It’s Alive

The Needle Moves: Majority Believe IRS Targeting was Intentional and Illegal

But…it’s not an “actual real scandal” according to all the president’s men.

A new poll finds that a majority of Americans believe the Internal Revenue Service targeting scandal was an intentional effort to harass conservative political groups.

In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday, 56 percent said the IRS use of higher scrutiny on Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status was a deliberate move, with 31 percent calling it an “administrative mistake.”

Docs: IRS letters harassing groups came from DC HQ And CA, despite IG’s focus on Cincinnati employees

Well this is cute … Can’t anyone in the Obama administration tell the truth?

  

• Tax agency has admitted targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for special, politically motivated scrutiny
• IRS inspector general focused on wrongdoing in Cincinnati, Ohio office and ignored abusive letters coming from other cities
• MailOnline found letters from IRS’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, and from IRS offices in two southern California cities
• The American Center on Law and Justice is threatening to sue the IRS if 27 tea party groups aren’t granted tax-exempt statuses by Friday

Letters from the IRS to tea party-related organizations in Oklahoma City and Albuquerque, New Mexico show that IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C., and two satellite offices in California, were directly involved with sending harassing letters to conservative organizations that sought tax-exempt status.

The IRS has acknowledged only the involvement of its Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati, Ohio, which typically makes most decisions about granting or denying tax-exempt status to non-profit organizations.

And Wednesday afternoon, CNN cited a congressional source in reporting that the acting IRS Commissioner – whom President Obama fired later in the day – had identified two ‘rogue’ employees, both in Cincinnati, whom he thought were responsible for targeting right-wing organizations with tactics that were not applied to left-wing or non-political groups.

Steven Miller then the acting IRS Commissioner, described the two employees as being ‘off the reservation,’ according to the CNN source.

Miller, added CNN, had emphasized that the problem was not confined to just two staffers.

Tuesday’s report from the IRS Office of Inspector General, however, focused exclusively on the Cincinnati office.

This IG’s review, according to the report ‘was performed at the EO [Exempt Organizations] function Headquarters office in Washington, D.C., and the Determinations Unit in Cincinnati, Ohio.’

The Washington staffers involved, the IG report continues, were in charge of reviewing materials prepared in Cincinnati. ‘As part of this effort, EO function Headquarters office employees reviewed the additional information request letters prepared by the team of [Cincinnati] specialists,’ the report reads.

Nothing in the report describes letters sent by IRS employees in California or the District of Columbia.

Yet an April 21, 2010 letter to the Albuquerque Tea Party organization, containing a preliminary list of 10 questions, came from the IRS’s Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division in Washington….

Read more at dailymail.co.uk …

FLASHBACK: PRESIDENT OBAMA TARGETED GIBSON GUITARS, BOEING ON IDEOLOGICAL GROUNDS

Inflating the balloon even more, you think it was just the Tea Party? Here are two companies that got the same treatment.

Moving on from your healthcare and the IRS we get to a couple of oldies….

Even mainstream media outlets are running story upon story about President Barack Obama’s possible ties to the government grabbing a wire service’s phone records and the IRS bullying conservative groups.

Those who have been paying attention to the New Media shouldn’t be surprised by these headlines. In fact, here are two examples where the Obama administration appeared to use an ideological cudgel to bash both conservatives and free market principles.

On Aug. 24, 2011, the Department of Justice sent armed agents into the Gibson Guitar factor in Memphis “confiscating half a million dollars worth of guitar making material is an alleged violation of environmental standards.”

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz is a conservative, and his company eventually settled rather than take matters to court.

Nashville-based Gibson agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty, forfeit claims to about $262,000 worth of wood seized by federal agents and contribute $50,000 to theNational Fish and Wildlife Foundation to promote the conservation of protected tree species.

We felt compelled to settle as the costs of proving our case at trial would have cost millions of dollars and taken a very long time to resolve,” CEO Henry Juszkiewicz said in a statement late Monday night….

“We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted, and a matter that could have been addressed with a simple contact a caring human being representing the government,” he said in his statement.

Just a few weeks later, the Obama administration squared off against Boeing for daring to set roots in a “right to work” state.

In a faltering economy, the aerospace titan opened a $750 million factory in South Carolina and hired thousands of workers to build the world’s most fuel-efficient commercial jet…. the National Labor Relations Board has accused Boeing of opening its South Carolina shop in a “right-to-work” state to retaliate against union worker strikes at its main manufacturing base in the Seattle area.

An Obama appointee is now asking a judge to order Boeing to relocate all 787 Dreamliner production to Washington state — a move that’s feeding the GOP narrative that Obama’s Big Government is meddling with job creation, just as the first plane nears its first commercial flight.

The NLRB complaint against Boeing was eventually dropped, but not before the union got a pretty compensation package as a parting gift.

Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates called it a prime example of regulatory overreach by the Obama administration, arguing that federal officials should not be telling companies where they can or cannot build factories. Congress held hearings and demanded thousands of pages of documents.

Sen Dems Pressured IRS To Investigate Conservative Groups.

Senate Dems ‘repeatedly and publicly’ pressured IRS to investigate conservative groups…

With Washington gripped by a trio of exploding scandals this week – from Benghazi to government spying on news outlets to thug tactics by the Internal Revenue Service – Senate Democrats seem to be hoping that if they just yell loud enough then voters will overlook a key role they played in at least one of them.

They quickly sensed the political toxicity associated with Friday’s admission by the IRS that they selectively targeted conservative organizations for special government scrutiny, and so Democrats didn’t waste any time springing into action. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, for example, vowed congressional hearings and called the IRS actions “an outrageous abuse of power and a breach of the public’s trust.”

Carl Levin wrote letters…

 

 

Benghazi, Here We Come

Why that’s a fine soup you got me in.

Sir I think they are onto you, maybe we should stop the lies … 

With The Facts Not On His Side, Obama Resorts To Calling Lingering Questions About Benghazi “A Sideshow”

SORTING OUT THE SPIN AND FALSEHOODS IN OBAMA’S LATEST BENGHAZI STATEMENTS

Obama Did Not Immediately Acknowledge The Benghazi Terror Attack As Terrorism

Those are some mighty big rocks you dropped on the road to Benghazi, sir.

This ought to do it, from the groove yard of forgotten favorites.

No sale, needs more lipstick, it’s a really big pig!!!!

Dead and circuses: Clown-in-chief Obama calls Benghazi talking points a “sideshow;” Flashback to Obama’s U.N. and Letterman sideshows

Oh, yes he just did. At a joint press conference with British PM David Cameron in Washington today, President Obama lied and evaded and obfuscated some more on his Benghazi crime and cover-up.

Red nose liar … Re-watch the “sideshow” yourselves of Obama plying the YouTube falsehood two weeks after the attack. Flashback and cue the circus music:

 

Obama called the swelling uproar over the Etch-a-Sketch YouTube video talking points shilled by U.N.

Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and himself a “sideshow.”

And then there is the Letterman sideshow … Obama Lying on Letterman Show

Speeches sound good taste like cra …

Using The IRS As A Weapon

AP: IRS is totally sorry for targeting groups with names that include ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’

BREAKING: IRS apologizes for inappropriately targeting conservative political groups in 2012 election.

According to this Associated Press story republished at Rare, the IRS admits it flagged tax-exempt conservative groups for additional scrutiny during the 2012 election season.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.

Lerner said the practice, initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati, was wrong and she apologized while speaking at a conference in Washington.

Flashback: Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation pushed back against IRS bullying of conservative groups.

 

You’re Gonna Pay …

The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, a stop-gap measure for those who cannot get health insurance now until the Obamacare mandate kicks in next year, is running out of money because – surprise! – it has major cost overruns.”

It’s looking like those cost overruns will be dumped on the states, many of which haven’t approved the Medicaid expansion yet:

In a letter this week to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, state officials said they were “blindsided” and “very disappointed” by a federal proposal they contend would shift the risk for cost overruns to states in the waning days of the program. About 100,000 people are currently covered.

“We are concerned about what will become of our high risk members’ access to this decent and affordable coverage,” wrote Michael Keough, chairman of the National Association of State Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans. States and local nonprofits administer the program in 21 states, and the federal government runs the remaining plans.

“Enrollees also appear to be at risk of increases in both premiums and out-of-pocket costs that may make continued enrollment cost prohibitive,” added Keough, who runs North Carolina’s program. He warned of “large-scale enrollee terminations at this critical transition time.”

The crisis is surfacing at a politically awkward time for the Obama administration, which is trying to persuade states to embrace a major expansion of Medicaid under the health care law. It may undercut one of the main arguments proponents of the expansion are making: that Washington is a reliable financial partner.

This is jut the tip of the ice berg, I’m afraid.

North Korea Removes Missiles From Launch Sites

RT reports …

In a sudden de-escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula, Pyongyang has removed two of its ballistic missile units from their launching positions, US officials confirmed.

Two Musudan missiles, capable of hitting targets 2,500 miles away, were withdrawn from a launch site in the eastern part of the country and moved to a storage facility, several US officials who chose to remain anonymous told the media.

The US, which considers Korean missile program as a threat to its national security in parts of the Pacific Ocean, has confirmed that the weapons have now been relocated, a defense official told AFP.

The news comes soon after Seoul and Washington kicked-off on Monday a five-day anti-submarine drill in the Yellow Sea with the presence of nuclear-powered forces, military officials told Yonhap news agency.

 

The Disconnect Between WDC and the People Is Getting Palpatable

You are paying for all this grandiose. A brilliant piece of work from Salena Zito … And still where are the jobs, jobs, jobs  for the citizens? Remember them? The ones that are paying the bills.

WASHINGTON–Eighteen Starbucks shops can be found in the three-mile walk from DuPont Circle to the U.S. Capitol. Not one of them had a line less than seven people deep on a recent Wednesday afternoon.

Twenty-one construction sites filled with workers on girders and cranes towering over whole city blocks can be found on the same walk.

Commerce bursts from every angle of this city: small businesses packed with shoppers, hair salons charging more than the monthly mortgage payment on my first house for a cut-and-blow-dry, and main as well as side streets clogged with traffic.

America’s capital seems bubble-wrapped in its own vibrant economic boom, while great chunks of the nation struggle with uncertainty about how to keep the engine going.

In fact, six of the 10 wealthiest American counties are Washington suburbs.

Washington once was the manifest of power. Now you can add “center of wealth” to its portfolio, crystallizing the elite institutional disconnect between it and the rest of the country.

Nearly six months have passed since the last presidential campaign promises were preached. Six months of waiting outside of the bubble for the Obama administration to fulfill passionate vows inserted into soaring speeches that pledged to create a million new manufacturing jobs in this term, to help big factories and small businesses double their exports, and to invest in advanced manufacturing.

All were promises made by the president, over and over again, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin and Michigan.

The outcome has not matched the promises, not even closely.