TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1114.
Archive for 2016
May 27, 2016
GREAT MOMENTS IN SECURITY KABUKI: TSA Wants a Closer Look at Actress Rose Byrne’s Breast Milk.
THE BATHROOM WARS: Bill Whittle goes there.
E.U. IN DISARRAY: Billions for Tribute, But Not One Cent for Defense.
The EU is proposing to spend up to ten percent of its budget on the immigration crisis. . . . Meanwhile, Politico.eu reveals that other EU leaders are mulling a multi-billion euro investment fund for states, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, from which refugees come. . . .
In the context of the refugee crisis, “investment” in sub-Saharan African countries (or other countries of origin) is fast coming in practice to mean bribing the local government to do the kind of deterrence work Europe would rather not do itself, often by blunter means than Europeans would employ, out of sight and out of mind. The precedent was set by the EU-Turkey deals; since then, Libya and a host of other nations have been clamoring for something similar.
Meanwhile, as we noted the other day, Germany now estimates it will spend €93B domestically on refugee matters by 2020. Other bills will come due in other states, and if, as seems likely, the Europeans discover that they have overestimated the extent to which the Middle East’s education system trains workers for the modern economy and underestimated other costs, these bills will likely be even higher than reported.All of which makes us wonder: what would it have cost instead to have pursued rational military strategies in Syria and Libya? What would it cost even now?
They are prisoners of a dysfunctional mindset. This is not entirely an accident. Plus:
In the early years of the American republic, when U.S. diplomats were being extorted for bribes by members of the French court, the American public embraced the slogan, “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.” Confronted today by the prospect of never-ending shakedowns from the weaker, poorer, failing states on its periphery, Europe’s response seems to be, “Billions for tribute, but not one cent for defense.”
Like I said.
JACK DUNPHY: Grievance Theater Night at the LA Police Commission:
If you want to know why LAPD officers are dispirited these days, if you want to know why they may be feeling the weight of the “Ferguson effect” and are reluctant to place their mortal hides on the line in the cause of reducing crime in the city, look no further than the commission that oversees the department. The police commission is a five-person body whose members are appointed by the mayor. It sets policy for the LAPD, and every member of the department, from the greenest rookie to the chief, serves under its authority.
Read the whole thing.
IRONY CAN BE PRETTY IRONIC SOMETIMES: Obama: World Leaders ‘Rattled’ by Trump’s ‘Ignorance’ and ‘Cavalier Attitude.’
Pretty rich coming from the guy who’s very life has been a textbook example of the Dunning–Kruger Effect in action. Which is why Obama likely has no idea that Trump is his doppelganger.
READ IT AND WEEP, ILLINOIS. AND CALIFORNIA. AND NEW YORK. AND. . . . Tennessee’s Bond Rating Upgraded To Top Level. Say, what do those other states have in common that Tennessee doesn’t?
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RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Sub sailor’s photo case draws comparisons to Clinton emails.
I’M WITH HERPES: NO, THAT ‘MAN ENOUGH FOR HILLARY’ AD FEATURING A TATTOOED BEEFCAKE IS NOT REAL.
Too bad; it certainly fooled Hillary’s metrosexual admirers at GQ, and as Heat Street noted yesterday, Hipster in Hillary Ad Also Pitch Man for STD Testing:
Hillary’s stock photo hipster appears to have served as a pitch guy before in a very prominent place—and one that Clinton may be concerned about. It turns out that the guy who is #ManEnoughforHillary is the face of sexually transmitted diseases in Portland.
Yesterday, Iowahawk laid down a marker:
Challenge accepted, Iowa-dude:
Incidentally, if bearded hipster dude has a sense of “fake but accurate” deja vu about him, here’s a flashback to CNN in March of 2008: Girl in Clinton 3:00 a.m. ad supports Obama.
GREAT MOMENTS IN MSM HYPOCRISY: Katie Couric Decried ‘Edited’ Planned Parenthood Footage, Then Doctored A Gun Owner Interview.
LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Instant Document Destruction At The IRS?
Has the Internal Revenue Service been systematically evading federal record-keeping laws? On Monday the Cause of Action Institute sued the IRS and commissioner John Koskinen for refusing to preserve electronic employee communications that concern official business.
Cause of Action says that in 2010 the IRS struck a little-noticed agreement with the National Treasury Employees Union not to record employees’ instant messages. The watchdog group also says that in response to its Freedom of Information Act requests for text messages sent by senior IRS officials, the agency replied that due to “routine system housekeeping” and “spacing constraints,” IRS text messages are retained for only 14 days before they are deleted.
Both actions appear to violate the Federal Records Act that requires agencies to preserve all relevant documents. The agency says it retains emails, at least those that don’t disappear in mysterious computer crashes. But if employees can send text messages and not save them, they can avoid records retention. “No agreement with a union or any other party can supersede Americans’ right to know how the IRS makes decisions,” says Cause of Action. “In addition, the IRS is violating the law by regularly deleting all employee text messages as a matter of convenience.”
The IRS says in a statement that, “Developing appropriate instant messaging policy is a challenge for all federal agencies,” adding that email should be used for official business. We wonder if taxpayers can use that explanation when failing to document income.
Only if they’re Clintons.
WELL, THEY SHOULD: Victims of civil asset forfeiture might get more due process.
Until last year, most Americans probably had never heard of civil asset forfeiture, but it’s a big problem that allows law enforcement to seize hundreds of millions of dollars from citizens a year.
The issue has brought together groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Heritage Foundation (full disclosure: my former employer). Media outlets on the left like Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post scorn the process as much as media outlets on the right like the Daily Caller and the Federalist.
Civil forfeiture is a legal tool used by law enforcement to seize property they claim has been used in criminal activity. Essentially, the property is accused of the crime, because the owner doesn’t even have to be guilty of (or even charged with) a crime. “This means that police can seize your car, home, money, or valuables without ever having to charge you with a crime,” writes Heritage.
The ACLU adds that civil forfeiture was “originally presented as a way to cripple large-scale criminal enterprises by diverting their resources.” But today, thanks to flawed laws and dwindling police budgets, the practice is used for profit.
Policing for profit is pretty much piracy.
AND THIS YEAR, THE ROLE OF PAULINE KAEL WILL BE PLAYED BY… CBS This Morning Host Gayle King: Nobody at Party I Was at Last Night Cares About Clinton’s Emails:
With Face The Nation moderator John Dickerson in the studio to discuss the State Department’s Inspector General report that slammed Clinton’s email conduct, King protested nobody at the party she was at the night before cared about it.
In the clip flagged by media watchdog NewsBusters, King appeared perturbed that Clinton’s server was once again at the forefront.
“So John, put it in perspective,” King said. “How big a deal is this really? I was at an event last night, and both Democrats and Republicans were quoting Bernie Sanders saying, ‘I’m sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.’”
“But that was a long time ago, and he’s since changed some of that,” co-host Charlie Rose said.
“Yeah, he has, but the people at this party last night haven’t, so how big a deal is it?” King asked.
Just as a reminder, Dickerson advised Obama to ‘Destroy the GOP’ in a 2013 Slate column. Charlie Rose recently joined in with the on-air mirth-making with two of Obama’s speechwriters who joked about the millions who’ve lost their health insurance policies thanks to Obamacare. The president of CBS News is David Rhodes, the brother of Obama advisor and failed novelist Ben “Lonesome” Rhodes, who recently committed ritual seppuku in the New York Times. Just think of CBS’s “journalists” as Democrat operatives with bylines, and you won’t go far wrong.
To paraphrase the late Pauline Kael, these newsreaders live in a rather special world. Where the people who dislike Hillary are, they don’t know. They’re outside their ken. And since they’re in midtown Manhattan, they can’t even feel them in the theaters.
THE GUILD PROTECTS ITS OWN: Networks, CNN, MSNBC Refuse to Cover Couric’s Gun Editing Scandal.
Flashback: Jennings and Brokaw Defend Rather Who Sees Effort to “Smear” Him.
IF NOTHING ELSE, HE’LL PROVIDE COMIC RELIEF: Down But Not Out: Grayson Plots Long Shot Comeback.
TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: Victor Davis Hanson: President Obama Is Visiting Hiroshima. Why Not Pearl Harbor?
What opportunity does Pearl Harbor present the semi-retired president on his final tour as the nation’s official scold in chief to lecture America on its inherent evil?
Related: “Let us think of Truman as President Obama prepares to go to Hiroshima to apologize for America’s use of the atomic bomb. Oh, we understand that Mr. Obama is insisting he’s not intending to apologize per se. He is oblivious to what is obvious to everyone else, which is that it’s not what President Obama says that is the apology but the very fact of an American president fetching up at Hiroshima in the first place.”
RATS ON THE WEST SIDE, BEDBUGS UPTOWN: New York City is about to become a lot more disgusting.
Travis Bickle, call your dispatcher.
I THINK SO: Could Romanian hacker ‘Guccifer’ assist FBI’s probe of Clinton?
A Romanian hacker’s plea deal to cooperate with the government is raising questions about whether he might be called upon to assist in the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton.
The hacker “Guccifer,” whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, has not been able to prove his boasts about breaking into Clinton’s private server. And the government has never publicly linked him with the server case.
But Lazar first exposed Clinton’s personal email account by hacking into longtime confidante Sidney Blumenthal, and questions have swirled for months about whether he would be able to assist the FBI probe.
“We’ll find out pretty soon if there’s a there there with him,” said Morgan Wright, a cybersecurity consultant who has worked with law enforcement officials.
Stay tuned.
ANNALS OF CONGRESSIONAL BIGOTRY: Great moments in magical thinking: “Witness says that we cannot indulge all fantasies. Mad Congresswoman denounces her as Enemy Of The People.”
YES, BUT RECOGNIZING THIS PRODUCES INSUFFICIENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT: Worker Bargaining Power Comes Chiefly From Employers’ Competition for Workers. “Workers’ bargaining power ultimately is tied positively to workers’ alternatives: the greater the number, and the better the quality, of a worker’s employment options, the stronger is that worker’s bargaining power. If many different employers are competing for your services – each by offering you good pay, good benefits, and good work conditions – you as a worker have splendid bargaining power. It follows that government interventions that reduce the creation of good jobs – that is, interventions that reduce firms’ incentives to create better opportunities for employing human labor – reduce workers’ bargaining power.”
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:
JEFFERSON SCANDAL UPDATE:
A former aide to U.S. Rep. William Jefferson was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison for his role in a bribery scandal involving the congressman.
Brett Pfeffer, 37, of Herndon, Va., pleaded guilty in January to two bribery-related charges: conspiracy to commit bribery and aiding and abetting bribery of a public official.
Pfeffer’s eight-year term was in the mid-range of the federal sentencing guidelines. Pfeffer, who is cooperating in the ongoing investigation of Jefferson, may be eligible for a reduction of his sentence once his cooperation is complete, said prosecutor Mark Lytle.
I wonder what that cooperation will involve.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, an interesting backstory at the Justice Department:
The Justice Department signaled to the White House this week that the nation’s top three law enforcement officials would resign or face firing rather than return documents seized from a Democratic congressman’s office in a bribery investigation, according to administration sources familiar with the discussions.
The possibility of resignations by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; his deputy, Paul J. McNulty; and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III was communicated to the White House by several Justice officials in tense negotiations over the fate of the materials taken from Rep. William J. Jefferson’s office.
Assuming this report (based on anonymous sources) is true, it seems likely that this means the Jefferson investigation goes well beyond the not-entirely-newsworthy phenomenon of a corrupt Louisiana Congressman. Even if the claims of Congressional immunity are bogus — which they are — I can’t imagine these guys threatening resignation over a run-of-the-mill corruption case. That makes me think that there are a lot of other members of Congress implicated, which perhaps also explains the rather, um, vigorous reaction from Congress.
UPDATE: Some speculation on what might be going on.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader who claims insider knowledge says not to get ahead of the news cycle on the Gonzales-resignation story. Well, stay tuned!
MORE: Some thoughts from Ed Morrissey:
Hastert and his colleagues have busied themselves with goalpost-moving and backtracking. Before, they claimed a Constitutional privilege of freedom from search warrants and subpoenas from the executive branch, even though Congress regularly issues subpoenas without judicial approval against members of the executive branch. Now Hastert has acknowledged that Congressmen are subject to the same laws as everyone else, but have modified their complaint; now they say the issue is that Jefferson and his attorney were not allowed to be present at the search. That’s a far cry from the phony Constitutional crisis they declared earlier this week, perhaps a more reasonable issue and certainly one that didn’t require Hastert’s intercession. He could have kept his mouth shut and let Jefferson’s attorney raise that question when the evidence got submitted for trial — just like any other defendant in a criminal case.
The denouement of this kerfuffle demonstrates two very important points. George Bush still holds the power in Washington and in the GOP, and this controversy shows that he and the people at Justice remain the adults in charge of the day care center. Hastert has severely damaged himself politically in two ways. No one in the GOP will ever give Hastert the same level of trust again after this attempt to pervert the Constitution, and Republicans will remain furious with him for taking the focus off of William Jefferson and his cash-cow business in selling his vote.
That sounds about right to me.