in their concern for maintaining their level of power, in their desire to perpetuate The Leviathan. As Jeff remarks:

…It is the ruling class vs. the rest of us. And we’re going to see that play out here. Scapegoats, fallguys, and prosecutions, without any real attempt to change the culture that routinely over the decades has produced similar scandals. It’s who they are. It’s what they do. And it’s up to us, we, the people, to stop them. Because lord knows they won’t stop themselves.

And, sadly, it’s becoming clearer that the only way we are going to be able to stop them is via the methods employed by The Founding Fathers, IYKWIMAITYD.

And right now… right now… right now it’s time to… kick out the jams, Motherfucker!

Hero of the Week

The Republican National Committee was very happy to have Pablo Pantoja on its payroll. Energetic, savvy, a decorated National Guardsman — what could be better? As a Latino in Florida, a state the GOP needs to win or steal to have a shot at the White House, he was well positioned to represent the hypothetical rebranding the party rolled out earlier this year. As the RNC Hispanic Outreach Director, his role was very important.

Sadly for the GOP, Pantoja also possesses a heart and a mind. Reflecting on the corrosive failure of the GOP’s fake embrace of minorities after their loss in November, he decided he’d had enough. In a powerful statement, he left his position and switched parties, becoming a vocal Democrat.

Yes, I have changed my political affiliation to the Democratic Party. It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further [...]

The complete disregard of those who are in disadvantage is also palpable. We are not looking at an isolated incident of rhetoric or research. … I think you get the idea. When the political discourse resorts to intolerance and hate, we all lose in what makes America great and the progress made in society.

It’s a scathing indictment of the othering done by the GOP as it attacks immigrants and minorities at every turn while callously courting their votes. Coming from an informed insider, it is particularly damning. As a nice parting shot, Pantoja also made a contribution to the ACLU for efforts to protect immigrant rights. Well done, sir, and welcome.

GLENN GREENWALD

On Real Time ↑