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Congressman Asks NSA To Provide Metadata For "Lost" IRS Emails
An anonymous reader writes in with news that the IRS lost email scandal is far from over. Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) has sent a formal letter to the National Security Agency asking it to hand over "all its metadata" on the e-mail accounts of a former division director at the Internal Revenue Service. "Your prompt cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated and will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment," Stockman wrote on Friday. The request came hours after the IRS told a congressional committee that it had "lost" all of the former IRS Exempt Organizations division director's e-mails between January 2009 and April 2011.
if they actually had that information... they can't possibly... and even if they do I'm pretty sure they'll deny it. The feds are in full blown police state at this point as regards due process. But still imagine if they actually had that information. That would be pretty incredible.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment
Reach a conclusion first, then look for evidence that supports it.
What a lame excuse, They're not even trying anymore.
Quickly! Use your fourth amendment violation to help us with this first amendment violation! No, that's not a joke. Why are you laughing?!
That's going to be a long wait for a train that never comes - the NSA will simply not comply. Its a nice 'in your face' gesture though, real cute. Should get some political points during election time, I'm sure.
Bullshit. These people are just trying to avoid paying taxes. Kill this 501(c) bullshit now. Or are you going to try to tell me that would violates everybody's "rights"?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
At least they don't pretend all this data collection is just for catching terrorists anymore. It's nice to see some honesty in the government.
you may expect subpoenas to be issued immediately to all individuals in control of emails sent outside the IRS that are identified with the supplied meta-data.
Earlier testimony by the IRS indicated that it would take years to fulfil the current request to get the emails from the email server. Now they are saying a workstation crashed so the emails were lost....... Time to start charging people with obstruction of congress/justice.
What would metadata even prove without the content?
So you "know" there was no suppression because one got through? Sounds like your bar for making conclusions is set pretty low.
There's nothing "stupid" about naming a political party with a political name.
It's a real scandal when the party in power can leverage tax exempt status, or any other "treatment" from the IRS. You can agree or disagree with the political opinions or positions of these parties, but you must never use political power to prevent another party from gaining traction.
That's more than a scandal, it's pure simple corruption.
You'll probably reply with something political now, such as that you don't like the tea party or Romney or something. Totally irrelevant, save it for a real political discussion.
"Take a real scandal (NSA) and link it to a fake one (IRS)"
Translation: "Take government malfeasance that I imagine affects me personally and link it government malfeasance that I don't think impacts me personally...yet"
You (and so many others) fail to appreciate what's obvious to others of us: that while the NSA behavior is egregious, it's now out in the open, and you can take steps to protect yourself. And if you already assume the worst--that the NSA is scanning/saving *everything*, then that can't get any worse.
But the extent of the IRS behavior *isn't* out in the open. It *can* get much worse. If there's *any* politically motivated behavior going on the the IRS, then that is tacit approval and groundwork for more. And you won't think it's a "fake" scandal in a decade when, left unchecked, you find yourself the subject of a tax audit because you donated to the political party not in power. They can put a lien on your house. They can garnish your wages. In terms of practically achievable damage to the average citizen's life, the IRS is far more dangerous. The power to tax is the power to destroy.
You can stymie the NSA. You can't stymie the IRS.
The problem is that in order to get the tax exempt status you are not supposed to be a political party. With that rule in mind, what exactly do you expect when you submit for tax exemption while having the name of a political party?
They were taping into large internet backbones, not internal corporate pipes.
Where's my tax exempt status?
If you give to, or become a charity only so you can get out of your taxes, then fuck you. You're just being greedy. It's a bullshit game. I say again, this whole "scandal" is a diversion. The real scandal is how the IRS treats us that actually have to work for our money. They can steal your property and leave you in the street.
But what chutzpah! A congressman actually working an internet meme. 'Tis the season...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
His laptop has nothing to do with his email,
as all email is required by law to be archived at
the server!
What a scam, really? He's claiming the the laptop
was the only mail archive?!
We've got politically motivated BOLO lists, a political appointee hatchet-person taking the fifth, a government agency bullshitting the nation about "crashed" computers and "lost" emails....
There is a turd in here somewhere. Let a special prosecutor to sift through the IRS back up tapes, and subpoena all the other agencies for Lerner's mail. Let's find out why all these motherfuckers are stonewalling and lying.
It's personally offensive to me; to be told they can't recover the mail. I know that's bullshit. It's not even vaguely plausible. It's an insult to my intelligence and it deserves to be persecuted if only to expose and humiliate the fuckwits that have the temerity to make such a stupid claim. Letting that one slide just isn't tolerable. Let's kick open the door and find out what in the hell is going on here.
lost the emails............ I know that's bullshit and so do you.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I expect that with a two-party system every single official in government has a political party affiliation. This is nothing new.
What I do not expect is for them to intentionally target groups which oppose some party they are adherents to. This is in direct contradiction to their job description, and of course, to the constitution.
What do I expect? I expect them to do better.
Some non-for profit issues happen to be more supported by one political side than another. An issue being politicized does not make it ineligible for non-for profit status. If this was the case, planned parenthood and other organizations would need to also lose their non-for profit status, not just the conservatives issues.
There were some abuses by filers for status and those should be weeded out in a timely manner. Since issues on both sides of the political spectrum receive funding from these entities it is not fair to hurt entities that lean toward one side without also doing the same to the other side.
Mod parent up.
It's easy to ignore the IRS scandal until an administration that opposes *your* views is elected and starts using it against you.
Fine. So long as they also do it for liberal groups like the Unions. But that won't ever happen because liberals like to play by a different set of rules.
I think our government needs a reset.
This is obviously a cover up. Time to for a special prosecutor. Let's get some demonrats under oath, as if that mattered to them. Nixon was impeached for threatening to use the IRS as a political weapon. Obama has done it.
an ill wind that blows no good
Do you have ANY comprehension of what you seem to be supporting????? Consider:
Person A pays his taxes. Person B pays his taxes. Person C pays his taxes.
Persons A,B, and C form a club, and each tosses-in a few dollars to fund club activities.
WHY ON EARTH is the government automatically entitled to apply a new tax to the already taxed money the three people chipped-in????
Now let's extend this a bit...
The club has functions of general benefit to society. Anything from providing medicine to needy kids, or food to hungry families, or teaching English to immigrants, helping drunks get sober, you name it ... and wealthy person D decides to donate to the cause. For a wide variety of historical and cultural reasons, in the US it has long been policy to not tax the money that person D donates to help the club. The general reason is that the US was never intended to be socialist - it had a small government and left "social welfare" to a huge array of voluntary and charitable organizations. Money already flowing to such organizations was already deemed to be in the public good, and it was therefore redundant and counter-productive to tax it "for the public good".
do-gooders on the left long-ago declared that actions in the political realm were in this very nature of being "beneficial to society" and in that vein, the labor unions were enabled to become hugely involved in politics by disguising their Democrat-aligned election activities as "voter outreach", "volunteer training" and so-on and were able to do it under the 501(c4) section of the US code (which covers labor unions). For DECADES all the people on the left DEPENDED on this and defended it with lofty rhetoric about "civic responsibility" and so on. Only recently, as people on the right started to try using the same parts of US law in a similar way, have Democrats become critics - and ALL their proposals to remove the tax exemption have included the 501(c3) section of IRS code (which is where the non-union charities all are) while carefully and deliberately letting the 501(c4) section (which conveniently only applies to labor unions) stand. Any proposal to kill-off tax exemption for the 501(c3) groups in a partisan attempt to "get" the Koch Brothers or the TEA Party, will also hit things like the Shriners, Alcoholics Anon, Food Banks, etc while protecting the thugs at the UAW and the SEIU - an obnoxious result for something pretending to be "reform".
IF you are going to remove ABSOLUTELY ALL tax exemptions from US Law, you'd at least be more fair than any proposal the Democrats have ever supported BUT you are still stuck with the problem of a group where all the members are contributing after-tax dollars: Should THAT money be re-taxed? I ask because many such proposals remove that tax exemption by declareing a gathering of people to be a new entity and the money chipped-in to be "income". Under that scheme there is no such thing as "freedom of assembly" because nearly every gathering costs money and as such would be taxed and regulated and subject to harassment and arbitrary suppression.
Anyone even essentially familiar with email systems and technologies are coming out of the wordwork as an expert calling BS on the executive branch's lie. We've seen that lie before with the Bush administration and, if I recall, fewer people had as much to say other than "if their systems suck that bad, something should be done about it." In any case, not making a claim that either side is any different in that regard, but I am saying it's not the first time that lie was attempted.
But I see another similarity in another government lie. The 9-11 report says a lot of things about how/why the buildings fell as they did. And just like people in IT, people in architecture and engineering are still calling BS on the official story. Having worked for an AE firm, I can tell you there was no controversy on the topic. They all knew it was BS.
The sad thing about this political firestorm is that not one person in a hundred can actually explain what it is about. It's amazing how many people think that the IRS was seeking to prevent the Tea Party from getting tax exempt status; that was never the issue, their tax exempt status was never in doubt. The issue was they were applying for 501(c)(4) status which is reserved for social welfare groups like civic leagues and volunteer fire departments. Social welfare groups are allowed to engage in political activity but it cannot be their primary activity. Wondering why the Tea Party wanted that 501(c)(4) designation? Such groups do not have to reveal who is donating money to them. There has been a large run up in the number of groups applying for the 501(c)(4) designation.
Not surprising. That seems to happen a lot. As such, would someone please explain to me why the IRS allows anyone (let alone the IRS' top administrator) to download their emails to their desktops and delete them from their servers? And even if they did, why don't server backups exist which contain those emails?
Are the IRS' IT staff that incompetent?
As for demanding that the NSA turn over email metadata for Lois Lerner's IRS email address, that assumes they even have such information. Emails internal to the IRS shouldn't go across the Internet. I assume (maybe incorrectly) that the NSA isn't actively capturing packets on the IRS' internal networks, so what is to be gained here, except highlighting the incompetence of the IRS and using the "NSA is capturing everything" meme to make the Obama administration look bad.
So. It's just business as usual. Nothing to see here, just political wrangling to distract us from the fact that our government is being run for the benefit of the monied interests and not its citizens. Move along.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
I am not a windows or MS Exchange admin but as far as I know the lost emails, refer to email contents and they are kept separately from the email header information. Unless IRS claims they have lost every worker's email for this questionable period of time (which, in and of itself is admitting guilt by hiding the truth in my opinion) they should be easy to go to a backup of MS Exchange database and pull the necessary header information. If I am required to keep a 7 years long duration of my financial records, I am sure they are keeping the same on everybody for 7 years. Why not email then ? There is an old folks' saying: The fish smells from the head. This one stunk up the whole neighborhood. Just curious how the Teflon covered president elect will slide out of this one without rolling some serious heads, maybe including his own.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
The IRS scandal is FAR from "fake". The administration used the IRS against its political opponents through TWO national election cycles. The IRS filtered the applications for tax exempt status looking for "liberal" or "progressive" groups (which were ACCELLERATED in the approval process) and TEA Party groups (which were thrown into legal limbo - neither approved nor denied (which would have allowed them to begin appeals)). This is on the record already established as FACT by the Inspector General within the Obama administration. The parts the Republicans keep investigating are: [1] WHO gave the orders (given that the people who probably did are on record under oath saying they did not) [2] WHO tried to cover it up (E-mails and other docs have been repeatedly hidden from congress, which has the legal right to see them, and administration officials have said under oath that it was all some little problem "at the Cleveland office" which is now known to be false) [3] Why is it STILL happening, WHO is still running it and WHO is still covering up (many TEA Party groups are STILL not getting processed after 3 YEARS). You liberals USED to claim that was EVIL (Democrats used that as an impeachment charge against Nixon, who had only TALKED about doing it). If you are now going to claim this IRS action is a "phony scandal" then you need to get on your knees and humbly apologize for all the hatred you every heaped on Nixon over the "phony" Watergate scandal (Remember: Nixon had no fore-knowledge of the Watergate break-in and no record was ever established that anything was (or could have been gained by) the break-in). If "using government against political enemies" and "using government to obstruct investigations" now constitutes a "phony scandal" then Watergate was as phony as a three dollar bill. Incidentally, I am at least consistent: I believe both Nixon and Obama aredysfunctional evil characters who deserve imprisonment for treason.
The money Karl Rove's "Crossroads GPS" spent backing Romney went straight down the toilet; Obama won and Rove's donors ended-up poorer for it ...... so for all the boogey-man shrieks by idiots on the left, no harm was done.
When Clinton fired all the US attys he had authority to fire, you lefties said nothing. When Obama did the same thing, you lefties said nothing. ONLY when Bush fired all the attys he had the legal right to fire did this action, long recognized as a normal thing that happens with every president, suddenly become something EVIL. Drop it, unless you are going to equally complain about Clinton and Obama doing it. Hell, right now Obama has appointed one of his own campaign donors to be the federal atty "investigating" the IRS actions.... are YOU outraged?
The IRS claims it has Lois' internal emails, it only lost the ones to external people outside of the IRS. Add that to the list of questionable claims.
By the way, she was sending donor lists of Tea Party groups to liberal groups, lists the IRS legally had no right to collect, and even less right to hand out. If this is true Lois Learner WILL go to jail, it isn't even up for debate or question. At that point they can put the heat on her to tell the rest of the story for a reduced sentence.
All this is already well known, they are just collecting additional evidence to make the legal case easier to win for a bigger amount of time for Learner.
This sounds like the action of a Congressman trying to discredit the NSA. The NSA obviously is not going to respond to this - if they did, they'd be inundated with requests from every small-town prosecutor wanting some more evidence (ironically, some might even get warrants for it). That would be worse than what will happen instead, which is that an anti-NSA legislator gets a talking point about how the NSA isn't using its data and isn't cooperating with the rest of the government (namely Congress).
Yes, it's just a political point being scored. But it's a point hopefully in our favor - or at the very least, one against our common enemy.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is the best way to get the NSA shut down. The general public has no control over it; trying to get them angry about it is pointless. The only way the general public could shut it down is by a revolution, and we're too well-fed and content to do that. But Congress could shut it down, so let's find every way to get Congressmen upset about the NSA. I wonder what a FOIA request for some congressional metadata would do...
There's nothing fake about the IRS being used for political muscle. The IRS gets to violate all sorts of due process measures like standards of proof being flipped (defendants have burden of proof in civil tax cases, rather than the government), asset seizure before/without a trial, etc.. It is a very nice tool to have, if you're in power.
did not "Bush" already loose a ton of mails when the "white house" moved from the
Huge giant sized corporate Lotus based mail to the " small business/HOME" mail system from MS
this is NOTHING new
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
Ms Lerner has said under oath that she had no such communications with the white house and certain other parts of government during these times. The congress wanted to see the e-mails BOTH to verify that testimony and also to enable them to then go to the other agencies with orders for the exact documents. The meta data would prove how many such e-mails existed, when and where and from whom they originated and to whom they were sent and might even include the text of the subject lines. Now (SHAZAM!) suddenly the very types of e-mails (ones between her IRS box and the boxes of other parts of the government - and during the very timeframe in question) are deleted. Wow. It's as if ALL the Nixon audio tapes (not just 18 minutes but ALL of them) miraculously erased themselves. Abra Cadabra! Kerpoof! All the e-mails on all the servers and backup tapes and backup servers and (federally-mandated) federal redords archiving servers all went crazy one night and lost ..... um ...... the EXACT same set of e-mails the congress demanded and which the Obama administration has long insisted it would evetually hand-over (they've been claiming they have the e-mails but that it would take a couple of YEARS (like until Mr Obama is retired) to porduce them).
He walked out of the State of the Union Address saying "I could not bear to watch as he continued to cross the clearly-defined boundaries of the Constitutional separation of powers". Really adult.
He's running for Senate in Texas against Senator Corwyn, the Senate Minority Whip, and he just dropped off the map. He missed 17 House votes in a row. It also seems that even though he is a official candidate, he is doing zero campaigning. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-senate-candidate-steve-stockman-goes-awol/
He has also been cited by the Office of Congressional Ethics (I know, I laughed too). He accepted campaign contributions from his own staff members, which is a big no no. He is also accused of using his full time House staff members to work on his Congressional campaign. They all pull this trick, but there is a legal way and a stupid way to do this. He chose stupid. http://oce.house.gov/2014/06/june-11-2014---oce-referral-regarding-rep-steve-stockman.html
So it's not surprising that he would be the one to further complicate the snake pit of uncontrolled domestic surveillance by injecting it into a congressional investigation. Considering his quote about Obama breaking the constitution, his appeal to use unconstitutionally collected data to get at the IRS is mind boggling. His brain is clearly an irony free zone.
Why is Snark Required?
Since the NSA is supposed to be monitoring threats to the US, this request implies that the NSA is targeting the IRS or members of its staff as a potential threat.
I could agree with that.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
That would be the EITC. According to Candidate Romney, you're probably one of the 47% who will never votes for him.
what's to stop nsa from "losing" metadata? As long as the ultimate check on the President's power is off the table (as it is with this President), the executive branch is unaccountable. Short of a veto-proof majority, the Congress has as much power (or even less) than the UN. It's a debate society.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"if the NSA doesn't come back with the data that it's asserted they have, then they're in cahoots with Obama"
HAAAA_RR !!
Since the US government is not protected by itself branches of itself can invade the privacy of the other branches. Check and Mate. I think we found out how to destroy the NSA and IRS in one swoop.
A 501(c)(4) is almost always operated through donations made to the organization that are not tax-deductible. That is, the money they run on was taxed before the individuals donated it, at the individuals tax rates. A 501(c)(4) rarely earns any significant income from any source other than these non-deductible donations (otherwise this section would not apply), and so would rarely have any taxable corporate income to speak of.
If I and 100 friends decided we wanted to fund the creation of a video outlining the dangers of hiring pedophiles as babysitters, we couldn't easily do so. Who would sign the contract with the producer, director, cast, writer? Who would write a check to pay the distributor and all the other payroll checks? As a group of individuals--using our after-tax dollars--we couldn't. What we'd need to do is organize under a corporate umbrella, which we'd give our after-tax dollars to, and which could then satisfy all those legal requirements. That'd be a 501(c)(4).
There's no taxes being avoided.
...in the reasoning behind NSA acting as the national backup.
Some politician (Stockman is not a surprise, by any means) will demand the data, supposedly used for National Security ONLY, must be allowed to be used for political purposes. If the government lets this one work, then think about how Nixon's Enemies List would have been managed using NSA data, and it spells the end of democracy.
Stockman is too dumb to even KNOW this is why the Patriot Act was so BAD: It abolished the pretense that the government wasn't spying on everybody...ala 1984 (only 30 years' later). This is the very abuse of the NSA over-reaching data collection policies that Snowden warned us about (as have others before him). This will be the test case for whether universal surveillance is now national policy...but they'll cover it up by providing the data in secret, publicly denying it, and then claiming, "This is why we can't share information; we need MORE right to trample the Bill of Rights!."
Forewarned is forearmed.
Thank you, Dilbert!
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
... at least we're safe from binders full of women, whatever that would mean!
Whew, dodged that bullet!
Hold on there, big fella! Once you - as an organization - apply to the IRS for a tax-exempt status and swear under penalty of law that you are not engaging in political activity (and let's be clear - tea party organizations are by definition 100% political), then you *should* expect the IRS to come sniffing. Do not extrapolate that simple reality into "OMG - if I support X party then they're going to audit me!!!". Reality check, please....
Since donations to 501(c)(4) organizations are not deductible, anyone donating to them has paid taxes on those dollars. Although they are corporations, 501(c)(4)'s generally do not have incomes like other corporations because they don't sell stuff for profit. Nearly all of the money 501(c)(4)'s "earn" comes in the form of already-taxed donations and the law reasonably does not require those dollars to be taxed again simply because they were donated to a 501(c)(4).
Donations to 501(c)(3) organizations *may* be deductible, but those organizations generally are precluded from engaging in political activities--unlike 501(c)(4)s.
A 501(c)(3) is actively engaged in doing things to help people needing it, but not advocating it in the political arena; the reverse is generally true for 501(c)(4). A 501(c)(3) may be feeding the homeless, for example, while a 501(c)(4) might be paying for advertisements that advocate changing a law that is seen to be aggravating the plight of homeless people.
There is some rationale for not taxing dollars that are helping people directly.
Take a real scandal (NSA) and link it to a fake one (IRS)
Can we please stop referring to this as a "fake scandal"? It's real.
Richard Nixon could only dream of using the IRS like this. By now, only the willfully blind can consider this a "fake" scandal.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
If I gave you $10,000 it would be a gift from me to you that would be tax-free on your part, but I would have had to pay income taxes on that first as that gift is non-deductible. If I gave $10,000 to, say Greenpeace or the NRA, it would be tax-free on their part, but I would have had to pay income taxes on that first as that gift is non-deductible.
BUILD A HOUSE OUT OF HER!
Don't like the advocacy of the NRA? Have to shut down Mothers Demand Action and Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, too. All 501(c)(4) groups.
From a freedom of speech perspective, it seems easier to let them all continue to exist.
(black critics of Obama get called things like "Uncle Toms" (and FAR worse) and conservative women get called "sluts" and worse) ....
could you provide examples for these assertions? I can't ever recall black critics of Obama being called "Uncle Toms". Neither do I recall conservative women getting called "sluts" by liberal opponents. The only time I recall the word slut thrown about was when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute because she advocated for mandatory contraception coverage in medical insurance plans. While it is possible that I just haven't been paying close enough attention to the political discourse going on about me in this country I really want to see you back up your claim with some examples.
It's easy to ignore the IRS scandal until an administration that opposes *your* views is elected and starts using it against you.
The extent to which they could use this against you is to tell you that you can't claim a charitable deduction for making contributions to these tea party organizations. This isn't quite the jack-booted thugs trampling over your liberties which you seem to imagine. Problematic, certainly, but let's try to have at least a little perspective here.
You can do exactly that, find three people you trust and you all put your money in a big pile together and go nuts, it doesn't get taxed again.
BUT you probably want government protection from your buddy taking the money and running right? Or say your club has some liabilities that club funds don't cover, I don't suppose you and your friends want your own monies on the line to cover the club right?
So now you create a special entity to protect those club monies and assets, and if it really is for the public good there are tax free options, otherwise that entity's income gets taxed like everything else's.
In both the US and Canada, data is supposed to be retained for 7 years by companies. It's standard practice to archive email at the SERVER before letting a client download it. Some places won't even allow email downloads, but force you to stick with protocols that leave the email on the server for safe keeping.
I don't buy it for a second. They didn't "lose" the emails and they can get them from the system backups for the email server ANY TIME.
Someone should be SHOT for this fraud.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
They are lying. Anyone who's worked in IT knows they are lying.
Be seeing you...
As someone who works support in the email archive business, I pull email metadata for clients all the time. Sometimes for MILLIONS of messages. Also, by law in the US, many companies need to keep their data for 7 years. I am not sure if IRS would fall into that category though. But, I'd be shocked if there was no Email Archive system at the IRS, considering the high amount of government organizations that I've worked with for many years. They keep it all, but its usually a giant mess.
The metadata that is stored in SQL for email archiving is usually Ownership (Sender/Recipient/CC/BCC), Message Subject, Message Date
501(c)(3) organizations (like churches) are not allowed to be political.
501(c)(4) organizations are allowed.
Guess which section the Tea Party groups were registering under.
Sounds like he had the idea a while back, and has been waiting for an oppurtunity to check if the NSA would be willing to share, for something official..
I subscribe to some liberal sites, and as a result get regular emails from them. I recently received an email from Public Citizen. Now, Public Citizen is a 501(c)(4), founded by Ralph Nader, who's primary purpose of late seems to be opposing the ruling handed down in the Citizens United case.
Recall that the Citizens United case hinged on the fact that a 501(c)(4) corporation produced a movie that had a political purpose, in this case a documentary "Hillary: The Movie" that was intended to highlight Mrs. Clinton's perceived shortcomings at a time when she was running for president.
The email from Public Citizen was urging me to donate money to support their distribution of a documentary highlighting how wrong they felt the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United was.
That's right: a 501(c)(4) corporation made a movie with the express political purpose of protesting the Supreme Court decision that a 501(c)(4) corporation could make a movie with an express political purpose!
stop lying. Ed shults on ann coulter " shes nothing but a right wing slut" Google it, im not doung your work for you. and while your at it google al sharpton and see him calling people he disagrees with uncle tom AND nigger.
,
but im sure you knew this, its not a secret google and youtube are your friends
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
At least that's what they will claim next.
That's why they cannot get server archives which most other companies and government organizations back up and store for 3-7 years.
But we all know NSA backs up the GMail servers regularly.
So they are stuck.
Once you - as an organization - apply to the IRS for a tax-exempt status and swear under penalty of law that you are not engaging in political activity (and let's be clear - tea party organizations are by definition 100% political), then you *should* expect the IRS to come sniffing.
This point cannot be stressed enough. The IRS was simply doing its job, and since it was basically only right-wing, conservative groups filing fraudulent applications, they 'feel persecuted'. As devious and disgusting as some of the ploys I've seen coming from the right, it wouldn't surprise me if this was basically planned from the start - take money given by Murdock, Koch, etc, and use it to create a bunch of political non-profits, then file for a tax-exempt status that they do not qualify for; if they're accepted, free money! and if they're denied, they've just created a "scandal" for Fox News! Its the very definition of a win-win.
The IRS is just about as corrupt as it gets. When they decide to target someone, that person's life is over. Finished.
I have an acquaintance this is happening to. The IRS claims that he and his wife screwed up a tax return a few years ago, and now have to pay retroactively. The amount demanded is beyond anything they could have owed, but there is really nothing you can do: The "court" you go do for justice is an IRS court, and guess who it sides with 99 times out of 100?
Since there is no way they can pay this lump sum, they agreed to a payment plan: $X per month. Now, after several months of payments, they have received a statement of account from the IRS. Due to accruing interest and penalties, the amount they owe has increased. Some IRS pantywad has decided to have some fun. Ruin someone's life - it's so entertaining. No accountability, no independent appeal, you are just so screwed.
In the current case: The IRS is legally required to maintain their business records. They are supposed to produce them. "Oops, sorry, a computer crashed" - completely unbelievable. Nonetheless, it appears that they will be allowed to get away with it, and no one at all will be punished...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
This time they may have stepped into it. Whoever created the myth that the emails were destroyed will probably go to jail. The very claim that the electronic records could not be produced because they were destroyed (while they clearly haven't been) is tantamount to attempting to destroy those records. There is no question that this lie gets them on abstraction of justice and lying to Congress. But attempting to destroy electronic records of a crime brings in a whole new set of charges (think wire fraud and such). They can't back peddle this anymore. Expect them to double down and dig in.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I mean... unless the emails were not sent, then there are probably multiple backups of the same emails by the email recipients.
Any email sent to multiple recipients should be essentially impossible to lose.
I use multiple public email services (yahoo, google, hotmail) and i'm certain that every email I ever sent is stored *somewhere* and I'm not a significant figure.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The level of discourse is very low on both sides.
I have to suffer through way more "libtards" than "knuckle-dragger" (rare) or a "mouth breather" (never?) or a "religious nut" (now this one is common).
And it's Limbaugh who is calling women "sluts" (and worse.)
After Romney lost- it was my conservative friends who were defriending all my liberal friends. I couldn't believe they were shocked he lost. It was *clear* from August that he was going to lose- he was unelectable.
I *used* to be a conservative independent (Voted for Reagan- twice... and for Bush Sr). But the republican party has been running so hard to the right, I'm finding myself unable to vote for any republican candidate that gets through the primary. They are all religious extremists who are neither fiscally conservative nor socially liberal.
In my conservative mailing list, Eric Cantor ( A "grade A" conservative according to the NRA and the anti-abortion groups) was called a "Rino". As far to the right as he was, he was still considered a liberal.
It is *literally* reached the point that it is crazy. Especially now that the Tea party has been taken over by the christian right who has basically forced out the original libertarian base.
I don't think your view of reality is very realistic. I've seen that increasingly in both the left and the right wings becoming extremists. The right seems to also be losing touch with reality. I really am starting to think we are going to see the disintegration of the republican party into a wealthy/corporate party, a religious party, and a libertarian party. And none of them will be electable so that should be impossible.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Indeed, just look at all those liberal churches that like to apply for non-profit status on the grounds they do not engage in political activity. And then, watch all those liberals engage in political activity.
Oh, wait...
The NSA is a military organization charged with protecting the nation against security threats. Remember it isn't even supposed to be spying on US citizens but Snowden showed otherwise. While I read somewhere that the NSA actually has handed over data to civilian authorities for a criminal prosecution unrelated to national security (one occurrence got publicized that I know of a few years ago), I thought that they are not supposed to do so. This IRS matter is clearly a domestic criminal matter and the NSA in theory should not be involved?
After that logic, I'd love to see your reasoning as to why the IRS needed the written logs of peoples' religious prayers to qualify for this resolution?
> By now, only the willfully blind can consider this a "fake" scandal.
I believe they call themselves Democrats.
So, because of one or two people saying something stupid, that means we all do?
I guess that proves the conservatives do nothing but stereotype huh? (Among other things if you listen to what any of the idiots on radio and TV like Fox News say)
Just to clarify the 100% comment:
The letter from the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that there just weren't many progressive groups who even sought special tax exempt status. A total of 20 sought it, and six were probed. All 292 Tea Party groups, meanwhile, were part of the IRS witchhunt.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/...
Still a scandal, but nowhere near as important as the NSA. Getting tax exempt status to do political bribery is small potatoes compared to the flagrantly unconstitutional NSA spying, in my mind.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Do you have ANY comprehension of what you seem to be supporting????? Consider:
Person A pays his taxes. Person B pays his taxes. Person C pays his taxes.
Persons A,B, and C form a club, and each tosses-in a few dollars to fund club activities.
WHY ON EARTH is the government automatically entitled to apply a new tax to the already taxed money the three people chipped-in????
Sheesh, taxes apply again and again, whenever money is spent. Didn't you know that? The club hires someone, why tax him as he's paid by money that is already taxed? When workers shop with their already taxed money, don't tax the shops? Tax the population once, and then the whole money supply is "already taxed" and so no more taxes for anyone - ever again?
"A club" cannot be very special. Unless you want companies to masquerade as clubs.
The upside of taxing anyone and anything is that the tax rate can now be lower, as the usual taxpayers are now offloaded by taxes paid by "former charities". A fine arrangement if you weren't in a club anyway.
Hundreds of "liberal" groups were also targeted, as were plenty of "nonpartisan" groups (occupy, etc).
Far from "100%" of the groups audited were conservative, turn off Alex Jones.
OfA probably shouldn't have 501c4 status given it's activities - that's a totally legit gripe.
Retroactive approval is common for these types of groups, for better or worse.
"Administration officials" is a convenient term for literally ANYONE who works in ANY part of the government. Though you use it in a manner as to suggest that President Obama was personally involved with the intimate minor details.
All my mod points to you sir. Wish I had some.
Just another day in Paradise
"Dear Lord, please watch over your favored candidate Lisa Miller and the Republican party. Anyone who doesn't vote for them goes to hell."
Your assertion that 100% of the 501c4 group applications that were scrutinized were conservative is a lie.
We build and use the world's greatest information system and you can't be bothered to step outside your echo chamber.
Under the current trend in this country of "guilty until proven innocent" why doesn't Congress just take this for what it is, an admission of guilt, and proceed to the penalty phase. Could it be that no matter what they find there isn't going to be a penalty phase? Oh some IRS director might get her wrist slapped, but nothing is really going to happen to rein in our out of control unimaginably corrupt government.
It is really a pleasure to watch a civic society at its best, exchanging reasonable and well thought trough arguments, going beyond the easy to spell out but not really working 'silver bullet' solutions, taking into account side effects of proposed solutions and weighing their benefits and costs independently of who was the author and doing this all with respect to other members of society. One can be surprised that such law point for any civic society (as NSA and secret courts etc really were) allows to show this great nation from its best side. Good summary and good fruitful discussion that follows are a sign that the republic and democracy are in good shape.
Last time I looked, the civil service act only had a few sentences on the topic. It says you can't require federal employees to make political donations. You can still fire them for any other reason, or for no reason at all without violating the act. Of course other legislation says you can't hire and fire based on race or religion, etc.
Since issues on both sides of the political spectrum receive funding from these entities it is not fair to hurt entities that lean toward one side without also doing the same to the other side.
So you agree that what *actually* happened was fair? Both left- and right-leaning politically active organizations got their applications stalled by the process in question. That gets completely glossed over by the right-leaning talk radio, though, so many people are completely unaware of that rather important fact.
And, of course, that's not actually what's at issue in this investigation. What is at issue is that an IRS employee apparently forwarded TEA Party child-organization donor lists to someone else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
I'm posting from a phone so looking up the exact laws is troublesome. However, that should help a bit should you be interested in more.
Dear Congress the NSA is not the email wayback machine. And do you even know what metadata is? I'm not sure what knowing one person got emails will prove besides that the NSA illegally tracked the IRS which i doubt they did.
could you provide examples for these assertions? I can't ever recall black critics of Obama being called "Uncle Toms". Neither do I recall conservative women getting called "sluts" by liberal opponents.
the only one with a stereotype problem seems to be you
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
1) They have all of 2012's emails, no problem.
2) They have already pieced together most of the her lost emails from threads of the other users on the To and CC lists.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
I don't think you ever worked for a bureaucracy before.
Imagine trying to use that excuse in an IRS audit of your business.
But sometimes "Stuff Just Happens."
I think I'll take 50x my deductions next year, lose all of the supporting receipts, and use that as the reason. If it works for one of their Directors, then it should work for me. After all, she's "Protecting the integrity of tax-exempt organizations" so her overall direction of SJH must be indicating a new government directive.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I am not downplaying the importance of the NSA scandal, but the IRS scandal is, in a way, worse. While the NSA violated the right of masses of Americans, it is (as far as we know) an "equal opportunity" violation of rights. But the IRS scandal is about using the machinery of government for partisan advantage. That is hugely dangerous in a way different, and arguably worse.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Come on, by now you realize the NSA never does anything until they are forced to backtrack from a leak! They've proven themselves to lie as much as possible while doing damage control and the media machine backs them up instantly. Then another Snowden leak makes the backtrack. It has happened many times already and should be getting more attention but instead we have to remember and track it ourselves since the media isn't bothering to point it out except some comedians who will make some jokes about it (if they can find the humor, they end up doing more actual analysis than all of the media.)
It is not likely they kept copies of all IRS emails and if they did, kept them long enough. Now with their expanded data capability, perhaps. Of course we assume they don't have more hidden capacity already-- their budget is many times that of the CIA and that is the formal amount; nobody knows where the hidden budget goes.
Reality is that all government operations should be archived by a 3rd party, something like the IRS but for public accountability. Then the IRS can't incompetently "lose" evidence-- sure, it means you can't quell BS investigations and just about every real world decision can be taken out of context... So one could make a strong argument for having wiggle room; but at the same time, if your politics degrade that far one has to wonder if the system is really all that functional in the first place. (So, today it wouldn't work as any innocent target of scrutiny could be brought down in scandal. Remember, we've had officials taken out with fabricated evidence already... it isn't much of a leap to imagine out of context emails easily taking out any competent honest official or scientist.) Also, what is amazing is how officials send emails without signing them-- making it easy to plant or forge emails in their name! Sure good forensics could detect it but good planting is possible and if one didn't invest the investigation time it would be easy.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
You voted for Reagan twice, but now you say the Republicans are running too hard to the right? Something doesn't sound right there.
And it's Limbaugh who is calling women "sluts" (and worse.)
Actually, no.
He did make jokes about Sandra Fluke being a prostitute. Then he apologized for going over the line.
His joke about Sandra Fluke: her big thing was to have the government give her money to buy birth control pills. Therefore she was trying to get paid to have sex, and what kind of woman is paid to have sex? Hurr hurr hurr. Yeah, he was right to apologize; that was over the line.
But I listen to some Rush Limbaugh several days a week, and I have not heard him call any woman a "slut" nor do I hear him just insulting women generally.
I hope the rest of your points are more accurate than this one, because this one was just untrue.
They wanted to keep their donor lists private because the IRS was targeting the people who donated. Wake up! The left wing hit squads were putting personal information from these lists on anarchist websites, people were being attacked. Hello...... wake up.....
Actually yes.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po...
Quote:
"It has been nearly two weeks since Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a âoeslutâ and in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, that is virtually an eternity.
Yet the outrage over the conservative talk radio hostâ(TM)s remarks is still making headlines, spawning activist attacks and causing headaches for advertisers."
The rest of my comments are usually equally valid. I'm human- I make mistakes- and I weight facts according to my own personal biases. I'm not perfect.
But in this case, you've literally remapped your memory to erase something that actually happened less than two years ago.
I regularly expose my thought processes to a wide variety of pro-conservative and pro-liberal viewpoints. I recommend it to keep a more accurate view of reality.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Horse shit.
There is no "both sides". Limp wristed false equivalence bullshit that's landed us in the mess we are in right now.
One side is clearly off their rocker fucking stupid. Or evil. Or both.
This does not excuse the actions of the other side but there are large, gaping, orders of magnitude chasms of difference in regarding to the levels of "bad" (For lack of a more general term)
You need to stop fooling yourself. It's time to call out what is going on. It's time to be loud and aggressive and abrasive and confrontational. Nothing but a shove and fight is going to change the situation. Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself.
The Republicans are monsters and the polite nonconfrontational apathy of the Democrats is making the problem worse.
I hate unicode. It looks normal until you save.
Quote:
"It has been nearly two weeks since Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, that is virtually an eternity.
Yet the outrage over the conservative talk radio host's remarks is still making headlines, spawning activist attacks and causing headaches for advertisers."
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's been said- and I believe it, that Reagan would be considered a "RINO" today.
Both the republican and democratic parties have gone to the right since Reagan was elected. I'm not sure he would be electable today. Not conservative enough.
My take on Reagan was that he failed massively as a fiscal conservative. He was the guy that said, "Not guns OR butter! Ney, Ney! Guns AND butter!" and greatly increased the depth of debt.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's a fake scandal. You're just regurgitating standard conservative media talking points, right down the list. You're either gullible or a shill.
Have you considered that those tea party groups are little more than money laundering endpoints?
The democrats are unrealistic thinkers, disorganized, ineffective, and very free with other people's money.
The democrats are unrealistic thinkers, organized, ineffective, and very free with other people's money.
There are other differences but those are the principle ones.
The republican values of self reliance, "hard love" and many others are good and valid points of view. The fundamental problem with Abortion isn't good or evil. Both the view valuing the fertilized cells and the freedom of the mother are valid moral viewpoints. Once you conclude that killing the fertilized cells is murder, then it's evil to not oppose abortion. I personally think the issue is unresolvable with no "right" side. The best we can get is some kind of ugly middle ground.
Simply calling the one side evil and calling it a day is the same as turning off your brain. You need to regularly listen to both sides of view. In the last election, roughly half of the voters still voted for Romney. You should not disenfranchise half the citizens because they lost by a narrow victory. When HALF the country has an opposing point of view that's the very definition of "there are two sides to these issues and points of view".
The best thing would be to work with them but the racist faction of the republicans basically went bat shit crazy when obama was elected and wouldn't take a 20 dollar bill if you handed it to them. There are still a lot of rational republicans- but not enough to win elections without the bat shit faction.
I agree that it's become challenging to find republicans to vote for.
The seeming problem (and it's been shown by studies) is that both republicans and democrats have decided the other side is evil, monsters, and bad for the country's future. The real problem is declining living standards for 80% of the population for the last 50 years. Good times make for comity. Bad times make for strife. Life is much harder than it was for our parents and grandparents. There isn't as much "hope".
And some of this is because we are undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift. A study by the Fed shows that most good jobs are being lost to automation, robotics and "gizmos". Your political position is secondary to employment and eating. We may be reaching a point soon where 15%-25% of the population just can't find work. They are going to be very pissy as a result. (By soon I mean 10 to 15 years - not tomorrow).
It won't be anyone's "fault" and it won't be stoppable. At this point even chinese workers making $3000 per year are being automated out of jobs.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
God dang it. I hate slashdot and the inability to edit! Or at least delete a post within 5 minutes so you can repost it.
The first two lines should read...
The DEMOCRATS are unrealistic thinkers, disorganized, ineffective, and very free with other people's money.
The REPUBLICANS are unrealistic thinkers, organized, ineffective, and very free with other people's money.
(while I'm at it- I think the christian right has taken over the tea party movie ment and transformed it from socially liberal, fiscally conservative to socially conservative, "low tax and low spending"- which will translate to "not fiscally conservative" in reality because they'll get taxes lowered but not spending).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The extent to which they could use this against you is to tell you that you can't claim a charitable deduction for making contributions to these tea party organizations. This isn't quite the jack-booted thugs trampling over your liberties which you seem to imagine. Problematic, certainly, but let's try to have at least a little perspective here.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people see something like this situation, and voice an opinion that basically states:
"I can conceive of a possible worse situation than what we currently have, so let's not bother doing anything about it until it gets to be equivalent to that worse situation."
The problem with this, of course, is that it's ALWAYS possible to conceive of a worse situation than what we're currently in.
Imagine if we did that with our health:
"Well...I'm getting a bit overweight, but I don't need to start exercising, because I'm not dead yet."
"Well, I know I stink, and I'm always short of breath, but I don't need to quit smoking, because I haven't been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer yet."
Once we get to the point of the worse situation, it's frequently too late to do anything about it.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
During many crashes, the surface of the drive, which holds the "bits", becomes dust. If you can find a way to put dust back together, you'll be a jillionare.
Table-ized A.I.
It's been said- and I believe it, that Reagan would be considered a "RINO" today.
If it's "been said", then it must be true. I have an alternate theory. Reagan would still be considered conservative today because he was.
Both the republican and democratic parties have gone to the right since Reagan was elected.
To the contrary, things have actually gotten more liberal with the involvement of the Libertarians and Tea Party people.
Reagan was not even REMOTELY fiscally conservative.
And you need only to look at Eric Cantor ("Perfect score by the NRA and anti abortion groups"-- called a RINO by conservative groups) to see Reagan could be considered a RINO today.
Electable in the general election -- probably.
Electable in the republican primary today-- not at all certain.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Reagan was not even REMOTELY fiscally conservative.
Hmmm, there's a point to that.
Though going into the 1980 election, Reagan did have a favorable record from his California governorship where he did. He had increased taxation, but coupled with spending cuts and a budget running a slight surplus ($33 million in the 1974-75 fiscal year according to this budget report).
And social conservatism isn't fiscal conservatism. Reagan probably would be able to appeal to both groups today just as he did back in 1980.
Finally, would Reagan acted the same in today's political environment as he did following the election in 1980? I think it's doubtful that he would have deliberately acted in a way that alienates his supporters. That's basic politician instincts there.
As to Cantor, I think there's more to the story than he was a "RINO". To lose when an incumbent outspends the opponent so much (around a factor of 40) is not just a sign of national level sea changes, but also a sign that they failed badly to satisfy their constituency (at least the part that was Republican).