TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 134.
Archive for 2013
September 20, 2013
HILLARY CLINTON’S PHOTO POLICY: If she doesn’t want you taking pictures, security will take your phone away and delete them. Touch my phone and you’ll be sorry, “security” or not. But how perfectly in tune with the spirit of Hillaryland. When you take someone’s phone away by force, that’s robbery. At the very least, this guy should sue — and try to press criminal charges against the security guy. Of course, if all they did is say delete the photo or you have to leave the event, then it’s just ordinary Clinton/Obama thuggishness.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Banking Without Risk Is Impossible.
The fundamental fact of a banking crisis, which is different from a crisis in any other industry, is that if people believe a financial institution to be bankrupt, it actually is bankrupt. As Arnold Kling puts it, banks exist to reconcile the desire of households to lend short and borrow long — we want to have bank accounts we can empty at any time we want, but we want mortgage loans that carry fixed payments and last for decades. In financial parlance, the bank accounts are liquid — it’s easy to turn them into cash — and the mortgages are illiquid; if I want to get my money out, I have to find someone who wants to buy a mortgage on your house.
This creates a vulnerability at the heart of modern banks: If too many depositors try to turn their bank accounts into cash at the same time, the bank will be insolvent, because it cannot liquidate the mortgages fast enough to pay the depositors. And when are you most likely to get a flood of people trying to empty their accounts? When they think the bank is insolvent. So people who fear that their bank will go bust can actually produce that result, even if the bank is perfectly sound. Worse, if that bank fails, customers at other banks may panic, triggering a nationwide collapse.
This is unique to finance. That’s why I didn’t support the bailout of General Motors Co.: As I put it at the time, if GM went bankrupt, my mini was still going to start the next morning when I put the key in the ignition.
Actually, my old Sonic Foundry software quit working when they sold out to Sony and shut down the authentication servers. But point taken.
A SHOCKING LACK OF DIVERSITY AT THE OBAMA HEALTHCARE EXCHANGE WEBSITE: “I have to say, as a middle aged white guy, I am starting to feel a little awkward, like I wandered into the wrong bathroom or something…”
OBAMA: RAISING THE DEBT LIMIT DOESN’T INCREASE OUR DEBT. Stephen Green: “I think he was stoned, and I’m not kidding.”
MESSAGING: Gun control support drops after Navy Yard shooting. “Support for gun control has dropped to its lowest level in a year, despite this week’s Washington Navy Yard shootings and a string of mass shootings over the past 14 months. What’s more, a new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that nearly half of all Americans–46 percent–believe that the nation would be less safe if only police and the military were allowed to have guns.”
AT AMAZON, it’s the Blu-Ray Deals Of The Week. Lots of cool stuff here.
Also, today only: Up to 65% Off “Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture Collection.” “These collections contain all six feature Films: The Original Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, The Search For Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier, and The Undiscovered Country.”
ANNALS OF SMART DIPLOMACY: The Economist: The weakened West: The deal over Syria’s chemical weapons marks a low for those who cherish freedom. “The deal looks good only because the mess Mr Obama had got himself into was so bad. Step back, and the outcome looks rotten.” Ya think?
UPDATE: Sarah Palin: “I can see Putin’s shoe print on Obama’s behind from my house.”
TRUTH-TELLING: Oberlin College Blames The Blogosphere For Pointing Out That Racism Hoax Was A Hoax. “As we have documented before, and as the records released this morning further demonstrate, the Oberlin administration knew no later than February 27 that this was a hoax by students trolling for a reaction. There were no KKK supporters or Neo-Nazis prowling the hallways and buildings. Yet the Oberlin administration never told the students, the alumni, or the media. Instead, the Oberlin administration allowed students to live in fear. In the email last night, there still is no acknowledgement that the primary culprit behind this was a liberal pro-Obama ‘anti-racist’ activist, and that it was not what it seemed. Oberlin thereby furthers the damage done by the hoax.” For these people, it must always be 1963. Acknowledging reality would mean facing unpleasant thoughts.
JAMES TARANTO: The Press And The IRS: Journalistic Partisanship Fed The Scandal.
The Washington Post is credited with exposing the Watergate conspiracy and helping to bring down a corrupt presidency. Forty years later, the Post played a role in the corruption of the Internal Revenue Service, to the benefit of an incumbent president in a bitter and close re-election.
A staff memo released earlier this week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee provides an “interim update” on the investigation of the IRS scandal. A central finding: “Media attention caused the IRS to treat conservative-oriented tax-exempt applications differently” from liberal or progressive ones.
The memo presents no evidence that the White House directly ordered the IRS to crack down on political opponents. Instead, it is consistent with the theory, described here in May, that IRS personnel responded to “dog whistles” (in Peggy Noonan’s metaphor) in public statements from the president and his supporters. . . .
As we have argued before, Barack Obama’s re-election deserves to be listed with an asterisk in the record books. He is the political equivalent of an athlete found to have used illicit performance-enhancing drugs. Whether he would have won in 2012 absent the IRS’s political corruption is unknowable. We know only that he did win with the help of a corrupt IRS. And if indeed the election was stolen, many in the media were complicit in its theft.
Ouch.
IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: IRS Surveilled Tea Parties Until Two Weeks Ago.
Related: Lois Lerner: Signed letter rekindles debate on IRS official’s status. “Lois Lerner has been on paid leave from the Internal Revenue Service since May, after invoking her Fifth Amendment rights in refusing to answer questions from Congress about her handling of Tea Party cases. So why was she still sending letters to groups applying for tax exemptions as recently as August?”
SHOCKINGLY, IT’S NOT PROF. ALEX JONES. BUT CLOSE: Professor Claims Navy Yard Shooting Was Staged.
SPYING: Justice Dept. watchdog never probed judges’ NSA concerns. “In response to a FOIA request from USA TODAY, the Justice Department said its ethics office never looked into complaints from two federal judges that they had been misled about NSA surveillance.”
ROLL CALL: Why Ted Cruz Might Be Right About Defunding Obamacare in the Senate. I think the GOP can win even by losing, forcing vulnerable Democrats to vote in favor of ObamaCare, which is even less popular than it was when it was rammed through.
BUT NOT REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS: White House: Obama ‘willing’ to meet with Iran’s Rouhani at UN.
September 19, 2013
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Going for broke: The multiple lost decades of US household income. Is it possible to have a recovery while the standard of living collapses? To be fair, these problems started before Obama took office. But (1) he was sold as the fixer-of-everything; and (2) he’s made things worse. And note the acceleration of income inequality during his term.
An environmental group aiding Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s Virginia gubernatorial bid is airing an ad critical of Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli. But in one of the race’s bigger ‘egg on the face’ moments, the commercial shows an FBI raid into a business owned by one of McAuliffe’s friends. . . .
It’s actually footage of a FBI raid of Vitreo-Retinal Consultants Eye Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., according to the nonpartisan FactCheck.org. The company’s logo can be seen in the background.
It gets more interesting.
Vitreo-Retinal Consultants (now called Melgen Retina Eye Center) is owned by Salomon Melgen, a wealthy Democratic donor. What FactCheck.org doesn’t note is that he also is a friend of McAuliffe. The two have played golf together, and Melgen donated $10,000 to McAuliffe’s 2009 gubernatorial campaign.
Melgen was also a big donor to Sen. Robert Menendez.
SO EARLIER I MENTIONED THE FACE-OFF BETWEEN USA TODAY REPORTER BRAD HEATH, AND DOJ SPOKESPERSON BRIAN FALLON. Here’s the HuffPo story and reader David Mosier comments: “The HuffPo column was somewhat critical of Fallon and the DOJ, but the comments were 100% critical Fallon and The DOJ, and strongly, even disrespectfully, critical. I thought I was reading comments on Free Republic.” Yeah, I think the administration has damaged its brand more than it realizes.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think that this is the story that DOJ flack Brian Fallon was unhappy about.
NAVY YARD SHOOTING DONE WITH AN ILLEGAL GUN. Ban hacksaws!
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Company Behind Snowden Vetting Did Washington Shooter Check.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Death Of An Adjunct. Perhaps academics view the business world as cruel and exploitative toward workers because academia is so cruel and exploitative to its own workers. . . .