Lois Lerner's emails.

[Minimalist]

Well then let's let Congressman Doggett ( of Texas no less!) put your little dog and pony show in proper context, Woodie.

[Cato]

There are a couple parts of this that really piss me off. I don't give a fuck about the scandal aspect and people are idiots if they think the IRS isn't used for political purposes so there shouldn't be any surprise.

1. Everyone likes to blame the IRS. Democrats and Republicans have both over the years held hearings to demonstrate their love affair with the voter, but seem to ignore they both have created the mess and are the ones imbued with the power to change things. They will continue with these types of shows until they simplify the tax code. Neither party, in spite of campaign promises, will never seriously take this up. They love the power that comes with tax code manipulation more than they care about citizens. These assholes need to compromise on a consumption tax. There are ways to make a consumption tax progressive, which I would support.

2. The one valid point Ryan had dealt with document retention requirements. I think he should have just stated the governing law for electronic communication retention requirements rather than just compare it to personal tax document retention requirements. I don't give a fuck how antiquated the IRS's computer systems are, they still must comply with regulation. The IRS certainly wouldn't accept a 'dog ate my email' excuse from a person or business. The fact they are using this excuse is ridiculous. I don't give a fuck about Lerner, the alleged targetting, or the silly wasteful side shows, but I do care that these fuckwits can't abide by the same rules I am forced to follow.

[Minimalist]

Ah, this explains why Woodie's video ended abruptly.

Apparently the commish told these self-righteous republicunts to go fuck themselves.

They'd hate to see that on the news.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/2014062...7d6a7.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defiant before skeptical Republicans, the head of the IRS refused to apologize Friday for lost emails that might shed light on the tax agency's targeting of tea party and other groups before the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Instead, Commissioner John Koskinen accused the chairman of a powerful House committee of misleading the public by making false statements based on incomplete information.

The contentious back-and-forth didn't end there. Later in the hearing, Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republicans' vice presidential candidate two years ago, told Koskinen bluntly that "nobody believes you."

"I have a long career. That's the first time anybody has said they do not believe me," said Koskinen, who came out of retirement in December to take over the IRS. Previously, he served in other positions under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

The hearing showed that emotions are running hotter than ever in the dispute over the IRS and political fundraising.

Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, asked Koskinen to testify a week after the IRS disclosed that it had lost an untold number of emails to and from Lois Lerner. Lerner headed the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status during a time when, the IRS has acknowledged, agents improperly scrutinized applications from tea party and other conservative groups.

Camp was clearly expecting Koskinen to be more contrite.

"What I didn't hear in that was an apology to this committee," Camp said after Koskinen's opening statement.

"I don't think an apology is owed," replied Koskinen.

Glad to see this guy refuse to kiss their nazi asses.

[Heywood]

There are a couple parts of this that really piss me off. I don't give a fuck about the scandal aspect and people are idiots if they think the IRS isn't used for political purposes so there shouldn't be any surprise.

You should give a fuck otherwise your complacency simply invites more corruption. The IRS should be taken to task and investigated. People should be jailed/fined for either obstructing justice or failure to comply with retention regulations. This applies to everyone. Chris Christie's bridge scandal, Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, Solyndra, etc. People should call out corruption when they see it otherwise they invite more of it. Our leaders and bureaucrats need to know that being corrupt involves the taking on of significant risk. They should want to avoid even the appearance of corruption.

[Minimalist]

People should be jailed/fined for either obstructing justice or failure to comply with retention regulations.

WHAT retention regulations are those?

Records-retention protocols released by the IRS indicate that before May of last year, employee inboxes were limited, external backup tapes kept only six months of data and were then recycled, and that, as a result, there was no centralized backup of email. Employees were individually responsible for preserving much of their own email correspondence.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/19/hard-d...fficial-lo


That last sentence is instructive, though. As a general rule, I kept email on my computer for 6 weeks unless it was something of particular importance to the union in which case I set up separate folders in the inbox to move them for safe keeping. I had some for years. But most of the shit they generated was valueless and had anyone attempted to retain it all in short order you would have been unable to find anything. 50-75 emails per day was not uncommon and they were generated by every management twit who thought the rank and file was just fucking dying to hear from them. To this day I still mass delete emails at the six week mark. Old habit. But if it is older than that the odds that I'll ever look at it again are slim to none.

[Ryantology]

But when the Bush White House mysteriously lost 22 million emails (which was, in part, to cover up an actual crime, by the way), Darrell Issa was the first to jump to their defense.

Republicans accused the Democrats of pursuing the investigation simply to dig up dirt on Rove and waste hundreds of thousands of dollars of money that the RNC could be using to shore up its candidates' campaigns.

"Are we simply going on a fishing expedition at $40,000 to $50,000 a month?" Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked National Archives and White House officials at the hearing. "Do any of you know of a single document, because this committee doesn't, that should've been in the archives but in fact was done at the RNC?"

Talking out of both sides of his stupid ass. And so are the rest of them.

[Tonus]

If the policy was to recycle backups after six months and the emails in question are dated earlier than that, then there's no scandal. Shouldn't they have reviewed the retention policy at the start? Or are they claiming that certain people still had their emails on their desktop PCs and decided to delete them when they realized they might be investigated? Because that's a whole separate charge. Simply saying that they destroyed emails in accordance with IRS policy makes this a non-story, IMO.

[Heywood]

If the policy was to recycle backups after six months and the emails in question are dated earlier than that, then there's no scandal. Shouldn't they have reviewed the retention policy at the start? Or are they claiming that certain people still had their emails on their desktop PCs and decided to delete them when they realized they might be investigated? Because that's a whole separate charge. Simply saying that they destroyed emails in accordance with IRS policy makes this a non-story, IMO.

There are federal record retention laws that supersede IRS policy that may have been violated. It also looks suspicious that 6 people being investigated all had the their hard drives crash and then subsequently destroyed. It also looks very bad that the IRS testified before congress making claims it knew were false.

[Cato]

You should give a fuck otherwise your complacency simply invites more corruption. The IRS should be taken to task and investigated. People should be jailed/fined for either obstructing justice or failure to comply with retention regulations. This applies to everyone. Chris Christie's bridge scandal, Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, Solyndra, etc. People should call out corruption when they see it otherwise they invite more of it. Our leaders and bureaucrats need to know that being corrupt involves the taking on of significant risk. They should want to avoid even the appearance of corruption.

You missed my point. It's a little naive to think that anything substantive will come from the current proceedings. This is all political grandstanding, nothing more. This doesn't mean nobody acted inappropriately, just that it's an unnecessary witch hunt with the hope that the malfeasance can be tied directly to the administration. The obvious assumption someone has to operate with is that individual IRS employees are incapable of doing wrong without being ordered to do so.

I care about corruption, just not its manifestation in the current political side show. The "problem" has already been addressed, it's now just politics. As I've already stated, the tax code needs a complete overhaul if you want to treat the disease rather than make a great show of caring about one of the disease's symptoms. We need to eliminate the potential for this type of corruption.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I must admit I've only read the first page, but it depicts exactly the problem that is killing our political process, to wit, an ugly hostility and intolerance, coming from both sides of the aisle. I didn't have the gumption to wade through the other four pages.