ARRA News Service

It's All Irrelevant?

2013-05-20T20:00:00.000-05:00

Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: By almost any measure, last week was a bad week for the Obama White House. Predictably, the White House did its best to spin the trio of scandals making daily headlines with a presence on every major Sunday talk show. But rather than sending out Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama's closest advisors, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough or Vice President Joe Biden, the American people were introduced to White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer.

Mr. Pfeiffer did not help the president's cause. Pfeiffer had one response to virtually every major question, "It's irrelevant."

We get a deluge of information whenever it suits the purposes of this administration. When Osama bin Laden was killed, President Obama wasted no time in going before the cameras. We got pictures of the president, Biden and Clinton in the Situation Room. We even have a picture of the president in the Oval Office being informed about the Sandy Hook shootings.

But we have virtually nothing about Obama's actions on the night Ambassador Stevens and three other brave Americans were murdered in Benghazi.

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace tried in vain to get some answers about Benghazi, repeatedly asking Dan Pfeiffer where was President Obama and what was he doing on the night of the attacks.

Pfeiffer initially tried deflection, saying, "The question here is not what happened that night." When asked if Obama was in the Situation Room, Pfeiffer responded, "That's a largely irrelevant fact."

Moving on to the IRS scandal, on ABC's "This week," host George Stephanopoulos asked, "What does the president believe? Does the president believe that [targeting conservative groups] would be illegal?" Pfeiffer's answered, "The law is irrelevant."

A stunned Stephanopoulos asked, "You don't really mean the law is irrelevant, do you?"

The evasiveness continued on CBS's "Face The Nation." But a fed up Bob Schieffer put Pfeiffer in his place. Schieffer pointed out the Obama Administration's habit of sending out people, like Susan Rice, who know very little about a given topic to say even less. Then Schieffer asked, "Why are you here today? Why isn't the White House Chief of Staff here to tell us what happened?"

The American people do not believe these scandals are "irrelevant." A new CNN poll finds that 84% of Americans believe Benghazi is an important issue, 85% say the same about the IRS scandal, and 87% believe the Associated Press phone records scandal is an important issue.

The "Rogue" Agents Speak
Those "rogue" IRS agents in the Cincinnati office who allegedly targeted conservative and Christian organizations for harassment and increased scrutiny are speaking out. I'm not surprised since higher-ups in Washington are trying to pass the buck and blame them. Here's what one IRS worker in the Cincinnati office told the Washington Post:
"We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. …That's why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don't have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive."We need to hear more from these folks so we can learn just how far up the ladder this scandal goes. We didn't get much from Commissioner Steven Miller's testimony Friday, and Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) was furious.

If you missed Rep. Kelly's exchange with Commissioner Miller, watch it here. It is a rare thing for a member of Congress to get a standing ovation during a congressional hearing!

Later this week we will hear from Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS office at the center of this entire controversy. She certainly has a lot of explaining to do.

A Remarkable Coincidence
Some in the media have tried to argue that there is no IRS scandal because there is no evidence that President Obama ordered the IRS to do anything wrong or that he even knew about it. He said he learned about the outrageous and likely illegal activity at the same time the rest of the country learned about it.

But top White House officials, including White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, did know about it last month. Former Clinton White House Counsel >Lanny Davis
(a guy who knows something about scandals!) is calling for Ruemmler to resign.

But consider this: According to White House visitor logs, the president of the IRS employees' union, Colleen Kelley, met with President Obama at 12:30 PM on March 31, 2010. According to the inspector general's report, the IRS campaign to harass and intimidate Tea Party and other conservative groups was launched a day or two later, on April 1st or 2nd.

The visitor logs prove nothing by themselves. The timing is a remarkable coincidence. For her part, Kelley is standing by the Cincinnati agents, telling the Associated Press, "No processes or procedures or anything like that would ever be done just by front-line employees without any management involvement. That's just not how it operates." Stay tuned!

Fox Reporter Investigated
News is breaking today about another potential media scandal separate from the controversy surrounding the seizure of phone records from the Associated Press. According to the Washington Post, the Obama Justice Department spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010. The investigation was launched after Rosen broke a story on North Korea's growing nuclear weapons program and its likely response to new sanctions.

Like the massive seizure of AP phone records, the Rosen case stands out for the extent of the government's intrusiveness. In addition to seizing phone records and personal emails, the government tracked Rosen's movements in and out of the State Department using "security badge access records."

Even more outrageous, the FBI suggested Rosen was a potential criminal co-conspirator in the release of classified information in order to justify a warrant to seize his email and phone records.

Michael Clemente, an executive vice president at Fox News, blasted the allegation, saying, "We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter. …We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press."

In addition, we are also following the breaking news that the Department of Justice obtained emails from two other Fox News staffers, reporter William La Jeunesse and producer Mike Levine. Their emails reportedly turned up in an inspector general's report released today on Operation Fast and Furious.
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Gary Bauer is is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families where his articles are also shared.

Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, IRS, abusing conservative, groups and people, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

President Obama: Lean Forward!

2013-05-20T19:00:00.000-05:00

by AF Branco

Tags: President Obama, Obamacare, IRS, TEA Party, Lean Forward, ediorial cartoon, AF Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

No To National ID Card

2013-05-20T18:04:00.000-05:00

by Dr. Ron Paul, Campaign for Liberty:
No National ID Petition to:
My U.S. Representative and Senators

Whereas: Privacy from government is a chief cornerstone of our liberties, enshrined in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution; and

Whereas: In the past, many Members of Congress, instead of taking steps to end illegal immigration, have chosen instead to use the issue to dramatically expand government intrusion into our lives; and

Whereas: The so-called "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" proposal being touted by Senators Chuck Schumer and John McCain includes a de facto National ID system that would be required for all U.S. citizens in order to hold a job legally; and

Whereas: A National Database with biometric information would also be created, allowing government bureaucrats to track an American’s every move.

Therefore: I urge you to oppose any legislation requiring U.S. citizens to obtain a National ID card just to get a job - or any other bill that would establish a National ID card that includes biometric scanning or tracking devices.

Link to Sign the Petition

Tags: petition, no to National ID Card, Dr. Ron Paul, national id card, Gang of Eight, Campaign for Liberty To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

IRS Scandal - Time for Rein in the IRS Rallies on Tuesday May 21

2013-05-20T15:08:00.000-05:00

Tea Party Patriots Reject Apology, Demand Resignations and Insist on Investigation! Encourage: Rein in the IRS Rallies on Tuesday, May 21 @ Noon

On behalf of Tea Party, Patriot groups, 9/12, liberty activists, and the American people,
we are calling for anyone and everyone to protest the IRS’ complete abuse of power
on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at noon local time.

ARRA News Service - Today the Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization, rejected the apology by the IRS for targeting tax-exempt groups for further review during the 2012 election cycle and demanded the immediate resignations of all of those involved in the deliberate harassment of Tea Party Patriots and similar groups. News reports indicated that Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups at the IRS, blamed the targeting of organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their tax-exempt applications on “low-level workers in Cincinnati.”

“The IRS has demonstrated the most disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of government power,” said a local Baxter County (AR) Party member.

“This deliberate targeting and harassment of tea party groups reaches a new low in illegal government activity and overreach. It is suspicious that the activity of these ‘low-level workers’ was unknown to IRS leadership at the time it occurred. President Obama must also apologize for his administration ignoring repeated complaints by these broad grassroots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens again. We reject a simple apology that does nothing to alleviate the danger of this happening again. Only immediate and public actions on the part of the IRS and the president will suffice.

“We demand the immediate resignation of all complicit in this activity should imediately resign and Congress should investigate beyond a few cursory hearings."

Quoting Speaker Boehner, “The IRS admitted to targeting conservatives, even if the White House continues to be stuck on the word ‘if.’ My question isn't about who is going to resign. My question is who's going to jail over this scandal?”

On May 10th, America learned that the IRS – perhaps the most frightening of all government agencies – has been singling out and targeting conservative groups, including Tea Party groups. This admission from the IRS confirms what many of us had already suspected. The IRS has, in fact, been delaying our applications and harassing those of us who wanted to form local Tea Party chapter organizations. In some extreme cases, the IRS went after Tea Party local leaders and audited their family members. President Obama said the IRS's actions are "unacceptable." He's right, but these actions are also un-American and un-Constitutional.

The First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, which includes the right to political speech and the right to associate and form groups with other like-minded individuals. The Tea Party movement, which began organically in 2010 in response to government excess, has attracted millions of regular Americans. The Tea Party movement is, at its core, the embodiment of the American spirit. The Tea Party movement sprang up in response to the government's abuses of its powers, and this latest stunt from the IRS confirms for many of us why the Tea Party is so necessary.

In response to this outrageous revelation, the House Ways & Means Committee immediately held a hearing to question Steven Miller, the former acting commissioner of the IRS who resigned because of the scandal, but only one month before his term would have ended. The questions at the hearing covered a broad spectrum: When did you learn about this targeting? What actions did you take after learning about this issue? Why did you previously lie to the Ways & Means Committee? Why did you mislead the American people about this problem? But Mr. Miller is apparently suffering from temporary amnesia because the only answer he offered was: "I don't remember." The systemic abuse of power that took place for nearly three years at the IRS is simply too far-reaching and widespread for Mr. Miller to get away with not remembering what took place.

Americans expect that our government will enforce its laws and rules – especially its tax laws – with fairness and equal application. Congress needs to keep asking questions and demanding more substantive answers than the evasive responses Mr. Miller provided.

But if this scandal at the IRS has taught us anything, it's that we need to rein in the federal government and make it more accountable to us. The IRS's abuse of power highlights why the Senate needs to slow down with its amnesty bill. We simply cannot trust bureaucrats to make the right decisions. Immigration policy is too complex and too important for us to delegate to a group of bureaucrats who may be pursuing an agenda that doesn't match Americans' best interest.

Time again to serve some TEA! Join your fellow Concerned Citizens this Tuesday, May 21st at Noon local time at your nearest IRS Office - click for a potential locations – for a Rein in the IRS Street Rally calling for the IRS to stop the abuse of power.

Tags: IRS Scandal, TEA Party, Patriots, Rein in the IRS, Street Rallies, IRS Offices, May 21, 2013 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

A Culture Of Intimidation Throughout The Administration

2013-05-20T14:07:00.000-05:00

by Gary Varvel

Today in Washington, D.C. - May 20, 2013
The Senate reconvened at 2 PM. The Senate will begin consideration of S. 954, the farm bill. Later today, the Senate will take up and also vote on the nominations of Sheri Chappell to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida and Michael McShane to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Oregon.

Today the House is considering and expected to vote on HR 258 — Stolen Valor Act of 2013 and HR 1073 — Nuclear Terrorism Conventions Implementation and Safety of Maritime Navigation Act of 2013. Both are expected to pass with little or no objections.

As more details of the IRS scandal involving improper scrutiny of tea party groups come out, ever more questions about the Obama administration are being raised.

Wall Street Journal reported last night, “The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday. That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time. In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that ‘a small number of line IRS employees had improperly scrutinized certain…organizations by using words like “tea party” and “patriot,”’ the official said. President Barack Obama said last week he learned about the controversy at the same time as the public, on May 10, when an IRS official revealed it to a conference of lawyers. The president's statement drew criticism, focusing attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently informed about the agencies under his authority.”

Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker goes through statements by Lois G. Learner, the director of the IRS division responsible for granting tax-exempt status, and finds her earning “a bushel of Pinocchios.” Glenn Kessler writes, “In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury Inspector General’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.” Kessler dings her claims that 501(c)(4) applications rose dramatically prior to the IRS targeting, that she only learned about targeting of tea party groups from news reports last year, and saying that no one had asked her about such targeting prior to the conversation that broke the news initially. Kessler concludes, “In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios.”

Yesterday, White House communications advisor Dan Pfeiffer made the rounds on Sunday shows giving the Obama administration’s spin on the swirling scandals, but when he got to Face the Nation and CBS’ Bob Schieffer, Schieffer had apparently run out of patience with Pfeiffer’s answers. Describing the interview, Mediaite writes, “Cutting to the chase, Schieffer questioned whether the White House is approaching the issues in earnest (‘Does that mean you don’t take any of this seriously?’), which Pfeiffer quickly denied. . . . It’s ‘very difficult,’ Schieffer argued, to understand how the White House would have been ignorant to the goings-on within the agency. Pfeiffer claimed it was so, as Schieffer continued to express skepticism. ‘Is this president out of touch?’ the CBS host asked, addressing the talk about Obama often appearing to be a bystander. . . . Schieffer pressed on though: Later in the interview, he denied any desire to be ‘argumentative,’ but pointed out that when the executive branch does something right (e.g. killing Osama bin Laden), the White House has no ‘hesitancy’ in taking credit. ‘But with all of these things, when these things happen, you seem to send out officials many times who don’t even seem to know what has happened,’ he added, as contrast.”

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell emphasized that there is a larger “culture of intimidation” in the Obama administration towards those they consider their political opponents. Leader McConnell said, “[T]here is a culture of intimidation throughout the administration. The IRS is just the most recent example. Let me just recount a few for [the] audience. Over at HHS back during the Obama care debate, Secretary Sebelius sent out a directive to help insurance companies telling them they couldn't inform their policyholders of what they thought the impact of Obamacare would be on them. Now she's trying to shake them down for contributions in effect to agree to go out and how to convince the public that they should love Obamacare. Over at the FCC there have been efforts by Obama appointees to shut down or make [it] difficult [for] people who are seeking to buy advertising to criticize the administration. Over at the SEC the Obama appointees have been engaged in an effort to make it difficult for corporations to exercise their First Amendment political rights. [C]oming back to the IRS, the head of the union at the IRS gives 99 percent of her campaign money to Democrats. She openly criticizes the Republican House for trying to reduce government spending and has specifically targeted Tea Party groups in her public comments. It's no wonder that the agents in the IRS sort of get the message."

Tags: Washington, D.C., Obama administration, Culture of Indimidation To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama's Stupid Pet Tricks

2013-05-17T19:30:00.000-05:00

by A.F. "Tony" Branco

Tags: President Obama, Big Government, Benghazi, cover-up, AP Phone records, IRS, TEA Party, conservative groups, scandals, AF Branco, editorial cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

IRS Rules Already Clear On 501(c)(4) Political Activity

2013-05-17T19:00:00.000-05:00

"Targeting organizations for special scrutiny on the belief that they might exercise their First Amendment protected rights to engage in political activity in is an egregious violation of the freedom of speech. If it had been done consistently for groups of all stripes. it would not have made it better." — ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

Americans for Limited Government - Fairfax, VA: In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, outgoing Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Steven Miller suggested that the targeting of tea party and other groups was in part caused by Congress' failure to provide "clear rules" on what constitutes political activity.

"With respect to political activity, it would be a wonderful thing to get better rules," Miller said, stating the rules needed to be "more clear."

But those rules are already clear, Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens noted.

"IRS rules already stipulate that political activity is electioneering, that is, express advocacy for or against a candidate standing for public office and direct contributions to candidates or candidate committees. And it is already clear based on IRS rules that 501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to engage in a limited amount of political activity provided it does not constitute a majority of its activity, plus an unlimited amount of lobbying and issues advocacy, that is, advocacy in favor or against legislation or regulations or court rulings, provided that it furthers its tax-exempt function," Mehrens stated.

"Miller may not agree with those rules, but to suggest they are not clear is incorrect," Mehrens explained.

Miller explained the targeting: "What happened here was someone saw some tea party cases come through. They were acknowledging that they were going to be engaged in politics. This was the timeframe in 2010 when Citizens United was out. There was a lot of discussion in the system about the use of [501](c)(4)s."

Except, Citizens United clarified that organizations are allowed to engage in politics, Mehrens explained. "If anything, Citizens United made things more clear, not less. The Supreme Court simplified the rules and stated that organizations have a First Amendment right to engage in political activity, period."

Miller continued in his testimony, explaining the process for centralizing these cases: "People in Cincinnati decided let's start grouping these cases, let's centralize these cases." This meant quarantining the applications and sending them to Exempt Organizations (EO) Technical, based in Washington, D.C. for special scrutiny.

"The way they centralized it, troublesome. The concept of centralization, not," Miller said, suggesting that targeting political activity of groups was permissible. Elsewhere in testimony, he agreed that the agency was targeting political activity: "the litmus test if anything was political activity."

Mehrens blasted the practice, "The IRS processes thousands of tax-exempt applications a year that engage in issues advocacy, lobbying, and yes, political activity without any hassle or special scrutiny. They are allowed by law to engage in these activities. Yet, these tea party cases were selected for special scrutiny. This created inconsistency in the processing of applications, when the revenue procedures state that centralization is supposed to establish uniformity. Liberal groups doing the same thing as tea party groups were not centralized."

But, even if liberal groups had been targeted too would not have helped, Mehrens added, "Targeting organizations for special scrutiny on the belief that they might exercise their First Amendment protected rights to engage in political activity in is an egregious violation of the freedom of speech. If it had been done consistently for groups of all stripes would not have made it better."

Miller suggested the practice was "not illegal," but Mehrens said, "Of course it was illegal. These actions violated the First Amendment to the Constitution which is the 'supreme Law of the Land'."
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Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703) 383-0880 ext. 103 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

Tags: Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Commissioner Steven Miller, IRS Rules, 501(c)(4), political activity, Citizens United, House hearings, Americans for Limited Government, Nathan Mehrens To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Formula for Abuse of Power

2013-05-17T18:10:00.000-05:00

by Ken Blackwell, Contributing Author: John F. Kennedy as a candidate liked to tweak his opponent, Richard Nixon. When the Wall Street Journal criticized Republican Nixon, Kennedy jumped on it. “That’s like L’Osservatore Romano criticizing the Pope!” The press corps knew that that Italian newspaper was the house organ of the Vatican. They loved the fact that Catholic Kennedy was throwing such a witty jab at Nixon.

So, we all need to pay attention when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews criticizes President Obama. That’s like L’Osservatore Romano kniocking the Pope. Matthews was the kennel master for the lapdogs of the Obama media. He said in 2008 that he “felt a thrill going up my leg” whenever Mr. Obama spoke.

That was then. Now, Chris Matthews has issued a stern rebuke over the Obama administration’s mounting scandals. He particularly focused in on Mr. Obama’s lax management style and his obvious inattention to the nitty-gritty demands of being a Chief Executive. Matthews grilled a guest:
"What part of the presidency does Obama like? He doesn't like dealing with other politicians -- that means his own cabinet, that means members of the congress, either party. He doesn't particularly like the press.... He likes to write the speeches, likes to rewrite what Favreau and the others wrote for the first draft," Matthews said.

So what part does he like? He likes going on the road, campaigning, visiting businesses like he does every couple days somewhere in Ohio or somewhere," Matthews continued. "But what part does he like? He doesn't like lobbying for the bills he cares about. He doesn't like selling to the press. He doesn't like giving orders or giving somebody the power to give orders. He doesn't seem to like being an executive.”Chris Matthews is not the only one. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, a reliably liberal columnist, scorched Mr. Obama as “President Passerby” in a recent piece.At the start of Tuesday’s briefing, the AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn pointed out that in all the controversies of the moment — the Benghazi talking points, the IRS targeting and the journalists’ phone records — “you have placed the burden of responsibility someplace else. … But it is the president’s administration.”

President Passer-by, however, was not joining the fray. Carney repeated Obama’s assertion that the IRS’ actions would be outrageous only if they are true. Never mind that the IRS has already admitted the violations and apologized. (Tuesday night, Obama issued a statement saying he had seen the inspector general’s report and directed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew “to hold those responsible for these failures accountable.”)It’s especially apt that the IRS apparatchiks chose to go after conservative and TEA Party groups, especially those that mentioned “constitution” and “liberty” in their mission statements.

Here’s a quote from a mission statement that sounds like something to attract the IRE of the IRS:

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

That quote, of course, is from America’s mission statement, the Declaration of Independence. It refers to that hands-off manager, King George III, and his abuses of power.

New Offices? How about the Independent Payment Advisory Board? This unelected, unaccountable body was created under Obamacare to decide whether you really need that heart bypass — when you are 82.

For enforcement of Obamacare’s myriad requirements, the president has chosen none other than the IRS. He wants another 16,000 agents to harry and harass you and eat out your substance.

They will look over all your papers and effects, and hover over you while Mr. Obama is just passing by. If you think this IRS scandal is serious — and we do — just imagine what President Obama will do with another army of snoopers to swarm you.
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Ken Blackwell is a conservative family values advocate. Blackwell is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a visiting professor at Liberty University School of Law. He is a contributing author to the ARRA News Service.

Tags: formula, abuse of power, Obama administration, IRS, Ken Blackwell To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

House Oversight Hearings Begin on IRS Abuse of Conservative Organizations

2013-05-17T17:22:00.000-05:00

Today in Washington, D.C. - May 17, 2013
The Senate was not in session today and will reconvene on Monday at 2 PM, when it will take up S. 954, the farm bill. Yesterday, the Senate voted 97-0 to confirm MIT professor Ernest J. Moniz to be Secretary of Energy.

The House was in session this morning voting on Amendments to and passing HR 1062 (235-161) — "To improve the consideration by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the costs and benefits of its regulations and orders." Amendments approved prior to the passage of the bill were: Sessions (R-TX) Amendment No.1 (voice vote) – Mandates that assessment plans required under this Act include analysis of any jobs added or lost as a result of the regulation, differentiating between public and private sector jobs. Hurt (R-VA) Amendment No.2 (233-163) – Expresses the sense of Congress that rules adopted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) comply with the same standards required of the SEC. Requires the SEC to ensure that any rules adopted by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), and other national securities associations comply with the standards set forth in the bill.

The major event of the day, was The House Ways and Means Committee initial hearing to investigate the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) admitted practice of targeting conservatives and political opponents of President Obama. Committee Chair, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) opened the hearing stating:On May 10, 2013, Lois Lerner, Director of Exempt Organizations for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) division that oversees tax-exempt groups, finally acknowledged that the agency had been targeting conservative-leaning political organizations.

Four days later, the Treasury Inspector General for Taxpayer Administration (TIGTA) confirmed that, “the IRS used inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status.” The report also confirmed that this abuse of power began as far back as 2010.

This revelation goes against the very principles of free speech and liberty upon which this country was founded. The blatant disregard with which the agency has treated Congress and the American taxpayer raises serious concerns about leadership at the IRS.

Let’s establish the facts that we do know. Based on the TIGTA report we know that for an 18-month period beginning in Spring 2010, IRS employees in the agency’s Determinations Unit employed keywords such as “tea party,” “patriot,” and “9/12” to target applicants for tax-exempt status. These groups were then subjected to further IRS investigation and document requests.

IRS employees later expanded their search to include groups concerned about government spending, debt, taxes, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or trying to “make America a better place to live.” Let me repeat that, people were targeted for trying to “make America a better place to live.”

These Americans had their applications delayed for nearly three years, and at least 98 applicants were asked for improper and inappropriate information such as donor lists and whether family members planned to run for public office.

During that delay, and while applications of conservative groups sat untouched for more than a year, other applications with names like “progress” and “progressive” were approved in just a matter of months. The headline in USA Today from earlier this week really says it all: “IRS gave liberals a pass; Tea Party groups put on hold.”

TIGTA’s audit found that some of those cases should have been set aside because of concerns related to their potential political activity, but no such review was done. Without objection, I enter the USA Today news report into the record.

This week, we learned that senior IRS officials knew about this activity almost two years ago, in June 2011, and IRS’s leadership in Washington knew of it in May 2012 – a year ago.

Despite a two-year long investigation by this Committee, the IRS never told the American people or their representatives about this simple truth. In fact, we were repeatedly told no such targeting was happening. That isn’t being misleading, that is lying.

But now, we know the truth – or at least some of it. We also know that these revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. It would be a mistake to treat this as just one scandal. This may be the one generating headlines, but in total I count at least five serious violations of the taxpayers’ right to be treated fairly, honestly and impartially by their government.

First, back in August of 2010, a "White House official" discussed the tax status of a private company – a clear intimidation tactic.

Second, in June 2010, the targeting of conservative groups began.

Third, in May 2011, the IRS started to threaten donors to conservative leaning non-profits that they were liable for certain taxes.

Fourth, in March of 2012, the Huffington Post published the confidential 2008 donor list of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative tax-exempt organization.

And fifth – but unlikely the final transgression – ProPublica announced that the IRS had leaked confidential applications for tax-exempt status from conservative groups.

Mr. Miller, with all due respect, this systemic abuse cannot be fixed with just one resignation. And, as much as I expect more people need to go, the reality is this is not a personnel problem. This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too powerful, too intrusive and too abusive of honest, hardworking taxpayers.

There isn’t a person I come into contact with back home – or anyone in this country frankly – who does not fear the IRS. They fear getting something wrong on their tax filings. And, they fear the IRS’ ability to audit them and wreak havoc in their lives. Especially when all they are trying to do is improve their lives, let alone, God forbid, trying to “make America a better place to live,” which is what the IRS targeted them for.

Under that kind of thinking, every civic group in America is at risk – the Knights of Columbus, the Rotary, the JC’s, the American Legion and VFW clubs. I’m sure you’re aware of the saying that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Well, under this Administration, the IRS has abused its power to tax, and it has destroyed what little faith and hope the American people had in getting a fair shake in Washington.

This will not stand. Trimming a few branches will not solve the problem when the roots of the tree have gone rotten. And, that is exactly what has happened with our entire tax system – it is rotten at the core, and it must be ripped out so we can start fresh. Only then will the American people get a tax system that treats them fairly and honestly, as they deserve.

And, while that is a larger discussion, it is directly tied to the issue before us today – how and why our tax system has gone so far off-track. Many questions still remain:
Why did the IRS repeatedly target the American people and then keep that fact covered-up for so long?
Who started the targeting, who knew, when did they know and how high did it go?
Who leaked private taxpayer information?
Why were the names of donors asked for, and what was done with those lists before they were supposedly discarded?
When did the Administration know about each of these, and what was its reaction?
Listening to the nightly news, this appears to be just the latest example of a culture of cover-ups – and political intimidation – in this Administration. It seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election.

The American people have a right to the truth, to a government that delivers the facts, good or bad, no matter what. President Obama promised to be different and to deliver a better government, the most transparent in history.

He was right. America deserves better. It is time to end the corruption at the IRS and fix a tax code that allows Washington and the IRS to pick who wins and who loses in America.

I expect nothing less than total cooperation by the IRS and this Administration as we investigate what happened and what we must do to fix it.Rep Camp remarked at the hearing, "The reality is, this is not a personnel problem, “This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too powerful, too intrusive and too abusive of honest, hardworking taxpayers. ... This appears to be just the latest example of a culture of coverups and political intimidation in this administration. It seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election.”

USA Today noted, "The panel's top Democrat, Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., said he, too, wanted to find out why the IRS targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny, and that IRS officials responsible should be fired. But he took exception to the injection of campaign politics into the hearing. 'If instead this hearing becomes an effort to score political points, it will be a disregard of the duties of this committee,' he said." USa Today also noted, "The agency's chief watchdog testified Friday that the Internal Revenue Service has not fully addressed the problems that led it to improperly subject Tea Party and other conservative groups to extra scrutiny. 'We do not consider the concerns in this report to be resolved,' Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George said."

David Weigel at Slate noted "By general acclimation, the greatest Moment from today's battering of the IRS (with an assist from the bored, doomed outgoing acting commissioner) came when Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly went buck wild. After pressuring the witness a few times and getting non-answers, Kelly finally just went on a tirade about the IRS, the "monster under the bed," the force that terrifies hard-working Americans. When he finished, Kelly earned spontaneous applause from the public seats."

Tags: House, Ways and Means Committee, oversight, IRS, abuse of conservatives To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Agent McConnell Has Infiltrated the Bureaucracy

2013-05-17T11:30:00.000-05:00

(Article image by Roman Genn)

By Daniel Foster | National Review: Mitch McConnell had a problem. He needed to give President Obama, the man he had publicly vowed to make a one-term president, a nominee for the Legal Services Corporation. By law, the LSC, a Nixon-era 501(c)(3) tasked with providing legal aid to low-income Americans, had to be bipartisan; no more than six of its eleven members could belong to one party. By tradition, it fell on McConnell, as the senior member of the opposition in the Senate, to provide the president with a list of Republican names.

The trouble was that, as is often the case with putatively bipartisan bodies, the posts required nominees to meet certain ostensibly nonpolitical criteria that by their nature all but rendered the posts partisan carve-outs. In this case, McConnell needed to find a Republican who was “income eligible” for the available seat, meaning someone who earned less than 130 percent of the federal poverty line, which came out to a little over $14,000 a year.

So where on the fruited plain did Mitch McConnell find a competent, dedicated conservative lawyer without two nickels to rub together? As it turns out, in a rectory. Enter Father Pius Pietrzyk, a Dominican parish priest who happened to be a University of Chicago Law School graduate and a stalwart member of the Federalist Society. After practicing corporate and securities law at a big Chicago firm for three years, Pietrzyk left in 2002 to pursue a calling he found more meaningful. He was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church in 2008.

As a Dominican, he took a vow of poverty. And in 2010, President Obama nominated him, and the Democratic Senate confirmed him, to the LSC board of directors. There he sits next to board chairman John G. Levi, another Chicago lawyer (albeit with a significantly higher net worth), whose greatest claim to fame might be that he hired young Michelle LaVaughn Robinson and Barry Obama in the late 1980s.

Now, placing a ringer on an out-of-the-way board might not be the equivalent of repealing Obamacare or flipping the Senate, but in McConnell’s world it was a real win in the war of attrition that Republicans are quietly fighting inside what you might call the Other Government: namely, the bureaucratic state comprising more than 100 bipartisan boards and commissions created by Congress to regulate everything from Wall Street to farm credit, the post office to nuclear safety, Social Security to federal elections.

Many of these bodies are exactly as obscure as you are thinking. (Wikipedia helpfully tells me that the Commission on Key National Indicators, for instance, works with the National Academy of Sciences to “review research on the selection of a set of key national indicators [and] determine how to implement and establish a key national indicator system.”) But others are big-deal, big-government bureaucracies with familiar abbreviations such as SEC, FTC, FCC, FDIC, and NLRB. And because there isn’t a Republican in the White House, it falls on McConnell to fill their Republican slots.

President Obama tends to make his appointments to these boards the way they have usually been made: willy-nilly. Some will be well-known policy experts or academics politically aligned with the president. Others will be patronage picks of bundlers and allies. And others will be “friends of friends.”

Usually, it’s the same way with Senate leaders who do not belong to the president’s party. In the Senates of Bob Dole and George Mitchell, during the administrations of Clinton and George H. W. Bush, appointments were commonly viewed as so many caucus carrots, intended to keep members happy. (The attitude continues today. One GOP Senate staffer said of the relatively rare cases in which the Senate Democratic leader makes personnel choices instead of the White House, “Anytime Harry Reid gets to appoint two people, you can guarantee that one of those two people will be from Nevada.”)

Not so with McConnell. According to a number of sources inside the Senate Republican shop, McConnell saw Obama’s comfortable victory in 2008, and the Democrats’ daunting majority in the upper chamber, and knew he had to find creative ways to conduct asymmetric political warfare. On the legislative side, that meant first and foremost keeping Republicans unified against the president’s agenda, especially by ensuring that they kept their hands off Obamacare — a strategy whose overall success was marked by four years of liberals’ complaints about Republican intransigence. On the regulatory side, it meant scrapping the view that appointments are opportunities to do favors for your colleagues, and instead searching every nook and cranny of the country for sharp conservatives to take little-heralded but critical regulatory jobs.

“The way I like to think of it is, as leader, McConnell’s primary job is to unite 45 Republicans on as much legislation as possible,” McConnell speechwriter Brian McGuire told me on the Hill. “He has to be concerned about everybody in the conference and weighing all the equities that implies. [Appointments are] the one aspect of his job that he can act on unilaterally, and so to me this really reflects his conservative instincts.”

To translate his instincts into names, he brought in GOP veteran Dan Schneider. To look at Schneider’s government rap sheet — stints at the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Labor Department — you’d think he was a die-cast liberal. But when I spoke with him for this story, he said he likes to think of himself as a loyal conservative sent behind enemy lines “to monitor the radicals.”

Schneider came onto McConnell’s radar via the senator’s wife, Elaine Chao. When George W. Bush appointed Chao to head his Department of Labor, Schneider became her first White House liaison, and she gave him free rein to find conservatives to fill more than 200 slots inside the department. He impressed, and, after the Obama transition, migrated into McConnell’s office, where he oversees a sort of national conservative talent search with the title “Policy Advisor and Counsel for Nominations.”

Schneider operates according to a set of five criteria for screening potential nominees first developed by E. Pendleton “Pen” James, Ronald Reagan’s director of personnel management. First, were the nominees competent in the subject matter? Second, were they philosophically compatible with Senator McConnell? Third, did they possess high character and integrity? Fourth, were they tough? Fifth, were they team players?

The result, two or three hundred appointees later, is measurable.

Take the LSC, where not just Father Pius but four other McConnell-Schneider picks were confirmed and are serving. Among them is Sharon L. Browne. Browne was principal attorney for California’s Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), one of the oldest conservative/libertarian public-interest law firms in the country, formed in part by veterans of Reagan’s gubernatorial administration. As president, Reagan had tried and failed to get a PLF lawyer on the LSC. But McConnell succeeded in seeing Browne through, even though her nomination was hotly opposed by the American Bar Association, no doubt in part because she successfully sued the California Bar in 1995, forcing them to settle on a claim that they had taken funds reserved for poverty programs and used them for political operations.

She brought that fight to the national level, and together with McConnell’s other picks, she got enough Democrats on board to promulgate a regulation making legal-service grantees financially liable for spending grant money on political advocacy instead of what it was intended for.

On the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which went from sleepy New Deal installation to big-time regulator after Dodd-Frank, McConnell installed Tom Hoenig, the former president of the Kansas City Fed and a famed inflation hawk. In the lead-up to the financial crisis, Hoenig voiced concerns about the banking system. In its aftermath, he urged the government not to bail out equity holders. He later opposed Henry Paulson’s interventions, the Bush and Obama bailouts, and Dodd-Frank.

On the Federal Trade Commission, McConnell handed Obama the name of Josh Wright, a holder of both a Ph.D. in economics and a J.D. and widely considered his generation’s greatest mind on antitrust law. Before his confirmation, Wright had been highly critical of the FTC’s exceedingly thin two-year antitrust investigation of Google’s search-engine practices. Seventy-two hours after his confirmation to the FTC board, the investigation was dropped with minimal consequence for Google.

Then there is Chris Beall, an infrastructure expert whose first job was building natural-gas pipelines for the Koch brothers and who had spent most of the rest of his career in finance, privatizing dozens of public utilities. On McConnell’s recommendation (and, one assumes, to Joe Biden’s lament), Obama nominated Beall — the man who built climate-change conduits for the Co-Princes of Darkness — to the board of directors of Amtrak.

The list goes on. It is populated by individuals with both expertise and conservative pedigrees, in many cases already known for advocating the sorts of causes that annoy the White House — and who nevertheless were formally nominated by the White House. McConnell values this list not just because it stocks bureaucratic Washington with Obama opponents, but also because it constitutes a farm team for the next Republican administration, credentialing conservatives, many of whom have not had government experience, to take more senior roles once the GOP returns to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Of course, nomination negotiations between the Senate and the White House have always been a little like Cold War spy exchanges — you give us our two NLRB guys and we’ll give you a judge; two under secretaries for an FCC commissioner and a player to be named later; and so on — but McConnell’s innovation has been to stack his side of the trades with as many Jason Bournes and James Bondses as he can, where his predecessors might have stacked them with congressmen’s nephews and senators’ golf buddies.

And while a few appointments to commissions with Democratic majorities aren’t going to undo the progressive agenda all by themselves, they can prevail in the right spots, and gum up the works in others. Daniel Gallagher, a longtime SEC staffer and regulatory expert whom McConnell tapped to return as one of five SEC commissioners after a stint in the private sector, is a good example. In at least two instances, Gallagher convinced Democratic SEC commissioners to flip their votes on major regulations, ensuring their defeat in favor of Republican alternatives. In other cases Gallagher merely stymied former Democratic SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro, capturing more ink in the financial pages and industry tip sheets and coordinating dissenting opinions on regulations that courts later relied on in overturning them. According to one source familiar with the dynamics of the SEC, Gallagher was generally “running circles around” the Democratic commissioners.

I asked Schneider, whose office is tucked into one of the fractal corners of the leadership suite on the Senate side of the Capitol, how much of a difference he thinks all of this makes at the macro level. How would Washington and America be different if McConnell were appointing good ol’ boys from Kentucky to all these slots? Standing next to a wall unit dominated by hunting maps — he is an outdoorsman — and a binder of dossiers, Schneider takes a minute to think. Then he responds in his affable Kansas cadence: “My boss’s goal is to make sure that our people, collectively, beat their people day in and day out, that our people are smarter and sharper and better than theirs.”

And while that is not measurable in every instance, he asks me to consider a counterexample. “There is not a bipartisan health-care board,” he says. “Consequently, we have 20,000 pages of regulations on the implementation of Obamacare. This matters.” Indeed, the eight-foot-high paper stack, printed out and wheeled around the Capitol on a hand truck as a clever, if unwieldy, political prop, was at that moment standing just a few rooms over in McConnell’s reception area.

I spoke to several individuals who are part of Schneider’s kitchen cabinet — think-tankers and public-policy professionals whom he regularly consults when headhunting nominees. They agreed that the biggest effects of McConnell’s appointment strategy are likely “ecological” and “cumulative.” The Hudson Institute’s Tevi Troy, who frequently huddles with Schneider on picks, even joked that he regretted this story was being written, since he thought McConnell was doing “brilliant” work; he didn’t want the other side to take notice.

When I asked McConnell himself to comment for the story, he was characteristically matter-of-fact, and hardly bashful. “We’ve had a very aggressive effort to do what we could on the regulatory side,” he told me over the phone, in his monotone drawl. “The core question was, ‘Can you have an impact on public policy at a time when you’re outnumbered?’ I think after almost five years of doing this, we have.”

McConnell has expressed himself on the subject even more succinctly than that. Schneider tells me that after he had located, recruited, and shepherded a “rock star” nominee through confirmation, the boss popped his head into the office to deliver a simple command: “Keep ’em coming.”

Tags: Obama administration, Mitch McConnell, Senator, Kentucky, Senate Republican Leader, appointments To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Second Court Rules Another President Obama NLRB Recess Appointment Is Unconstitutional

2013-05-16T18:09:00.000-05:00

Flashback: President Obama Formerly Called Recess Appointments ‘The Wrong Thing To Do,’ And Senior Democrats Have Argued They Are An ‘Abuse Of Power, Mischievous And Troubling’ Now Appeals Courts Agree: President Obama's Recess Appointments Are Unconstitutional.

‘For the second time this year, an appeals court reaffirmed what Republicans and job creators around the country have been saying: the President’s attempt to circumvent the Senate with a supposed ‘appointment’ to the NLRB was made outside the law’

Washington, D.C. — “For the second time this year, an appeals court reaffirmed what Republicans and job creators around the country have been saying: the President’s attempt to circumvent the Senate with a supposed ‘recess appointment’ to the NLRB was made outside the law,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.

In its ruling today (NLRB v. New Vista Nursing and Rehabilitation), the Court found that the President’s action resulted in a nominee being “invalidly recess appointed to the Board during the March 2010 intrasession break” and therefore “vacate[d] the [NLRB’s] orders” in the New Vista case.

The Court said the Administration’s argument that the Senate is in recess for purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause even when it is meeting regularly “was incompatible with the Constitution,” and “would eviscerate the [Constitution’s]divided-powers framework.” If the Administration’s view of the Recess Appointment Clause were to prevail, the Court said, “then the President could circumvent the Senate’s constitutional role simply by waiting until senators go home for the evening.”

Given that the Senate had passed legislation that the Administration wanted during the same type of session that the Administration now says doesn’t count, the Court also noted that the Administration’s position would lead to absurd results: “Holding that the Senate is unavailable during these sessions requires a definition of availability that allows the counterintuitive situation in which the Senate is available to enact legislation while simultaneously unavailable to provide its advice and consent.”

“Last year, the President made an unprecedented power grab by placing political allies at a powerful federal agency without even trying to obtain the Senate’s advice and consent. Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit correctly struck down the unlawful, so-called 'appointments' to the NLRB,” Sen. McConnell said, “It’s time for the unlawfully appointed nominees to step down.”

Tags: US. Circuit Court, NLRB v. New Vista Nursing and Rehabilitation, Pesident Obama, Recess appointment, unconstitutional, unlawful appointees, Mitch McConnell To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

U.S. House Votes to Repeal Obamacare

2013-05-16T17:36:00.000-05:00

ARRA News Service: The House passed H.R. 95 by a vote of 229-195 — "To repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010." Two Democrats joined 227 Republicans i voting for repeal while 195 Democrats voted to keep this oppressive bill. Nine Representatives (4 Democrats and 5 Republicans) did not vote.

This is the third time the Republican-led House has voted to fully repeal the president’s health care law since 2011. President Obama has signed several other bills that repeal or defund parts of the law -- you can see a list of those bills here.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released the following statement after the House passed H.R. 45, fully repealing and defunding the president’s health care law:“This is all about jobs. The president’s health care law is already undermining our economy -- employers are cutting workers and cutting hours, costs are going up, and even Democrats are worried the whole thing is headed for a train wreck. There are also serious concerns about whether the IRS should be involved in our health care at all, let alone as the law’s chief enforcer. Fully repealing ObamaCare will help us build a stronger, healthier economy, and will clear the way for patient-centered reforms that lower health care costs and protect jobs. This is a good, common-sense bill, and I thank Congresswoman Bachmann for her leadership in bringing it to a vote today.”Republican Study Committee Chairman Steve Scalise (R-LA) commented:“To make matters even worse, leading the way in the enforcement of Obamacare is the IRS, which lost any degree of impartiality or credibility by illegally targeting Americans who dared to oppose political beliefs of the Obama Administration. Every day I hear horror stories from families and small businesses in southeast Louisiana about how Obamacare is leading to higher costs, loss of jobs, and in many cases the loss of health care for people who liked the plans they had. It is time to completely repeal this law, and get to work on the common sense reforms that lower health care costs and fix real problems like preventing discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.”It is doubtful that Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will allow a vote on H.R. 45 in the Senate or that if a vote were allowed few if any Democrats would break ranks and vote to real Obamacare even though Democrats have said that the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) is a "train wreck" waiting to happen.

Tags: US House, votes, repeal, Obamacare To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

AP: Ouster Of IRS Official Isn't Ending Investigations -- McConnell: It’s Bigger Than Just The IRS

2013-05-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

American People Seeing "Remarkable Arrogance" from Obama Administration

A lot of questions are being raised as a result of these revelations and, as Speaker Boehner said at a press conference today, "This House will stop at nothing to get to the American people the answers and the accountability that they expect."

Today in Washington, D.C., May 16, 2013
The Senate and began consideration of the nomination of Ernest J. Moniz, of Massachusetts, to be Secretary of Energy. At 2 PM, the Senate is scheduled to vote on confirmation of the Moniz nomination.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has indicated he plans to bring S. 954, the farm bill, to the floor on Monday. Yesterday, the Senate voted 83-14 to pass S. 601, the Water Resources Development Act of 2013. Prior to passage, senators voted to agree to an amendment from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and reject two amendments from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). Also yesterday the Senate voted 91-7 to confirm Marilyn Tavenner as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and 56-41 to confirm William H. Orrick, III as U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California.

The House today will vote again on the repeal of Obamacare. The House Oversight Committee announced Wednesday that it would hold a hearing May 22, featuring Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversees tax exempt organizations, and Shulman, the former commissioner. The Senate Finance Committee announced a hearing for next Tuesday.

Yesterday the House passed by voice vote H.R. 573 - To amend Public Law 93-435 with respect to the Northern Mariana Islands, providing parity with Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. The House approved (415-1) H.R. 767 "To amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to modify the Pilot Project offices of the Federal Permit Streamlining Pilot Project," H.R. 701 (416-6) "To amend a provision of the Securities Act of 1933 directing the Securities and Exchange Commission to add a particular class of securities to those exempted under such Act to provide a deadline for such action," and H.R. 384 (420-3) "To establish the position of Special Assistant for Veterans Affairs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and for other purposes."

The AP writes today, “Don't look for the outcry over the Internal Revenue Service's improper targeting of tea party groups to subside with the ouster of the agency's acting commissioner. Three congressional committees are investigating and the FBI is looking into potential civil rights violations at the IRS, Attorney General Eric Holder said. Other potential crimes include making false statements to authorities and violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in some partisan political activities, Holder said. President Barack Obama said Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew had asked for and accepted Steven T. Miller's resignation.”

Speaking on the Senate floor this morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Last night, the President took an important symbolic step in accepting the resignation of acting IRS Commissioner Miller. I had called for this resignation on Monday, when we learned that Mr. Miller signed his name to one if not more letters that we know now couldn't have possibly been truthful. But let’s be clear: this symbolic step was just that, symbolic. What Americans want right now are answers about what happened at the IRS, why it wasn’t disclosed earlier, who was ultimately accountable for this behavior — and assurances that this kind of thing isn’t still going on at the IRS or anywhere else in the federal government because the allegations of ideological targeting only continue to multiply.”

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Leader McConnell last night who explained how the IRS abuses are part of a larger pattern: “I’ve been talking about this since June of 2012. There were Tea Party groups in my state complaining about this back then. But you know, it’s bigger than just the IRS, Hugh. Let’s just go back to the Obamacare debate for a moment. Secretary Sebelius, the head of HHS, sent out a directive to health insurance companies saying they couldn’t tell their policy holders how they felt about Obamacare. And now, she’s shaking them down for money to spend on ads trying to convince the American people they ought to like Obamacare. We’ve had similar moves over at the Securities And Exchange Commission by Obama appointees, the Federal Communications Commission by Obama appointees. And now, they’ve messed with the one agency everybody in America really knows about, and that’s the IRS. They’re the one agency with the power to shut us down. And look, this is a huge, huge scandal. You know, we don’t know who knew what and when, we don’t know how high it goes up.”

And there are more questions the IRS needs to answer. This morning, Leader McConnell said, “Last May, Senator Hatch — the top Republican on the Finance Committee — sent a letter to the IRS inquiring about reports that someone at the IRS had leaked confidential donor information from [the National Organization for Marriage] to an advocacy group whose political goals were in direct conflict with its own. NOM has since released documents suggesting that this information came from one source — from within the IRS itself. All this took place, by the way, in the middle of a national political campaign. Significantly, one of the NOM donors whose name was leaked was none other than Mitt Romney. What a coincidence. And what about the group it was leaked to? Well, it was headed by a guy who was named a co-chair of the Obama campaign, and who published the confidential donor information on the website of the organization he ran – an organization opposed to the goals of NOM. . . . . No one should be intimidated by the government into shutting up as part of our political process. And that’s why the Republican members of the Finance Committee are sending a letter today to Treasury’s Inspector General for Tax Administration requesting investigation into this very issue. Because, without this sort of inquiry, we may never have confirmed the inappropriate harassment of conservative groups that was going on at the IRS for two years. Apparently, this is the only way to get this Administration to take responsibility for its actions.”

On another important angle, Newsmax noted that the current scandal facing the Internal Revenue Service proves that the agency cannot be trusted to implement Obamacare.

Tags: Washington, D.C., IRS Scandal, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

There is No There There -- Is There?

2013-05-16T11:00:00.000-05:00

by AF "Tony Branco

Tags: President Obama, scandals, No There, the press, editorial cartoon, AF Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

IRS and HHS Can’t Be Trusted With Our Health

2013-05-16T10:30:00.000-05:00

Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: “We have a large government,” political consultant David Axelrod offered as a plea of ignorance to all of the scandals swirling around his boss. “Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast.” And yet, thanks to Axelrod and Obama, we now stand on the precipice of the largest expansion of government power in almost half a century: Obamacare, officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

PPACA massively expands and empowers the same IRS that President Obama himself admits is an out-of-control agency that is being ineffectively managed by his administration. And it also creates sweeping new powers for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is being engulfed in its own scandal that, most likely, Obama will also claim to know nothing about.

According to the Government Accountability Office, Obamacare creates 47 broad new tax and regulatory powers for the IRS, including taxes on individuals, employers, health insurance providers, and medical device manufacturers. Implementing these taxes and attendant regulatory requirements will mean collecting a vast amount of data, including sensitive health information.

The IRS has already proven itself unworthy of such new powers. Not only in its systematic targeting of political enemies, shamefully including those groups “educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights,” which was supposed to be a fix to early targeting based on the words “tea party” and “patriot.” These groups were, illegally, asked to reveal their membership lists and answer detailed intrusive questions. And while hundreds of conservative groups opposed to PPACA and its vast expansion of IRS power were stalled for over two years, liberal groups engaging in the exact same activities were approved quickly with no questions asked.

It is not an open question whether IRS abuse of power will extend to PPACA implementation; it has already happened. The same IRS commissioner, Douglas Shulman (a Democrat originally appointed by President Bush and retained by President Obama) who told Congress falsely, “There’s absolutely no targeting,” also spearheaded an illegal IRS rulemaking that effectively blocks states from exercising their lawful right under PPACA to opt out of the law’s vast new taxpayer-funded subsidies and employer penalty taxes.

Michael Carvin of Jones Day, the lead counsel in a recently filed lawsuit against the rule said: “The IRS rule we are challenging is at war with the Act’s plain language and completely rewrites the deal that Congress made with the states on running these insurance exchanges.”

So the same IRS that steamrolled political opponents is already overstepping its new health care powers to steamroll states. And the IRS is also, in a separate lawsuit, accused of illegally seizing 60 million private health record of 10 million individuals.

Meanwhile, the other lead agency in PPACA implementation has its own scandal. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been calling corporate CEOs and shaking them down for donations to a left-wing group called Enroll America to aggressively promote PPACA and urge people to sign up for the law’s new entitlement program. Her actions violate several federal laws, and any other week it would have been a lead story instead of relegated to the number four scandal slot.

And while Sebelius is dialing-for-dollars, she is also reallocating money from a slush fund created by the law toward public relations and political activity instead of using it to help people with preexisting conditions. About 40,000 people with preexisting conditions will go without any coverage this year because Sebelius chose to end enrollment in the federal Preexisting Condition Insurance Plan in order to instead fund TV advertising and grants to lobbying groups. So HHS is abusing taxpayer dollars as well as shaking down private citizens for coerced donations, all to maximize spending on their political push to build support for the unpopular law, instead of actually helping sick people.

The scandals will only get worse. Government is already, by David Axelrod’s admission, too vast for the president to understand, let alone effectively manage. And it is spinning further out of control, with the health of the American people in the balance. Health care is simply too important to subject to politics and bureaucratic manipulation. It’s time to repeal PPACA and start over with real health care reform that empowers patients and doctors, not the IRS and HHS.
------------------
© 2013 Phil Kerpen is president of American Commitment and the author of Democracy Denied: How Obama is Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him. Phil Kerpen is a contributing author for the ARRA News Service.

Tags: Phil Kerpen, American Commitment, IRS, Internal Revenue Service, scandals, HHS, Department of Health and Human Services, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, PPACA, repeal PPACA To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

The President as Sergeant Schultz

2013-05-16T09:10:00.000-05:00

Alan Caruba, Contributing Author: How is it that, time and again, the most powerful man on the planet doesn’t seem to have a clue what is happening in his own government? Famed for never accepting blame for anything, the more I see President Obama these days, the more I am reminded of Sergeant Hans Schultz of the TV sitcom, “Hogan’s Heroes”, that ran from 1965 to 1971.

The wonderful Hans Banner the actor who played the prisoner of war guard left an indelible legacy with his repeated denials, “I know nothing. I hear nothing, and I see nothing”; often all three at the same time to avoid being implicated in Col. Robert E. Hogan’s manipulation of Werner Klemperer’s Col. Wilhelm Klink, the camp commandant of Luftwaffe Stalag 13.

Obama’s way of dealing with everything has been to talk it to death and he has been responding to questions from the press, claiming that the accusations are all “a sideshow” or that “there’s no there, there.” It is not working. In the case of Benghazi-Gate, his lies are so blatant that it has gone from an embarrassment to a full-fledged cover-up.

I Know Nothing - but I was a Sgt
in a country run by a megalomaniac
who claimed to know everything.
Humm - maybe there is a relationship!

Similarly, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, has relied on claiming ignorance and putting distance between himself and his Department of Justice’s increasing list of scandals, from Fast and Furious that earned him a citation for contempt of Congress in June 2012 for his lack of candor. His latest “I know nothing” testimony regarding the DOJ’s seizure of the phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters makes one wonder why the President continues to retain him in office or, for that matter, why he isn’t in jail for stonewalling about Fast and Furious, an ATF gun-running scheme that got a border patrol and ICE agent killed.

Those of us who follow the President closely know that he has been lying consistently before and since being elected--twice. His two “memoirs” have been picked apart by reporters who have written their own books on the subject. It would appear that Obama picked up the habit of lying early on in life as the son of a Kenyan who had abandoned his mother, the step-son of an Indonesian whom his mother also divorced, and a man who remarkably was a friend or associate of a long list of shady characters you might more likely find in a detective novel.

He dismissed his close friendship with former 60s Weatherman terrorist, Bill Ayers, as someone who lived in his Chicago neighborhood. He had to throw his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, under the bus when it became known he said many bad things about America over the course of the many years Obama was a member of his church. The man who conducted Obama’s wedding and christened his children said of 9/11, “the chickens have come home to roost” as if it was America’s fault it was attacked.

Even so, this is small potatoes compared to the way the many “renewable energy” companies received billions in government loans and rapidly went bankrupt. It turned out that many of the many of the men who created those companies where major “bundlers” and contributors to his 2009 presidential campaign. Of the most famous bankruptcy, Solyndra, Obama said, “That was not our program, per se. Congress-Democrats and Republicans—put together a loan guarantee program…” Maybe so, but we have not seen such a program lose so much money in such a short time, betting on solar and wind power projects. The taxpayers got stuck with the bill. The number of actual “green” jobs ended up costing over a million dollars each to create.

Of his failed “stimulus” package, Obama said “Apparently there weren’t as many shovel ready jobs as we thought.” Before spending millions to allegedly revive the economy, you are supposed to know such things.

If not Benghazi-Gate, than the IRS targeting of conservative, patriot, and constitution education groups could provide the fulcrum to bring down Obama’s presidency. Despite his denials of knowledge about the program within the IRS to harass and deny these groups non-profit status, vital to raise donations and funding, and the firing of the IRS commissioner, this is a scandal with which ordinary taxpayers can identify, fearful of audits. Imagine now as the realization sinks in that it is the IRS that will be administering Obamacare!

Up to now Obama could count on the mainstream media to ignore much of the blunders, failures and lies that characterized his first term, but the scandals coalescing as his second term begins have a weight that includes the growing unhappiness of the White House press corps who are tired of being lied to or having to listen to press secretary Jay Carney speak to them as if they were a bunch of witless clowns.

It is said that “the fish stinks from the head” and what we are witnessing is an administration whose corrupt political practices have seeped deep into the government agencies for which Obama is responsible.

It is still too soon to know which scandal or combination of scandals will bring down his presidency, but it will only take a few more eye-witnesses and whistle-blowers to turn Obama into the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtain and pulling the levers to fool Dorothy and her pals or, in our case, those of us who still believe laws should be obeyed and power should not be abused.
------------------
© 2013 Alan Caruba. Alan is a writer by profession; has authored several books, and writes a daily column, "Warning Signs" disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites and blogs. He is a contributing author at ARRA News Service.

Tags: President Obama, scandals, Know Nothing, Sergent Schultz, op-ed, Alan Caruba To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Acting IRS Director Resigns

2013-05-15T18:36:00.000-05:00

The Washington Posts reports: "President Obama on Wednesday demanded and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven T. Miller, as part of a multi-pronged effort to quell controversies that threaten to dominate his second term.

"The action was Obama’s first substantive step to address a political uproar stemming from the IRS’s disclosure that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. It capped a day when the White House tried to dampen two other furors that had put Obama on the defensive — the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records and the administration’s editing of talking points about the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, last year. . . ." [Read More]

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McConnell On the Resignation of IRS Chief

2013-05-15T17:55:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement following the resignation of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller:“More than two years after the problem began, and a year after the IRS told us there was no problem, the President is beginning to take action. If the President is as concerned about this issue as he claims, he’ll work openly and transparently with Congress to get to the bottom of the scandal—no stonewalling, no half-answers, no withholding of witnesses. These allegations are serious — that there was an effort to bring the power of the federal government to bear on those the administration disagreed with, in the middle of a heated national election. We are determined to get answers, and to ensure that this type of intimidation never happens again at the IRS or any other agency.”

Background:
In February 2012, Tea Party organizations reportedly received letters from the regional IRS office in Cincinnati, demanding hundreds of pages of documents with little indication of the criteria being applied.

On March 14, 2012, Sen. McConnell joined ten other GOP senators in sending a letter to IRS Commissioner Shulman seeking assurance that “this recent string of inquiries has a sound basis in law and is consistent with IRS’s treatment of tax-exempt organizations across the spectrum.”

“We have received reports and reviewed information from nonprofit civic organizations in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas concerning recent IRS inquiries perceived to be excessive. It is critical that the public have confidence that federal tax compliance efforts are pursued in a fair, even-handed, and transparent manner—without regard to politics of any kind. To that end, we write today to seek your assurance that this recent string of inquiries has a sound basis in law and is consistent with the IRS’s treatment of tax-exempt organizations across the spectrum. … It is imperative that organizations applying for tax-exempt status are able to rely on a consistent and foreseeable review structure from the IRS.” (Twelve Republican Senators, Letter To IRS Commissioner Shulman, 3/14/12)

“Given the potentially serious implications of selective or discriminatory enforcement, we request that you hold further IRS-initiated demands for information from 501(c)(4) applicants beyond the extensive information already required of all applicants (in Form 1024 and Schedule B...” (Twelve Republican Senators, Letter To IRS Commissioner Shulman, 3/14/12)

On June 15, 2012, Sen. McConnell spoke on the issue at the American Enterprise Institute (video here), singling out the IRS actions for special criticism.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “the tactics I’m describing extend well beyond the campaign headquarters in Chicago. To an extent not seen since the Nixon administration, they extend deep into the administration itself. … Earlier this year, dozens of Tea Party-affiliated groups across the country learned what it was like to draw the attention of the speech police when they received a lengthy questionnaire from the IRS demanding attendance lists, meeting transcripts, and donor information. One of the group’s leaders described the situation this way: ‘[groups like ours] either drown … in unnecessary paper work … or you survive, and give them everything they want, only to be hung.’ The head of one national advocacy group has released documents which show that his group’s confidential IRS information found its way into the hands of a staunch critic on the Left who also happens to be a co-chairman of President Obama’s re-election committee. The only way this information could have been made public is if someone leaked it from inside the IRS. And just last week we learned of an IRS decision revoking the tax-exempt status of small political nonprofit groups that undoubtedly foreshadows an effort to do the same to bigger groups on the Right that the Obama Administration regards as a threat to its campaign. ... let’s be very clear: no individual or group in this country should have to face harassment or intimidation, or incur crippling expenses, defending themselves against their own government, simply because that government doesn’t like the message they’re advocating.” (Sen. McConnell, Remarks At AEI, 6/15/12); (Video Here At Minute 11:15)

On June 15, 2012, Sen. McConnell published an op-ed in POLITICO.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “One thing that has always distinguished America is the enthusiasm with which its citizens have organized around issues they believe in. Alexis de Tocqueville observed this more than 175 years ago, ‘In no country in the world,’ De Tocqueville wrote, ‘has the principle of association been more successfully used or applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America.’ Recent events, however, suggest that this principle is under serious threat — not only from some left-wing groups, which have resorted to intimidation to grind their critics into submission, but by an administration that has used the tools of government to do the same.” (“Fighting For The First Amendment,” Politico, 6/15/12)

McConnell: “Dozens of tea party-affiliated groups across the country learned earlier this year what it was like to draw the attention of the speech police when they received a lengthy questionnaire from the Internal Revenue Service, demanding attendance lists, meeting transcripts and donor information. As the leader of one organization described it: ‘[Groups like ours] either drown … in unnecessary paperwork … or you survive, and give them everything they want, only to be hung.’” (“Fighting For The First Amendment,” Politico, 6/15/12)

On June 18, 2012, Sen. McConnell joined a letter with ten other GOP senators to IRS Commissioner Shulman, reiterating their concerns with the IRS’s inquiries and stressing that Congress has made privacy the rule not the exception.

“‘Congress has made privacy the rule, and not the exception,’ wrote the Senators. ‘A list of donors who have given money to specific charitable organizations is something that carries great value to certain interested parties, as trading of personal information about private citizens has become common practice. Unfortunately, the public release of private donor information exposes citizens to possible harassment and intimidation by those who oppose the goals of the charitable organization.’” (Ten Republican Senators, Letter To IRS Commissioner Shulman, 6/18/12)

“… the IRS is requesting the names of donors and contributors to organizations that apply for tax exempt status. In doing so, the IRS appears to be circumventing the statutory privacy protections that Congress has long provided donors.” (Ten Republican Senators, Letter To IRS Commissioner Shulman, 6/18/12)

Tags: IRS, Chief, resigns, Mitch McConnell, repsonds To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

McConnell: IRS Actions Part Of Administration Acting As‘Speech Police; Boehner: Who's going to jail over this scandal?

2013-05-15T14:47:00.000-05:00

by AF "Tony" Branco

Today in Washington, D.C. - May 15, 2013.
The House is in session but most bills to be considered are administrative in nature. Any bills completed will be noted in tomorrow's report.

Speaker John Boehner today addressed the growing IRS scandal whereby administration officials admitted to wrongfully targeting conservatives and political opponents of President Obama, and reportedly gave preferential treatment to liberal groups and allies of the White House. Boehner said: “The IRS admitted to targeting conservatives, even if the White House continues to be stuck on the word ‘if.’ My question isn't about who is going to resign. My question is who's going to jail over this scandal?”

The House Ways & Means Committee will hold a hearing to investigate the IRS this Friday at 9:00 AM ET, and the Oversight & Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing next Wednesday.

The people appear to agree with the Speaker's position. Rasmussen Reports that "57% Want IRS Offenders Jailed or Fired.Most voters believe the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups was politically motivated and think most of those involved should be severely punished

Yesterday, the Senate rejected two amendments to S. 601. The Senate resumed consideration of S. 601, the Water Resources Development Act of 2013. Today they voted 83-14 to pass S. 601, as amended. The Senate began consideration of the nominations of Marilyn Tavenner to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and William H. Orrick, III to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California. They will vote on confirmation of the Orrick and Tavenner nominations later today.

In committee, Senate democrats are ramming through an Amnesty bill to bring to the floor for a vote.

On the Senate floor this morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell discussed the latest news on the IRS scandal, saying, “It seems like, with each passing hour, the facts get more and more inconvenient for senior folks over at the IRS. Yesterday, it was reported that the agency may have gone after a ministry founded by Billy Graham. We also learned that the very same IRS office that admitted to harassing conservative groups also released nine pending applications for tax-exempt status to the liberal investigative group ProPublica. How did we find out? ProPublica revealed it.”

USA Today reports, “In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked. That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months. In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows. As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like ‘Progress’ or ‘Progressive,’ the 'liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.”

According to ABC News, “Cincinnati was far from the only IRS office where agents put conservative groups seeking tax exempt status under heightened scrutiny, according to documents obtained by ABC News. David French, an attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice representing 27 groups that say they were unfairly scrutinized by the IRS, provided letters from two different agents in Washington, D.C., to tea party groups seeking tax exempt status. Other groups received demands for information from agents in two separate IRS offices in California.”

And The Wall Street Journal adds, “Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday the Justice Department has opened a criminal probe of the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of tea-party groups, while an investigative report blamed the agency's managers for allowing the practices to continue for more than 18 months. . . . The inspector general's report left unanswered a key question—how exactly IRS workers came to focus excessively on conservative groups. ‘We could not specifically determine who had been involved in creating the criteria’ that led to selection of so many applications from conservative groups for extra review, the report said in a footnote. The report called on the IRS to better document the reasons for choosing groups for extra review, request better guidance on rules by the Treasury Department, and quickly resolve cases—some of which ‘have been in process for three years.’”

Frustrated with the new reports but no answers yet from the IRS, Leader McConnell said, “Basically all we’ve gotten from the IRS, on the other hand, is an attempt to scapegoat some folks out in Cincinnati and a laughable attempt to move past this whole issue with a ridiculous op-ed claiming ‘mistakes were made.’ Well, most folks don’t think that ignoring the Constitution is simply a ‘mistake.’ I like the fact that one group the IRS targeted, when asked by the agency to provide reading materials related to their mission, mailed them a copy of the Constitution. And today, I’d like to encourage every group that feels like it’s been unjustly targeted to do the same. Maybe just underline the First Amendment before you put it in the envelope. Because that’s what this is all about.”

He pointed out, “[L]et’s not forget that we wouldn’t know any of this if congressional Republicans hadn’t demanded better answers than the ones we were getting from the Administration. When I and several of my colleagues wrote to the IRS last year seeking clarification on allegations that they were harassing conservative groups, the response we got was essentially ‘nothing to see here, move along.’ When I pressed the issue in a speech last June, the Left either ridiculed the suggestion or ignored it. When IRS officials were asked point blank in congressional hearings whether this was happening, they said point blank that it wasn’t. Well, turns out it was.”

But that’s not the whole story. The Daily Caller writes, “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the Internal Revenue Service’s extra scrutiny of conservative groups is not an isolated incident, but rather part of a ‘pattern’ of this administration acting as the ‘speech police.’ In a phone interview with The Daily Caller, McConnell pointed to past actions by various agencies . . . and said that the IRS’s actions simply fell into that same mold. ‘This IRS investigation is certainly about the IRS, but it’s about the broader issue of the administration’s abuse of power and efforts to silence the critics of the administration,’ McConnell said.”

Writing about an interview Leader McConnell had with Larry Kudlow yesterday, CNBC notes, “McConnell said the limitations on free speech extended beyond the IRS, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. ‘The Department of Health and Human Services, during the Obamacare debate, issued a directive to the health insurance companies telling them they could not say to their policy holders what their objections were to Obamacare,’ . . .

On the Senate floor today, Sen. McConnell said, “If the President is truly concerned about this issue, as he claims, he’ll work openly and transparently with us to get to the bottom of this. And people will be held accountable. These allegations are serious — that there was an effort to bring the power of the federal government to bear on those the Administration disagreed with, in the middle of a heated national election. It could be criminal. And we’re determined to get answers.”

Tags: Washington, D.C. scandals, IRS, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

The Power Of Drudge: A Little Civics Lesson For Janet Napolitano And Barack Obama

2013-05-14T21:55:00.000-05:00

President Barack Obama & DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano

by Ralph Benko, Contributing Author: Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is on the list of potential Democratic presidential candidates compiled by the extraordinarily astute Prez16.com. As a cabinet secretary (and as a potential, if dark horse, presidential nominee) Madame Secretary should refrain from slurring the Drudge Report, as recently she did, a slur Drudge, confidently, featured.

Drudge is no fan of Napolitano. He regularly tweaks her as “Big Sis” (presumably an allusion to George Orwell’s “Big Brother”). Drudge is one of the most powerful — and widely respected — forces in the news business today. It suggests a kind of, well, Obamaesque clueless snobbishness to disparage him.

The Washington Examiner reported an exchangebetween the astute Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-SC, and Secretary Napolitano at a recent Congressional hearing:“You know, when Forbes magazine or Drudge or some reputable news sources start to repeat the numbers … the numbers cease to become Internet rumors, and they start having some credibility,” Duncan said questioning the “long delay” from the DHS to clarify the numbers.

“I will tell you, we found it so inherently unbelievable that statements would be made, it was hard to ascribe credibility to them,” Napolitano said, suppressing a bemused smile, adding that, “I don’t know if I’d put Forbes and Drudge in the same sentence.”Therein hangs a tale.

Two months ago this columnist reflected in one of his weekly commentaries for Forbes.com Opinion on a little-noticed Associated Press report stating that the DHS had issued purchase orders totaling 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. This was a story that had been circulating around the Internet for some time. AP’s fine shoe-leather reporter checked it out with DHS.

DHS did not deny (or meaningfully clarify) the claim. Instead, its spokesperson attempted to justify it with a claim of doing it to get the best price. The DHS spokesperson, AP reported, stated that DHS expends 15 million rounds every year, “mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.” This wasn’t really reassuring. 1.6 billion divided by 15 million implies “strategic sourcing contracts” for … a 100 year supply. This simply did not add up.

This columnist dismissed the possibility of anything politically sinister in this acquisition, interpreting it as “bureaucrats gone wild.” The main point of the column dealt with the discrepancy between President Obama’s avowed hostility to guns … and his opportunity to take this as a “teachable moment” to lead by example by remanding the bulk of this purchase. (Why are guns in the hands of citizens objectionable while guns in the hands of a civilian government agency admirable?)

This could have been an opportunity for Mr. Obama to bring the left and right together. The Second Amendment protects the rights of the people, not the government. As the second-ranking right in the Bill of Rights it is designed to provide a restraint on government. And the federal government now is showing precious little restraint. Libertarians, and many conservatives, as well as (if not more than) progressives, would have no objection to the federal government doing a little (and, in the case of the Department of Homeland Security, a lot) of disarmament. For Mr. Obama to have directed scaling back these purchase orders would have been quite, well, disarming.

DHS buying hundreds of millions of bullets (many, according to comments to the column by readers far more erudite than this columnist, not typically used for target practice) seems akin to Michael Bloomberg living on 20-ounce soda pops and food rich in trans fats. If Obama really wanted to change politics as usual, rather than sneer at those with whom he disagrees, he had a perfect opportunity to unite the country by scaling back the DHS ammo purchase. It was an opportunity he did not take.

The Drudge Report picked up that column. Subsequently over 900,000 people viewed it. Readers provided almost 1,000 comments, mostly astute (even when ungenerous to this writer). Meanwhile, DHS was excruciatingly slow to clarify. Mrs. Napolitano, in the Congressional hearing, kindly “reminded the audience that the DHS typically uses 150 to 160 million ammunition rounds a year.”

That’s an order of magnitude larger than that originally given to the AP by its spokesperson. US News and World Report, in an April 29th report, concludes that “DHS officials testified last week it was only planning to buy up to 750 million.”

Only? While 750 million is a little less than half that originally reported by AP it is by no means out of scale. It is not inconsistent with “strategic sourcing” purchase orders totaling 1.6 billion (this columnist having viewed web postings credibly purporting to show such purchase orders) rounds. Ordering, even over time, 750 million rounds provides an equally compelling basis for this writer’s call for restraint.

Rather than justifying, with claims of incredulity, her agency’s laxness Secretary Napolitano really should apologize. The delay in responding to a national furor bespeaks a cavalier attitude toward the citizens she has been hired to protect. When the owners of Subway — the world’s largest fast food chain — saw a wordless Facebook posting of one of their “footlongs” measuring only 11 inches they immediately issued a public commitment to rectify this. And sent out a quality control memo to all of their 38,000 outlets.

DHS, by contrast, long ignored a popular outcry apparently of almost an order of magnitude larger. If Mr. Obama vaguely wonders why so much of the public so mistrusts the government there’s a little civics lesson for him, too, here. Mr. President? Contrast the laxness of a federal agency with the alacrity of Subway in responding to public opinion. Discuss.

Secretary Napolitano also ought to be deeply penitent for her backhanded slur of Drudge: “I don’t know if I’d put Forbes and Drudge in the same sentence.” This columnist is proud of the Forbes brand high editorial standards and justified reputation for integrity. Forbes’s integrity does not demean Matt Drudge, who is the Walter Winchell of this era. (Drudge’s famous fedora suggested a subtle homage to Winchell.) Winchell was read by 50 million people a day, and 20 million listened to his radio show: “"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press.” The Drudge Report self-reportedly received over (a characteristic) 1 billion pageviews in the past 31 days. More views than your bullets, Madame Secretary. The pen remains mightier than the sword.

According to the New York Times:Drudge, once thought of as a hothouse flower of the Lewinsky scandal, is now more powerful in driving news than the half-billion folks on Facebook. (According to the study, Facebook accounted for 3.3 percent of the referrals to news sites, less than half as many as generated by The Drudge Report.)
“When you look at his influence, it cuts across all kind of sites, both traditional news outlets and online-only sites,” said Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism …. “He was an early and powerful force in setting the news agenda and has somehow maintained that even as there has been a great deal of change in the way people get their news.”

The Times on to note that “15 percent of the traffic at WashingtonPost.com, which is not exactly a hotbed of Tea Party foment, comes from The Drudge Report.”

Madame Secretary? Even if you have, as Joseph Welch once famously asked another high government official, “at long last … no sense of decency,” do reconsider. As former Indiana governor Thomas Branigan famously observed to Eugene C. Pulliam, publisher of the Indianapolis News and Star, it is unwise to argue “with one who buys ink by the barrel.” Or, as updated by the witty Darrell Patrick, “Never pick a fight with someone who buys their bandwidth by the gigabyte.”

It would appear that, at least in part as a result of Drudge’s attention to entirely credible reporting raising questions about DHS’s apparently extravagant ammunition purchase orders, the House Government Oversight Committee recently conducted a hearing on DHS ammo acquisition. Now the Government Accountability Office reportedly is conducting an investigation of your agency’s practices. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) have introduced legislation, the AMMO Act, restraining DHS.

Such is the power of the press. Such is the power of Drudge. It would be becoming, Madame Secretary, for you to send Matt Drudge a box of chocolates, a bouquet, and a note of apology for having slurred him for using the power of the press to hold your agency accountable. At very least it is unwise to argue “with one who buys ink by the barrel” or “bandwidth by the gigabyte.”

A little lesson in civics, and civility, for you, Madame Secretary.

And for you, with all due respect, Mr. President.
----------------
Ralph Benko is senior advisor, economics, to American Principles in Action’s Gold Standard 2012 Initiative, and a contributor to the ARRA News Service. This article first appeared in Forbes.

Tags: Drudge, civics lesson, Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama, Ralph Benko To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

"Questions"

2013-05-14T16:18:00.000-05:00

RNC:

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Gosnell Spared the Death Penalty

2013-05-14T15:55:00.000-05:00

Washington Post - Philadelphia abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies born alive at his rogue clinic dodged a possible death sentence Tuesday in a hasty post-verdict deal with prosecutors.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, waived his right to appeal in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. Gosnell was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in a case that became a flashpoint in the nation’s abortion debate. . . . [Read More]

Reference prior article: Kermit Gosnell Found Guilty of Murder!

Tags: Kermit Gosnell, guilty, murder, life without parole To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

IRS Scandal

2013-05-14T13:30:00.000-05:00

Today in Washington, D.C. - May 14, 2013:
The Senate resumed consideration of S. 601, the Water Resources Development Act of 2013. At noon, they voted on cloture on S. 601 (i.e. whether to cut off debate and restrict amendments) and then recessed for policy lunches.

The House convened yesterday but took up no bills. Today they conviened at noon but will not take up any bills until early this evening. The House is scheduled to conside two bills: H.R. 180 — "To encourage, enhance, and integrate Blue Alert plans throughout the United States in order to disseminate information when a law enforcement officer is seriously injured or killed in the line of duty." H.R. 1580" To affirm the policy of the United States regarding Internet governance."

Revelations about the growing scandal at the IRS where it targeted conservative and Tea Party groups for extra intensive scrutiny over tax-exempt status are coming quickly following the first news on Friday stemming from a Treasury inspector general report.

Reuters reports, “Higher-level Internal Revenue Service officials took part in discussions as far back as August 2011 about targeting by lower-level tax agents of ‘Tea Party’ and other conservative groups, according to documents reviewed by Reuters on Monday. The documents show the offices of the IRS's chief counsel and deputy commissioner for services and enforcement communicated about the targeting with lower-level officials on August 4, 2011, and March 8, 2012, respectively. The two communications occurred weeks and months before Doug Shulman, then the commissioner of the IRS, told congressional panels in late March 2012 that no groups were being targeted for extra scrutiny by the tax agency.”

And The Washington Post adds, “ProPublica on Monday reported that the same IRS division that targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle provided the investigative-reporting organization with confidential applications for tax-exempt status. That revelation contradicts previous statements from the agency and may represent a violation of federal guidelines. Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS sector that reviews tax-exemption applications, told a congressional oversight committee in April 2012 that IRS code prohibited the agency from providing information about groups that had not yet been approved. . . . ProPublica reported that the Lerner’s division released ‘nine pending confidential applications of conservatives groups’ in response to a request from the investigative-reporting organization for the applications of 67 nonprofits in November 2012. . . . IRS officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating the groups, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to a report in Tuesday’s Washington Post. IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified on the targeting issue before a House Ways and Means subcommittee in March 2012, adamantly denying that the IRS singled out groups for special scrutiny. ‘There’s absolutely no targeting,’ he said.”

House Republican Study Committee Chairman Steve Scalise responded today to the IRS Scandal:
“This latest government scandal at the IRS is a fresh reminder of the political thuggery that has characterized the Obama Administration,” Scalise said. “The Internal Revenue Service’s decision to target organizations based on their beliefs and values represents a new low for the Obama Administration’s attack on conservative principles. All those responsible for this scandal, from the White House down, must held accountable for their shameful actions.

“The American people deserve to know what the White House knew about this scandal and when they knew it. The fact that the IRS targeted groups simply because they expressed interest in the tea party movement or ‘making America a better place’ is outrageous, and there is no place for such Anti-American attitudes.

“It is quite telling that President Obama has yet to call for anyone’s resignation as result of this scandal, and I urge him to take significant corrective measures against all of those involved.”
Outraged about this scandal, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor this morning: “Over the past few days we’ve heard many in the media talk about how this has been a ‘rough week’ for the Administration. It’s been a worse week for those who cherish the First Amendment. On Friday, we learned that, just as we'd been told by our constituents, the IRS deliberately targeted conservative groups across the country in the midst of a heated national election. Over the weekend, we learned that the extent of it was even broader than we originally thought. Then this morning, we all learned that the targeting wasn’t limited to an IRS office out in Cincinnati — as the Administration suggested last week — but that it reached all the way to IRS headquarters in Washington. What we don’t know at this point is whether it jumped the fence from the IRS to the White House. But we do know this: we can’t count on the administration to be forthcoming about the details of this scandal — because so far they’ve been anything but. So, this morning, I’m calling on the President to make available, completely and without restriction, everyone who can answer the questions we have as to what was going on at the IRS, who knew about it, and how high it went. No stonewalling, no more incomplete answers, no more misleading responses, no holding back witnesses, no matter how senior their current or former positions — we need full transparency and cooperation. The American people deserve answers.”

He noted, “Despite repeated assurances from the Obama Administration that it was not targeting its political enemies through the IRS during the last election cycle, we’ve now learned that the IRS was in fact singling out conservative groups – groups who dared to speak up and express their First Amendment rights. Clearly, we’ve only started to scratch the surface of this scandal. The American people are looking for answers, and I’m determined to help them get to the bottom of this.

“Last June, I gave a very public speech in which I called out the Obama Administration for serial abuses of government power in going after its political enemies in the middle of a heated national election. The Left scoffed at the suggestion. The Washington Post said my speech was full of ‘red herrings’. The New York Times called my argument ‘bogus’. Robert Reich called it ‘bonkers.’ Well, you know what we learned last week: these abuses were even more widespread than we knew.”

As he pointed out in an interview with Breitbart News, “The Obama effort to shut up opponents isn’t limited to the IRS. . . . It applies to the FCC [Federal Communications Commission], SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], FEC [Federal Elections Commission], HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] …. And you remember, the Obama campaign last year published a list of eight businessmen who it believed were enemies.”

Speaking to National Review Online, he explained, “I cannot resist the temptation to say, ‘I told you so.’ . . . I zeroed in on this last summer after reports of this intimidation surfaced in Kentucky and elsewhere. I’ve been warning about this for years. In fact, I launched a campaign on this issue last year, and the Washington Post dismissed it as a bunch of red herrings. Now we know it’s not a red herring, it’s the real deal. . . . The whole effort by the administration to silence their enemies is going on across the board — at the FEC, the FCC, the SEC, and the HHS.”

Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens sums it up well:
"The use of the nation's tax agency to target groups for audit and review on the basis of political leanings is an egregious abuse of power. This is beyond Nixonian in its flagrant disregard for the rule of law as it was intended to stifle dissent, and now there must be accountability. We know the Democrat-controlled Senate will not be bothered to inquire what happened, but the House of Representatives can and should use its power to subpoena witnesses to get to the bottom of this scandal. Our laws either apply equally to all citizens and citizen groups regardless of political leanings, or we have become nothing more than a banana republic."

Tags: IRS Scandal, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Lurking Tyranny

2013-05-14T13:19:00.000-05:00

by AF "Tony" Branco

Tags: Lurking Tyranny, editorial cartoon, AF Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Senate Democrats ordered IRS in 2010 to Investigate 501(c) Conservative Groups

2013-05-14T12:30:00.000-05:00

ALG calls for special counsel to be appointed to prosecute case

May 14, 2013, Fairfax, VA — Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) in 2010 letter requested that then-Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Douglas Shulman deeply investigate 501(c) non-profit political organizations.

The letter called on Shulman to "survey major 501(c)(4), (c)(5) and (c)(6) organizations involved in political campaign activity to examine whether they are operated for the organization's intended tax exempt purpose and to ensure that political campaign activity is not the organization's primary activity" and to "to determine whether they are acting as conduits for major donors advancing their own private interests regarding legislation or political campaigns, or are providing major donors with excess benefits."

In his own letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens noted, "Considering the invasive questions the IRS was asking the targeted organizations, it appears that Sen. Baucus got exactly what he asked for, which was a witch-hunt."

Baucus' letter also instructed Shulman that "Possible violation of tax laws should be identified as you conduct this study. Please report back to the Finance Committee as soon as possible with your findings and recommended actions regarding this matter."

Baucus specifically referenced a Sept. 16, 2010 Time article, "The New GOP Money Stampede" reporting that "Democrats fear [what] could be a $300 million Republican spending blitz this year." The story detailed allegations that local tea party groups were actually "shadow Republican groups formed by longtime party officials." The article referenced the tea party, but also American Crossroads, American Action Network, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as forming a wider campaign front for the 2010 Republican election campaign effort, financed "in the form of secret undisclosed contributions."

Baucus also referenced "a group transforming itself into a non-profit under 501(c)(4) of the tax code," ensuring, as the Time article put it, that the group would "not have to publicly disclose any information about its donors." That "group" Baucus referenced was actually Crossroads GPS.

"The Time article Baucus so prominently referenced was all about the financing of Republican election efforts and right of center political and advocacy organizations," Mehrens noted in his letter, adding, "It did not scrutinize any left-wing groups. Nor did Baucus include in his letter to Shulman any footnotes to articles that detailed Democrat campaign activities or left of center groups. The implicit task was to investigate the political right from start to finish. And that's exactly what the IRS did."

Yesterday, Baucus issued a statement suggesting "Targeting groups based on their political views is not only inappropriate but it is intolerable, promising a "full investigation into this matter by the Senate Finance Committee."

But that is not possible, Mehrens said, considering Baucus' letter to Shulman. "Senate Democrats were complicit in the IRS scandal targeting the tea party and other groups, per Baucus' explicit letter to Shulman. The Senate majority must therefore recuse itself from any ensuing investigation in order to ensure that the public's trust in the inquiry's findings is not tainted."

The only good option, Mehrens wrote, was for Senate leaders to call on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special counsel to prosecute the case. "Just as the Senate majority cannot be trusted to investigate its own complicity in this affair, neither can the Obama Administration."

He concluded, "These targeted attacks by the IRS were not about restoring 'transparency' to our political process, they were a part of a brazen partisan assault using the instrumentalities of the state to harass political opponents and stifle dissent to achieve a partisan end. It is beyond Nixonian in its flagrant disregard for the rule of law. Only a special counsel can get to the bottom of this."

Mehrens joined others, including the Republican Governors Association, who today also demanded a special prosecutor be appointed. To view online.
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Attachments:
Americans for Limited Government letter to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, May 14, 2013.

Letter from Sen. Max Baucus to then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, Sept. 28, 2010.

"The New GOP Money Stampede," by Michael Crowley, Time Magazine, Sept. 16, 2010.

Tags: Senate Democrats, IRS, 2010 to investigate, conservative groups, 501(c), INSERT TAGS To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!