Photo Credit: AP
His exact words: “President Obama says he’s renewing his efforts to close Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay? How about closing the IRS? Why don’t we do that?”
Loud applause broke out, and then Mr. Leno continued: “How about shipping the IRS to Guantanamo Bay? That’s what we — yes. That’s how you do it.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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“In Wetumpka, we are patriotic Americans; we peacefully assemble; we petition our government; we exercise our right to free speech. We don’t understand why the government tried to stop us. I’m not here as a serf or a vassal. I’m not begging my lord for mercy. I’m a born-free American woman, wife, mother, and citizen, and I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place.”
“I’m not interested in scoring political points. I want to preserve and protect the America that I grew up in. The America that people crossed oceans and risked their lives to become a part of, and I’m terrified it’s slipping away.”
It’s not just the IRS. A second federal agency is facing a probe and accusations of political bias over its alleged targeting of conservative groups.
“I don’t think it is fair at all. It is not fair to the American taxpayer — the American taxpayer should expect and demand that the EPA treats everyone equally in regard to these requests,” said Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. “This cannot be tolerated. As we see more federal agencies with this kind of bias, it is and should be a concern for all of us.”
The allegations concern the Environmental Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests — allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones.
The allegations are under investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is also holding hearings on the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.
The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.
The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a bronze plan.
“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says. Read more from this story HERE.
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Two-Thirds of Americans Don’t Know If They Will Insure Under Obamacare
By Dan Mangan. There’s no assurance folks will be buying insurance under Obamacare, and that could spell trouble for the Affordable Care Act.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.
And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May.
And a whopping 68 percent of low-income Americans aren’t sure they qualify for tax credits that would subsidize their purchase of health insurance—despite they fact that they almost invariably will qualify, the survey found. That population is most likely to benefit from government subsidies under the health-care reform law.
Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, said public uncertainty about Obamacare—particularly a lack of commitment to signing up—could end up driving up health-insurance costs under the program because not enough healthy people will participate to offset benefits payouts. Read more from this story HERE.
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ObamaCare Bait and Switch: The truth about those rate increases in Oregon and California
By The Wall Street Journal. Liberals have spent years claiming that “rate shock” under the Affordable Care Act—the 20% to 30% average spike in insurance premiums that every independent analyst projects—is merely the political imagination of Republicans and the insurance industry. So they immediately claimed victory when California reported last month that the plans that will be available on the state’s new insurance exchange next year would be cheaper than they are today.
Except now it emerges that California goosed the data to make it appear as if ObamaCare won’t send costs aloft as the law’s regulations and mandates kick in. It will, by a lot. And now liberals have suddenly switched to arguing that, sure, insurance will be more expensive but the new costs are justified. Needless to say that was not how Democrats sold health-care reform.
California reported that the rates would range from 2% above to 29% below the current market. “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,” said Peter Lee, the director of the state exchange. “These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard.”
But Mr. Lee and his fellow regulators were making a false comparison. They weren’t looking at California’s lightly regulated individual insurance market that functions surprisingly well. They were comparing ObamaCare insurance to the state’s current small-business market where regulations similar to ObamaCare have already been imposed.
In other words, California wasn’t comparing apples to apples. It wasn’t even comparing apples to oranges. It was comparing apples to ostriches. Read more from this story HERE.
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Nearly a month after the scandal broke, the issue of who directed agents in Cincinnati to single out Tea Party and other groups is perhaps the most glaring unanswered question. Inspector General J. Russell George, at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, revealed Monday that his audit of the agency tried — unsuccessfully — to get to the root of the targeting.
“We did pose that question and no one would acknowledge who, if anyone, provided that direction,” he said…
George later testified that the scandal itself is “unprecedented.” He cited past attempts by the Nixon administration to use the IRS for inappropriate purposes, but said this program was unprecedented.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Former senior Obama aide David Plouffe ripped Issa in a Twitter message, referring to allegations from as far back as 1972, when Issa was still a teenager.
“Strong words from Mr Grand Theft Auto and suspected arsonist/insurance swindler. And loose ethically today,” Plouffe tweeted.
Plouffe’s “grand theft” crack referred to charges of larceny that Issa faced in 1972 after he allegedly stole a Maserati sports car. Issa claims the incident was a case of mistaken identity and the charges were later dropped.
The “arsonist/insurance swindler” insult referred to a 1982 fire at a Cleveland warehouse belonging to Issa’s companies Quantum Enterprises and Steal Shopper. The fire was ruled suspicious and Issa collected an insurance payout, but he was not charged with any crime.
Read more from this story HERE.
The Internal Revenue Service is playing defense on a new front: excess spending on conferences.
The IRS spent close to $50 million on 225 conferences between 2010 and 2012, according to briefings given to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
TIGTA will release an audit Tuesday that details surplus spending at a conference in 2010 for 2,700 people in the IRS Small Business/Self-Employed division.
At a House oversight committee hearing on the issue next week, lawmakers will focus on the August 2010 conference held in Anaheim, California, at a cost of $4 million. Several IRS employees stayed in presidential suites at hotels, the committee learned. Such suites currently cost between $1,500 to $3,500 per night.
“The culture of the federal workforce is one where I don’t think you can underestimate that if you don’t keep reminding the voters – but also the federal workers – that we’re watching, this will happen again,” Rep. Darrell Issa said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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The agent in the Cincinnati office, in which the targeting took place, told congressional investigators that he or she was told in March 2010 by a supervisor to search for Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status and that “Washington, D.C., wanted some cases”…
When asked by congressional investigators about allegations and press reports about two agents in Cincinnati essentially being responsible for the targeting, the agent responded: “It’s impossible. As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen. … They were basically throwing us underneath the bus.”
Read more from this story HERE.
By Fox News. In the wake of the scandal over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, the embattled agency has provided lawmakers with a video featuring about a dozen of its employees line dancing on a stage.
The video of the IRS workers practicing their dance moves, which lasts just under three minutes, comes weeks after it was revealed that agency workers produced two other videos parodying the “Star Trek” and “Gilligan’s Island” TV shows.
All three videos were given to Congress on Friday in response to a request issued by Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, after learning that the videos were recorded at IRS offices in New Carrollton, Md., outside Washington, D.C.
The latest recording cost about $1,600 and was produced to be shown at the end of a 2010 training and leadership conference held in Anaheim, Calif., said IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge. Read more from this story HERE.
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GOP says report will expose lavish spending at 2010 IRS conference
By Bernie Becker. The House Oversight Committee is holding another hearing on the IRS — but not one dealing with the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.
The panel, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), will hear on Thursday from Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration about “excessive spending” at IRS conferences.
“The IRS is an agency in crisis,” Issa said in a statement. “The American people expect that their tax-dollars will be used responsibly and not for financing lavish hotel suites and entertainment for government employees. The Oversight Committee will examine these egregious abuses of the public trust and an IRS culture that shuns accountability.” Read more from this story HERE.
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During the final weeks of the campaign Salvi loaned himself over a million dollars to buy ads in the Chicago media market. This in turn prompted the Democrat party’s campaign arms to file complaints with the FEC and in kind the FEC, specifically Lois Lerner, filed charges against Al Salvi.
That is when Mr. Salvi contends Lois Lerner made him the following offer, “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.”
Read more from this story HERE.