Darth Issa: Lord Vader, my colleague in the House of Representatives, Dave Camp, is here to help the Imperial Army and Tea Party gain control of the IRS. He serves as Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee.
Darth Vader: The Emperor is pleased with the progress. Proceed according to schedule.
Darth Issa: Yes Lord Vader.
And it's none other than D-D-D-Darrell Issa with yet more opinions on how the IRS "Scandal" (aka a figment of Issa's imagination) is really a scandal after all.
This time, he has managed to bring in his colleague in the House of Representatives, a fellow IRS Scandal-Propaganda supporting Republican Rep. Dave Camp, Chairman of House Ways & Means Committee, in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post on the IRS "Scandal" situation.
I have chosen to dissect the whole Op-Ed by would-be Congressmen Issa and Camp in its entirety:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The IRS scandal’s inconsistencies
By Darrell Issa and Dave Camp, Updated: Tuesday, August 6, 7:10 AM
Darrell Issa (Calif.) and Dave Camp (Mich.), both Republicans, are the chairmen of, respectively, the House committees on Oversight and Ways and Means.
Just three months ago, Lois G. Lerner, a senior official in the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations division, publicly admitted that the agency targeted taxpayers because of their political beliefs. Until that point, despite years of inquiries from Congress, the IRS had continued to deny that it was targeting taxpayers, even though officials had long known about the conduct. With the truth out about the targeting of tea party groups, Lerner, then-acting Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Steven Miller and even the president’s own spokesman were quick to blame the entire episode on our front-line workers in Cincinnati.
Right. Lois Lerner did admit that the agency targeted taxpayers because of their political beliefs. They targeted conservative and Tea Party groups but they also looked at liberal & progressive groups at the same time.
Next argument:
Interview after interview of IRS employees by congressional investigators, however, began to expose the inconsistencies in the administration’s narrative. There were no “rogue” agents, only employees who followed the implicit or explicit directions of more senior IRS officials in Washington. When Washington told Cincinnati IRS employees to “hold” other tea party cases while officials in Washington scrutinized early “test cases” concerning the group, they did it. When Washington told them to assign a tea party case coordinator, they obliged. Employees also told investigators that the IRS chief counsel’s office was not, as the American people were first led to believe, merely involved in fixing problems once discovered. Employees explained, and one testified publicly, that this office — led by one of only two political appointees at the IRS — participated in scrutinizing and delaying tea party applications.
IRS employees being interviewed has what relationship with the Obama Administration's narrative?
Since the “blame Cincinnati” narrative began to unravel, the White House and its allies have engaged in a flailing effort to put this scandal behind them. When the scandal was first revealed, the president promised the American people that the administration would “hold the responsible parties accountable.” Yet upon the direction of the president, new IRS acting Commissioner Daniel Werfel ordered a 30-day review, upon which Werfel claimed the agency found no “evidence of intentional wrongdoing by anyone in the IRS.”
Well first of all, genius...
1) There were already reports coming from the Cincinnati IRS Office. Behold the following information that is not a "Blame Cincinnati" narrative but actually comes from the Cincinnati IRS Office from a conservative Republican working for the office. Do you contest this person's facts?
http://www.reuters.com/...
(Reuters) - A manager from a U.S. Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati where staffers have been accused of unfairly subjecting conservative groups to extra scrutiny has said his agents were not influenced by any political agenda.
John Shafer, who described himself as "a conservative Republican," told congressional investigators he flagged the first application for tax-exempt status from a Tea Party-aligned group that he and a lower-level agent came across in February 2010 because it was a new, high-profile issue.
Asked if the lower-level agent sought to elevate the case to Washington because he disagreed with Tea Party politics, Shafer said that was not the case.
"We never, never discussed any political, personal aspirations whatsoever," he said, according to a transcript of his testimony reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday.
2) Werfel, the acting IRS Commissioner, found no evidence of intentional wrongdoing. That's correct, no evidence of
intentional wrongdoing. Is it important to find that the evidence is intentional or unintentional wrongdoing? Your response Congressman Issa.
None? Ok. Moving on:
How could a 30-day review by a new official credibly clear an entire agency after a year-long independent audit by the IRS’s inspector general just found significant unanswered questions?
Working with the IRS, congressional Democrats then tried to sell Americans on a new rationale, that this was “not much of a scandal,” by trying to smear the inspector general and falsely equating routine scrutiny of progressive groups to tea party applications. The inspector general, however, stood his ground, countering that the facts still support the conclusion that tea party groups were systematically scrutinized at a level above and beyond other applicants. During the 27 months during which the IRS did not approve one application for tax-exempt status from a tea party group, the agency approved “perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups,” according to a review by USA Today. Front-line IRS workers were not instructed to route progressive organizations to a special coordinator; these groups’ applications were simply processed through the general inventory.
Congressman Issa, in what way do the IRS problems as reported represent a scandal? Do you even know what the word "scandal" means or do you even know what the context of a scandal has been in U.S. history?
Or do you even know what the heck I'm talking about?
Furthermore, here's this bit of information which wasn't reported by your House "Oversight" and Government "Reform" Committee:
http://www.ibtimes.com/...
A group of employees at Cincinnati’s beleaguered Internal Revenue Service field office used IRS computers and email accounts to exchange dozens of emails during the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election among a group of friends and colleagues dubbed the "Neanderthals," discussing national politics in a manner that two employment lawyers say likely violated federal law.
And certain decisions about who to promote within the office were decided in part based on considerations of employees’ political leanings, according to a longtime Cincinnati IRS field-office employee who declined to be identified but provided the internal emails to International Business Times.
The 80 politically charged emails were sent among members of a group of more than 20 people, including at least eight employees of the Cincinnati IRS field office’s Employee Plans Office, part of the Tax Exempt & Government Entities Division there, which is already embroiled in a national scandal over its targeting of conservative groups for added scrutiny in the run-up to the 2012 election.
The revelations about the Employee Plans Office emails, the content of which was decidedly pro-conservative and anti-Democrat, add another chapter to the tale of a Cincinnati IRS operation gripped by political tension.
Congressman Issa, this is golden information to you for the IRS "Scandal," isn't it? It's like cookies from a cookie jar that you'd just love to eat, right? RIGHT?
Oh wait, you're only looking for conservative & Tea Party IRS stories. Sorry! My mistake!
Moving on...
Meanwhile, the White House has vacillated between indifference and acknowledgment of inappropriate IRS behavior. Consider this: On the same day President Obama bemoaned the “phony scandals” plaguing his administration, his chief spokesman, Jay Carney, allowed that “we need to get to the bottom of what happened at the IRS.” Which is it?
“Let’s just take the IRS scandal. The fact is, it’s far different than what you said,” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough recently reminded Carney.
Oh, Issa is WAY over-analyzing here. First off, spokesman Jay Carney says we need to get to the bottom of what happened at the IRS. Of course the White House does. The U.S. Treasury Secretary is the IRS Commissioner's boss.
But when the IRS situation is interpreted as a "scandal," there has to be an already proven fact that it's a scandal. Unfortunately, no prove exists as of yet.
The American people demand and deserve accountability from their government, not to live in fear of being subject to an audit or other extra scrutiny for reasons unrelated to the content of their filing. So far, the IRS and this administration have provided no assurances that oversight and accountability is in place to prevent such abuses from happening again.
The administration’s own partisan anti-tea party rhetoric, its evolving and inconsistent explanations and the IRS’s own unwillingness to fulfill the president’s promises of cooperation with our investigation have fueled skepticism about how dedicated they are to holding the responsible parties accountable.
Ok but the Obama Administration's view on the Tea Party vs. IRS's own problems still have no correlation.
And in truth, the IRS has cooperated with Darrell Issa and the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee. However, below in this view, it's Issa himself who is not cooperating with the IRS himself so it's fair to say he's trying to have it both ways:
We are committed to a thorough and fair investigation. Our committees are working to find out how this happened and how we can prevent any taxpayer from being targeted. The American people deserve to know that they have a government that works for them — not against them. The White House and the IRS should fully cooperate. It is the only way Americans can regain lost trust in this administration.
Wait, hold on here. Time out. First off, Americans regaining trust in the Obama Administration? I thought it was Americans regaining trust in the IRS?
THE IRS IS NOT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, SIR!
And how can the IRS investigation by Issa and Camp be thorough and fair with this kind of bickering?
If you can't stand to hear more of Darrell Issa's antics, keep the San Diego County Democratic Party busy since they're the most local and active Democratic Party nearby Darrell Issa's area of residence (not to mention his local office).
Make sure you mark down this information and pass it on to others for firing up the base in California's 49th Congressional District if you want to target Issa for re-election and get voter registration drives going. If you can find someone in the CA-49 who can run against Issa in 2014, the more the merrier:
San Diego County Democratic Party Website: http://www.sddemocrats.org/
Address: 8340 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, Suite 10 San Diego, CA 92111
Phone: (858) 277-3367
Fax: (858) 571-0275
E-mail: info@sddemocrats.org
Contact Form: http://www.sddemocrats.org/...
Oh and don't forget, the DCCC could use some action as well: (202) 863-1500
If you want to see if the Michigan Democratic Party will nominate or support a Democratic challenger to Dave Camp, contact them at the following:
Phone: (517) 371-5410
Fax: (517) 371-2056
Email: midemparty@michigandems.com