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In a Friday night document dump, internal EPA documents showed that in both 2014 and 2015, the EPA described how existing conditions at the mine set created the possibility of a blowout of contaminated waters. So EPA managers was certainly aware that the river could received massive amounts of mine sediment and wastewater laden with metals.
The EPA has been less-than-forthcoming with its responses and explanations of this catastrophe. The AP and other media outlets have been pressuring the EPA to release internal documents related to the Colorado mine; so far, the information put forth from the agency has been relatively scant.
From the AP:
–The internal documents that were released were amply redacted
–The EPA documents “do not include any account of what happened immediately before or after the spill.”
–”Among the items blacked out is the line in a 2013 safety plan for the Gold King job that specifies whether workers were required to have phones that could work at the remote site, which is more than 11,000 feet up a mountain.”
–“Among the unanswered questions is why it took the agency nearly a day to inform local officials in downstream communities that rely on the rivers for drinking water.”
–The EPA confirmed “its employees were present at the mine when the spill occurred. The company declined to provide more detail, saying that to do so would violate ‘contractual confidentiality obligations’.”
–“The EPA has not yet provided a copy of its contact with the firm. On the March 2015 cost estimate for the work released Friday, the agency blacked out all the dollar figures.”
–“EPA did not immediately respond Friday night to questions from the AP.”
In fact, the EPA has received a high volume of criticism for its lack of responsiveness and cooperation to any questions about the incident, but has been quick to assuage citizens that they are “very sorry.” Furthermore, the EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy spoke soothingly at a conference a week ago and described that waters are returning to “pre-incident conditions” — explaining “the very good news is that we see that this river is restoring itself.”
Which begs the question: if nature can restore itself after a man-made disaster, compounded by man-made government bureaucratic incompetence, why do we need the EPA at all?
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Those responsible for the toxic EPA spill into the Animus River should be prosecuted to the fullest extent for their actions. Just as the EPA has gone after individuals and private companies for violating various EPA statutes, the EPA workers who released 3 million gallons should face the same fate.
Take the case of Lawrence Lewis, who, in 2007, was accused of violating the Clean Water Act, unknowingly, while executing accepted policy of relieving overflowing drain pipes into the street drainage system. Assisted by his long-time maintenance staff, Lewis “diverted a backed-up sewage system into an outside storm drain—one they long believed was connected to the city’s sewage-treatment system—to prevent flooding in an area where the sickest residents lived. In fact, the storm drain emptied into a creek that ultimately reaches the Potomac River.”
For this crime, Lewis was prosecuted; he pleaded guilty only in order to avoid jail time away from his family. Lewis was sentenced to one year’s probation and placed under court-ordered supervision, which included unannounced visits to his home and new place of employment.
The Wall Street Journal covered this atrocity:
In an interview [his lawyer said], “There was no fight to have. It was a strict liability case,” meaning the government didn’t have to prove Mr. Lewis knew he was doing anything wrong. “His good intentions did not matter.” The lawyer told Mr. Lewis that, to be found guilty, prosecutors needed only to prove that he was aware that sewage was being pumped into the storm drain that led to the creek.
In court documents, the government argued that Mr. Lewis didn’t ensure the storm drain fed into a waste-treatment facility rather than the creek. About 30% of the city’s storm drains flow to a treatment plant, according to the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority. Plus, the government argued, Mr. Lewis was responsible for several prior discharges during his time at Knollwood.
Certainly, dumping 3 million gallons of materials into a river is far more serious than diverting a storm drain into a creek accidentally. If Mr. Lewis can endure a harsh sentence for his accidental crime, the EPA should most certainly follow through with their employees who are “very sorry”, for their massive pollution and make sure they receive the same swift justice that Mr. Lewis received.
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Each month, CNSNews does a nice roundup of the monthly Treasury statements which show revenue and expenditures for the prior month. As has been the case for the last few months, the month of July has been another record setting month for revenues. Even with that, the government still continues to run a deficit for the year — their annual spending outpacing their receipts.
From CNSNews:
“The federal government raked in a record of approximately $2,672,414,000,000 in tax revenues through the first ten months of fiscal 2015 (Oct. 1, 2014 through the end of July), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.
That equaled approximately $17,955 for every person in the country who had either a full-time or part-time job in July.
It is also up about $183,397,970,000 in constant 2015 dollars from the $2,489,016,030,000 in revenue (in inflation-adjusted 2015 dollars) that the Treasury raked in during the first ten months of fiscal 2014.
Despite the record tax revenues of $2,672,414,000,000 in the first ten months of this fiscal year, the government spent $3,137,953,000,000 in those ten months, and, thus, ran up a deficit of $465,539,000,000 during the period.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total seasonally adjusted employment in the United States in July (including both full and part-time workers) was 148,840,000. That means that the federal tax haul so far this fiscal year has equaled $17,954.94 for every person in the United States with a job.
In 2012, President Barack Obama struck a deal with Republicans in Congress to enact legislation that increased taxes. That included increasing the top income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, increasing the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent, and phasing out personal exemptions and deductions starting at an annual income level of $250,000.
An additional 3.8 percent tax on dividends, interests, capital gains and royalties–that was embedded in the Obamacare law–also took effect in 2013.
The largest share of this year’s record-setting October-through-July tax haul came from the individual income tax. That yielded the Treasury $1,276,630,000,000. Payroll taxes for “social insurance and retirement receipts” took in another $894,374,000,000. The corporate income tax brought in $266,068,000,000.”
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The Club for Growth recently announced it is compiling a policy series called the “Presidential White Papers” in an effort to contribute to Election 2016 discussions. Their goal is to examine what candidates have said and done on matters of economic freedom.
From their website: “From journalists to the candidates themselves, the Club’s White Papers are widely regarded as the go-to source on economic policy facts. The truth is in their record, not their rhetoric – but we’ve sifted through it all and found the facts. Whether you’re looking to get some quick facts before the debates or you want to fact-check the candidates’ statements about these policy issues, the White Papers will be your best resource.”
So far, the Club for Growth has added eight candidates to the series, including,
*Jeb Bush
*Chris Christie
*Ted Cruz
*Mike Huckabee
*Rand Paul
*Marco Rubio
*Donald Trump
*Scott Walker
According to the Club for Growth, “the papers found that there are strong pro-growth candidates in the 2016 presidential race, including Senators Ted Cruz (TX), Rand Paul (KY), and Marco Rubio (FL). Governor Scott Walker has also frequently governed Wisconsin with pro-growth policies, and Jeb Bush showed many of the same tendencies when he was governor of Florida.”
As the election season continues and more candidates provide economic policy plans, the Club For Growth will release more white papers accordingly.
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Every summer, the Taxpayer Advocate releases one of two annual reports to Congress. The summer report is the “Annual Objectives Report” which seeks to identify and work on priority issues for the upcoming Fiscal Year. The Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson, had done a good job for years trying to look out for the people, especially the the IRS being in such a tumultuous state recently.
This year’s report had three top priorities:
1) Long-Term IRS Strategic Planning and Taxpayer Service
The NTA expresses concern that the IRS continues to view itself primarily as an enforcement agency, with taxpayer service receiving less emphasis. As the IRS undertakes the development of a concept of operations, the NTA urges the IRS to place primary emphasis on “meet[ing] the needs of the overwhelming majority of taxpayers who are trying to comply with the tax laws.”
2) Assisting Victims of Identity Theft-Related Refund Fraud
Taxpayer service also failed for victims of identity thieves—as the problem has grown worse and more IRS filters are catching more potentially fraudulent returns, victims often have to wait a half year or more to receive their refunds.
3) Administration of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)
This past tax year added the challenge of dealing with the new provisions under the ACA–the Premium Tax Credit (PTC) and the Individual Shared Responsibility Payment (ISRP). The upcoming year will see more complexity, and TAS will focus on training its case advocates to better assist taxpayers, notably on ACA collection activities and the Employer Shared Responsibility provision.
In related topics, reflecting on the recently completed filing season, Olson states the IRS ran a generally successful filing season under difficult circumstances, but maintains that there was still a group of taxpayers for whom the filing season was “the worst in memory.”
You can read the full report here:
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There are still ten tea party groups which haven’t received approval by the IRS — years after having applied for tax-exempt status. Some applications have been delayed five years by now. All in all, 547 applications were “centralized,” for extraordinary scrutiny.
According to a report by Senate investigators, “the Albuquerque Tea Party was one of the original test cases the IRS used to try to figure out how to handle tea party applications, and that group was still awaiting approval as of April. Accordingly, while substantial progress has been made since 2010 to reduce the backlog of political advocacy applications, IRS management has not yet been able to bring all of these applications to closure.”
There’s no way in the world that a backlog of FIVE years exists — and if it actually does, IRS top brass should be fired for running an incompetent, inefficient agency of that magnitude.
But nothing will actually happen. This was made painfully evident from reading the Senate report, which differed in its conclusions about the culpability of IRS officials. Indeed, it “cleared those top officials of more serious charges of trying to punish groups politically opposed to President Obama. Indeed, after two years of investigation the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee couldn’t even agree on whether there was politically motivated targeting in picking which applications to delay or to give extra scrutiny — the central allegation in the 2013 inspector general’s audit.”
The only IRS employee to be particularly named was Lois Lerner but even then, the assessment of her misdealings by Senate investigators was particularly weak. She was chastised for failing to “adequately manage the EO employees who processed these applications”, her handling of applications “was flawed in design and/or mismanagement”, and she showed “little emphasis” on “providing good customer service.”
Heads should roll. But they won’t, ever. The scandal is two years old now — which is ancient in the political world. People have moved on from their outrage and they are now focused mainly on 2016. The scandal is barely covered in the news anymore, which is how the IRS can still get away with keeping some groups remaining in limbo, due to a “backlog”, even after 5 years. It’s outrageous.
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Washington Free Beacon had a sobering article about the lack of fiduciary responsibility in the Social Security Administration. A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that for 5 years (FY2009-FY2013), disability payments totaling $371.5 million were overpaid to many individuals. “The report examined how concurrent Federal Employees’ Compensation Act (FECA) payments affect Disability Insurance (DI) overpayments.”
The most recent annual Social Security Trustees report showed that the projected date of insolvency for the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund is late 2016, a date that remained unchanged from the prior year. With this crisis looming in the background, the report of overpayments is especially concerning. From the article:
“The GAO found that SSA did not detect concurrent FECA payments for about 1,040 individuals during at least one month from July 1, 2011, through June 30, 2014.
To test SSA’s internal controls, GAO randomly selected 20 beneficiaries for review. In all 20 cases, SSA’s controls failed to detect and prevent overpayments. In seven of the cases, SSA did not detect overpayments for more than a decade, and each of these individuals received $100,000 in overpaid benefits.
One of these seven individuals received FECA benefits in the 1980s and was approved for disability benefits 14 years later in 1994. The GAO found that this individual received $200,000 in overpayments for more than 20 years.
The SSA’s “internal controls” rely on beneficiaries to self-report overpayments.
“SSA officials told us that if beneficiaries do not self-report benefits, there are no system prompts that would alert SSA staff to ask beneficiaries if they are receiving any workers’ compensation benefits, including FECA payments,” states GAO. “SSA officials agreed that relying on beneficiaries to self-report benefits presents a challenge in identifying overpayments related to the concurrent receipt of FECA benefits.'”
Congress is aware of the projected date of insolvency, but has yet to agree on a path forward. What’s more, the date roughly coincides with the 2016 election, so of course no one is willing right now to make any decisions or provide any possible solutions. Without any changes, benefits will be reduced by nearly 20%. Currently the Disability Trust Fund provides more than $100 billion a year to roughly 11 million recipients, making it the largest government assistance program in the country.
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It really irritates me that someone who has been incredibly wrong on the Obamacare issue can still be taken seriously anymore. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of Obamacare and Rahm Emanuel’s brother, has argued firmly for years that Obamacare will revolutionize the healthcare market and lower costs. Now that the actual hard data has come in, and that data has shown that Obamacare costs are actually rising substantially, Emanuel does this sort of backpedaling on the issue that is absolutely ridiculous.
In an article earlier this month, Emanuel discussed “The Coming Shock in Healthcare Increases.” It must’ve been a shock to him and all the rest of the so-called experts who implemented this albatross of legislation without any understanding of real-world impact — how could costs do anything except skyrocket with all the provisions and regulations contained within the bill?
Now, this expert admits that prices are rising, and will continue to rise, “without further action.” What does he propose? More government intervention:
“Experts from across the ideological spectrum agree that the key to long-term cost control is to pay doctors and hospitals in a way that rewards cost savings and quality. Such payment reforms would move Medicare and private payers away from paying a fee for each service—which encourages doctors to order unnecessary and even harmful tests and procedures.
The Obama administration recently announced a laudable goal: 50% of Medicare payments will be made under new payment models by 2018. But to reach this goal, the administration must change tactics and use the authority given to it under the law to rapidly expand payment reforms.”
Because the government has been both correct and efficient with regard to Obamacare so far? The entire program from the start, including the rollout, website, pricing, and exchanges has been one giant colossal failure.
As if it couldn’t get any worse, Emanuel goes on to discuss an Obamacare program called “Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs)” (created by more “experts”), which Emanuel begrudgingly admits has been an utter failure so far:
“While many reforms are being tested, the administration’s main focus has been on creating “accountable care organizations.” ACOs are groups of medical providers that are rewarded for achieving savings on their total spending while improving quality.
The results so far are less than encouraging. Several studies found that ACOs achieved minimal savings after two years. This is not unexpected. Investing in technology, hiring nurses and changing the way care is delivered is complex and takes time to implement effectively. But we don’t yet have evidence that ACOs can reduce costs substantially.
The bigger problem is scale. In the advanced ACO program—which penalizes health-care providers for overspending—13 of 32 participating groups dropped out. In the other ACO program—which rewards organizations for underspending but does not penalize them for excessive spending—the number of new participants is falling, and more than half of the participants are now deciding whether to renew.”
So when the people who are actively involved in healthcare — the healthcare providers — decline to participate in a half-baked scheme cooked up by the Obama Administration to lower costs, does it signal to any of the “experts” that maybe they really aren’t “experts” at all? Of course not! Emanuel instead proposes yet another government “reform” idea: Medicare bundling. He goes on to explain how this new program idea is wonderful and perfect and the solution to all of our current health care cost problems. Pinky swear.
He ends his ridiculous article with an ominous plea to his readers: “Time is running out. If Mr. Obama doesn’t act soon to control costs, escalating costs may ultimately threaten the sustainability of his coverage expansion—and his entire health-reform legacy.”
Mr. Obama’s bill has singlehandedly destroyed the healthcare system in this country. The last thing we need is more government meddling and fiddling with programs, for Mr. Obama to again “act soon to control costs.”
The only thing Emanuel is correct on is the need to bend cost curves down. But his solution — more government and more experts and more programs — is utterly incorrect. Tort reform and health savings accounts are the only way to achieve cost savings. Obamacare did neither, and now the entire healthcare industry is worse than before. Emanuel has proven to be anything but an expert, only a cheerleader for a failed policy. Why are we still listening to him and his ideas?
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There’s not much more to say that what ATR lays out. In a nutshell, many IRS employees used an interoffice messaging chat system to communicate with one another, instead of email, because there was no archiving system turned on for that mode of communication — meaning there was no written trail of discussions. This methodology was discovered while looking at Lois Lerner’s emails.
From Americans for Tax Reform:
The IRS used a “wholly separate” instant messaging system that automatically deleted office communications, according to documentation released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. The system appears to have been purposefully used by agency officials responsible for the targeting of conservative non-profits, in order to evade public scrutiny.
The system, known as “Office Communication Server” or OCS was used by IRS officials, including many in the Exempt Organizations (EO) Unit, which was headed by Lois Lerner.
As the Oversight Committee report states, the instant messaging system did not archive any communications, so it is not possible to know what employees of the EO unit discussed on it.
However, in an email uncovered by the Committee Lerner warns her colleagues about evading Congressional oversight:
“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails – so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.”
Lerner then asks whether OCS is automatically archived. When informed it was not, Lerner responded “Perfect.”
While it is possible to set the instant messaging system to automatically archive messages, the IRS chose not to do so, according to one employee interviewed by the Committee. The fact that the agency chose not to archive messages raises questions about the true purpose of OCS and what discussions took place.
Needless to say, the apparent use of OCS to evade Congressional oversight once again shows that the IRS does not want the American people to learn the truth about the Lois Lerner targeting scandal.
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There was an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last month regarding Puerto Rico, called “Profligate Puerto Rico on the Brink”. It was written right at the time the the current Governor Alejandro García Padilla declared that Puerto Rico couldn’t pay its debts anymore. As someone who is involved in Puerto Rico with friends and clients whom I advise on matters there, I found most of the points agreeable — that Puerto Rico has not tried serious reforms before deciding to declare insolvency.
Some points he raises:
–The proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 contains no plans for head-count reductions.
–Puerto Rico’s debt crisis is the result of years of government mismanagement. Dozens of agencies and publicly owned corporations have run deficits year after year, making up the difference by borrowing from bond markets.
–The administration seems to believe higher taxes are the answer. An increase in the island’s sales tax passed last month, to 11.5% from 7%, is projected to raise more than $1 billion in a year. This is the fifth tax increase since 2013, intended cumulatively to generate more than $4 billion. In reality, they have raised less than $1.5 billion in new money as more Puerto Ricans move their economic activity underground, businesses cut outlays, and the exodus to the U.S. continues.
–In Puerto Rico, the decline in the real economy has been less than 8% over the past decade, and while total employment has declined 16%, the population has declined more than 10%, leaving the unemployment rate only slightly higher than it was in 2006. Yet the commonwealth continues to spend more on growth-inhibiting programs—regulations, fees and taxes—rather than on pro-growth stimulus initiatives like agency mergers, investment in business infrastructure and public-private partnerships.
One items, however, was incorrect; this has to do with Governor Fortuño, the Republican governor from several years back. The author suggested that overspending is a bipartisan problem by including Fortuño in his list of horribles . However, Governor Fortuño was the one leader who actually did make systemic changes to reduce Puerto Rico’s deficit. He eliminated 38,000 government jobs thereby reducing the size of the government by 20%. Then he cut income-tax rates by half and corporate-tax rates by nearly a third. He lowered the deficit to $660 million from $3.3 billion. For this, I disagree that he was just lumped into the analysis with the other profligate Democrats before and after him.
Reducing the size and scope of government is a major key part of getting Puerto Rico back on track. Without trying to sound callous, Puerto Rico should feel, to some degree, the consequences of their extraordinarily poor choice they made four years after the leadership of Fortuño who put Puerto Rico onto a path to solvency. By choosing to discontinue the rational, solvent course he had carved out and subsequently electing a leader that instead promised the unaffordable, Puerto Ricans must have to first experience tough reforms and cutbacks help Puerto Rico thrive once again.
