TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 433.
Archive for 2014
July 16, 2014
GOOD: North Dakotan Shale Boom To Surge This Summer.
You just can’t keep a good boom down. Oil production from North Dakota’s Bakken formation has quintupled over the past five years as drillers employ the dual technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling to tap previously inaccessible hydrocarbons trapped in shale. This summer, it looks as if Gaia will cooperate, offering mild weather to spur what one official is predicting will be a “big surge” in output. . . .
The shale boom has been so sudden, and so unexpected, that we still lack the transportation infrastructure to deliver shale-sourced crude to refineries. Without pipelines to link North Dakota’s Bakken formation to Gulf Coast refineries, that crude is riding our nation’s rails and being transported by truck—more expensive and more dangerous options. Building new pipelines will cut down on bottlenecks, save money, and potentially save lives. This is a challenge, but it’s the kind we’d like to see more of: one of abundance, not scarcity.
And one that makes the barbarous nations of the Middle East — and Putin’s Russia, too — less powerful and less important.
MAYBE THEY SHOULD ALSO APOLOGIZE TO THE FALSELY ACCUSED?
A leading forensic consultant urged representatives from more than 60 colleges and universities gathered here Monday to acknowledge that they’ve made mistakes in handling campus sexual assaults and to apologize publicly to student survivors.
“We must apologize for causing that harm,” David Lisak, the consultant and clinical psychologist, said. “And that apology must mean something.”
I note that it ends with a call for . . . more money for administrators.
AT AMAZON, take 25% off Men’s Canvas Slipons for Summer.
Plus, deals on bestselling Power Drills. I still like my Bosch.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Virginia Postrel: Turning College Into A No-Thought Zone.
IT’S IN ROLLING STONE, NATCH: The Stupidest Article About Guns You Will Ever Read.
NEVER LET THE TRUTH INTERFERE WITH MESSAGING: Nope: Elizabeth Warren says the government shutdown was about birth control. “I have a question for Sen. Warren. If this law is essential to escaping the crushing force of the patriarchy and preserving modernity, why didn’t Democrats put it in ObamaCare? It’d be just as disingenuous and, frankly, more substantiated to argue that the absence of the birth control mandate from the text of ObamaCare—it was added after the fact in one of the thousands of blanks left for unelected regulators—means Democrats who crafted the law from start to finish were bent on limiting women’s access to birth control. After all, they very explicitly did not make it a law that every employer provide free birth control when the power to do so was in their hands. That action is equivalent to turning back the clock on women to a time when birth control was prohibited. Or, so I’ve heard.”
CHANGE: House Republicans take aim at EPA climate rules.
House appropriators on Tuesday approved a $30 billion spending bill designed to block a host of looming Environmental Protection Agency regulations viewed by the GOP as exceeding the agency’s authority.
Republicans on the Appropriations Committee pushed through the Interior and environment funding bill, sending it to the House floor over the objections of Democrats who described it as full of “veto bait” and handouts to big business.
The panel advanced the measure — the seventh, and potentially last for the year, of the 12 annual appropriations bills Congress is supposed to pass — by a 29–19 vote. Even if approved by the House, the bill is unlikely to become law. The Senate has yet to act on a single appropriations bill, and President Obama would likely refuse to sign it.
But they’ll attack the House as “do-nothing.”
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: TSA Agent Who Stopped Man From Boarding Plane Didn’t Know Where District Of Columbia Was. Demanded a passport because he thought it was another country.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: New Organization Founded to Promote Due Process on Campus. “FIRE is pleased to announce the launch of a new organization, Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE), dedicated to defending due process on campus.”
THIS HAS BEEN THE DEMOCRATS’ STRATEGY ALL ALONG: Is a fear of ‘getting Koch’ed’ hurting Republican super PACs?
Give to Dems and the media cooperates in protecting you. Give to the GOP and it cooperates in attacking you. GOP activists, if they want to get ahead, should be trying to make Dem donors radioactive, too.
JUDITH CURRY: ‘Scientist’: the evolving story of a word. “The radical implications of the internet are acting to democratize science. Blogs are conducting post publication peer review and we are seeing the development of internet scientific communities on blogs that are acting as ‘clubs’ for independent scientists that focus on addressing scientific issues that are relevant to public debates. These developments are challenging traditional notions of expertise, especially as independent scientists are cited in the mainstream media and are invited to present evidence at government hearings. Scientists who belong to the right ‘clubs’ (universities, professional societies) regard this membership as conferring expertise in public debates involving science, and they tend to be dismissive of independent scientists. Independent scientists, in the mode of the 19th century ‘man of science’, are relegated by scientists who belong to the right clubs to a lower ‘amateur’ status.”
THE V.A. SCANDAL ISN’T GOING AWAY. IT’S GETTING WORSE. Veterans Affairs stonewalls, spies on people investigating it.
Congressional staffers investigating data falsification and whistleblower retaliation at the Department of Veterans Affairs regional office in Philadelphia were given a workspace there that was wired with activated audio microphones and video cameras, the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs said Monday.
Committee investigators also glimpsed a notebook used by the agency’s regional director that bore written instructions to ignore their requests for information, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said during a late-night hearing. Miller, chairman of the veterans committee, said he is “shocked” by the directives from VA officials to ignore congressional investigators.
“You will not ignore this committee anymore,” Miller said to Allison Hickey, VA’s under secretary for benefits, who testified at the hearing.
Well, she will if she can get away with it. Zero out the budget for bonuses and conference travel.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: 8th Circuit Orders New Trial in Unsuccessful Republican Faculty Candidate’s Discrimination Suit Against Iowa Law School.
This is bad news for Iowa, which can ill afford another round of bad publicity.
SOME KANSAS REPUBLICANS ARE OPPOSING BROWNBACK.
Meanwhile, in my own area, perennially controversial Republican State Senator Stacey Campfield — you know, the kind of State Senator CNN pays attention to — has a primary challenger. I don’t know anything about the guy, but all the excitement I’m seeing for him on Facebook comes from Democrats (“for the first time in my life I’m voting in a Republican primary!”) and the first car I saw his bumper sticker on was festooned with Obama and “Coexist” stickers.
JUSTICE: Father freed after a decade in jail as daughter admits she lied about him raping her when she was 11 as she was ‘disappointed in him.’ “A 23-year-old woman has told police she lied about her father raping her when she was 11 – accusations that put him behind bars for nine years. But Cassandra Kennedy, from Longview, Washington, will not be charged as prosecutors fear it could stop others from reporting sexual assaults.”
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Before Contract, Teachers Gave $350K To DeBlasio Charity. “Less than a month before Mayor Bill de Blasio struck a major contract agreement with the United Federation of Teachers, its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, gave $350,000 to a nonprofit run by de Blasio advisers, which lobbies on behalf of the mayor’s priorities, newly released records show. The AFT’s $350,000 donation, on April 9, was the largest donation to the de Blasio-affiliated nonprofit, Campaign For One New York, since it was founded after the mayor was elected last November. Its timing raises questions about the ability of outside interests to advance their agendas before the city by supporting a nonprofit close to the mayor.”
It doesn’t raise questions, it answers them. Not that there was much of a question to begin with.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Benjamin Ginsberg: College Presidents — New Captains Of The Titanic?
After the Titanic struck the iceberg, the ship’s captain and senior executives were said to be unworried. How could their mighty ship sink? The hubris and arrogance of the ship’s captain and senior officers was astonishing. They seemed to believe that because they were handsomely recompensed, resplendent in their uniforms and saluted by their toadies, their little world would never end. While the passengers and lowly crew members were beginning to panic, the officers urged them to remain calm. They were confident that the ship was unsinkable and on course. The dining rooms remained open and the ship’s orchestra played on to soothe the foolish passengers and crew who prattled about an utterly impossible impending disaster. Unfortunately, more than a century later, the good ship Titanic remains at the bottom of the ocean. Some of her passengers survived but 1500 did not, victims of the captain’s decision to maintain course and steam full speed ahead despite numerous warnings from experienced crew members that there were icebergs in the vicinity.
I’ll bet these captains won’t go down with their ships.
JUSTICE: North Carolina police accused of making up phony 911 calls to search homes. Tar. Feathers.
CHANGE: GOP Senators Go On Offense On Women’s Issues.
And that’s not counting going after Democratic politicians who pay women less than men.
DOCTOR WHO: Jim Treacher Takes A Victory Lap.
HEAR ME TALK ABOUT POLITICS AND THE NEW CLASS on The Ed Morrissey Show.
FEDERAL ELECTIONS COMMISSION WORKER (AND LOIS LERNER ASSOCIATE): “I Don’t Understand How Anyone But Straight White Men Can Vote Republican.”
As a part of a settlement agreement with the [Office of Special Counsel], Ms. [April] Sands admitted to violating the Hatch Act by soliciting political contributions via Twitter, conducting political activity through her Twitter account, and participating in a political discussion ‘via webcam from an FEC conference room . . . while on duty,’” Issa and Jordan write in their letter. “The FEC [Office of Inspector General] sought to pursue criminal charges stemming from Ms. Sands’s solicitation of political contributions while on duty inside the FEC building. However, the FEC recycled Ms. Sands’s hard drive before the OIG was able to seize it, and therefore the OIG was unable to show that Ms. Sands’s solicitations and political activity were done from an FEC computer. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia thereafter declined criminal prosecution.
We might as well replace the civil service with the spoils system. Because right now, we’ve just got a one-party spoils system.