Exclusive: Inalienable Rights Sabotaged

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Adam GlanzmanAnyone still question whether or not IRS abuse exists? The IRS has been too onerous and too powerful for much too long. But you haven’t seen anything yet! As Obamacare unfolds, tax collection will become subordinate to information gathering but will remain the mechanism for intimidation and bullying used by the ‘service’. Recently they asked us, some of us, for the content of our prayers. Here’s what’s in my prayers Mr. Taxman, I pray to God that the IRS dies as we know it and is replaced with a simple fair tax structure requiring little if any oversight.

Who is tasked with ensuring that Obamacare is implemented? That’s right, the IRS. Obamacare was designed as the most powerful weapon to date to be used by the government against the people! The House of Representatives has voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare but the Speaker would have us believe that nothing can be done, ”its the law of the land”, another martini please. The fact is that defunding Obamacare or ‘Obamatax’ is possible. If we don’t defund and then repeal Obamacare soon, great hardship awaits us all, compliments of the IRS!

No one in support of or supported by the Obama administration purports to know much of anything about the various scandals they’ve created, especially not our darling President! Be it the present IRS scandal, Fast and Furious or Benghazi, Mr. 0 says he’ll get to the bottom of ”it” so that ”it” never happens again. What this means is that ‘low’ and ‘high’ level officials in his administration whether guilty or not of wrong doing will be re-assigned, promoted, offered early retirement or otherwise NOT be held accountable in any meaningful way for anything. This while innocent lives are lost due to the ignorance, ineptitude and corruption of the fools running Washington DC. What will it take to alert Americans smitten with this ‘cool’ President to the fact that he and his socialist crooks are burning this country to the ground! America is changing into something we’ll all regret if we don’t reverse course soon!

Which rights were sabotaged by the IRS? Surely rights declared in the first and fourth amendments to the US Constitution were. In the first amendment, freedom of speech was sabotaged. Oh we could speak, but an IRS audit was initiated based solely upon key words we used such as ‘Tea party’ and ‘Patriot’. These and other triggers were used to target specific conservative groups and individuals for audits and other nefarious purposes, any of which should be abhorred. As for the fourth amendment, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures was sabotaged. In the electronic age though, there’s no need for any IRS goon to come knocking at your door. Agents simply commit sabotage through the internet or postal service.

Many of us paying attention to the various scandals brought to us by the Obama administration may be asking ourselves, what’s next? Which new scandal will erupt and temporarily overshadow the previous one? Don’t people working at the IRS recognize what we see? All of this results from either stupidity and ignorance, or worse. We the people aren’t going to allow the destruction of America at the hands of foolish, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.

Tyranny Is No Longer ‘Lurking’

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Barack Obama/flickrGiven last week’s revelation that the IRS targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, it’s worth recalling President Obama’s Ohio State University commencement address. The president decried “voices” warning “that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.”

It’s no longer lurking. It’s here.

Testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee by the outgoing acting IRS commissioner, Steve Miller, as well as numerous statements by individuals claiming they have been harassed and intimidated by IRS agents, reveal a government agency out of control, or more precisely, under the control of political hacks. It’s doubtful this was a freelance operation. J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testified he knew as early as June 2012 that the IRS was targeting conservatives, but did nothing to stop it during the presidential campaign. Who else knew?

The delay in tax exemption approval prevented some conservative groups from donating money to the Romney campaign or to groups supporting his candidacy. The IRS even asked one tea party group in Richmond to identify all of their financial donors and volunteers.

There is a simple way to restrain the IRS so this type of intrusion doesn’t happen again: get rid of it. That’s what Steve Forbes proposed in his run for president in 1996 and 2000. So did former presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Forbes proposed a flat tax of 17 percent and a simple tax code. Individuals could file their tax returns on a post card.

Read more from this story HERE.

Of Course Obama Knew About IRS Targeting

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Beverly & PackThe standard police warning about con men applies to politicians, as well: When they tell you something that sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

So it goes with the White House claim that it knew nothing — nothing! — about the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service.

Of course the White House knew. And we already have the first piece of evidence.

The Friday hearing on what amounted to political profiling of anti-Obama groups took a huge step toward demolishing White House efforts to distance itself from the scandal. The agency’s inspector general testified that he told his bosses at the Treasury Department in June 2012 about his ongoing audit of public claims that the IRS was engaging in blatantly unfair treatment of conservatives. One of those he told at Treasury was Tim Geithner’s top deputy.

To believe the deputy, Neal Wolin, didn’t tell Geithner about such abuses, in the middle of a presidential campaign no less, is to believe they were all too busy to focus on politics. And to believe that Geithner didn’t warn the White House is to believe the IRS agents just made honest mistakes that coincidentally helped the incumbent president.

Read more from this story HERE.

Yes, the Obama Administration’s Actions Amount to Tyranny

/23 Comments/in , /by

What the Obama Administration has done with the IRS is nothing short of tyranny.

Let’s begin by stating the obvious. If government were a business, and subject to economic realities and the consequences of its ignoring them, it would have been liquidated long ago — its remaining assets of value would have been reclaimed by its creditors and shareholders (both of which are the American taxpayer), and its market share of consumers (also the American taxpayer, and those they are gracious enough to financially support) would be sought by other, more efficient businesses.

But let’s pretend for a moment that it is a business. And let’s pretend that this business had engaged not only in unethical practices, but illegal practices, completely betraying the trust of its shareholders and customers and and disavowing the very foundational principles upon which its business is predicated.

The IRS, an agency under the control of this government that Obama assures youngsters is no threat to liberty whatsoever, has done exactly that. They have apologized for selectively harassing, excessively scrutinizing, and denying benefits to conservative groups these last years.

Of particular note, the Treasury Department’s inspector general J. Russell George disclosed on Friday that the Obama administration officials were well aware of his auditing the IRS for its political screening policies in June 2012. Convenient as the IRS’s targeting of Democrats’ enemies was, the Obama administration chose not to reveal any of this knowledge to the public in the 2012 election year, yet it now feigns shock and indignation at the prospect that the IRS could have acted irresponsibly and illegally…

Obama is reasonably implicated in this crime, and this crime is nothing short of tyranny.

Read more from this story HERE.

Judge Shafts Joe Miller in FNSB Case

/8 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: KTUUIn yet another dubious move by the Alaska Court System, Judge Stephanie Joannides awarded the news blog Alaska Dispatch an inordinate sum totaling almost 100K in legal fees from the Miller v. FNSB court case. Joe Miller was ordered to pay 85K, this despite the fact that the majority of the fees were billed either before Miller intervened in the case or after they were a relevant party to the case.

The Alaska Dispatch remained party to the case long after the Anchorage Daily News and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reasonably withdrew, and had agreed not to petition the court for legal fees.

To any remotely objective observer, the Dispatch had no legitimate reason to remain party to the case outside of the source material they may have been able to gain through first-hand observation of the Borough depositions, a raw profit motive, or perhaps prurient interest.

In fact, Dispatch attorneys even admitted that they had no reason to be in the case, given that Mr. Miller had filed no action against them. Yet they still sought fees long after the case was decided in their favor, and from actions they had unilaterally undertaken, dating all the way back to Sept. 2010, weeks before Miller intervened in the case.

How is Miller responsible for expenses accrued by the Dispatch’s lawsuit against the Borough before he chose to intervene? Or for the debts accumulated long after they ceased to be a relevant party to the case?

Following is the breakdown of the fee schedule stated in Mr. Miller’s appeal:

“According to Alaska Dispatch’s counsel, he billed 123.1 hours of attorney’s fees from September 9, 2010 through October 19, 2010, when Mr. Miller intervened in this lawsuit; 34.6 hours from October 20, 2010 through October 26, 2010, when Alaska Dispatch obtained its relief; and 291 hours after October 27, 2010, while the cross-claims and third-party claim between Mr. Miller and FNSB/Whitaker were being litigated.”

Equally troubling is how Judge Joannides was assigned to the case in the first place, and subsequent revelations that she had a financial relationship with a Dispatch employee.

Under normal circumstances a judge would be assigned through a random selection process. However, in the FNSB case, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court intervened and hand-picked Judge Joannides. This is a very rare move, perhaps unprecedented outside of this particular case.

Moreover, Judge Joannides had rented her basement apartment to an Alaska Dispatch employee, but claimed that the fact was irrelevant to the case. This begs the question of whether it was a random coincidence. Does the Judge have further relationships with other folks at the Dispatch?

_____________________________________

Tom is author of the blog ‘It’s a Kwazy Life: Analyzing the Sanity in Politics That Control Our Lives’ and is also a Construction worker in Anchorage Alaska. This story first appeared at his blog HERE.

We Must “Politicize the Hell” out of Benghazi, Obamacare Shakedowns, AP Records Grab and IRS Abuses

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: TownHallBy Kurt Schlichter. Some establishment types are shaking their heads as they warn conservatives that we must not politicize the Administration’s Benghazi bungling, its Obamacare shakedowns, its AP records grab or its IRS abuses.

Like hell we mustn’t. We must. Big time.

The last couple weeks’ revelations of fresh and compelling examples of the kind of duplicity and petty tyranny we conservatives have been screaming about for five years have presented us with what military folks call a “seam.” A “seam” is the border where two different units meet, and it is generally the kind of weak point you want to drive your forces into in order to split your opponent’s front and rout him. These latest scandals have revealed a seam between two elements of the liberal coalition, the liberals who actually believe some of what they say and the cynical leftists who merely crave power.

Let’s split that seam.

But to do so, conservatives must ignore the voices of the fussy and the fainthearted and ruthlessly exploit it. We can and should – and must – politicize the hell out of these shameful imbroglios. Read more from this story HERE.

____________________________________________________

AP president rips ‘unconstitutional’ Obama administration investigation

By Jeff Poor. On this weekend’s broadcast of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt ripped the Obama’s administration’s Justice Department for the tactics it used in its investigation into leaks about a foiled terror plot in Yemen and the use of the Stuxnet virus against Iran’s nuclear program.

According to Pruitt, the government investigation overstepped by casting such a broad net under a veil of secrecy.

“Under their own rules, they are required to narrow this request as narrowly as possible so as to not tread upon the First Amendment,” Pruitt said. “And yet they had a broad, sweeping collection, and they did it secretly. Their rules require them to come to us first, but in this case they didn’t, claiming an exception, saying that if they had it would have posed a substantial threat to their investigation. But they have not explained why it would and we can’t understand why it would.” Read more from this story HERE.

The 10 P.M. Phone Call: Clinton and Obama Discussed Benghazi. What Did They Say?

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review What would you be focusing on in the Benghazi investigation?” I spent many years in the investigation biz, so it’s only natural that I’ve been asked that question a lot lately.

I had the good fortune to be trained in Rudy Giuliani’s U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. Rudy famously made his mark by making law enforcement reflect what common sense knew: Enterprises take their cues from the top. Criminal enterprises are no different: The capos do not carry out the policy of the button-men — it’s the other way around.

So if I were investigating Benghazi, I’d be homing in on that 10 p.m. phone call. That’s the one between President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the one that’s gotten close to zero attention…

We do not have a recording of this call, and neither Clinton nor the White House has described it beyond noting that it happened. But we do know that, just a few minutes after Obama called Clinton, the Washington press began reporting that the State Department had issued a statement by Clinton regarding the Benghazi attack. In it, she asserted: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Penny Pritzker: Obama’s Worst Insult to His Left-Wing Base

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: breitbart In a crowded field, Chicago billionaire, bundler, sub-prime banker and union buster Penny Pritzker is clearly the worst nominee that President Barack Obama has chosen for his second term cabinet.

Though the position for which she has been nominated, Secretary of Commerce, often goes to a presidential crony or political insider, Pritzker would exceed all her predecessors and peers with her shocking record of cronyism and failure.

Pritzker ran Superior Bank into the ground by dealing in sub-prime mortgages. As Breitbart News noted recently, the bank’s depositors lost $6000, on average, and the taxpayers got fleeced–but the investors got paid out first. Pritzker recently served on the board of the Chicago Public Schools during a period of abject educational failure, and earned a bad reputation with labor unions both there and at her family’s Hyatt hotel chain.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Tax Reform Moment

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: kenteegardinRupert Murdoch took some heat for observing on Twitter, “Growing IRS scandal makes perfect case for flat tax and abolition all deductions. Nothing could be fairer and abuse free.”

Several responses took Murdoch to task because the abusive treatment of certain groups applying for tax-exempt status, based on their politics, doesn’t have any direct relationship with the progressive income tax system, or plans to replace it.

But if I might be a bit more charitable to Murdoch, I think he was trying to make the broader case that a Flat Tax system would greatly reduce the size and power of the IRS. If his suggestion is taken literally, and all deductions are abolished, it follows that no one would be applying for any sort of tax-exempt status at all. One of the complaints raised by the groups targeted in the IRS scandal is that it put them at a competitive disadvantage against liberal groups, which sailed right through the Tax Exempt Organizations unit and secured approval in a matter of weeks – even when they were actually violating tax law at the time, as in the case of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, run by the President’s half-brother. This isn’t just a scandal about those who were given a hard time; it’s also about those who weren’t.

Read more from this story HERE.

This Is No Ordinary Scandal

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APPolitical abuse of the IRS threatens the basic integrity of our government.

By Peggy Noonan. We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they’re seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration’s credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don’t look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.

Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed. As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president’s answers when he’s pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice Department? You do not.

The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He’s shocked, it’s unacceptable, he’ll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.

But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.

A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town. Read more from this story HERE.

__________________________________________________

President Asterisk: Why the Obama IRS scandal may be worse than “a cancer on the presidency.”

By James Taranto. No one can deny that Barack Obama is a highly skilled politician, at least by the measure of election outcomes. His record is undefeated, save for an ill-advised 2000 primary challenge to an entrenched incumbent congressman. His 2008 presidential victory, after a fraction of a term in the U.S. Senate, was especially dazzling. It disproved those who said that Hillary Clinton was invincible, that a left-wing Democrat couldn’t win, and that America wasn’t ready for a black president.

No one can deny that Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire were highly skilled athletes. But their accomplishments are forever tainted by their use of banned performance-enhancing drugs. The use of the Internal Revenue Service’s coercive power to suppress dissent against Obama is the political equivalent of steroids. The history books should record Obama’s re-election with an asterisk to indicate that it was achieved with the help of illicit means.

The Weekly Standard notes that NBC’s Lisa Myers “reported this morning that the IRS deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election”:

The IRS commissioner “has known for at least a year that this was going on,” said Myers, “and that this had happened. And did he share any of that information with the White House? But even more importantly, Congress is going to ask him, why did you mislead us for an entire year? Members of Congress were saying conservatives are being targeted. What’s going on here? The IRS denied it. Then when–after these officials are briefed by the [inspector general] that this is going on, they don’t disclose it. In fact, the commissioner sent a letter to Congress in September on this subject and did not reveal this. Imagine if we–if you can–what would have happened if this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different.”

Read more from this story HERE.