Political Roundtable - Part VI

[daSwami]

The phone taps of the AP by the current administration is extremely disturbing. This is a common tactic used by the late Hugo Chavez, and many other Latin dictators to slowly ensure the media remained privately owned but quasi-censored.

Combine that with sicking the IRS on conservative groups? US politics are looking more and more like the 3rd world...

- preach "the rich are to blame".
- phone tap media to get their sources
- sick the tax authority on the opposition.....

3rd world gameplan....

It would be if it actually happened. No phones were "tapped," which implies the govt was eavesdropping on actual conversations. What actually happened is that the govt got phone records, meaning a listing of who called who and when. They're trying to ascertain the source of leaks of classified information to the press (the have specific incidents in mind). Leaking classified information is a Federal crime because it can put national security at risk. If they were actually tapping phone calls, I'd be disturbed. But what the Justice Dept is doing seems like a legitimate reasons to acquire such records. They do similar things with suspected drug traffickers and child pornographers, so the tactic has precedent.

[penbeast0]

Anyone mention that before the current administration's IRS went after groups that had "defending the constitution" in their mission statement; Hilary and Bill Clinton got the FBI to turn over their confidential files on Congressional Republicans? There is nothing more dangerous than a person who believes both that he is morally right and that their ends justify any means. I wouldn't trust most of the evangelical right conservatives either but the politicians that get the Republican nomination haven't been coming from that wing.

I'm not a Republican, more a "plague on both their houses" Libertarian, but it's a disturbing trend both in it happening and in the shocking lack of moral outrage in both cases. At least with Nixon's coverup and with Clinton's perjury (though not with his taking sexual advantage of a 19 year old that worked for him), people seemed to care.

[dobrojim]

interesting wrinkle in the IRS story

Sen. Marco Rubio has sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew (full text below the fold) in which he says "I strongly urge that you and President Obama demand the IRS Commissioner’s resignation, effectively immediately." It's perhaps a sign of how interested in the details of this matter Rubio is that there in fact is no IRS commissioner at present. The last IRS commissioner, Douglas Shulman, was appointed by George W. Bush in March of 2008 and resigned in November. It seems unlikely that this Republican appointee was engineering an inquiry in Tea Party groups' tax status for partisan reasons and even if Shulman is to blame he can't resign because he's ... already resigned.

from http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/13/marco_rubio_irs_commissioner_resignation.html

[doclinkin]

Seems to me not only reasonable but intelligent of the IRS to provide added scrutiny on organizations whose stated aims involve abolishing taxes. Probable cause and whatnot.

I'm 100% certain that you and many others on this board wouldn't be so nonchalant about the issue if a Bush was in the White House and liberal advocacy groups were being intentionally targeted by the IRS. You guys would be losing your minds, talking about the dictatorial President and the decline of democracy in America. The media uproar would be 24/7 for weeks.

If a liberal organization stated outright that its object was to abolish unjust taxes and eliminate income tax and the IRS in particular I would not be all that startled if they were flagged for closer scrutiny. And wouldn't really pitch too much of a fuss if in fact they were audited. Par for the course, happens all the time, they knew the stakes, expected to draw attention. And really why would the IRS not make a point to double check their numbers? Their mission is to avoid taxes. To ignore that fact would be stupid. I read no claim where the IRS unjustly screwed Tea Party organizations, or held them to a different standard, they simply assessed that they were more likely to try to play tricks with the code. Personally I'd prefer that resources were spent eyeing corporations instead of various cranks and wingnuts on the Right, but I can understand why the IRS might focus a stronger lens there. They can't investigate everybody, have to pick likely offenders.

As for hue and cry. Lefties I knew growing up simply expected government scrutiny. If you aren't wiretapped or whatever you're probably not shouting loud enough. Just make sure you have your facts straight, and lawyers paid. At some point someone comes knocking.

[W. Unseld]

I don't think this should be shrugged off by either party--the IRS mess or the AP calls. I would say both are a slippery slope--and not all that far off--to much worse. Don't cheer and defend your guys b/c soon enough it will be the other guys in power. Speak out when it happens no matter which team you root for.

[dobrojim]

the hue and cry from the right on the AP story is ironic given how
easy it is to go back just a few years and find pretty much the same
folks taking the opposite position from what they are taking now.

that said, I'm not a big fan of secrecy as it is more often used to
cover up things which if were known, would be embarrassing.
But that doesn't sound like what is happening in this particular case.

my understanding is that admin folks went to a judge and got
a subpoena. Sounds pretty by the book to me.

[Zonkerbl]

It would be ok to target all organizations that appear to be abusing their tax exempt status. I don't have a problem with that aspect. But it's absolutely unforgiveable to target organizations with certain words in their names. That stinks.

It's ok to have some guidelines. "IRS employees must identify organizations that appear likely to abuse their tax exempt status. Here are some criteria that can be used:
blah

Employees will submit a brief explanation of why the companies where selected."

Something like that. If the criteria are fair and you follow them, and it's primarily Republican companies that are trying to abuse their status, then that's fine, ex post. A priori, it's just unforgiveable to explicitly target organizations whose titles are clearly associated with one political party.

Huge fubar by the IRS. What were they thinking? What was Obama thinking, saying he learned about it for the first time from the news? Jon Stewart claims this has been going on for a year, it didn't occur to the IRS to brief the POTUS about it? Although maybe for plausible deniability they briefed the POTUS staff. The pres is allowed to delegate, and maybe the staff honestly didn't realize this would blow up. Seems unlikely though. Stewart showed a series of clips where Obama repeatedly claims to have learned about some crisis "just now from the news," so it looks like a standard Obama ... thing. WTF dude?

[BigA]

The phone taps of the AP by the current administration is extremely disturbing. This is a common tactic used by the late Hugo Chavez, and many other Latin dictators to slowly ensure the media remained privately owned but quasi-censored.

Combine that with sicking the IRS on conservative groups? US politics are looking more and more like the 3rd world...

- preach "the rich are to blame".
- phone tap media to get their sources
- sick the tax authority on the opposition.....

3rd world gameplan....

It would be if it actually happened. No phones were "tapped," which implies the govt was eavesdropping on actual conversations. What actually happened is that the govt got phone records, meaning a listing of who called who and when. They're trying to ascertain the source of leaks of classified information to the press (the have specific incidents in mind). Leaking classified information is a Federal crime because it can put national security at risk. If they were actually tapping phone calls, I'd be disturbed. But what the Justice Dept is doing seems like a legitimate reasons to acquire such records. They do similar things with suspected drug traffickers and child pornographers, so the tactic has precedent.

The tactic has precedents, but it appears that the extent of what Justice collected in this case is unprecedented in a leak investigation.

The actual leaks they are investigating are both from about a year ago: that the US was behind the Stuxnet attacks on Iran and that a planned underwear bomber attack from Saudi Arabia was purportedly foiled by the CIA (came out later that it was actually foiled by British intelligence). The Republican claim at the time was that the leaks were likely coming from the Obama inner circle, because they were politically useful to the administration.

Holder recusing himself from the investigation was due to him being a person in a position to have leaked either or both of these.

The interesting thing will be whether the investigation itself actually goes anywhere.

[dobrojim]

Lawrence O'D had some interesting things to say about the IRS story.

The statutory language in the tax code uses the word exclusively
in defining the activities that an org supports. Since the early 1960s,
the IRS summarily changed that to primarily without defining what
that meant. They've never been forced to clarify the issue.

Internal Revenue Service agents have been struggling to do their jobs–which have been made essentially impossible by an incorrect interpretation of the law that the IRS made in 1959. It was then that the IRS changed the language of the law without any authority to do so. Here is how the tax law was written in its latest update in 1954 on 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations. The 501(c)(4) designation was to apply only to: “Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.”

But a 1959 interpretation guideline written by the IRS says that: ”To be operated exclusively to promote social welfare, an organization must operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare…”

With absolutely no legal oversight, the IRS changed the world “exclusively” to mean “primarily” and then the IRS never defined what it meant by primarily. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains that the tax code must be enforced with the word “exclusively” so that no political organizations would ever be able to get 501(c)(4) status. “No Tea Party organizations, no Democratic party organizations, no Republican party organizations, no Libertarian party organizations, no party organizations of any kind should ever get 501(c)(4) status and that is exactly what the law already says,” O’Donnell said Wednesday night.

[BigA]

If the IRS imbroglio stops with this issue of political discrimination in evaluating applications for tax-exempt status, then the result will be some people getting fired and reprimanded, maybe some new procedures being put in place, and some more embarassment for the administration as the hearings drag out over the next few months.

Potentially more serious issues are whether tax information from these applications* or from other reporting such as individual returns was passed by the IRS to the Obama political operation for use in the campaign, or whether politically-motivated audits were undertaken. These sorts of things would harken back to past IRS politicization by FDR, Nixon, etc.

(*Note that some of the information in applications for tax-exempt status becomes public when they are approved anyway, and non-profits make other annual filings that are available to the public.)

There have been some allegations of this type floating around since the campaign (e.g. how did Harry Reid know what was in Romney's tax returns? ) but haven't attracted much media attention outside Fox and presumably other right-leaning places. But the charges of disciminatory evaluation of tax-exempt applicatons has been out there as well, with lawsuits, etc., and hadn't attracted attention until last week, when I guess the IRS got wind of what was in the IG's report and fessed up. So we'll see.

[fishercob]

The Scandals Are Falling Apart

As someone who has followed the headlines, but not the stories in depth, I found this analysis of the IRS, Bengazi, and the AP to be quite interesting. In sum:

It’s always possible that evidence could emerge that vaults one of these issues into true scandal territory. But the trend line so far is clear: The more information we get, the less these actually look like scandals.

The whole article is worth a read if you're inclined towards such things.

[Induveca]

Be realistic, government officials violently auditing an opposition party to those currently in power......the source likely goes very close to the top.

This will get extremely ugly.

[crackhed]

The Scandals Are Falling Apart

As someone who has followed the headlines, but not the stories in depth, I found this analysis of the IRS, Bengazi, and the AP to be quite interesting. In sum:

It’s always possible that evidence could emerge that vaults one of these issues into true scandal territory. But the trend line so far is clear: The more information we get, the less these actually look like scandals.

The whole article is worth a read if you're inclined towards such things.

agree with u that these scandals won't amount to much without a true smoking gun or a canary. and the republicans can overplay their hand. unfortunately for the president however, there's a common theme to all 3... the possible abuse of power for political gain

[montestewart]

Be realistic, government officials violently auditing an opposition party to those currently in power......the source likely goes very close to the top.

This will get extremely ugly.

"violently auditing" sounds like prison slang

[Induveca]

Be realistic, government officials violently auditing an opposition party to those currently in power......the source likely goes very close to the top.

This will get extremely ugly.

"violently auditing" sounds like prison slang

[penbeast0]

I don't like lumping them all together. The Benghazi thing looks like people making what seemed reasonable choices about spending and troop deployment before the fact that look like wrong decisions after the fact . . . not a scandal.

The AP issue is bad but also characteristic of most of our Presidents and their dealings with the press. Clearly wrong both beforehand and with hindsight but not unusual.

The IRS issue to me looks like something far more wrong and if it can be tied directly to Obama (which hopefully it can't) is roughly the equivalent of Watergate. If is doesn't go all the way to the White House, it's still the exact kind of political persecution for viewpoint that the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to try to prevent and a lot of people should be fired, not just one temporary commissioner but every single person with the power to have stopped it that knew about it and didn't do anything.

[willbcocks]

That is true to an extent Nivek. What competent manager though would allow communication to go out with their name attached without knowledge of its content. In thirty years of business experience, mostly at the executive level, none that I know of. It's Business 101 for gosh sakes. She either knows and approves of the content and transmission with her name attached or she is incompetent.

Umm, this "signature" thing has been the practice at State for a long time. Washington Post had a good piece about this when the GOP started trying to make something of these "signed" cables. They include links to a variety of cables "signed" by Condoleeza Rice when she was Secretary -- including lofty subjects like a travel alert, and a shortage of hotel rooms in Monrovia.

They also have links to cables "signed" by Hillary Clinton on stuff like managing the e-mail system (included tips like not using all capital letters because it's perceived as shouting) and new phone numbers in Brazzaville.

I understand and respect your business experience, but...we're not talking about business. We're talking government. It's antiquated. It's silly. But, it is how State Department operates.

Now, the GOP is welcome to continue pretending that the "signed" cables mean that Clinton knew or should have known what was in them. But, that's exactly what they'd be doing -- pretending.

Fair enough Nivek. I think your portrayal is accurate. The system should be reformed to reflect best practices. Otherwise our leaders can always claim they knew nothing about whatever controversy arises.

The ability to add bold, italics, underlined text, pictures and attachments to cables is a very recent development. At a cable-writing seminar I attended this week, the lecturer, appreciating the irony, expressed how proud he was to pioneer adding charts and graphs during his last couple of years on the job. Signature lines are at the end of the line of potential process improvements...

[Induveca]

Umm, this "signature" thing has been the practice at State for a long time. Washington Post had a good piece about this when the GOP started trying to make something of these "signed" cables. They include links to a variety of cables "signed" by Condoleeza Rice when she was Secretary -- including lofty subjects like a travel alert, and a shortage of hotel rooms in Monrovia.

They also have links to cables "signed" by Hillary Clinton on stuff like managing the e-mail system (included tips like not using all capital letters because it's perceived as shouting) and new phone numbers in Brazzaville.

I understand and respect your business experience, but...we're not talking about business. We're talking government. It's antiquated. It's silly. But, it is how State Department operates.

Now, the GOP is welcome to continue pretending that the "signed" cables mean that Clinton knew or should have known what was in them. But, that's exactly what they'd be doing -- pretending.

Fair enough Nivek. I think your portrayal is accurate. The system should be reformed to reflect best practices. Otherwise our leaders can always claim they knew nothing about whatever controversy arises.

The ability to add bold, italics, underlined text, pictures and attachments to cables is a very recent development. At a cable-writing seminar I attended this week, the lecturer, appreciating the irony, expressed how proud he was to pioneer adding charts and graphs during his last couple of years on the job. Signature lines are at the end of the line of potential process improvements...

Cable writing seminar. Sounds exciting. My condolences!

[dobrojim]

a paper of no lessor note than the NY Times has come out basically in agreement
with Lawrence O'Donnell's take on the IRS story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/white-house-under-fire-it-condemns-irs-audits.html

Unfortunately, it appears as though the I.R.S. looked only at conservative groups applying for the exemption, an inexcusable mistake given its power over individuals, nonprofits and corporations, and the potential for abuse. It’s important to point out, though, that this is a far cry from President Richard Nixon’s interest in intimidating his political enemies through selective audits of personal tax records. There is no evidence President Obama knew about the audits by the I.R.S. The groups involved were seeking not to pay taxes on large amounts of income by claiming that they promote social welfare. No one has an automatic right to this tax exemption; those seeking one should expect close scrutiny from the government to ensure it is not evading taxes.

For many years, however, the I.R.S. hasn’t provided it. Democratic groups were the first ones to start abusing their social-welfare tax status in the 2004 election; the Republicans followed suit and became the biggest players in this field beginning in 2008. Far bigger than any Tea Party group, Crossroads GPS nakedly violated the tax code by spending tens of millions on behalf of Republican candidates, claiming it wasn’t political because it ran only “issue ads.” It never lost its tax exemption.

[W. Unseld]

Benghazi's main issue seems to be the cover up. There were some judgement calls that can be questioned but admittedly that is hindsight, so the cover up is the issue there. As a lover of the first amendment I know the youtube video "filmaker" technically had a probation violation but he was free beforehand and arrested and in jail right after this broke out and he's been there ever since. If that's not a patsy, I don't know what is.

IRS-there are people claiming to be individually audited for political; it's early they could all be lying (if you are being audited, that's a timely defense), but if they aren't I hope we can agree that's a real problem.

The AP sure seems to think that this was different than business as usual with the way their data was collected. Holder's oral recusal w/no written proof or memory of when it happened doesn't seem to pass the smell test.