OBAMA ADMINISTRATION GOES AFTER LEAKERS

From BoingBoing:  "Obama Administration Has Secured 526 Months of Jail Time for Leakers."

Up until Obama's "most transparent administration", and throughout the entire history of the USA, national security leakers had received a total of 24 months of jail time. There are many more cases pending.

From the Daily Signal:  "19 Times the Government Withheld Documents It Didn't Want You to See."

This is not a particularly transparent administration. 

CHICAGO POLITICS IN D.C.

From the Washington Examiner with the HuffPost as its source.  All this talk about Democrats opposing big business is just "smoke and mirrors" for its constituents.  They want to use Wall Street money just as badly as Republicans do.  And if they can control the bureaucracy and big business see themselves as being in a very powerful political position.

Congressional battles over the Export-Import Bank and terrorism insurance are an opportunity for Democrats to win back corporate elites who abandoned the party after the passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reforms, according to one of that law's primary architects, former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

"I think this is finally starting to get to the business community now," he told HuffPost during a July interview. "Part of this was the real significance of the defeat of [then-House Majority Leader] Eric Cantor. Eric Cantor was one of [Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd] Blankfein's best friends in government. His wife used to work [at Goldman] and they were personally friendly -- of course, a great recipient of money. And then Cantor loses and nowKevin McCarthy shifts his position on the Export-Import Bank."

GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY

Obamacare has been ripped by critics for its computer technology failures and huge cost overruns, but this seems to be a problem related to big government bureaucracies.  Now the Department of State computer has crashed and it has been impossible for a foreigner traveling to the United States to get a visa for at least two weeks. We are looking more like a Third World country.  The Bayern Munich football club has been prevented from coming to America to play!  But it also has deprived thousands of other legitimate travelers access to America.  But maybe they should fly to Mexico City and just cross the Rio Grande?

The US Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) at the State Bureau of Consular Affairs “is currently experiencing technical problems with our passport/visa system,” US State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf revealed at a media briefing, adding that the database has actually been“experiencing intermittent performance issues for several months” now.

ILLEGAL BUREAUCRATIC RULES

From WAPO.  "Study: Hundreds of rules passed by Obama administration are technically illegal."  What is the difference between "technically illegal" and "illegal".  Could I use this phrasing to get out of a traffic ticket?

There’s a problem, however: Technically speaking, these and about 1,800 other regulations shouldn’t be in effect, because they weren’t reported to Congress as required. Yet there is little that lawmakers or the courts can do about it.

The situation illustrates the obscure, byzantine process used to create federal regulations — and how easily it can go awry.

“It’s pretty apparent that the system is broken,” said Curtis Copeland, a retired Congressional Research Service staffer who discovered the issue. “It would seem this is one area where congressional Republicans and Democrats could get together and say: ‘This is crazy. We can fix this.’ ”

Under a 1996 statute, most federal rules are supposed to be reported to the House and Senate in paper form and to the Government Accountability Office electronically. But since the start of 2012, that hasn’t happened for many of the regulations put out by the Obama administration, either because of bureaucratic oversight or because they were considered too minor to be reported.

IRS TO MONITOR CHURCHES

From Investor's Daily.  I wonder if they will target liberal churches or just conservative churches?

A lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) asserted that the Internal Revenue Service ignored complaints about churches' violating their tax-exempt status by routinely promoting political issues, legislation and candidates from the pulpit.

The FFRF has temporarily withdrawn its suit in return for the IRS's agreement to monitor sermons and homilies for proscribed speech that the foundation believes includes things like condemnation of gay marriage and criticism of ObamaCare for its contraceptive mandate.

The irony of this agreement is that it's being enforced by the same Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division of the IRS that was once headed by Lois "Fifth Amendment" Lerner and that openly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups.

Among the questions that the IRS asked of those targeted groups was the content of their prayers.

OBAMACARE WEBSITE

It is hard to believe that it has already cost taxpayers $840 million to develop a website that doesn't work well!

The Government Accountability Office says cost overruns went hand-in-hand with the management failures that led to the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov and the 36 state insurance exchanges it serves.

GAO's report, prepared for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Thursday, details a long series of management, oversight, and contracting problems that plagued the entire process, from risky contracting practices in 2011 through the botched launch last October.

PAUL RYAN ON HELPING PEOPLE IN POVERTY

Representative Paul Ryan (R, WI) has an interesting proposal to help people in poverty. . .give them what they need based on individual needs.

He described the case of a 24-year-old single mother of two with a high school education, two years of retail work experience and dreams of one day being a teacher. Instead of relying on food stamps, housing vouchers and welfare checks, she could go to a social services provider, sit down with a case manager to develop an "opportunity plan" to meet her goals, targeting money where it is needed most.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

VA SCANDAL UPDATE

The media has noted that "al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo treated better than our vets."  You can't fire incompetents in the VA and they actually end up being promoted or given bonuses.

The Left has bragged about the VA as a model for medical care, but this socialist model has failed.

The "secret" of the VA's "success," Krugman argued, "is the fact that it's a universal, integrated system." That saves on administrative costs and allows for efficient record-keeping. Krugman acknowledged that the VA had a history of mismanagement and mediocre care, until "reforms beginning in the mid-1990's transformed the system." But wait. Hasn't it been a universal, integrated system all along?  This sounds like it could be a prophetic statement about Obamacare.  At least in a private care system you can sue the doctor or hospital for malfeasance. And Krugman opposed Republican proposals allowing vets to use VA benefits in private care systems.

From WND.  Obama failed to fix problems left over from the Bush administration even though he promised to.

Map showing an "epidemic" of VA incompetence.

REVIVAL OF AL QAEDA

Hard to believe American intelligence missed this event--maybe they were too busy listening to the phones of Americans or German Chancellor Merkel?

A new video shows what looks like the largest and most dangerous gathering of al Qaeda in years. And the CIA and the Pentagon either didn't know about it or couldn't get a drone there in time to strike.

U.S. officials won't comment on that, but every frame of the video is now being analyzed by the United States.

WASHINGTON LOBBYING

The divorce of a big Democrat lobbyist, Tony Podesta, is revealing how lobbying works inside the beltway. It is not pretty if you believe in integrity in the public square.

Corporations give to Democratic politicians, avoiding the scrutiny of liberal attack dogs in the media and nonprofit sectors, and enjoying the ego boost that comes with being on the “right side of history.” Then those corporations hire the Podestas to get them out of the Rube Goldberg traps the Democrats have enacted into law. John’s innovation was to establish a corporate-funded think tank where the burdensome policies would be concocted, and whose staff would go on to man the regulatory agencies that put their wool-headed ideas into practice. And to whom do the corporations turn when they find themselves on the receiving end of all this uplift, all this do-goodery, all this progress, hope, and change? Why, to the man in the red Prada loafers, and to his flamboyantly patterned wife.

IRS "IMPROPRIETY"

According to allegations employees in the Dallas IRS office were involved in the 2012 presidential campaign while working in the IRS office.  It is illegal for government employees to bring the campaign of any public figure into the work they do while on government time.

According to this Office of Special Counsel document, employees at the Dallas IRS Taxpayer Assistance Office were seen wearing pro-Obama campaign paraphernalia: stickers, buttons, and T-shirts, even putting campaign screen-savers on work computers.

And according to the Hill, it was happening in other IRS offices as well.

Evidently Democrat Representative Elijah Cummings was pushing the IRS to go after conservative groups according to the Republican chair investigating the IRS.

Issa said records obtained last week from the IRS show communications from the office of ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., about True the Vote, a Texas-based, non-profit conservative group that aims to prevent voter fraud.

RUSSIAN ARMS INDUSTRY

The US government is supporting the Rosoboronexport, a major Russian arms dealer.  So Washington is criticizing Putin for his actions in the Crimea and slapping the wrists of a few Russian billionaires while a billion in tax payer money is going to Russia for weapon systems--only in bureaucratic Washington!

Arms exporter Rosoboronexport has raked in $1,133,783,077 in Defense Department contracts since 2011, according to federal contracting records. Shortly before these contracts began getting the green light, Rosoboronexport had been the subject of U.S. sanctions for assisting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Today, senators sent a strong bipartisan message to Obama: cancel all existing contracts with the Russian arms exporter including upcoming deliveries, scrap plans to ink new contracts, and put the company back on the sanctions list where it belongs.

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

The government in the United States is withholding more information and making it harder to find out what various agencies are doing.

The Obama administration has a way to go to fulfill its promises from Day 1 to become the most transparent administration in history.

More often than ever, the administration censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, cited more legal exceptions it said justified withholding materials and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

CORRUPTION IN THE BUREAUCRACY

I suspect this is the tip of a much larger iceberg.  From the Washington Examiner:  "Top Treasury employees swindled thousands of dollars, in-the-know bosses did nothing."  The taxpayer is footing the bill for the corruption and high-living that takes place in the higher level of the bureaucracy.

THE IRS SCANDAL TIMELINE

From the Wall Street Journal, "Connecting the Dots."  Bradley A. Smith gives a timeline to how the scandal developed.  However, he doesn't mention Obama's 2009 speech in Arizona where he jokingly kidded about using the IRS to audit his enemies--was this a Freudian slip?  And a number of Democrat senators were pushing the IRS to engage in its singling out of conservative groups.

The mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. This betrays a remarkable, if not willful, failure to understand abuse of power. The political pressure on the IRS to delay or deny tax-exempt status for conservative groups has been obvious to anyone who cares to open his eyes. It did not come from a direct order from the White House, but it didn't have to.

POLITICAL APPOINTEES IN OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

From WAPO.  An academic appointee to the National Council on the Humanities was expected to sign a document that she would never criticize the Obama administration in order to be appointed.

IRS & OBAMA TARGETING

From the Heritage Foundation.  A discussion of how Obama attempts to stop groups that oppose him.


Opponents are targeting businesses or business leaders who support conservative causes, for example.


“Media Matters, David Brock’s group, has intentionally made clear in fundraising pitches their intention to expose donors, so that other left-wing groups and they can organize boycotts of these conservative donors,” said Smith.


CP Politics discusses how Obama tried to silence groups supporting his Democrat rivals in 2008.


"You go all the way back to the Democratic Primary in the Spring of 2008, and you find Bob Bower filing a complaint with the Federal Election Committee against an organization called the American Leadership Project, which was backing his opponent in the primary, Hilary Clinton," Strassel recalled. She argued that the IRS targeting scandal is only the latest version of this sort of political attack. The Obama campaign also went after a group supporting John Edwards, the WSJ columnist said.

IRS RULES & FREE SPEECH

From the Chicago Tribune.  The IRS wants to curb free speech, but it also lets some social advocacy groups off the hook by letting them camouflage political activity.

IRS DRAFTING SECRET RULES

From the Daily Caller.

The Obama administration’s Treasury Department and former IRS official Lois Lerner conspired to draft new 501(c)(4) regulations to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that would not be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

No one would then no about why an organization was denied approval (or approved).

At least 292 conservative groups were subjected to unfair targeting between 2010 and 2012, against six liberal groups that were allegedly given similar treatment.
I guess the IRS believes liberals are more honest.

IRS AND TEA PARTY

Senator Schumer (D, NY) argued that the IRS should go after the Tea Party in speech before the Center for American Progress. 

The Washington Free Beacon reports that Schumer advocated that Tea Party organizations be targeted, saying, “the Obama administration should bypass Congress and institute new campaign finance rules through the IRS.”

Schumer is further quoted as saying: “It is clear that we will not pass anything legislatively as long as the House of Representatives is in Republican control, but there are many things that can be done administratively by the IRS and other government agencies — we must redouble those efforts immediately."

As the article indicates, Schumer isn't worried about Republicans ever getting control again of the White House and using the IRS to go after liberal groups.  And he expects the media to go after Republicans if the Democrats ever should lose the White House and go after liberal groups.