Fun is fun-but I am done. Two weeks is a bit too long, and I definitely ready to go home.
I did want to take the opportunity to comment on the outrage being displayed in the Fox News set about the Tea Party getting extra scrutiny by the IRS. And as for the NSA-my Canadian Counterpart asks the simple question: What else did you expect?
Most of you will remember that I went apeshit when I first heard about the Bush NSA program that was implemented in secret, without congressional authorization, after 9/11. I went on about it for years, actually.
But the people who were fine with it then – and in some cases demanded the prosecution of journalists that reported on it – are out of their tiny pinheads about it now. Of course, these are almost universally the same twats that want a secret war in Syria, so go figure.
However there are a couple of important distinctions.First, Obama sought a FISA warrant for the records, which Bush never did, and Republicans insisted that he didn't have to under Unitary Executive Theory, the Authorization to Use Military Force Resolution of 2001 and the "Because ….Lincoln!" argument that they deploy whenever it fucking suits them.
Second, the GOP voted to change the law to to allow for exactly what Obama is doing today. Something I would advocate impeaching Obama for, Republicans legitimized way back when.
Obama did not invent this-he just kept on doing what Bush was doing, only complying with the minor details that Bush could not be bothered to do.
Which brings us to the IRS. For sure the optics are quite poor-the big black guy that every teabagger hates picking on the patriotic group of whiners known as the Tea Party. But when they whine-one should remember the stuff they leave out:
The Tea Parties weren't asserting a right, they were seeking a favor from the government in the form of non-profit tax status. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of the right to tax-exempt status for anyone but Indians in the Constitution. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either ignorant of lying………….
President Nixon specifically targeted individuals for IRS harassment, just as Johnson and Kennedy did before him. The difference is that they weren't organized groups seeking deductions in a post-Citizens United world, which begs such scrutiny. Nixon went after individual members of groups, journalists and sundry political enemies, which is a clear abuse of power and something no one has accused Obama of.
Skippy Stalin's concluding line is a classic: "Do you want to pay higher tax rates just because shitty people with dishonest thinking don't want to pay any at all?"
What he said.
Your problem is that the LEFT leaped out of its skin denouncing Bush for his alleged behavior while his Clinton era apointees were running the intelligence services and have absolutely nothing to say about Obama's intelligence officials doing exactly precisely the same thing and not just capturing and detaining suspected terrorists but simply outright exterminating them. Has he captured any since taking office?
IRS and Nixon contrastionation. So Fucking What? He's dead. Remember? Hard core communists at the EPA and IRS and NSA are violating the law and you and stalin say, "fuck you loser, Nixon is alleged to have talked about doing it to?"
That's your rebuttal is it?
WTF happened to blaming Bush? Oops, you both did that too.
The issue is that the right did no screaming about the same issues when Bush was President. Plenty of responsible people on the left have been quick to decry Obama on this issue and others. But that is what he is getting at when he talks about the Shitty People in the Tea Party. They only started whining when Obama became President.
Bush can't be blamed enough. His Presidency dramatically affected the USA and not for the better.
Conservatives are not screamers. Of course the right objected. They just didn't wear pink and have full time media exposure from what passes for media in this country.
You and Stalin agree on the tax thing then. You're saying, "Do you want to pay higher tax rates just because shitty 'poor, lazy, shiftless, young, ill' people with 'no money' don't want to pay any at all?"
See, you and Skippy keep thinking that my money is your money. I never make that mistake about you or other people. I guess I'm just ethical and not a slave dealer or pimp who expects people to work hard all day for nothing at all for as long as it takes for you to get your money.
The tax system is horrific. One has only to look histroiclly at the precentage of taxes paid by corpoartins decades ago as compared to today where, of course, the salaryman(woman) gets killed.
There was a concept decades ago called TIA(Total Information Awaremess) that the spooks/NSC types THEN thought was a good idea. It proved to be unworkable. Data, pre-SUPER computer, was available in abundance but it proved to be just too much. The sad part is this fear of the lack of privacy seems to be generational, with OLD codgers like myself to be the most offended and worried, though I am not so inclined.
Heck, when i go to Amazon they KNOW what i want to buy:"""" And how many stories do we see of dumbass(usually kids/girls) tell all thieri most intimate secrets and body parts on facebbok to sex texts or tweets and are Shockedf, SHOCKED that their "friernds" tell/show theri f friends etc etc. …Bottom line of this rant. Privacy is dead. 1984
sigh.
Skippy, you've got the right of this argument.
Here's the thing: An individual's "right to privacy" ends when a judge says it ends. Not the President. Not the FBI director. An Article-III-appointed-for-life-under-the-constitution judge. As you point out, George II couldn't be bothered with the Constitutional niceties.
Curtis, when did the right scream? Hannity went on air every night for weeks arguing that anyone who opposed the NSA warrantless accumulation of data was a traitor. Beck was worse. O'Reilly had the same bullet points as Hannity. Limbaugh echoed Beck. Possibly the only voice on the right opposing the plans was Neil Boortz (in Atlanta if you don't know who he is). Now the "scary man" is actually complying with the law PASSED BY THE REPUBLICANS and it is an inveasion of privacy? This I do not understand. But maybe because it's hypocritical and I don't tolerate hypocrites very well. (One of the reasons why I always enjoy Skippy's posts (even when we disagree) and Lex before him).
And the 50(c)(4) inquiries is not about your money being my money or anyone else's money. It is only about complying with the law. The law was badly written. Citizens United made a bad law worse. The IRS was and is understaffed. The employees are doing the best they can to interpret the law which allows tax exempt status to community welfare organizations. Can someone help me understand how a political advocacy group (which is not entitled to tax exempt status, see e.g. the DNC or the RNC) is a community welfare organization? Is Rove's Crossroads interetested in community welfare of defeating democratic candidates? If you say both, then you begin to understand the nature of the problem facing the IRS employees.
Semper fi.
Once a Marine, I don't watch any of that stuff. Nope. I'm strictly a product of the media environment not some wingnut who watches wingnuts on one wingnut (most popular by far) news channel. So. I saw all the pink anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-capitalism, anti-1% every night on the ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, NBC news but I never caught them covering the screamers you mention. Do you suppose the media wasn't covering the right wing protests just as it unfailing failed to cover the Tea Party rallies? When I say conservative or use the term right wing, let's just presume I'm talking the Wall Street Journal, Spengler, V.D. Hanson, the Hoover Institute, the Claremont Insititute, Michael Kelly, Herb Caen, Mike Royko, Henninger, Taranto. Wingnuts like that.
I don't see one word in the Constitution about a right to privacy. You know what that means? I have it and nobody can take it away. Nobody. The idea that this country finds it suitable for a judge to determine if a man must enter his own password into his computer or hard drives in order to use the information on those drives against him while the state prosecutes him on no other evidence…. Ludicrous. It's just like requiring citizens to tape themselves continuously and turn them over to the police whenever the police want to see them. Or force you to call up the federal call data repository and have it record all your phone calls. BS.
I wrote about it earlier but what right does anyone have to tell google or any other business that they not only have to turn over the records demanded by the police, they must also PAY to develop the tools and technology to find precisely the data that the police may want access to? I have no problem with them dumping the entire mass of data on the government and inviting them to figure it out because anything shared on someone else's harddrives is theirs and thus nobody with data on someone else's hard drive has a leg to stand on and claim that it is private.
I'm not sure what law you're talking about that was passed by Republicans. The only ONLY LAW I can recall that passed on a strict party line vote was ObamaCare. I don't actually have any problem with the surveillance state. We created it to monitor the Russians. Only a contemptible idiot would not instantly assume that it would be used to monitor everyone. I am not an idiot.
viz the tax exempt nonsense. You are spouting talking points. I don't follow them but know them when I hear them. Set them aside for a minute and consider: thousands of tea party type legal structures were submitted to the IRS for review and approval. Thousands of left wing structures identical in purpose were submitted. Thousands of left wing structures were approved. Very very very very few of the Tea Party or Patriot structures were. I don't believe a word that the IRS has said so far in its defense. It is indefensible to do what they did and then turn around and claim there was no bias. Stupid to say they had the manpower to approve all the left wing nutjobs but not enough to approve the rightwing nutjobs (EVEN THOUGH THE THREW THOUSANDS OF MANHOURS INTO INVESTIGATING EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THE RIGHTWING NUTJOBS, right?)
I believe in a flat tax. I believe in using the power of money to operate the levers of political power. I think anybody who fails to understand that 'money is power' is insufferably stupid and ignorant. I believe that everyone should be treated fairly by the government not subjected to the whims of stupid petty communist bureaucrats. I'm perfectly OK with eliminating tax free structures that lobby the government. I'm also OK with taking your congressman out to lunch or dinner and pushing your case over martinis. And, if you get one to go for a walk near a cliff I'm OK with a little pushing there too.
The IRS was and is understaffed.
When the IRS story broke, there was linked on Drudge a story about the bonuses that the lead lady who ran the office received. Now I know many here don't like Drudge, and believe those who read his sight just follow talking points, but one thing to remember, Drudge doesn't write the articles or have people go and dig up dirt. All he does is link articles that are out there from all sources (ABC, Huff Post, etc) and gives them a catchy title to get your attention, but the fact remains that the articles are still out there from different souces, and not just right leaning ones.
Back to my point, during the period from 2009-2012, Lerner received over $100K in bonuses from the IRS, including her normal step increase. What is more telling was that in the article, it stated that she was not alone in getting huge bonuses, and showed that many in the IRS during the same time period received bonuses from $3k (I only wish I made that kind of bonus during the same time period and I am a government worker) to some who made $70K and above. Funny thing too, it lsted the names and as I was reading through the list, a funny thing struck me, a lot of them were female names. Now I am a male with a female sounding name, but most of them were definate female names. So much for this supposed war on women.
My point is that to say the IRS is understaffed is a joke. If they can afford to give out up to $100K in bonuses to people tells me that they are doing just fine with the manpower they have. The bottom line is that they are all accountants, working for an organization that can never go broke. Do they really need to be that skilled in accounting to justifiy those types of bonuses.
It seems to me that many government organizations should follow the DOD lead in treating their employees. GAO, who sets the hotels prices and travel prices spends outlandish amounts on their own, yet when you try to justify an upgrade to a rental car in DoD you get told no. IRS handing out $20,000 and up bonuses to people, yet for DoD you will be lucky to get a $900 (before taxes) and 8 hrs time off award.
Do I believe that the IRS targeted conservative groups, sure. Is that right, no. Look at how the DoD and USMC and other services have come down hard on individuals posting negative comments about its leadership sometimes on people who do it on non-DOD computers. We have to follow the rules to be impartial as Federal employees, yet these guys at IRS don't. Even though they have to go throudh the same EO training as other government employees do.
"Do you want to pay higher tax rates just because shitty people with dishonest thinking don't want to pay any at all?"
What he said.
In regards to this, I am still waiting for Corzine, the crooked former Senator and GOv of NJ to be indicted for his part in the IMF Global stealing of up to a billion dollars, and yet nothng is being done to him, while I have a nephew sitting in the state pen in a southern state for getting caught with a few ounces of drug. Until that crook joins my nephew in some sort of penal institution, I'mnot concerned about tax rates for people who make a lot of money, I want the crooks who get a lot of money illegally thrown in jail, so that at least the rest of us can at least get in the game and make a fair shot at it.