Land of the Freeloader

Medicaid rolls hit a record 72.6 million last year while nearly 11 million Americans — also a record — received disability benefits in May. America has truly become a nation of freeloaders.

When nearly one-fourth of the entire nation — in this case about 23% — is enrolled in the country’s health care program for indigents, and record numbers are collecting disability payments, the trouble is deep. America is the land of opportunity and prosperity, not the land of dependence.

But that’s the goal of the progressives and the Obama presidency — to turn America into a welfare state where most of the country lives off the productivity and earned wealth of a few.

Don’t think so? Look at the Congressional Budget Office report issued Wednesday. That account, requested by Democrats, says that the top 10 major tax breaks “are distributed unevenly across the income scale,” with 17% of the benefits going to families earning $450,000 or more a year.

That would be the top 1%, the small number of Americans who were the objects of the Occupy Wall Street mob’s rage and continue to be a target of the progressives who want to enshrine their version of “fairness” in the tax code.

What the left wants is for this thin slice of the population to pay for leftist programs. This is clearly seen in the comments of Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. On review of the CBO report, he concluded that “we could achieve a significant amount of deficit reduction, long-term deficit reduction, by limiting these tax preferences to the highest-income earners.”

In other words, the Democrats want even more from the rich they so routinely demonize.

This country is hurtling in the wrong direction. Between 1988 and 2011, the number of Americans receiving federal benefits — from Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, subsidized housing, tuition aid and countless other entitlements — has increased 62%, according to a Heritage Foundation study released early this year.

Over the same period, the population grew by less than half that rate while the Heritage’s Index of Dependence on Government Score increased 180%.

No, Obama is not responsible for this jump in dependency. But welfare spending has grown 19% during his time in the White House and the health care overhaul that bears his name will increase reliance on government even more.

And he did say that it was his goal to fundamentally change this nation and spread the wealth. Anyone who doesn’t think he was talking about turning the U.S. into a nation of dependents isn’t being honest.

A freeloading country is an unstable country; it cannot last. Dependency undermines morals and work ethic that drive nations to prosperity. It encourages sloth and inner rot. It is dehumanizing and has no future.

Eventually those who are forced to pay for it will not be able to fund it. That’s when everyone becomes equal — as in the even distribution of misery. (IBD)

And that’s the best equality outcome the Democrats could hope for.

Land of the Freeloader and Home of the Dependent.

What could be better.

Bedfellows

“As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.” – H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

“For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House

 Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?

Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?

The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts.

March 31, 2010.

According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.

The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:

Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30

In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”

The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:

April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.

In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.

The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies. Kelley herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates.

Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party and conservative groups around the country.

The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White House.

In fact, this record in the White House Visitors Log of a 12:30 Wednesday, March 31, 2010 meeting between President Obama and the IRS union’s Kelley was not unusual.

On yet another occasion, Kelley’s presence at the White House was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive Order 13522. A presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party NTEU — the IRS union — a greater role in the day-to-day operation of the IRS than it had already — which was considerable.

Kelley is recorded as visiting the White House over a year earlier, listed in this fashion:

Kelley, Colleen Potus/Flotus 12/03/2009 18:30

The inclusion of “FLOTUS” — First Lady Michelle Obama — and the 6:30 pm time of the December event on this entry in the Visitors Log indicates this was the White House Christmas Party held that evening and written up here in the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times focused on party guests from the President’s home state of Illinois and did not mention Kelley. Notably, the Illinois guests, who are reported to have attended the same party as Kelley, included what the paper described as four labor “activists”: Dennis Gannon of the Chicago Federation of Labor, Tom Balanoff of the Service Employees International Union, Henry Tamarin of UNITE, and Ron Powell of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Six days following Kelley’s attendance at the White House Christmas party with labor activists like herself, the President issued Executive Order 13522 (text found here, with an explanation here). The Executive Order, titled: “Creating Labor-Management Forums To Improve Delivery of Government Services” applied across the federal government and included the IRS. The directive was designed to:

Allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters….

However else this December 2009 Executive Order can be described, the directive was a serious grant of authority within the IRS to the powerful anti-Tea Party union. A union that by this time already had the clout to determine the rules for IRS employees, right down to who would be allowed a Blackberry or what size office the employee was entitled to. The same union that would shortly be doling out serious 2010 (and later 2012) campaign contributions to anti-Tea Party candidates with money supplied from IRS employees. The union, as noted last week here in this space, already has the authority to decide all manner of IRS matters, right down to who does and does not get a Blackberry.

It is the same union whose IRS employee-members were being urged in 2012 by Senate Democrats (Chuck Schumer, Al Franken, Max Baucus, and others) to target Tea Party and other conservative groups.

Which, as the IG records, they did.

Both Mr. Obama and the NTEU’s Kelley have been by turns evasive and tight-lipped about their roles in the blossoming IRS scandal.

Kelley refused to open up to the Washington Post. In an article titled ”IRS, union mum on employees held accountable in ‘sin’ of political targeting,” the Post quoted the following:

“NTEU is working to get the facts but does not have any specifics at this time. Moreover, IRS employees are not permitted to discuss taxpayer cases. We cannot comment further at this time,” NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said via e-mail.

A call to the NTEU office in Cincinnati resulted in a similar response: “We’ve been directed by national office. We have no comment.”

The President approached things in a more evasive manner.

Last Thursday at the President’s press conference with the Turkish prime minister, Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News asked the following question, bold print for emphasis: 

“Mr. President, I want to ask you about the IRS. Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd? And when they did find out, do you think that you should have learned about it before you learned about it from news reports as you said last Friday? And also, are you opposed to there being a special counsel appointed to lead the Justice Department investigation?”

The President’s response? (Again bold print emphasis.)

“But let me make sure that I answer your specific question. I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press.”

Take note: Goldman’s question was:

“Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd?”

The President evaded by answering:

“I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report…..”

The question was not whether he knew about the IG report ahead of time. The question was whether he could “assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions.”

In response, the President ducked.

In other words, the IRS union chief went to the White House to meet personally with the president on March 31. The union already had Executive Order 13522 behind it, issued by the President barely three months earlier. An Executive Order directing that the IRS must “allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters….”.

The very next day after that March 31 meeting at the White House, the IRS, with the union involved in its decision-making, was setting up its “Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party.”

Which raises the famous question from Watergate: What did the President know and when did he know it?

While potentially explosive now, in fact the Obama Administration hadn’t been in office a month before Kelley was boasting of the IRS union’s influence in the White House.

In a February 15, 2009  interview given to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh is Kelley’s home town), there was this question from the PG reporter, with the now Washington-based Kelley boasting as below, key point in bold print: 

Q: Has the Obama staff been receptive?

A: Yes. We have worked with the transition team, given them suggestions; and throughout the campaign, President Obama talked about working with the federal employees and unions. He’s recognized the contributions federal employees make. I was just at the White House (Jan. 30) while he was signing some executive orders to undo some things the prior administration did.

Catch that?

The boast?

“I was just at the White House…”

Which is to say, the election of 2008, in which the union had endorsed Obama, was no sooner over than the head of the IRS union had “worked with the transition team” and “given them suggestions.” Literally ten days after the Obama January 20 inaugural in 2009 — January 30 the article notes — Kelley was boasting that “I was just at the White House while he (the President) was signing some executive orders to undo some things the prior administration did.”

And what did Kelley see as the IRS union’s relationship with the White House she had already visited ten days into the President’s first term?

Kelley responded candidly, again with the bold print added for emphasis:

“We are looking for a return to what we used to call partnership. I don’t really care what it’s called. For me, it’s about collaboration.”

Catch those words?

Collaboration. Partnership.

In addition to Kelley’s three visits to see the President — in January of 2009, December of 2009, and March of 2010 — she is listed for three other visits, the contact names those of presidential aides:

“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 11/04/2009 10:00”

“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 12/01/2009 12:00”

“Kelley, Colleen Nelson, Greg 01/14/2010 13:40”

The obvious question instantly arises with the revelation that Kelley was meeting with the President personally — the day before the IRS kicked into high gear with its “Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party”.

Were the President of the United States and the President of the NTEU meeting in the White House at 12:30 on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 — and engaged in “collaboration” and “partnership”? A “collaboration” and “partnership” that was all about targeting the Tea Party?

And did that collaboration and partnership result in the IRS letting loose the hounds on the Tea Party and conservative groups — the very next day after the Obama-Kelley meeting?

To add to the administration’s IRS-NTEU woes is the fact that beyond the Inspector General, there is another IRS-connected agency in the Treasury Department: the IRS Oversight Board.

And on that board sits a presidential appointee named Robert M. Tobias. Tobias, oddly, was a Clinton appointee in 2005, confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term. He is still there. He is the longtime NTEU general counsel and Kelley’s predecessor as the union president. Here’s the statement, from the IRS Oversight Board, on all of this. It is headed: 

IRS Oversight Board Deeply Troubled by Breakdown in IRS Process in Reviewing Tax-Exempt Applications.

There was no reference to the influence of the anti-Tea Party NTEU in the statement. Why would there be when the union’s ex-president sits on the Oversight Board itself?

Obama’s problem here is considerable.

By not forthrightly answering Goldman’s question, he seems to be evading the issue in the manner that brought so much trouble in the form of congressional investigations, special prosecutors, and impeachment threats to Presidents Nixon and Clinton, with Nixon being forced to resign the presidency and Clinton brought to a Senate trial.

The President’s too-clever-by half evasion added to Kelley’s silence leaves open the question of whether the union and the White House, not to mention the IRS Oversight Board, are collaborating — collaborating right now — on a cover-up.

Nixon looked the American people in the television eye and flatly lied about his personal involvement in the Watergate scandal, lies that came from a frantic attempt to conduct a cover-up.

Clinton looked the American people in the eye and famously wagged his finger as he lied that he “did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” In Clinton’s case this extended to lying to a federal grand jury.

For a good long while, the American people in fact believed both Nixon and Clinton. The stories are now legion of Nixon cabinet and staff believing their man, and Clinton’s cabinet and staff believing their man’s protestations of innocence as well.

Finally, in both cases, the truth was out.

As Washington and the country have long since twice-learned the hard way, the parsing of presidential words in cases like this, not to mention looking into the cameras and boldly lying on the prayer of getting away with the lie, always bodes ill for presidents. It leads inevitably to that simple question famously uttered by then-Tennessee GOP Senator Howard Baker and posed of Nixon at the Senate Watergate hearings: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

Twice in recent American history the answer to this question, once for Nixon and once for Clinton, has landed popular, powerful presidents in impeachment hot water. Ending Republican Nixon’s presidency altogether and coming close to doing the same with Democrat Clinton. Leaving the legacy of each permanently scarred.

The notion that the players in the IRS scandal did what they did to get past the 2012 election will only add to an Obama presidential reputation as borrowing the Nixon playbook on skirting scandal in a presidential election year.

Ironically re-casting the image of America’s first black president as the black Nixon.

With the examples of how Nixon and Clinton dodged, evaded, and lied, Obama’s non-answer to Juliana Goldman’s question at last week’s press conference comes in for much more scrutiny. Matched to the silence of Kelley it begins raising obvious questions. Such as:

• Did the President himself ever discuss the Tea Party with Kelley?

• Did the President ever communicate his thoughts on the Tea Party to Kelley — in any fashion other than a face-to-face conversation such as e-mail, text, or by phone?

• What was the subject of the Obama-Kelley March 31, 2010 meeting?

• Who was present at the Obama-Kelley March 31 meeting?

• Was the Tea Party or any other group opposing the President’s agenda discussed at the March 31 meeting, or before or after that meeting?

• Is the White House going to release any e-mails, text, or phone records that detail Kelley’s contacts with not only Mr. Obama but his staff?

• Will the IRS release all e-mail, text, or phone records between Kelley or any other leader of the NTEU with IRS employees?

• What role did Executive Order 13522 play in the IRS investigations of the Tea Party and all these other conservative groups?

Doubtless there are others, considerable others and the list of questions will grow.

Not to be lost sight of here is the role of the NTEU in raising money for Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles — the exact period when the IRS was busy going after the Tea Party and the others to curb any possible influence the groups could have in the elections of 2010 and 2012.

The NTEU, through its political action committee, raised $613,633 in the 2010 cycle, giving 98% of its contributions to anti-Tea Party Democrats. In 2012 the figure was $729,708, with 94% going to anti-Tea Party candidates. One NTEU candidate after another, as discussed last week in this space, campaigned vigorously against the Tea Party. 

So the motivations here — defeating the Tea Party in 2010, and failing at that, making sure that the news of the metastasizing cancer in the IRS was kept quiet until after the 2012 presidential election was over — are clear.

What is particularly interesting here are the automatic assumptions of the mainstream media in all of this.

Like this “given” from the Washington Post’s Dan Balz, bold print added for emphasis. 

The most corrosive of the controversies is what happened at the IRS, which singled out tea party and other conservative groups for special scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status. That Obama knew nothing about it does little to quell concerns that one of the most-feared units in government was operating out of control.

But if in fact the President did know about it?

Here’s the Washington Post’s “Journolist” Ezra Klein:

The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of high-level White House involvement and wide political repercussions.…

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.

Exactly. 

Which is why it will be a curious sight indeed to see the efforts the media will go to ignore/dismiss the tight, on-the-record connection between the President personally and a vociferously anti-Tea Party union. A union that has the literal run of the IRS — and whose union chief is recorded as having met with the President in the White House the day before the IRS launched “a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases.” A decision with which, according to the IG report: “The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.” Check those words from Mr. Klein 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.

The question now is a simple one.

In 1974, “the smoking gun” was a tape recording that ended the Nixon presidency.

In 1998, the smoking gun was a blue dress — and it almost undid Bill Clinton’s White House.

Now the all-too-familiar pattern of scandal and its day-by-day drip-drip-drip nature has begun to set in. Newsmax is now quoting Washington attorney and conservative activist Cleta Mitchell as saying:

“There were nearly 100 groups across the country that got the very egregious set of letters from the IRS that were almost identical and they came from offices all over the country, so I know of at least 85 to 90, maybe more, organizations.”

Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator: Regular American all over the country are coming forward with their stories. Understanding the relationship between the Obama White House and the IRS union will be a must for congressional investigators.

President Obama is coming perilously closer to becoming the new Nixon. The next Bill Clinton.

And once again, as news of exactly what a president was doing in the Oval Office on a particular day and time goes public, yet again the old question becomes new.

What did the President know? And when did he know it?

Bully For You

Thomas Sowell: We have truly entered the world of “Alice in Wonderland” when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a congressional subcommittee to be denounced on national TV for not paying more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to “a worrisome federal deficit,” according to Sen. Carl Levin — one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

Because of “gimmicks” used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Levin said, “children across the country won’t get early education from Head Start. Needy seniors will go without meals. Fighter jets sit idle on tarmacs because our military lacks the funding to keep pilots trained.”

The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws. It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven’t.

What is a tax “loophole”? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.

If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Yet words like “gimmicks” and “loopholes” suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don’t pay any more taxes than the law requires.

Are people who are buying a home, who deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns, using a “gimmick” or a “loophole”? Or are only other people’s deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago that “the very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it.”

If the line in tax laws was drawn in the wrong place, Congress can always draw it somewhere else. But if you buy the argument used by people such as Levin, then a state trooper can pull you over for driving 64 miles per hour on the highway in a 65-mile-per-hour zone, because you are driving too close to the line.

The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but exercises additional powers that we have never voted to give it. That is when “public servants” become public masters. That is when government itself has stepped over the line.

Government’s power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us. When Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department started keeping track of phone calls going to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen (and his parents) that was firing a shot across the bow of Fox News — and of any other reporters or networks that dared to criticize the Obama administration.When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than to intimidate people who might otherwise donate to organizations that oppose this administration’s political agenda?

The government’s power to bully has been used to extract billions from banks, based on threats to file lawsuits that would automatically cause regulatory agencies to suspend banks’ rights to make various ordinary business decisions, until such indefinite time as those lawsuits end. Shakedown artists inside and outside of government have played this lucrative game.

Someone once said, “any government that is powerful enough to protect citizens against predators is also powerful enough to become a predator itself.” And dictatorial in the process.

No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F.A. Hayek called it “the road to serfdom.”
IRS Scandal: The inexplicable raid nearly two years ago on a guitar maker for using allegedly illegal wood that its competitors also used was another targeting by this administration of its political enemies.

On Aug. 24, 2011, federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. One of the top makers of acoustic and electric guitars, including the iconic Les Paul introduced in 1952, Gibson was accused of using wood illegally obtained in violation of the century-old Lacey Act, which outlaws trafficking in flora and fauna the harvesting of which had broken foreign laws.

In one raid, the feds hauled away ebony fingerboards, alleging they violated Madagascar law. Gibson responded by obtaining the sworn word of the African island’s government that no law had been broken.

In another raid, the feds found materials imported from India, claiming they too moved across the globe in violation of Indian law. Gibson’s response was that the feds had simply misinterpreted Indian law.

Interestingly, one of Gibson’s leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Co. According to C.F. Martin’s catalog, several of their guitars contain “East Indian Rosewood,” which is the exact same wood in at least 10 of Gibson’s guitars. So why were they not also raided and their inventory of foreign wood seized?

Grossly underreported at the time was the fact that Gibson’s chief executive, Henry Juszkiewicz, contributed to Republican politicians. Recent donations have included $2,000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and $1,500 to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

By contrast, Chris Martin IV, the Martin & Co. CEO, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee over the past couple of election cycles.

“We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted,” Juszkiewicz said at the time, adding the matter “could have been addressed with a simple contact (from) a caring human being representing the government. Instead, the government used violent and hostile means.”

That includes what Gibson described as “two hostile raids on its factories by agents carrying weapons and attired in SWAT gear where employees were forced out of the premises, production was shut down, goods were seized as contraband and threats were made that would have forced the business to close.”

Gibson, fearing a bankrupting legal battle, settled and agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty to the U.S. Government. It also agreed to make a “community service payment” of $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation — to be used on research projects or tree-conservation activities.

The feds in return agreed to let Gibson resume importing wood while they sought “clarification” from India.

The feds say they acted to save the environment from greedy plunderers. America is a trivial importer of rosewood from Madagascar and India. Ninety-five percent of it goes to China, where it is used to make luxury items like $800,000 beds. So putting Gibson out of business wasn’t going to do a whole lot to save their forests.

Juszkiewicz’ claim that his company was “inappropriately targeted” is eerily similar to the claims by Tea Party, conservative, pro-life and religious groups that they were targeted by the IRS for special scrutiny because they sought to exercise their First Amendment rights to band together in vocal opposition to the administration’s policies and the out-of-control growth of government and its power.

The Gibson Guitar raid, the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups and the fraudulently obtained warrant naming Fox News reporter James Rosen as an “aider, abettor, co-conspirator” in stealing government secrets are but a few examples of the abuse of power by the Obama administration to intimidate those on its enemies list. (IBD)

He’s Checking his list to see if you’ve been Naughty or Nice… 🙂

The Devil Went Down

Desperate DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz:

Getting in President Obama’s way has been the top priority for Republicans in Congress since day one. But now they’ve gone too far.

They’ve been caught red-handed making up so-called ‘scandals’ out of thin air to stir up false rumors of vast ‘cover-ups’ happening in the White House.

Did they find a single shred of evidence to back up their outrageous claims? No.

But rather than let the truth stand in their way, Republicans actually doctored emails between administration officials about Benghazi. Then, they released them to the press, trying to pass them off as real in order to create their scandal. Fortunately, they got caught in the act when the White House released all of the actual emails.

Tell President Obama you’ve got his back right now, no matter what Republicans come up with next.

Thanks, Debbie… ::sigh::

Country-music legend Charlie Daniels isn’t buying the White House line that President Obama simply “didn’t know” about the scandalous actions plaguing his administration.

From the gun-running “Fast & Furious” debacle of 2011 to recent revelations the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting tea-party groups, Obama has denied knowledge of his underlings’ actions, even stating he only discovered the improprieties after the evening news reported them.

But in an exclusive interview with WND, the ever-outspoken Daniels blasted the president’s “excuses.”

“If I had a drunk bus driver, for instance, and I told everybody, ‘Don’t tell me about that, I don’t want to know about it,’ and that way if we get sued I can say, ‘I didn’t know it,’ basically that’s got to be what’s happened,” Daniels said. “[But] when you hide behind plausible deniability, that is not leadership. That is cowardice. You’re not leading the country, you’re misleading the country.”

Daniels further charged the blame-shifting is “pervasive” throughout the Obama administration.

“Look at the so-called attorney general, who should have been held to task a long time ago, for one thing, not prosecuting the Black Panthers standing in front of the polling place,” Daniels said. “Then we have Fast & Furious, then we have this thing in Benghazi, then we have the IRS thing – it’s one thing after another. This administration is out of control!

“People have, with reason – regardless of whether they support the presidential administration or not – lost any kind of trust,” Daniels said. “If someone says something, you don’t know if it’s true, if they mean it, if they don’t mean it. As far as what’s going on right now, we don’t have a leader.”

And don’t even think about defending Obama by pointing back to George W. Bush.

“Going back and saying what Bush or Reagan – or for that matter George Washington – did is a total and complete waste of time,” Daniels told WND. “It makes no difference what they did. This guy was supposed to be in to fix the mistakes any president in front of him made, and he’s not doing it. Making excuses for him is not going to help him. He needs to be held to account, he needs to come clean. He needs to get that IRS woman to go back in front of Congress and tell the truth.”

The IRS scandal in particular, appears to have piqued Daniels’ ire.

“Somebody deserves some jail time out of this thing with the IRS,” Daniels told WND. “It’s like the Gestapo. It’s like having your own, private, secret police force to sick on people. It’s dirty.

“I am not comparing Obama to Hitler; I’m comparing politics to politics,” the singer explained. “In the 1920s and ’30s Germany erred in that direction, giving a little bit here, a little bit there, giving the government more and more until they had it all, then all of a sudden the government turns around and says you can’t have guns and you can’t do this, you can’t do that. … This is a dangerous, terrible situation we have going on in this country right now.”

Watch Charlie Daniels’ message to America about the loss of U.S. sovereignty and the rise of a New World Order in the riveting new video “Behold a Pale Horse” on DVD!

Since the 1950s Daniels has been a country singer and famed fiddler, perhaps best known for his hit song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2008.

But he also writes frequently on culture and politics, no stranger to bold statements in defense of God and country, and maintains a “soapbox” blog on his website, CharlieDaniels.com.

“I have never in my life seen the United States of America in the kind of shape it’s in right now,” Daniels told WND. “It’s time for somebody to do something to bring this country back together.”

But who’s that somebody, and what can they do?

Daniels decried that so many people in our country are unaware of the severity of the scandals rocking Washington and unwilling to be educated about their own government or the freedoms being slowly sapped from them by the very people they voted into office. Far too many, Daniels lamented, “don’t even know who the speaker of the House is” and “couldn’t find New Jersey on a map.”

“How much more are we going to let stupid get away with?” Daniels asked. “The Bible says, ‘My people perish for lack of knowledge’ – it’s what’s going on in this country. If people knew what was happening, it would scare them to death. But they don’t know. They’ve got their head in the sand; they don’t want to know. It’s just like, ‘Send me my check every month and the h— with everything else.’

“Who are they going to vote for?” he asked rhetorically. “They’re going to vote for the guy that gives them the most.

So can anyone make a difference in Washington?

“The true power in this country is the House of Representatives. That’s our people,” Daniels said. “That’s the people that the people put in every two years. We need to put people there that hold people accountable. The Senate’s a d— lost cause. In my opinion the House of Representatives needs to hold everyone’s feet to the fire. … We need to get to the bottom of this thing.

“If the IRS gets off scot free, the Benghazi thing is let go and the Justice Department getting into these reporters’ lives is let go, we’re finished,” Daniels concluded. “I mean, it’s just gone: nothing going to be done about nothing, and they can do anything they want to and we’re just at their mercy.”

“I hope that this time he’s dug in deep enough that they’re not going to let it go,” Daniels said of Obama. “If people had any idea what they’re losing in this country, they would be doing something about it.” (WND)

Obama: I’m the Best there has ever been! 🙂

 

Memorial Day

If there was ever a moment in time when the American people could collectively glean knowledge from a “teachable moment,” the Obama Administration’s handling of the al Qaeda-related attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya is surely one. From the moment the public became aware of what can only be perceived as an act of war, perpetrated at the hands of an enemy that has officially declared war on the United States and the West, the Obama Administration – Progressives one and all – have engaged in one of their favorite tactics of political opportunism: re-writing history. In this instance, they are doing it in real time; right in front of our faces.

From the moment US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice took to the airwaves to insist that the attacks that took the lives of a US Ambassador and three of his colleagues were, in fact, not a coordinated and planned terrorist assault of a US target of interest, but, rather, a “spontaneous” uprising turned violent, spurred by a third-rate video that literally no one had ever seen, the American people were being subjected to fact manipulation for political purposes. With an election coming up, a terrorist attack did not fit the Obama Campaign’s narrative that, “Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is on the run.” If the al Qaeda was on the run on September 11, 2012, it was running forward, bayonets fixed, with death in their eyes.

But re-writing history is nothing new to the Progressive Movement. During the time of Woodrow Wilson, Progressives perfected the art of propaganda to such an extent that many in the fascist  movements of Europe – Hitler, the hierarchy of the Nazi Party and even Italy’s Mussolini – took notice; impressed at the effectiveness and results achieved by Wilson’s Administration.

In Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg writes:

“Under President Wilson, progressives perfected the art of government propaganda. Wilson appointed the journalist and former muckraker George Creel to head the Committee on Public Information (CPI), the first modern ministry for propaganda in the Western world. Thus empowered, Creel methodically assembled an army of nearly 100,000 ‘Four Minute Men,’ each trained by the CPI to deliver, at a moment’s notice, four-minute propaganda speeches at town meetings or any other public venues where they might be heard. In 1917–18 alone, these operatives delivered some 7.55 million speeches in 5,200 communities.

“In addition, the CPI produced – with taxpayer dollars – millions of posters, buttons, and pamphlets bearing pro-Wilson, Progressive messages. The CPI’s nearly 100 pamphlets were distributed to approximately 75 million people. ‘It was a fight for the minds of men, for the “conquest of their convictions,” and the battle line ran through every home in every country,’ Creel later recalled…

“The public-relations pioneer Edward Bernays learned the science of what he termed ‘the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses’ during his time on Creel’s committee.”

To that end, it could be argued that Barack Obama’s entire life story is a product of decades of propaganda perfection. From Dreams From My Father to The Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama’s entire life’s story has been very carefully crafted to present a myth rather than a man; a story rather than a life; an illusion instead of a person; an idea rather than reality. But I digress…

With UN Ambassador Rice’s advancement of the narrative that it was a protest over an inconsequential and poorly made film that served at the genesis for the murders of Ambassador Stevens and his colleagues, the spin of a propaganda machine meant to protect the Obama presidency began. CIA talking points used in a briefing to Obama Administration officials by the Director of National Intelligence were revised no less than two times in less than 24-hours – from 231 words that included references to jihadists and al Qaeda to 91 words that completely expunged all reference to radical Islamist participation, planning or premeditation.

And then the propaganda machine began to hum. From Ambassador Rice to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to high-ranking officials at the Pentagon and CIA, to President Obama himself, the story – the talking points – were so succinctly crafted and choreographed that they could have been loaded into a teleprompter. Well-rehearsed and with authoritative style, each of these political operatives delivered the approved talking points text with conviction, insisting that they, too, were disgusted by the Islamophobic nature of the incendiary video. Mrs. Clinton even went so far as to look the father of slain former-Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods in the eye and say, “We will make sure the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Of course, the light of the truth is shining on the facts of this story thanks to many in the new media, talk radio and FOX News, three information outlets routinely lambasted as “bias” and “right-wing” by the Progressive Movement’s many “useful idiots,” both in the mainstream media and the special interest community. And those facts, as they present, depict a much different reality – a much more truthful accounting – of the circumstances surrounding the slaughter in Benghazi. Ambassador Stevens and his colleagues were abandoned; left to fend for themselves and die in a foreign land so that an election could be won.

An equally disturbing truth, albeit not as lethal, is the fact that many serving in the highest elected offices in the United States; the highest offices in the Executive Branch as well as the Legislative Branch, left these people to die because of their political aspirations; so emboldened by their total commitment to a socio-political ideology, so cripplingly devoted to attaining the power that only winning elections can afford, that they blatantly and freely deceive the American people, even about lethal attacks on our diplomats; deadly attacks against our country.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the very real fact that many, if not all, of the people who voted for Mr. Obama in 2012 were led to incorporate the “Obama Campaign Islamophobic film narrative” into their decisions at the ballot box.

The facts being what they are, it cannot be denied that the decision to deceive the American people, the decision to flagrantly lie to the American people – and, in fact, the decision to abandon four Americans as they fought for their very lives – was a decision based on a political motive. The CIA talking points on the slaughter in Benghazi were purposely and grotesquely altered in an effort to deceive the voting public into believing the deadly events of September 11, 2012, were inconsequential to the 2012 Presidential Election; that everything that could have been done to save the lives of four Americans in the service of their country was done; that the hellfire that rained down on Ambassador Christopher Stevens, US Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and former-Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods was the result of “common over-reactionary” violence associated with the hurt feelings of Islamofascists to which the Obama Administration had no recourse.

The decision to lie to the American people about the act of war that happened in Benghazi, Libya, on September 12, 2012, was made to mask the weak and conciliatory foreign policy of a president whose only real-life prerequisite experience for the highest office in the land was that of Chicago community organizer – not a constitutional scholar, not an exceptional legal mind, not a well-seasoned elected public servant, but a failed Chicago Progressive community organizer.

In the book, Fabian Freeway, Rose L. Martin explains the agenda mindset of the founders of the Fabian Socialist Movement, the very movement that would give birth to today’s Progressive Movement. Incidentally, among the founding members of this arrogant and totalitarian movement: George Bernard Shaw:

“From the outset, the nine young men and women who remained to found the Fabian Society had grandiose plans. Quite simply, they wanted to change the world through a species of propaganda termed ‘education,’ which would lead to political action. To a rather astonishing degree they have been successful…”

“Changing the world through a species of propaganda termed ‘education’.” Given the fact that the same people who lied to the American people about the slaughter in Benghazi are the very people in control of our public education system, I would have to say I have never read more chilling words.

When the people we elect to public office are caught lying there should be consequences; a price paid for the cost of the deception. Keeping in mind that the four Americans who died in the slaughter of Benghazi – whose last moments on this earth must have been hopelessly tormenting – have already paid the ultimate price in the service of their country, it is fair to say that, so far, the only price Mr. Obama has been made to pay for his deadly political opportunism is to be re-elected to the Presidency on the wings of a lie.

I’m sure he’ll lose sleep over it. (CDN)

Welcome to The Party

Obama To Media: Support the Stop Me Before I Kill Again Act

Derek Hunter: In the original Die Hard movie, John McClane is desperately trying to get the police to notice terrorists have taken over Nakatomi Tower. He’s already pulled the fire alarm and called 911, but no one had taken him seriously. Finally, an officer is dispatched to check it out and, after a half-hearted look, he decides there’s nothing happening and starts to leave. It’s then McClane throws a terrorist’s body out a window and onto the hood of the patrol car and says the famous line, “Welcome to the party, pal!”

That character, Sgt. Al Powell, would recognize how the progressive mainstream media feels this week with the revelation the federal government, headed by their guy, attempted to criminalize what they do for a living by claiming Fox News reporter James Rosen was a “co-conspirator” to espionage for essentially doing his job, their jobs.

Hundreds of dead from the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious program didn’t interest the Democrat Media Complex. Neither did the cronyism of “green” loans to campaign donors or the illegal “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Neither did the president’s decision to refuse to enforce the immigration laws in any way other than cheering his implementation of the “DREAM Act” without it having been passed by Congress, or his choice to not defend the Defense of Marriage Act which, agree with it or not, is the law of the land.

There are many more scandals and abuses of power that would be 48-point headlines if the man in the White House had an R after his name instead of a D, and that’s before we even get to the disaster of Benghazi and the IRS targeting political opposition to the president. But now that the Obama administration has targeted their progressive media allies themselves, journalists suddenly have perked up a bit.

Welcome to the party, pal.

The subpoenaing of phone records of the Associated Press perked up their ears, but going after James Rosen’s records, including his personal email and parents’ phone records, finally seemed a bridge too far. To seize Rosen’s records, the government had to accuse him essentially of espionage against the country, which effectively criminalizes the act of investigative journalism. The Justice Department hasn’t pursued Rosen because the accusation was made only to gain access to his records, not build a criminal case against him. But the concept has put the fear of God into the hearts of journalists everywhere.

Most Washington reporters thought themselves immune to the pointy end of the stick because they were cheerleaders who were grateful for the carrot. But power knows no loyalty. They’d be less surprised by this purge if they’d learned from the history of left-wing purges of loyal lapdogs, but no victim ever thinks that which they cheer would turn on them.

For the liberal/progressive media, the timing of this story affords them special treatment. The harmonic convergence of Scandalpalooza means the president needs them on his side right now to cover (if not kiss) his flank, so he’s done a public mea culpa and is now calling for legislation to help them.

In his long, rambling speech that made a sneeze seem organized at the National Defense University on Thursday, President Obama said, “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law. That is why I have called on Congress to pass a media shield law to guard against government overreach.”

He said that line without the slightest acknowledgement it was his administration putting journalists at risk. The First Amendment used to be enough. “Congress shall make no law …” is not at all vague. But then, neither was “when the Senate is in session …” until recently.

President Obama was caught with his hand in someone else’s cookie jar and wants to blame the baker for not making them less delicious. He’s putting the onus on Congress to act to pass a law saying his administration can’t do what it already can’t do – but does. Stop me before I kill again.

Some hard-cases in the progressive media will forgive his sins and shift focus to Congress, but some will not. Once bitten, twice shy would apply had the mainstream media not seen its credibility decimated by the million little chomps it already has suffered.

Those chomps would have been forgiven had the news of this assault on the only constitutional amendment journalists care about – and the one part of it they like – not happened now. But it did.

Progressives will not put anything ahead of their agenda, except themselves. The ruling class in leftist regimes throughout history silently tolerated the oppression of others because they were “safe.” Once it became clear they had a target on their backs too, their tone changed. It takes only one small crack to bring down a dam. Will journalists continue to treat the president as a conquering hero or will they actually report honestly before he metaphorically “kills” a piece of the Constitution again?

Only problem, that John McClain had to catch everyone anyhow because law enforcement was too incompetent to do for themselves.

Come to think of it…

 

Secure

In arguably the weakest national security speech by a commander in chief, Obama denied Thursday that our terrorist enemy is inspired by Islam — while at the same time appeasing Islamic critics by apologizing for drone strikes and agreeing to throttle back on such precision bombings, and close down the terrorist prison at Guantanamo.

Talking Points!!

He vowed to wind down further military actions in the war on terror, arguing he can protect America through law enforcement actions, instead, as if the threat comes from bank robbers or other common criminals.

His mea culpas and capitulations will only embolden the Islamist enemy. In case you missed the interminably long and rambling speech, here are some of its many pusillanimous lowlights:

• “Force alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the wellspring of extremism, a perpetual war — through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments — will prove self-defeating.”

• “So the next element of our strategy involves addressing the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism.”

• “In Iraq and Afghanistan … thousands of civilians have been killed.”

• “Much of the criticism about drone strikes understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties … It is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties. And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss … those deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

• “By the end of 2014, we will no longer have the same need for force protection (in the Afghanistan theater), and the progress we’ve made against core al-Qaida will reduce the need for unmanned strikes.”

• “America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists; our preference is always to detain, interrogate and prosecute.”

• “America does not take (drone) strikes to punish individuals” for past terrorist acts; “we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.”

• “Targeted action against terrorists, effective partnerships, diplomatic engagement and assistance — through such a comprehensive strategy we can significantly reduce the chances of large-scale attacks on the homeland.”

“It is false to assert that putting boots on the ground is less likely to result in civilian deaths or less likely to create enemies in the Muslim world.”• “By narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”• “For what we spent in a month in Iraq at the height of the war, we could be … feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists. That has to be part of our strategy.”

• “And the best way to prevent violent extremism inspired by violent jihadists is to work with the Muslim American community — which has consistently rejected terrorism.”

• “Even after Boston — we do not deport someone or throw somebody in prison in the absence of evidence.”

• “Gitmo has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law.”

“This war must end.”

Not 48 hours before he uttered those final words, an al-Qaida-inspired jihadist who decapitated a war veteran in the streets of London vowed to keep up the attacks on the West.

“We swear by almighty Allah that we will never stop fighting you,” said the 29-year-old alleged murdering British Muslim, blood dripping from his butcher’s knife. “You will never be safe.”

If this president has his way, he may be right. (IBD)

Unless Big Brother and The Ministry of Truth tell you otherwise and you my must believe them, OR ELSE!

 

OBAMACARE

When Rahm Emanuel helped foist on America the unready, unsteady and unsustainable healthcare religion known as Obamacare, one wonders in retrospect whether he had in mind another unready, unsteady and unsustainable government religion: union health benefits for government workers.

Last week Obama’s former chief of staff- and Chicago’s newest mayor-for-life- Emanuel, decided that the city was through with paying for healthcare benefits on behalf of about 30,000 retired government workers.

“Once the phaseout is complete,” reported the Chicago Tribune, “those retired workers would have to pay for their own health insurance or get subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. The city-subsidized coverage is particularly important to retired workers who aren’t yet eligible for Medicare, as opposed to those 65 or older who use the subsidies for Medicare supplemental insurance.”

The 30,000 retired workers will either pay for their health insurance individually, says the city, or they can move their healthcare over to Obamacar and receive a federal government subsidy along the way, in addition to paying an out of pocket premium. The proposal will save Chicago $109 million next year.

The bill to the federal government for the move to Obamacare will be $110 million. The bill for the retired workers will be about $167 million- a kind of hidden tax within a the premium.

And if you know anything about how economics works under the Rahm and Obama show, you’ll know that the fact that the combined cost of $277 million to taxpayers and citizens to save Chicago a $109 million next year is a benefit under the system.

Because, as the Wall Journal reported earlier this year, more cities might be looking to do the same and shift costs from big cities to the federal government.

And that’s when the real hopey and changey stuff begins.

That means that there will be more state and city money in budgets available for the dues-paying, non-retired members of the government employee unions.

“All told, state and local governments are on the hook for between $700 billion and $1.5 trillion for retiree health benefits,” writes the Journal, “and like Chicago most will soon be unable to afford even their minimum annual payments. Offloading the costs on Uncle Sam will look attractive since retiree health benefits don’t enjoy the legal protections that some states have bestowed upon pensions. Stockton, California intends to shed its $400 million unfunded liability for retiree benefits in bankruptcy.”

This was the same scheme that was widely criticized regarding Romneycare. The state of Massachusetts, under Romney’s example of healthcare reform was able to offload a substantial amount of healthcare costs to the federal government and to beneficiaries in the form of a hidden tax known as insurance premium increases.

About 20 percent of the cost for Romneycare is born by Massachusetts, 20 percent by the federal government and the rest by the private sector in increased premiums.

“Of course, the full cost of Romneycare includes not only increased state spending but increased federal spending (in the form of matching Medicaid funds) and mandated private spending by individuals and employers,” says the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner. “In total, [the Massachusetts Taxpayers] foundation conservatively estimates that the full cost will exceed $2.1 billion this year. That is, Romneycare is covering the uninsured at a cost of about $6,700 each. For comparison, in 2007 the average cost nationally of an individual policy was just $2,600. That’s a bad deal, even by government standards.”

It depends on which government you ask.

For state and local governments that are trying to live on tighter budgets, it’s great deal.

“Who cares how much reform costs as long as I don’t have to pay for it,” it seems, Chicago’s Emanuel is saying.

Labor unions however are bridling over the consequences.

“It makes an untruth out of what the president said, that if you like your insurance, you could keep it,” Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said according to CBS News. “That is not going to be true for millions of workers now.”

It’s not going to be true of millions of union retirees either.

And it’s just another “untruth” that Emanuel and Obama knew about regarding their healthcare religion when they discovered it engraved on 2,900 stone tablets on a mountain outside of Chicago.

Or, maybe they didn’t know. Take your pick.

Because, whichever one they admit to, I’m certainly sure they mean the opposite. (John Ransom)

But the goal of controlling people from birth to death and having the government decide both will still be intact so the Agenda is satisfied.

Chilly Forecast

NBC News is reporting that Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed off on a controversial search warrant that targeted Fox News correspondent James Rosen:

Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday…The law enforcement official said Holder’s approval of the Rosen search, in the spring of 2010, came after senior Justice officials concluded there was “probable cause” that Rosen’s communications with his source, identified as intelligence analyst Stephen Kim, met the legal burden for such searches. “It was approved at the highest levels– and I mean the highest,” said the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said that explicitly included Holder.  

As you’ll recall, the Obama/Holder DOJ treated Rosen as a criminal co-conspirator in order to secretly gain access to Rosen’s personal email as well as phone records on up to 30 separate lines — including Rosen’s personal cell number and the home phone of his parents.

Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law. That is why I have called on Congress to pass a media shield law to guard against government over-reach. I have raised these issues with the Attorney General, who shares my concern. So he has agreed to review existing Department of Justice guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters, and will convene a group of media organizations to hear their concerns as part of that review. And I have directed the Attorney General to report back to me by July 12th.

Attention, America: Eric Holder — the man who authorized a truly shocking and intrusive warrant designed to pry into the news-gathering methods of a journalist — “shares the president’s concerns” about freedom of the press.  Good to know.  And aren’t you comforted that Holder has been tasked with reviewing…his own actions and “reporting back” to his boss by mid-summer?  Slate’s Dave Weigel wins the day with this headline: “Eric Holder Will Lead Investigation Into Journalist Warrant That he Approved.”  What a farce. (townhall)

But then again, it’s designed to be one. You have Holder chasing his own tail and reporting back to Obama denying everything.

This airplane of truth is on permanent stall.

If you can’t dazzle them with arrogance/brilliance then baffle them with bureaucracy and BS.

And then make them afraid to speak ill of you. Now that’s Freedom. 🙂

‘Horrible customer service.” That’s what the newly fired IRS commissioner averred was the agency’s only sin in singling out conservative political groups for discriminatory treatment.

In such grim proceedings one should be grateful for unintended humor. Horrible customer service is when every patron in a restaurant finds a fly in his soup. But when the maitre d’ screens patrons for their politics and only conservatives find flies paddle-wheeling in their consomme, the problem isn’t poor service. It is harassment and invidious discrimination.

And yet both the acting and the previous IRS commissioners insisted that the singling out of groups according to politics was in no way politically motivated. More hilarity. It’s definitional: If you discriminate according to politics, your discrimination is political. It’s a tautology, for God’s sake.

The IRS responds that this classification was for efficiency, to cut down on overwork. Ridiculous. How does demanding answers to endless intrusive and irrelevant questions, creating mountains of unnecessary paperwork for both applicant and IRS, reduce workload?

We’re further asked to believe that a cadre of Cincinnati GS-11s is a hotbed of radical-left activism in America. Is anyone stupid enough to believe that?

WKRP IN CINCINNATI!  And your host Dr. “Johnny” Partisan Fever! With news by Less “is More” Info Nessman. Lois Lerner as Mr(s). Carlson.

That’s why the IRS scandal has legs. And because pulling the myriad loose ends of this improbable tale will be the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Democrat Max Baucus. So much for any reflexive administration charge of a partisan witch hunt.

On Wednesday, however, the issue was in the hands of the House Oversight Committee. It allowed Lois Lerner, the IRS official who had already apologized for targeting Tea Party groups, to read an opening statement claiming total innocence: “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”

She then refused, on grounds of self-incrimination, to answer any questions.

Perhaps not wanting to appear overbearing, Chairman Darrell Issa gave her a pass, pending legal advice on whether she had forfeited her Fifth Amendment shield by making a statement. Then again, Lerner’s performance may not have endeared her to the average viewer. Her arrogance reminded anyone who needed reminding why the IRS is so unloved.

Try saying what she said — I deny, I deny, I deny, and I refuse to answer any of your questions — when you’re next called in for an IRS audit.

Does the IRS scandal go all the way up to the top? As of now, doubtful.It’s nearly inconceivable that anyone would be stupid enough to have given such a politically fatal directive from the White House (although admittedly the bar is rapidly falling).But when some bureaucrat is looking for cues from above, it matters when the president of the United States denounces the Supreme Court decision that allowed the proliferation of 501(c)4s and specifically calls the resulting “special interest groups” running ads to help Republicans “not just a threat to Democrats — that’s a threat to our democracy.”That’s especially telling when it comes amid letters from Democratic senators to the IRS urging aggressive scrutiny of 501(c)4 applications.

A White House can powerfully shape other perceptions as well.

For years the administration has conducted a concerted campaign to demonize Fox News, delegitimizing it as a news organization, even urging its ostracism. Then (surprise!) its own Justice Department takes the unprecedented step of naming a Fox reporter a co-conspirator in a leak case — when no reporter has ever been prosecuted for merely soliciting information — in order to invade his and Fox’s private and journalistic communications.

No one goes to jail for creating such climates of intolerance. Nor is it a crime to incessantly claim that those who offer this president opposition and push back — Republicans, Tea Party members, Fox News, whoever dares resist the sycophantic thrill-up-my-leg media adulation — do so only for “politics,” power and pure partisanship, while the Dear Leader devotes himself exclusively to the nation, the middle class, the good and just.

It’s not unlawful to run an ad hominem presidency. It’s merely shameful. The great rhetorical specialty of this president has been his unrelenting attribution of bad faith to those who disagree with him.

He acts on principle; they from the basest of instincts.

Well then, why not harass them? Why not ask the content of their prayers? Why not read their email? Why not give them especially horrible customer service?

Waiter! There’s a fly … (Charles Krauthammer)

New evidence makes it clear that the Internal Revenue Service campaign against conservatives wasn’t the result of two “rogue” agents, but was directed from higher up. The question is, how high up?

The claim that a couple of workers in the bowels of an IRS office in Cincinnati managed to block tax-exempt applications from conservative groups for more than two years, while subjecting them to outrageous, intrusive and improper requests for information, started falling apart days ago.

Last weekend, the Washington Post quoted a staffer saying that “everything comes from the top” at the IRS.

As Colleen Kelley, president of the union that represents IRS agents, told the Associated Press, “No processes or procedures or anything like that would ever be done just by frontline employees without any management involvement.”

And the New York Times reported that IRS accountants got a “directive from their manager” in early 2010 to “be on the lookout” for Tea Party-type groups.

This week, NBC News quoted a former manager of that Cincinnati office who explained how various internal checks and balances would have prevented workers from carrying out such a scheme on their own.

And Cincinnati’s Fox 19 News, which has done more solid reporting on this story than most of the major news outlets, looks to have put the final nail in the “rogue agent” story.

The local news station found that there were six agents — not two as former IRS head Steven Miller insisted just last week — who worked on these tax-exempt applications. These agents, Fox 19 learned, all had different direct managers, who in turn had different territory managers.

That means any directive applying to all these workers would had to have come from at least three levels up the management chain.

That manager turns out to be Cindy Thomas — who the IRS says oversees “exempt organization determinations” nationwide. She also happens to be the same person who ProPublica said signed off on releasing nine confidential tax-exempt applications from conservative groups to that liberal-leaning news website.

So if Thomas ordered the targeting, why? And if someone told her to get it done, who was that?

Fox 19 also learned all these managers would have known that Tea Party applications were being blocked long ago. IRS agents must handle tax-exempt applications within 270 days, after which the system automatically sends out an alert, making the agent provide a status update each month until the case is resolved.

Since the IRS started blocking Tea Party-type applications in April 2010 and didn’t approve a single one for more than two years, “thousands of red flags would have been generated.” Given the 270-day schedule, the first alerts would have hit back in December 2010.

Given all this, it’s not surprising that one top IRS official is now pleading the Fifth, and that the IRS is stonewalling congressional requests for communications relating to the targeting, including crucial emails.

Every new tidbit of information only makes the scandal look worse. (IBD)

Lerner was placed on paid administrative leave after she refused to resign.

It Matters

BENGHAZI

Former Democratic National committee chairman Howard Dean considers the controversy over Benghazi a “joke” and “silly.”

“Benghazi is a laughable joke,” Dean proclaimed twice last week in a discussion with Republican National Committee communications chairman Sean Spicer.

“With all due respect, governor, when four Americans die serving this country, that’s not a joke, sir,” Spicer responded.

“This is about issues that are important to the American people,” said RNC communications director Sean Spicer.

“Benghazi isn’t about scoring political points, it’s about making sure we do right by our foreign policy.  The IRS is about making sure that we don’t target American citizens,” he began before Dean interrupted him.

“Oh stop it,” Dean said in response.  “The blaming the president for that is a ridiculous joke, the American people — you’ve been beating on this for a year.  I don’t understand why you don’t give up on it…!”

Valerie Plaime anyone? WMDs? Watergate Anyone?

“There are no serious questions being asked about Benghazi, none…It’s totally made up nonsense.  It’s totally clear what happened in Benghazi.  It’s ridiculous,” he added.

“I want to wish Hillary a Happy Mother’s Day. She has her child. I don’t have mine because of her.” Pat Smith, mother of a Benghazi victim Officer Sean Smith.

IRS

There are moments in politics when an argument is advanced that is so surpassingly stupid or dishonest that it momentarily freezes your brain.  Welcome to former DNC Communications Director Karen Finney’s IRS twilight zone:

According to Finney, the fact that Mitt Romney didn’t make a huge deal out of the IRS targeting scandal last year is somehow proof that the whole thing is essentially a non-story and wasn’t buried until after the election.

It’s not difficult to imagine how Finney and her cohorts at MSNBC would have reacted if the GOP had adopted such an approach last fall.  Her entire “point” here is imbecilic and purposefully disingenuous.  It’s one thing to try to re-write distant history.  It’s another to do the same with still-unfolding history.  I’m not sure who she thinks she’s fooling, aside from those MSNBC viewers who are eager to be fooled, but kudos for at least slipping in the “overreach” talking point.  Bravo.(Townhall)

So it’s Romney’s Fault!

Seriously?

With that backdrop on trying to fool and bamboozle people…

Thomas Sowell: This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher learning.

The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of battle. General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties — something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas within the family.

Instead of fighting the Japanese for every island stronghold as the Americans advanced toward Japan, MacArthur sent his troops into battle for only those islands that were strategically crucial. In the same spirit, parents who want to bring their brainwashed offspring back to reality need not try to combat every crazy idea they picked up from their politically correct professors. Just demolishing a few crucial beliefs, and exposing what nonsense they are, can deal a blow to the general credibility of the professorial pied pipers.

For example, if the student has been led to join the crusade for more gun control, and thinks that the reason the British have lower murder rates than Americans have is because the Brits have tighter gun control laws, just give him or her a copy of the book “Guns and Violence” by Joyce Lee Malcolm.

As the facts in that book demolish the gun control propaganda fed to students by their professors, that can create a healthy skepticism about other professorial propaganda.

There are other books that can likewise demolish other politically correct beliefs that prevail on campuses. My own recent book, “Intellectuals and Race,” has innumerable documented facts that expose the fallacies in most of what is said about racial issues in most college classrooms.

For those students who have bought the campus party line on Third World nations, the classic study of that subject is “Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion” by the late P.T. Bauer of the London School of Economics. He made a veritable demolition derby of most of what has been said in politically correct circles about the relationship between rich and poor countries.

For those students who have been conditioned to regard the welfare state as the solution to social problems, there is no book that exposes the actual human consequences of the welfare state more poignantly than “Life at the Bottom” by British physician Theodore Dalrymple. He has worked in both low-income neighborhoods and in prisons, so he has seen it all.
Although Britain is the setting for “Life at the Bottom,” Americans will recognize very similar patterns here. Problems found in low-income black ghettoes in the United States are found in low-income white neighborhoods in Britain, where none of the usual excuses about racism, slavery, etc., apply. The only thing that is the same in both countries is the welfare state and its poisonous ideology.

If your student has been led to believe that “comprehensive immigration reform” — amnesty, in plain English — is the only way to go, a devastating book titled “Mexifornia,” by Victor Davis Hanson, introduces some cold, factual reality into a subject usually discussed in sweeping and lofty rhetoric.

A book that offers a choice between the island-hopping strategy that General MacArthur used in the Pacific and the all-out assault across a broad front that was used by the Allied armies in Europe is titled “The New Leviathan.”

It has thirteen penetrating articles by leading authorities on such subjects as national security, ObamaCare, environmentalism, election frauds and more.

Those parents who want to follow the MacArthur strategy can recommend reading one, or a few, of these articles, while those who want to follow the strategy of attacking all across a broad front can recommend that their student read the whole book.

However the battle is fought, what is most important is that the battle be fought, since the young are the future, and the propaganda of today can become the government policies of tomorrow.

Like Marijuana is no big deal. 🙂

Benghazi is “ridiculous”.

And ObamaCare is “good”.

Targeting your political enemies and the press don’t matter.

It’s Bush’s Fault

It’s Romney’s Fault (and he wasn’t even elected and it’s his fault!)

Yeah, right…

The Path

First Up: The IRS

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday afternoon that Lois Lerner, who heads up the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt division, plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a hearing Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs.

Transparent? wouldn’t you say… 🙂

Speaking of transparent…

Liberals are not fond of “cuts”. (Decreases in increases).:)

Well, here’s another sequester they won’t be happy about.

Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained “standstill” in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.

But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.

The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast.

But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term.

An international team of researchers looked at how the last decade would impact long-term, equilibrium climate sensitivity and the shorter term climate response.

Climate sensitivity looks to see what would happen if we doubled concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and let the Earth’s oceans and ice sheets respond to it over several thousand years.

Transient climate response is much shorter term calculation again based on a doubling of CO2.

“The most extreme projections are looking less likely than before.”

The authors calculate that over the coming decades global average temperatures will warm about 20% more slowly than expected. (BBC)

Another sequester for the Liberals to whine about. 🙂

U.S. officials say they have identified five men they believe might be behind the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year. The officials say they have enough evidence to justify seizing them by military force as suspected terrorists _ but not enough proof to try them in a U.S. civilian court as the Obama administration prefers.

So the officials say the men remain at large while the FBI gathers more evidence. The decision not to seize the men militarily underscores the White House’s aim to move away from hunting terrorists as enemy combatants and toward trying them as criminals in a civilian justice system. (Breitbart)

Bringing them to Justice, on the slow path… 🙂

“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots,” said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. “It’s actually closer to us being idiots.” (CBS)

That makes me feel SO MUCH Better… 🙂

Michelle Malkin: Top Obama donor and billionaire Faulkner is founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which will soon store almost half of all Americans’ health information.

If the crony odor and the potential for abuse that this “epic” arrangement poses don’t chill your bones, you ain’t paying attention.

As I first noted last year before the IRS witch hunts and DOJ journalist snooping scandals broke out, Obama’s federal electronic medical records (EMR) mandate is government malpractice at work. The stimulus law provided a whopping $19 billion in “incentives” (read: subsidies) to force hospitals and medical professionals into converting from paper to electronic record-keeping systems. Penalties kick in next year for any provider who fails to comply with the one-size-fits-all edict.

Obamacare bureaucrats claimed the government’s EMR mandate would save money and modernize health care. As of December 2012, $4 billion had already gone out to 82,535 professionals and 1,474 hospitals; a total of $6 billion will be doled out by 2016. What have taxpayers and health care consumers received in return from this boondoggle? After hyping the alleged benefits for nearly a decade, the RAND Corporation finally admitted in January that its cost-savings predictions of $81 billion a year — used repeatedly to support the Obama EMR mandate — were, um, grossly overstated.

Among many factors, the researchers blamed “lack of interoperability” of records systems for the failure to bring down costs. And that is a funny thing, because it brings us right back to Faulkner and her well-connected company. You see, Epic Systems — the dominant EMR giant in America — is notorious for its lack of interoperability. Faulkner’s closed-end system represents antiquated, hard drive-dependent software firms that refuse to share data with doctors and hospitals using alternative platforms. Health IT analyst John Moore of Chilmark Research, echoing many industry observers, wrote in April that Epic “will ultimately hinder health care organizations’ ability to rapidly innovate.”

Question: If these subsidized data-sharing systems aren’t built to share data to improve health outcomes, why exactly are we subsidizing them? And what exactly are companies like Faulkner’s doing with this enhanced power to consolidate and control Americans’ private health information? It’s a recipe for exactly the kind of abuse that’s at the heart of the IRS and DOJ scandals.

Big Brother just wants to know. You have nothing hide, now do you, Citizen…:)

 

Borders

Knee Jerk Thoughtless Liberal Whoops of the Day:

Lizz Winstead heard about the tornado touching down in Oklahoma today and her liberal ideology quickly kicked in.

Winstead, who created The Daily Show and uses social media to promote her far-left views, sent out this Twitter joke earlier today:

This tornado is in Oklahoma so clearly it has been ordered to only target conservatives.

Social media brushback quickly followed, and Winstead served up a speedy apology for letting her progressive nature supercede a sense of decency toward the victims of the tornado.

Made a political joke, Twas before devastation revealed. In hindsight, had I understood, I would have refrained. Beyond sorry.

No she’s not. Not really.

Why?  Simple. See Commentor on Article: Wonder if Conservatives will block federal relief to this disaster just like they blocked relief for Sandy victims. Remember how Conservatives thought that Sandy relief was another example of government waste.

Petty and Childish. All the hallmarks of a Liberal. Meant to foment hatred and divisive partisanship.

Instead of being honest and saying that Republican congressmen voted against one version of a bill because they have issues with parts of it and they prefer their own version, the liberal media just tell the public that Republicans voted against bills which help people.

Same thing with the Sandy bill, where Republicans had issues with a bunch of allocations which had nothing to do with Sandy victims, and liberal outlets just said that Republicans did not want to help the victims.

It was a set-up. A Pork-Laden set-up. Never let a pork crisis go to waste!

Because that suited The Agenda.

And there will be no repercussions. After all, a Liberal said it. 🙂

Speaking of Agendas…

The union representing 12,000 adjudications officers and staff for the United States Citizen and Immigration Services Council (USCIS) came out in opposition to the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill on Monday morning.

The USCIS Council and its president, Kenneth Palinkas, joined the letter the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council, the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, and sheriffs from around the country have signed declaring the 867 page immigration bill makes problems worse for immigration law enforcement rather than better.

In that letter, law enforcement officials noted that there has been a rush on the border by illegal immigrants seeking to get inside the United States before the passage of the amnesty bill from the Gang of Eight. They also wrote that the bill “provides no guarantee of increased border security.”

USCIS officers would be crucial to the implementation of immigration reform if the current bill was passed; USCIS handles the applications of immigrants who want to enter the United States and would be charged with processing the applications for amnesty for the at least 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States.

In a statement announcing his group’s decision to join the ICE Council and others, Palinkas said Gang of Eight members did not consult his officers when crafting the bill. As a result, Palinkas argues, the bill “fails to address some of the most serious concerns the USCIS Council has about the current system which Congress must address.”

Specifically, Palinkas said under President Barack Obama’s administration, USCIS officers are currently “pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation.”

“The culture at USCIS encourages all applications to be approved, discouraging proper investigation into red flags and discouraging the denial of any applications,” Palinkas said. “USCIS has been turned into an ‘approval machine.’” Palinkas argues the Gang of Eight bill does nothing to fix this problem.

Additionally, Palinkas argues that the bill does not fix current administration policy that treats immigrants applying for entry into the United States as “customers” of the American government.

“A new USCIS computer system to screen applications known as ‘Transformation’ has proven to be a disaster as the agency has spent upwards of $2 billion for a system that would eventually allow an alien–now referred to as a ‘customer’ under current USCIS policy–to upload their own information via the internet for adjudication purposes,” Palinkas said. “To date, only one form can be accepted into the program that has been in the making for close to 10 years.”

Palinkas also notes that the Gang of Eight bill does nothing to fix the failures under the current administration for different agencies to coordinate, or de-conflict, on cases involving specific illegal immigrants. “USCIS has created an almost insurmountable bureaucracy which often prevents USCIS adjudications officers from contacting and coordinating with ICE agents and officers in cases that should have their involvement,” Palinkas wrote. “USCIS officers are pressured to approve visa applications for many individuals ICE agents have determined should be placed into deportation proceedings.”

Yet another issue the bill does not address, Palinkas notes, is a “secretive panel” that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano created that often denies immigration law officers’ requests to enforce the law. “USCIS officers who identify illegal aliens that, in accordance with law should be placed into immigration removal proceedings before a federal judge, are prevented from exercising their authority and responsibility to issue Notices To Appear (NTAs),” Palinkas claims. 

“In the rare case that an officer attempts to issue an NTA, it must first be approved by a secretive panel created under DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, which often denies the officer’s request,” Palinkas explains. “Illegal aliens are then permitted to remain in the United States as USCIS officers are not able to take action or contact ICE agents for assistance.”

Perhaps most importantly, Palinkas argues that the current political leadership at his agency holds the belief that USCIS’s role is not to serve America or Americans; rather, he claims they believe that USCIS is supposed to serve the illegal immigrants and the immigration lawyers who come through the doors of the agency on a regular basis. 

“The attitude of USCIS management is not that the Agency serves the American public or the laws of the United States, or public safety and national security, but instead that the agency serves illegal aliens and the attorneys which represent them,” Palinkas said. “While we believe in treating all people with respect, we are concerned that this agency tasked with such a vital security mission is too greatly influenced by special interest groups—to the point that it no longer properly performs its mission.”

Palinkas also notes that under the current law and system, USCIS reports a 99.5 percent approval rating for illegal immigrants seeking legal residency inside the United States. He said that high percentage began with President Obama’s and Secretary Napolitano’s new “deferred action” policy unveiled last summer. In addition, over the past year, Palinkas said USCIS has waived more than $200 million in fees from illegal immigrants seeking legal status. (Breitbart)

But as we all know, it is more about “Undocumented Democrats” to the Democrats and an attempt to kiss up to the “Undocumented Democrats” for the Republicans.

Either way, we get screwed.

Convict Bureaucracy

Hilarious quote of the Weekend:

“Before everyone in this town convicts this person in the court of public opinion with no evidence, let’s actually get the facts and make decisions after that. There’s nothing that suggests she did anything wrong,” *(ROTFL)*  White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, appearing on four Sunday morning political talk shows, offered strong support for Sarah Hall Ingram, who led the agency’s tax-exempt division as it admittedly targeted conservative groups. She recently was promoted to chief of the health care reform office, tasked with implementing “Obamacare.” (WT)

Close Second:  White House Press Secretary Jay Carney appeared on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live” Thursday night to answer questions related to the three separate scandals that have turned the federal government on its head over the last two weeks.

Carney’s answers summed up: There are no scandals.

“You’re concocting scandals that don’t exist,” Carney said, when show host Piers Morgan asked how the Obama administration would “restore the faith that some Americans have lost” in its transparency.

“Especially with regard to the Benghazi affair that was contrived by Republicans and, I think, has fallen apart largely this week,” Carney said.

He continued, . And we are committed to that. The president is committed to that.” (Blaze)

This from the Valerie Plaime, Trent Lott, Tea Party “Violence” ad nauseum “Vote for me!- The Other Guys an asshole” convict-everyone-who-disagrees-with-me-in-the-media crowd.

2005: (from a  Progressive Liberal website)-

Today comes the revelation in The Wall Street Journal that “A key department memo discussing Joseph Wilson’s Niger trip was classified ‘Top Secret,’ and the passage about his wife’s CIA role was specially marked ‘S/NF’ — not to be shared with any foreign intelligence agencies.”

Perhaps even more damning are reports that the Top Secret-S/NF document was apparently first delivered to Air Force One when George W. Bush and Colin Powell (who had apparently requested it from analysts within the State Department) were flying to Africa in 2003.

Somehow – nobody knows at the moment – the information in this Top Secret-S/NF document (the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife) then migrated from Air Force One to George W. Bush’s assistant, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney’s assistant, Scooter Libby. Rove and Libby then immediately began “dialing for dollars” – calling reporters with this juicy bit of Top Secret-N/SF information – in an attempt to politically assassinate Joe Wilson.

Which raises the question: “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”

But they are as as silent as the grave on Obama when you pose that same question now. 🙂 Is there such a thing as Anti-Silence? 🙂

SILENCE WILL FALL!

Hilarious!

But predictable. After all, Don’t do as I do, Do as I say. You aren’t allowed to use their own tactics against THEM. They are holier-than-thou.

“I think we’re going to find that there’s a written policy that says we were targeting people who were opposed to the president. I can’t believe that one rogue agent started this. It seems to be too widespread,” said Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate.

His Republican colleague Sen. John Cornyn of Texas agreed that there must be more to the story.

What did THIS President know and when did he know it? No one in the White House, The Democrats or most of the Media wants to know. But 8 years ago they were a ravenous pack of velociraptors over this very same question.

Fascinating… 🙂

“Bureaucrats don’t take risks unless they have a signal, either explicit or implicit, from their higher-ups that what you’re doing is exactly what we expect you to do,” he said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I have a very hard time believing that this was something cooked up in Cincinnati by midlevel employees.”

Or in Phoenix ATF (Fast & Furious anyone?) 🙂

Bureaucrats are creatures of safe, secure habits.

Bureaucracy is “a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation.” (Webster Dictionary). And a Bureaucrat is a creature of Bureaucracy. They are risk takers or rule-breakers unless it’s safe to do so.

Bureaucracies are criticized for their complexity, their inefficiency, and their inflexibility.

The dehumanizing effects of excessive bureaucracy were a major theme in the work of Franz Kafka, and were central to his masterpiece The Trial. The elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy is a key concept in modern managerial theory^], and has been a central issue in numerous political campaigns. Others have defended the existence of bureaucracies. The German sociologist Max Weber argued that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized, and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies were necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency and eliminate favoritism.^[14] But even Weber saw bureaucracy as a threat to individual freedom, in which the increasing bureaucratization of human life traps individuals in the an “iron cage” of rule-based, rational control.

What better place for people who believe if you tell a lie often enough that it becomes the truth but bureaucracy.

And what better bureaucrat to head the chief weapon, ObamaCare, than a loyal partisan bureaucrat.

AN APPARATCHIK!

Which is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government, i.e. an agent of the governmental or party “apparat” (apparatus) that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management. James Billington describes one as “a man not of grand plans, but of a hundred carefully executed details.” It is often considered a derogatory term, with negative connotations in terms of the quality, competence, and attitude of a person thus described. (Wiki)

But utterly loyal to the Party and will do whatever the Party requires.

Susan Rice, anyone?

Eric Holder?

The Mainstream Media?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting President Obama’s top attorney knew about the IRS targeting weeks ago before news broke, but of course, Obama still didn’t know about it until he learned about it “from the news.”

She just didn’t tell him? 🙂

Fascinating…

Victor Davis Hanson:In then-Sen. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, he ran to the left of Hillary Rodham Clinton as a moral reformer. Mr. Obama promised to transcend the old politics and bring a new era of hope-and-change transparency to Washington. Five years later, those vows are in shambles.True, the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, has become a mess of partisan bickering, but the disturbing facts now transcend politics. The Obama administration — the president himself, Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, White House press secretary Jay Carney — all at various times blamed an obscure video maker for the “spontaneous violence” that killed Americans last September.The problem is not just that such scapegoating was untrue, but that our officials knew it was untrue when they said it — given both prior CIA talking-point briefings and phone calls from those on the ground during the attacks.

One theme ties all the bizarre aspects of the Benghazi scandal together — the doctored talking points, the inexplicable failure to beef up diplomatic security before the attacks and to send in help during the fighting, the jailing of a petty con artist on the false charge that his amateur video had led to attacks on our consulate, and the shabby treatment of nonpartisan State Department whistleblowers.

There was an overarching pre-election desire last year to downplay any notion that al Qaeda remained a serious danger after the much-ballyhooed killing of Osama bin Laden. Likewise, Libya was not supposed to be a radical Islamic mess after the successful “lead from behind” ouster of Moammar Gadhafi. Facts then had to change to fit a campaign narrative.

As the congressional hearings on Benghazi were taking place last week, we also learned that the Internal Revenue Service, administered by the Department of the Treasury, has been going after conservative groups in a politicized manner that we have not seen since Richard Nixon’s White House. There was no evidence that any of these conservative associations had taken thousands of dollars in improper tax deductions — in the manner of former Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, the onetime overseer of the IRS.

Instead, groups with suspiciously American names like “Patriot” or “Tea Party” prompted IRS partisans to scrutinize their tax information in a way that they would not have for the tax-exempt MoveOn.org or the Obama-affiliated Organizing for Action. On top of that, the Justice Department just announced that it had secretly seized the records of calls from at least 20 work and private phone lines belonging to editors and reporters at The Associated Press in efforts to stop suspected leaks.

At about the same time as the Benghazi and IRS disclosures, it was widely learned that there was a strange relationship between the Obama White House and the very center of the American media — odd in a way that might explain the unusually favorable media coverage accorded this administration.

Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications in the Obama administration, is linked to the doctoring of the Benghazi talking points. He also happens to be the brother of CBS News President David Rhodes. CBS recently pressured one of its top reporters, Sharyl Attkisson, for “wading dangerously close to advocacy,” as one report worded it, in her critical reporting of Benghazi.

Unfortunately, such relationships are not rare with this administration. The head of ABC News, Ben Sherwood, has a sister who works for the Obama White House as a special assistant, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.

There is more. The CNN deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Mrs. Clinton’s former aide at the State Department, Tom Nides, who is also a former Fannie Mae executive. Mr. Carney, Obama’s press secretary, is the husband of Claire Shipman, the senior national correspondent for ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Apparently, in the logic of the Obama White House and the Washington media, there is nothing improper about wives dispassionately reporting to the nation on what their husbands are doing, or brothers adjudicating the news coverage of their own siblings.

Last month, the congressional architect of “Obamacare,” Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, announced his plans to retire — in part because he feared his legislative child would become “a train wreck.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who shepherded the bill toward passage, has echoed that worry.

Democrats are panicking because before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is even fully implemented in the midterm election year 2014, it appears neither affordable nor protective of patients. That reality was long ago foreseeable — given that Obamacare passed on a strictly partisan vote, with a number of questionable legislative payoffs to skeptical fence-sitting Democrats, and even after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who helped ram the bill through the House, admitted that, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

What is the common denominator in all these second-term administration embarrassments? “Hope and change” is fast becoming the 1973 Nixon White House.

But this Nixon, has the Press and a  24/7 News Lying cycle to try and cover it all up.

That’s why this is not 1973, but 2013.

America, The Land of The Bureaucrat and The Home of The Spin Liars Club of Washington.

America, What a Country! 🙂

Know Nothings

Once upon a time, Democrats were concerned with infringements on civil liberties, when the president abusing power was someone they opposed and when the deaths of Americans bothered them. It was a magical time called the 2000s, but it might as well have been a century ago because that party has since gone the way of the Dodo.

OK, Democrats never truly cared about those things in principle, mind you, but they at least paid lip service to the concept in a fairly convincing way.

To Democrats, when George W. Bush was president, he was personally responsible for the actions of soldiers he’d never met in a prison he’d never visited on the other side of the planet. Every job loss was a pink slip signed by him to enrich his Halliburton masters. Now that Barack Obama is president, the people he appointed to cabinet positions not only aren’t responsible for the actions of their subordinates, they aren’t responsible for their own actions. 

Lost on the media is the irony that the very people who have been trying to dismiss the IRS scandal as the work of “misguided mid-level rogues” would be buying out bullhorn supplies to shout their outrage had the parties been reversed. (Derk Hunter)

After all, the Democrats were the only screaming at the top of their lungs that Valerie Plaime was a big f*cking deal when it wasn’t. But that was then this is now.

And in 2013 it’s still Bush’s fault! FOR EVERYTHING. It’s the Six Degrees of Bush Blame! 🙂

And now the President is blameless for everything and nothing THEY DO is a big F*cking Deal. You complaining about it is the problem. It’s not them, it’s you!

You know the people I’m talking about. The Know-Nothings.

You know the folks who pushed that one law regarding almost 20 percent of the entire economy before they even read the bill? The ones who rushed it into law just to see what was in it? The ones who managed to write a bill, while still not being familiar with what the bill actually did?  

Yeah, those guys? The Know-Nothings.

Well, they know nothing about a lot of other stuff too.

Obama’s one of those guys. So is Eric Holder. So, apparently, is the entire staff at the IRS from the executive offices upward. 

They are kind of an “Axis of See No Evil, Hear No Evil”. (speak only evil of anyone who disagrees with you)

Below is a laundry list from the Huffington Post about Attorney General Eric Holder’s gripping testimony to congress regarding his department’s latest suppression of the First Amendment while seizing phone records from a news organization.

You know, just in case you didn’t know about it, this will clear everything up for you. And just in case you miss the subtlety below, Holder, by the way, knows nothing:

·      “I was not the person involved in that decision,”

·      “I am not familiar with the reasons why the subpoena was constructed in the way that it was because I’m simply not a part of the case.”

·      “I do not know, however, with regard to this particular case, why that was or was not done.”

·      “I simply do not have a factual basis for answering that question.”

·      “Again, Mr. Chairman, I don’t know.”

·      “I assume he was, but I don’t know.”

·      “I don’t know what has happened in this matter.”

·      “This is both an ongoing matter and an ongoing matter about which I know nothing.”

·      Holder also said he did not know “precisely” when he had recused himself from the investigation.

Liberal publications, including the Washington Post, carry similar lists.

However, Holder’s Know-Nothing affiliation shouldn’t surprise us because his boss is a Know-Nothing too.

In fact, he’s the chief Know-Nothing.

When asked about the recent Inspector General’s report on the IRS’s practice of targeting conservative groups, the president said: Hey! I just read about that! 

“I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this,” Obama said in a statement that says nothing, but still reveals much. “I think it was on Friday.”

As a follow-up I wish someone had thought to ask Obama what he had for lunch on Friday. It’d be nice to know if our president knows nothing about that as well.

Obama apparently knew nothing about Boston, about the illegal seizure of Associated Press phone records, the strong-arming of State Department employees, the constitution, the economy, job creation….

In fact, as I wrote at the beginning of the month, Obama, the know-it-all, suddenly seemed to know nothing, even before the IRS-AP fracas:

Still, it’s surprising that the administration that knows more about banking than bankers, more about healthcare than doctors, more about firearms than people who legally possess arms, more about budgets than citizens who have to balance their checkbooks and more about practically everything than anyone else, would admit that on a few things, they really know nothing.

“On most days it’s hard to tell him he’s wrong about anything,” recently confessed one top Democrat about the Commander in Brief.

It’s seems equally hard to TELL him about anything too.

But here it is:

Obama knows nothing about Benghazi.

He knows nothing about Boston’s Tsarnaev brothers.

He knows nothing about Fast and Furious; he knows nothing about green energy loans, either.

Yes, the man who recently proclaimed: I AM IN CHARGE NOW, FINALLY! knows nothing.

This seems strange coming from the administration that leaked every damn detail about how Barack Obama personally hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden, while simultaneously saving Detroit from bankruptcy… saved Detroit at least until after the election in 2012, that is.    

But the Know-Nothing party isn’t just a celebration of individual ignorance, it’s institutional too:

“Republicans seem to be losing patience with [ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service Steven] Miller because his answers don’t change,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “of course, neither have their questions. Miller, in response to rough questioning from [Republican] Dave Reichert, says he doesn’t know who is primarily responsible for initiating these searches of tea-party groups.”

“I don’t have that name, Sir,” Miller said.

Nor does anyone else at the IRS.

But of course the only people who seem surprise by this outbreak of ignorance are those other Know-Nothings, the press.

The rest of us?

We knew that this administration knew nothing a long time ago.  (John Ranson)

And if you know what’s good for you, Citizen, you’ll know nothing, ALWAYS.

And you like it that way.

And Benghazi? Forget about it!

OR ELSE! 🙂

Quid Pro Quo

Oh, and the lady in charge at the time of the current intimidation and partisan scandal is now in charge of ObamaCare. But nothing to worry about…Nothing to see here…

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”-George Orwell

Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as commissioner of the Tax-Exempt and Government Entities Division from 2009 to 2012, is now serving as director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act division.

(and Benghazi head Media Liar, Susan Rice, is still waiting for her promotion).

Ingram was so good at her job of suppressing the political speech of administration opponents by using the tax code as a political bludgeon that she was rewarded during her tenure with four bonuses totaling $103,390.

Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period, and she was also rewarded with the Affordable Care Act responsibilities.

That the person who rode roughshod over Tea Party groups was put in charge of riding roughshod over our health care is entirely fitting.

The Tea Party was a grass-roots response to the power grab and assault on the Constitution that Obama-Care represents.

It cost the Democrats the House in 2010, and the prime opponent of ObamaCare had to be punished. Her tenure at the exemptions office dovetailed perfectly with the Tea Party’s rise.

Now Ingram is running the IRS’ ObamaCare enforcement office, and if you think the IRS’ “extra scrutiny” of conservative, pro-life and pro-Israel groups is scary, think of the IRS having access to your private medical information.

ObamaCare has 47 separate provisions that involve the IRS. It’s the second-largest agency, after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, charged with implementing the Affordable Care Act.

As the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer.

MSNBC aside: And lately, the IRS has expanded its monitoring to include social media.

The agency now keeps an eye out for online discussions about nonpayment or underpayment of taxes, and even sale prices of goods on sites like eBay that don’t match what taxpayers report.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says “the IRS part of administering ObamaCare, particularly in the wake of this IRS scandal with regard to suppressing the views of Americans who were critical of the IRS, raises further suspicions about their involvement in the administration of ObamaCare.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has introduced the “Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013” that prohibits the Treasury secretary, or any delegate, including the IRS, from enforcing the Affordable Care Act.

“Now more than ever, we need to prevent the IRS from having any role in Americans’ health care,” he said. “I do not support ObamaCare, and after the events of last week I cannot support giving the IRS any more responsibility or taxpayer dollars to implement a broken law.”

Neither can we, and we are troubled by a lawsuit in California by a company against 15 IRS agents who were investigating a tax matter with a warrant for a former employee of the company.

The warrant authorized the IRS only to obtain financial records of the employee in question.

Yet, as the suit alleges, these agents stole more than 60 million medical records of more than 10 million Americans, including at least 1 million Californians.

Are the likes of Sarah Hall Ingram the people we want enforcing ObamaCare?

Is a government we can’t trust with our tax records to be trusted with our medical records?

Should we trust people who abuse their power to conduct universal background checks?

Will Tea Partiers and conservatives be likewise harassed and intimidated over their Second Amendment rights?

Keep the IRS out of the doctor’s office and repeal ObamaCare or at least neuter its funding mechanism lest one day the only two things we will be sure of will be death panels and taxes — both run by the IRS. (ibd)

We are From The IRS and we are Not here to Help you, we are here to help ourselves….. 🙂
And if you don’t like it, Talk to the Hand. The Hand of Big Brother.

Big Brother is watching you.!

 

 

On the QT

 

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 is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.  (ABC)

Nothing to see here, we already had out main course of Sacrificial Lamb….

A little extra salt for that Lamb skewer: Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harrassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012. (WE)

Nothing to see here, you racists (at least according to Al Sharpton)…

President Barack Obama, seeking to regain his footing amid controversies hammering the White House, named a temporary chief for the scandal-marred Internal Revenue Service Thursday and pressed Congress to approve new security money to prevent another Benghazi-style terrorist attack.

Why do we need new “security money?” after all, it was an Internet Video that caused the attack, right?

So I guess the money would be used to spy on the American People more, especially those violent, anti-government haters — The Tea Party. 🙂

It certainly wasn’t “terrorism”. And surely wasn’t because of <whisper> Muslim extremists…

Obama, who was criticized by both opponents and allies for his measured initial response to the IRS targeting, vowed to ensure the agency acts “scrupulously and without even a hint of bias.”

“I think we’re going to be able to fix it,” he declared. (my way)

That’s why he appointed the person in charge of it to the IRS’s jackboots on ObamaCare and Susan Rice- The Sacrifice to the Media for Benghazi- he is still trying to get her a Cabinet/White House Level job for her brave service.

Nope, nothing to see here. 🙂

“I’ve still got 60,000-plus troops in Afghanistan, and I’ve still got a whole bunch of intelligence officers around the world who are in risky situations,” he said. “Part of my job is to make sure that we’re protecting what they do, while still accommodating for the need for information.”

But 4 people in Benghazi, ah f*ck ’em! That’s just a Republican partisan plot to make me look bad! 🙂

After all, President Barack Obama vowed to “bring to justice” the perpetrators of the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya. On Oct. 26, 2012, Obama said his “biggest priority” was bringing the “folks” in Libya responsible for murdering four Americans to “justice.” Tick, tock, tick, tock. (Michelle Malkin)

Oh, by the way, if the last “blow up the White House” heroic movie wasn’t enough (“Olympus has fallen” there’s a second one- “White House Down.” coming.

After all, Hollywood terrorism is much more real and believable than REAL terrorism! 🙂

🙂

The South Side

Mr. Tinkle Up My Leg Chris Matthews: “The liberals, the progressives, the reasonable people…”

Matthews & Sharpton: Obama’s Scandals Prove “Racism” and “White Supremacy” in GOP.

Well, you knew they’d get around to it eventually… 🙂

*********

The White House on Wednesday released 94 pages of emails between top administration and intelligence officials who helped shape the talking points about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that the CIA would provide to policymakers in both the legislative and executive branches.

The documents, first reported by THE WEEKLY STANDARD in articles here and here, directly contradict claims by White House press secretary Jay Carney and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the revisions of those talking points were driven by the intelligence community and show heavy input from top Obama administration officials, particularly those at the State Department.

The emails provide further detail about the rewriting of the talking points during a 24-hour period from midday September 14 to midday September 15. As THE WEEKLY STANDARD previously reported, a briefing from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence shows that the big changes came in three waves – internally at the CIA, after email feedback from top administration officials, and during or after a meeting of high-ranking intelligence and national security officials the following morning.

The Internal Revenue Service has identified two “rogue” employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for “overly aggressive” handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, a congressional source told CNN. In a meeting on Capitol Hill, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller described the employees as being “off the reservation,” according to the source. It was not clear precisely what the alleged behavior involved. Miller said the staffers have already been disciplined, according to another source familiar with Miller’s discussions with congressional investigators.

Hey, it was essentially just two guys, and they’ve been “disciplined,” so can’t we all just move on? (Townhall)

They did it ….No! They Did it!…Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!….Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!Oh No We Didn’t They Did it!

Confused  and Frustrated yet? 🙂

The Payoff:

Insiders with ties to the Obama administration tell The Cable that U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has become the heir apparent to National Security Advisor Tom Donilon — a post at the epicenter of foreign-policy decision making and arguably more influential than secretary of state, a job for which she withdrew her candidacy last fall amid severe political pressure.

“It’s definitely happening,” a source who recently spoke with Rice told The Cable. “She is sure she is coming and so too her husband and closest friends.”

The Speech

“Now, if we’re being honest with ourselves, as you’ve studied and worked and served to become good citizens, the fact is that all too often the institutions that give structure to our society have, at times, betrayed your trust.”

“I think it’s fair to say our democracy isn’t working as well as we know it can. It could do better….Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works.”

Well, in recent days this suggested line of thinking has turned around and bit Obama on his own South Side. Let’s recap:

We have the lethal Benghazi scandal when Obama’s administration was totally unprepared for 9/11 attacks, the president went missing all night, no rescue was even attempted, Obama and pack repeatedly blamed an obscure anti-Islam video for two weeks despite knowing it was terrorism from minute one, they demoted career diplomats who asked questions. And have strung out congressional inquiries in hopes of fading interest in the smoldering scandal.

We have the IRS apologizing on a Friday, hoping to defuse a Tuesday investigative report into its attempted intimidation and successful harassment of a wide variety of conservative groups for years. Just a few over-eager, low-level number crunchers, you understand. Except, wait. Gee, it actually involved supervisors and execs lying to Congress.

That’s all against the law, of course. But the agency apologized. So, will the IRS now accept taxpayer apologies in lieu of back taxes?

Obama rushed to point out the IRS is an independent agency, which it isn’t. He called the tactics outrageous “if” the reports were true, which the Treasury agency had already admitted.

Then, Tuesday came word the FBI, in an alleged attempt to track down an old news leak, had secretly obtained telephone records for more than 100 media members. What’s wrong with that anyway? The Russian government does it all the time.

For someone who acts as if he knows everything, Harvard grad Obama certainly has admitted ignorance an awful lot in recent days.

He didn’t know there were any Benghazi scandal whistle-blowers being intimidated at the State Department. He didn’t know the IRS was harassing and intimidating opponents exactly as his local machine does back home in Chicago. And now given revelations of FBI snooping on more than 100 members of Obama’s media pack, his press pals may turn on him, for a while.

Additionally, 40 Obama White House aides still owe $333,000 in back taxes, which the IRS has not collected. But they’re not conservative.

A commander-in-chief can only admit ignorance once or twice before people ask what is he in command of anyway, besides his golf score and fundraiser schedule?

Tuesday Obama finally called the IRS report “intolerable and inexcusable.” And claimed to have ordered Treasury Secy. Jack Lew to bring any perps to justice, as he routinely does after every episode of bad news. To no particular end. Recall his promise to whack the murderers of those four Americans in Benghazi last fall, killers still wandering and plotting freely.

Meanwhile, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder ordered the FBI, which is probing news media phone calls, to investigate the IRS situation too. Holder, you’ll recall, is the fellow who squashed that old Black Panther voter intimidation probe and feigned ignorance of his own department’s deadly ‘Fast and Furious’ gun-running operation into Mexico.

Then, to not prove his innocence, Holder had Obama claim executive privilege to avoid turning over operational documents to congressional investigators.

This is a favored tactic of Obama. Remember in 2008 when published reports suggested Obama transition team members had worked with Obama pal and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on filling Obama’s vacant Senate seat? Blago is now in federal prison for attempting to sell that selection.

But an Obama team probe of the Obama team found no Obama team impropriety.What a relief that was, eh? Similarly, the Obama State Department probe of the Benghazi screw-up found some systemic problems but no one person to blame. Another relief all around.

We haven’t really had any probes of the billions in taxpayer dollars squandered on now-bankrupt green energy companies, many with connections to Obama’s top fundraisers. Probably coincidence. Chances are that investigation would end up like the FBI’s IRS probe will, with profound suggestions for bureaucratic tweaks. And that’s it.

“Unfortunately,” Obama told Ohio state grads, “you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.”Why ever would that be?

Don’t forget the IRS is the agency expanding by 16,000 new agents to enforce ObamaCare’s thousands of new regulations. And they will prosecute a certain percentage of violators to be determined at the discretion of those IRS agents.

Now what, given the unfolding tawdry record of this Windy City gang, could possibly go wrong there? (IBD)

Pinnochio

Carney tried to explain why he and the president still insist on conditionally condemning the IRS’ actions, depending on “if” something inappropriate occurred.  Reporters from the AP and CNN both pushed back, noting that the IRS has already acknowledged wrongdoing and apologized.  Alas, it seems admissions of guilt still aren’t sufficiently dispositive for our fact-finder in chief

On Libya, a detailed examination of the record shows that the White House has had no consistent message on what happened on September 11. In fact, they changed their message from day to day — and it’s clear that the administration’s actions in the days and weeks after the Benghazi tragedy was all political maneuvering.

Benghazi was a terrorist attack.  The September 11th murders of 4 Americans in Libya wasn’t about some You Tube video and the Obama administration did apparently leave those people out there to die.  They did apparently conceal the truth and they did think we’d be stupid enough to believe them.

And anybody who thought things would be different is, quite frankly, an idiot.

Especially right before the Re-coronation of the King of All Media and your sovereign Lord of all Things, Barack Hussein Obama!

Nothing could be allowed to get in the way. Nothing.

The Agenda is The Agenda.

The Message is The Message.

Once again, it appears that we must parse a few presidential words. We went through this question at length during the 2012 election, but perhaps a refresher course is in order.

After all, we are talking about the King of the Orwellian Parse.

Notably, during a debate with Republican nominee Mitt Romney, President Obama said that he immediately told the American people that the killing of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya “was an act of terror.” But now he says he called it “an act of terrorism.”

Some readers may object to this continuing focus on words, but presidential aides spend a lot of time on words. Words have consequences. Is there a difference between “act of terror” and “act of terrorism”?

 

The Facts

Immediately after the attack, the president three times used the phrase “act of terror” in public statements:

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.”

— Obama, Rose Garden, Sept. 12

“We want to send a message all around the world — anybody who would do us harm: No act of terror will dim the light of the values that we proudly shine on the rest of the world, and no act of violence will shake the resolve of the United States of America.”

— Obama, campaign event in Las Vegas, Sept. 13

“I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished. It will not dim the light of the values that we proudly present to the rest of the world. No act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America.”

— Obama, campaign event in Golden, Colo., Sept. 13

Here’s how we assessed those words back in October:

    Note that in all three cases, the language is not as strong as Obama asserted in the debate. Obama declared that he said “that this was an act of terror.” But actually the president spoke in vague terms, usually wrapped in a patriotic fervor. One could presume he was speaking of the incident in Libya, but he did not affirmatively state that the American ambassador died because of an “act of terror.”

    Some readers may think we are dancing on the head of pin here. The Fact Checker spent nine years as diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, and such nuances of phrasing are often very important. A president does not simply utter virtually the same phrase three times in two days about a major international incident without careful thought about the implications of each word.

The Fact Checker noted last week that this was an attack on what essentially was a secret CIA operation, which included rounding up weapons from the very people who may have attacked the facility.

Perhaps Obama, in his mind, thought this then was really “an act of war,” not a traditional terrorist attack, but he had not wanted to say that publicly. Or perhaps, as Republicans suggest, he did not want to spoil his campaign theme that terror groups such as al-Qaeda were on the run by conceding a terrorist attack had occurred on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Whatever the reason, when given repeated opportunities to forthrightly declare this was an “act of terrorism,” the president ducked the question.

For instance, on Sept. 12, immediately after the Rose Garden statement the day after the attack, Obama sat down with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes and acknowledged he purposely avoided the using the word “terrorism:”

KROFT: “Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word ‘terrorism’ in connection with the Libya attack.”

OBAMA: “Right.”

KROFT: “Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?”

OBAMA: “Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.”

Eight days later, on Sept. 20, Obama was asked at a Univision town hall whether Benghazi was a terrorist attack related to al-Qaeda, after White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that “it is self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”

QUESTION: “We have reports that the White House said today that the attacks in Libya were a terrorist attack. Do you have information indicating that it was Iran, or al-Qaeda was behind organizing the protests?”

OBAMA: “Well, we’re still doing an investigation, and there are going to be different circumstances in different countries. And so I don’t want to speak to something until we have all the information. What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests.”

(It is unclear whether Obama is ducking the “terrorism” question or answering one about al-Qaeda.)

Finally, during an interview on ABC’s “The View” on Sept. 25, Obama appeared to refuse to say it was a terrorist attack:

QUESTION: “It was reported that people just went crazy and wild because of this anti-Muslim movie — or anti-Muhammad, I guess, movie. But then I heard Hillary Clinton say that it was an act of terrorism. Is it? What do you say?”

OBAMA: “We are still doing an investigation. There is no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn’t just a mob action. Now, we don’t have all the information yet so we are still gathering.”

So, given three opportunities to affirmatively agree that the Benghazi attack was a terrorist attack, the president obfuscated or ducked the question.

In fact, as far as we can tell from combing through databases, Monday was the first time the president himself referred to Benghazi as an “act of terrorism.”

Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House national security council, said in the case of “The View,” “the point of the question what about what happened, not what to call it.”

She also noted that President George W. Bush used the phrase “act of terror” while visiting victims of the Sept. 11 attacks in the hospital, and critics such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) have used that phrasing as well in speaking about terrorist attacks. (She provided citations.) “I don’t really accept the argument that we are somehow unique in that formulation,” she said.

Administration officials repeatedly have insisted that this is a distinction without much difference. “There was an issue about the definition of terrorism,” Carney said on October 10. “This is by definition an act of terror, as the President made clear.”

The Pinocchio Test

During the campaign, the president could just get away with claiming he said “act of terror,” since he did use those words — though not in the way he often claimed. It seemed like a bit of after-the-fact spin, but those were his actual words — to the surprise of Mitt Romney in the debate.

But the president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.

Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time–and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.

Four Pinocchios (WP)

 

Never Lies

President Obama told donors like Jessica Biel, Justin Timberlake (who was wearing hipster glasses), and Tommy Hilfiger that Washington gridlock is pretty much Rush Limbaugh’s fault on Monday evening at a fundraiser at Harvey Weinstein’s house in New York’s Greenwich Village. Obama admitted that his theory — that after the 2012 election, the Republican “fever” would break, and they’d decide to co-sign some of his agenda — was wrong. “My thinking was when we beat them in 2012 that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet,” Obama said, according to the White House pool report. This is because of a certain corpulent radio host. “I genuinely believe there are Republicans out there who would like to work with us but they’re fearful of their base and they’re concerned about what Rush Limbaugh might say about them. And as a consequence we get the kind of gridlock that makes people cynical about government.

Wow!, now that’s cognitive dissonance (not to mention arrogance)….Always have to have a demonizing figure to galvanize the faithful, don’t you Big Brother! 🙂

2014 Totalitarianism or Bust!

WP: “The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism.”

— President Obama, remarks at a news conference, May 13, 2013

As we have noted before, the Benghazi scandal is boring.- The Atlantic

Thomas Sowell: There can be honest differences of opinion on many subjects. But there can also be dishonest differences. Last week’s testimony under oath about events in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 makes painfully clear that what the Obama administration told the American people about those events were lies out of whole cloth.

What we were told repeatedly last year by the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the American ambassador to the U.N., was that there was a protest demonstration in Benghazi against an anti-Islamic video produced by an American, and that this protest demonstration simply escalated out of control.

This “spontaneous protest” story did not originate in Libya but in Washington. Neither the Americans on duty in Libya during the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, nor officials of the Libyan government, said anything about a protest demonstration.

The highest American diplomat on the scene in Libya spoke directly with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by phone, and told her that it was a terrorist attack. The president of Libya announced that it was a terrorist attack. The C.I.A. told the Obama administration that it was a terrorist attack.

With lies, as with potato chips, it is hard to stop with just one. After the “spontaneous protest” story was discredited, the next claim was that this was the best information available at the time from intelligence sources.

But that claim cannot survive scrutiny, now that the 12 drafts of the Obama administration’s talking points about Benghazi have belatedly come to light. As draft after draft of the talking points were made, e-mails from the State Department pressured the intelligence services to omit from these drafts their clear and unequivocal statement from the outset that this was a terrorist attack.

Attempts to make it seem that Ambassador Susan Rice’s false story about a “spontaneous protest” was the result of her not having accurate information from the intelligence services have now been exposed as a second lie to excuse the first lie.

Despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s loudly proclaimed question “What difference, at this point, does it make?” the difference is between an honest mistake and a calculated lie to deceive the American people, in order to win an election.

Barack Obama’s election campaign oratory had proclaimed the death of Osama bin Laden as an accomplishment of his administration, as part of a general defeat of Al-Qaeda and other terrorists. To admit that these terrorists were still in action, and strong enough to kill an American ambassador and three other Americans in a well-coordinated military style attack, would be a politically devastating admission during the election campaign.

Far better, politically, to come up with a story about a protest demonstration that just got out of hand. This could be presented as an isolated, one-time event, rather than part of a continuing pattern of terrorism by groups that were still active, despite President Obama’s spin suggesting that they were not.

The problem with telling a lie, or even a succession of lies, is that a very small dose of the truth can sometimes make the whole thing collapse like a house of cards. The State Department’s own foreign service officer Gregory Hicks was in Libya during the attack, so he knew the truth. When threats were not enough to silence him, it was then necessary to try to discredit him.

After years of getting glowing job evaluations, and awards of honors from the State Department for his work in various parts of the world, Mr. Hicks suddenly began to get bad job evaluations and was demoted to a desk job in Washington after he spoke with a Congressman about what he knew. The truth is dangerous to liars.

The Obama administration’s excuse for not trying to get help to the Americans in Benghazi while they were under attack — namely, that it would take too long — is as shaky as its other statements. A small fighting unit in Tripoli was ready to get on a plane to Benghazi when they were ordered to “stand down.” Other fighting units located outside of Libya are designed precisely for fast deployment — and nobody knew how many hours the attack would last.

But it will take more investigations to determine who gave the order to “stand down,” and why. How many new lies that will generate is another question.

But Big Brother Never Lies. Big Brother always tells you the truth. You just have to trust Big Brother. He’s always looking out for you. 🙂

And anyone says differently needs to be re-educated because they are a dirty liar!

Ignore the IRS at your Door, the drone outside your house or the Justice Department listening to everything you say and everything you type. You’re perfectly safe….

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU!

 

Is

The U.S. still employs more than 2.5 million fewer people than when the recession began. At 180,000 jobs a month, it will take until the middle of 2014 to close that gap. Adjust for population growth, and it will take nine more years to return to the prerecession level of employment at the current rate of growth, according to the Brookings Institution.

That would be the middle of President Hilary Clinton’s Second term and very good for her hand picked successor.

“Headwinds and tailwinds are canceling each other out,” said Lou Crandall of the economic research firm Wrightson ICAP.

The longer that stalemate continues, the worse the long-term damage will be. Already, millions of unemployed Americans have given up looking for jobs; many will likely never work again.

Youth unemployment stands at 16.1% and would be a Europe-like 22% if more than 1.5 million young people hadn’t dropped out of the labor force; economic research suggests their early-career woes will leave lasting scars. The slow pace of growth leaves the economy more vulnerable to an unexpected shock—meaning a flare-up in Europe’s debt crisis or surge in oil prices could send the U.S. back into crisis mode. (WSJ)

Never let a Crisis go to Waste! 🙂

Obama has 3 fundraisers in New York along in next week. It’s not like he’s got anything to worry about… 🙂

“I would love nothing better than an effective, loyal opposition that is willing to meet us halfway and move the country forward (and do whatever I want them to) — because that’s what the American people are looking for (but since they won’t do everything I want when I want I’ll just blame them for everything). The economy is growing but there is still a lot of folks out there who are struggling; still way too many people who are unemployed; (I’m focused like a laser beam on jobs! 🙂 not campaigning or covering up) people who haven’t seen a raise in a decade (unlike Congress); people whose homes are still underwater; people who when they see $4-a-gallon gas  (it was less than$2 when you became President-but I’m sure that’s the evil oil companies you’ve been trying to destroy’s fault!) know that that is money that’s coming straight out of their pockets or their retirement funds and is going to be very hard to make up. (And ObamaCare will certainly help!) 🙂 And they’re hoping that we can do some governing (why break the trend!) 🙂. And that’s what I intend to do this year, and the year after that and the year after that,” Obama told the group. (Translation: Campaign!)

“But I would be dishonest if I didn’t say that it would be a whole lot easier to govern if I had Nancy Pelosi as Speaker.” (WS)

Yeah, the last time we got Stimulus Spending and a year-and-half mud fight cramming ObamaCare down our throats. That was progress.

But yes, it would be so much easier if their was no opposition to The Agenda and they could just do whatever they wanted, when they wanted, and because they wanted. And they could thumb their noses at the peons and peasants who objected to their high and mighty superiority.

Hope 🙂

“And I want her once again as a fully empowered partner for us to be able to move our agenda forward.”

Campaign Mode Overdrive: Engaged!

BY-Partisanship is our goal!

2014 totalitarianism or bust!

IRS UPDATE: At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.

On Jan. 15, 2012 the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.,” according to the appendix in the IG report.

And next year they get to enforce ObamaCare. Doesn’t that just fill you with hope & glee. 🙂

BENGHAZI UPDATE

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

Removed: Al-Qaeda , CIA warnings, and terrorism.

Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:

“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya.  These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?  Concerned …”

The paragraph was entirely deleted. (ABC)

Nothing to see here, move along… 🙂

The CIA draft included: The draft went on to specifically name  the al Qaeda-affiliated group named Ansar al-Sharia.

Instead we got the Internet Video storyline.

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy.

And the White was trying to avoid it altogether!

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now.

So it makes you go hmmmmm….

The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the case in a situation like this and is always appropriate.

This is an incredible thing for Carney to be saying. He’s playing semantic games, telling a roomful of journalists that the definition of editing we’ve all been using is wrong, that the only thing that matters is who’s actually working the keyboard. It’s not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either. (NY)

Depends on your definition of what is, is… What IS editing… What IS Terrorism…What IS a cover-up….

If it smells like a duck, and quacks like a duck, IS it a duck? 🙂

 

Can I Just Say…

Can I say I told you so yet?

“CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi.”

Let’s also show you why CNN did not go very far in covering these hearings because the CNN deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Hillary Clinton’s deputy, Tom Nides. It is time for the media to start asking questions why are they not covering this.

For the record, Ben Sherwood’s sister, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, is the Special Assistant to Barack Obama.

Virginia Moseley’s husband, Tom Nides, is the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.

As for David Rhodes’ brother Ben, he is Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communication.

As ABCNews.com reported Friday, Rhodes was a key player in revising the White House’s Benghazi talking points last September:

In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. — three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows – Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed.

“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

After that meeting, which took place Saturday morning at the White House, the CIA drafted the final version of the talking points – deleting all references to al Qaeda and to the security warnings in Benghazi prior to the attack.

Consider, too, that CBS News executives possibly including Rhodes have allegedly come down on their own investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson for “wading dangerously close to advocacy on” Benghazi.

If Attkisson gets the boot, it could very well be with a foot attached to the brother of an Obama administration official directly involved in the cover-up.

A family matter indeed. (NB)

Incest always make the Media go after the story! 🙂

CBS anchor Scott Pelley said at a speech at Quinnipiac University that journalists “are getting big stories wrong, over and over again.”

“Our house is on fire,” said Pelley. The video of Pelley’s speech is courtesy of nowthisnews.com.

“These have been a bad few months for journalism,” he added. “We’re getting the big stories wrong, over and over again.”

The CBS newsreader was quick to take at least partial blame. “Let me take the first arrow: During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now, I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here.”

And Pelley said the republic relies on the quality of the news business. “Democracies succeed or fail based on their journalism,” said Pelley. “America is strong because its journalism is strong. That’s how democracies work. They’re only as good as the quality of the information that the public possesses. And that is where we come in.”

See First Story. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid…

Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with “Tea Party,” ”Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says. (townhall)

OBAMACARE UPDATE

When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form.

The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.

As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”. 

So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information? 

Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme.  Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual.  This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.

This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.”

This will involve millions of new tax documents landing in mailboxes across America every January, along with the usual raft of W-2s, 1099s, and 1098s.  At tax time, the 140 million families who file a tax return will have to get acquainted with a brand new tax filing form.  Six million of these families will end up paying Obamacare’s individual mandate non-compliance tax penalty.

As a service to the public, Americans for Tax Reform has released a projected version of this tax form to help families and tax specialists prepare for this additional filing requirement. Taxpayers may view the projected IRS form at www.ObamacareTaxForm.com.  On the form, lines 3-4 show where taxpayers will disclose their personal health ID information.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/atrfiles/files/files/05102013pr_Obamacare%20IRS%20Health%20ID%20info.pdf

They want to know everything about you. Then they can control everything about you by virtue of “compliance” and regulations. So put down that soda, or get an Obama-Fine! 🙂

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.

“The Social Security number itself, it’s pretty ubiquitous in your life,” Calabrese said.

David Bier, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees with the ACLU’s fears.

“The most worrying aspect is that this creates a principle of permission basically to do certain activities and it can be used to restrict activities,” he said. “It’s like a national ID system without the card.”

For the moment, the debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on the parameters of legalization for unauthorized immigrants, a border fence and legal immigration in the future.

The committee is scheduled to resume debate on the package Tuesday. (wired)

Big Brother wants to everything about you Citizen…But tell you only what you need to hear from them.

Democracy in action! 🙂