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The Washington Times has the story on this new information being admitted to by the IRS — Lois Lerner used another separate personal email account with an alias, “Toby Miles”, to conduct professional business. This now makes three email accounts used by Lerner, the other two being her work email and another personal email that was previously known.
After all this time, to only now come clean about a third email account is egregious. The IRS lawyer, Geoffrey Klimas, tried to deflect the situation by arguing “that the IRS had previously hinted there may be other personal email accounts, pointing back to a footnote in a letter attached to a June 27, 2014, brief that mentioned “documents located on her personal home computer and email on her personal email account.”
However, that wording was also altered on Monday — evidencing backtracking and cover-up — referring now to her ‘personal home computer and email on her personal email’ account(s).” So the IRS deliberately retained the information the Lerner had a second personal email account, by which she used an alias. The alias, by the way, is her dog’s name.
The Times also reports that “Curiously, the Ways and Means Committee criminal referral mentioned the Toby Miles email address, identified as tobomatic@msn.com. The address came to light because it was included on an email that also hadMs. Lerner’s official account on the chain of recipients….at the time of the referral in April 2014, the committee linked the Toby Miles address to Ms. Lerner’s husband, Michael R. Miles, but said, “The source of the name ‘Toby‘ is not known.”
At no time did Lerner, or anyone else at the IRS, admit that the “Toby Miles” email account belonged instead to Lois Lerner. Nor has that email address been searched.
Lerner, of course is not the first, or second, or third administration member to use extra or secret email accounts, with or without aliases. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her top aides, the White House’s top science adviser, top Environmental Protection Agency officials and now the IRS, have all done this. All part of the “most transparent administration ever.”
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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?
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, HYPOCRISY, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
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.”
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
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.
by | BLOG, CONSTITUTION, ELECTIONS, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
A few days ago, I wrote about the Senate Finance Committee report, which revealed that ten groups have yet to receive tax exempt approval — some waiting as long as five years. ATR had also delved into that report, and found only one conservative group actually received approval in a three year interval with Lois Lerner at the helm:
The report by the Senate Finance Committee revealed that,
“Due to the circuitous process implemented by Lerner, only one conservative political advocacy organization was granted tax-exempt status between February 2009 and May 2012. Lerner’s bias against these applicants unquestionably led to these delays, and is particularly evident when compared to the IRS’s treatment of other applications, discussed immediately below.”
and furthermore:
“The unfortunate consequence of imposing this highly rigid and unorthodox process on EO Determinations was that many Tea Party applications that could have been decided in 2010 were not. Rather, those Tea Party applications unnecessarily languished for several more years, while the IRS mismanaged its way through a series of failed initiatives designed to bring the applications to decision.”
Not all groups received such treatment:
“Although applications from the Tea Party and conservative organizations languished at the IRS, this was not the case for all groups that applied. In cases where the IRS wanted to act quickly, it did – particularly for other high-profile applications that attracted political attention.”
And don’t forget Obama’s brother was fast-tracked in 2011 for approval in 30 days!
Yet, as I noted earlier, the assessment of Lerner’s 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. It’s outrageous.
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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.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, ELECTIONS, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, SOCIAL SECURITY, TAXES
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?
