Category Archives: Government

The Latest Escapade Of IRS Dominatrix Lois Lerner

Ethics, Fascism, Government, Morality, Taxation, The State

This news item is not easy to come by on Google. It concerns IRS dominatrix “Lois Lerner’s statements in late 2010.” These demonstrate that the Internal Revenue Service was being leaned on to “do something to stop the flow of money from corporations to political campaigns.”

Lerner revealed this while speaking “to a small group at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy.” (What amazes me is the network of contacts and speaking engagements these bureaucrats carve out for themselves while on the job. Corruption and conflict of interest is standard operating procedure with government. It doesn’t rate a mention in the article. Journalists and the public think it perfectly proper for public officials to grease the skids for future opportunities while in office.)

Via John Sexton @ Breitbart.com:

Newly uncovered video shows Lois Lerner discussing the political pressure that swirled around the IRS in 2010. Lerner says “everyone” was “screaming at” the IRS to stop the flood of money pouring into the 2010 elections through 501(c)(4) groups as a result of Citizens United.

Lerner spoke to a small group at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy on October 19, 2010, just two weeks before the wave election that brought the Tea Party and Republicans significant gains in Congress. During her appearance Lerner was asked about the flow of money from corporations to 501(c)(4) groups. “Everyone is up in arms because they don’t like it” Lerner replied, adding “Federal Election Commission can’t do anything about it; they want the IRS to fix the problem.”

Lerner goes on to outline the fact that 501(c)(4) organizations have the right to do “an ad that says vote for Joe Blow” so long as their primary activity is social welfare. However Lerner again emphasizes the political pressure the IRS was under at the time saying, “So everybody is screaming at us right now ‘Fix it now before the election. Can’t you see how much these people are spending?'” Lerner concludes by saying she won’t know if organizations have gone too far in campaigning until she looks at their “990s next year.”

Contrary to Lerner’s statement, everyone did not object to the Citizens United decision. The pushback was clearly partisan with the most high profile opponent being President Obama himself. Days after the decision, Obama used his weekly radio address to attack the ruling saying it would “open the floodgates” to special interest advertising in elections.

MORE.

ObamaCare for Thee, But Not for Me. Yippee.

Barack Obama, Democracy, Government, Healthcare

Despotism is upon us when “government officials write laws that apply only to us and not to them.”

Via Reuters: “When Congress passed the health reform law known as Obamacare in 2010, an amendment required that lawmakers and their staff members purchase health insurance through the online exchanges that the law created. They would lose generous coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.”

Now:

Congress has won some partial relief for lawmakers and their staffs from the “Obamacare” health reforms that it passed and subjected itself to three years ago.
In a ruling issued on Wednesday, U.S. lawmakers and their staffs will continue to receive a federal contribution toward the health insurance that they must purchase through soon-to-open exchanges created by President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.
The decision by the Office of Personnel Management, with Obama’s blessing, will prevent the largely unintended loss of healthcare benefits for 535 members of the Senate and House of Representatives and thousands of Capitol Hill staff.

Obama Care for thee, but not for me. Yippee.

This is the law of rule, not the rule of law.

Oh For The Privileges Of A ‘Registered Provisional Immigrant’ (RPI)

Classical Liberalism, Government, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Nationhood, Taxation, The State, Welfare

“Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is now on Economic Policy Journal, which, given its traffic rank and the intellectual vitality of its authors and editor, is fast usurping all others as the premier libertarian site on the worldwide web.

To the analysis offered by the column (always circumscribed by a word count), I’d like to add the following points for your consideration:

What is there to like about the fact that the new, privileged wards of the state will enjoy protections unavailable to nationals or to immigrants who’re in the US on merit?

Ask egalitarians of the libertarian and liberal left.

There is not much you and I can do—much less our corrupt representatives in the House—if General Keith Alexander’s National Security Agency and apparatus sics his spies on us. The same goes for our rights under the successors of Lois Lerner and Sarah Hall Ingram, at the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt division.

But woe betide the NSA or IRS agent who does unto a “registered provisional immigrant” (RPI) what he did to a tea-party patriot. The “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” promises to name and shame this wicked government worker. Caught in the improper use of a registered provisional immigrant’s personal data, the agent will incur a criminal penalty.

The Bill (the lengthy summary of which is linked here) specifies that snooping on beneficiaries of S.744 will be permitted only for the purpose of determining benefits. These, to quote the EPJ column, are “carved out of the hides of taxpaying Americans, immigrants included.”

To prevent any “errant” law-enforcement officer from daring to quiz a suspicious registered provisional Democrat about his status, a “document of special protection while waiting” will be issued to The Protected One.

Oh for the privileges of a ‘Registered Provisional Immigrant’ (RPI).

I suppose that we-are-the-world libertarians can rejoice in the fact that the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” makes “illegal alien” a thing of the past—not due to the promised defense of this country’s borders, but because of a near abolition of the legal versus illegal distinction.

As this column has written, “Would that the American Welfare State did not exist. But since it does and is, unfortunately, likely to persist for some time to come, it must stop at the Rio Grande.”

The same source has also done the work your US representatives won’t do—can’t we export them?—and that is: Read and honestly distill the Immigration Bill.

Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream

Business, Classical Liberalism, Democrats, Government, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, The State

“Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“The ‘Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S.744)’ is statist through-and-through.

This is one thing one can state unequivocally about the Gang of Eight’s immigration Bill. The same goes for those who support it. The ‘libertarian’ Independent Institute, for one, whose scholars claim that the ‘Positive Aspects of Immigration Bill Outweigh Its Flaws.’

This is nonsense on stilts—true only if an expansion in the size and power of the federal government is a net positive.

If you’ve enjoyed the ‘work’ of Department of Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, you’ll love her successor (rumored to be the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk Ray Kelly). The Marco Rubio immigration Bill concentrates even more power in the office Kelly may inherit. Such power includes the ability to adjust the status of a ‘registered provisional immigrant’ (RPI) to that of ‘an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence’ on satisfying a few ridiculous conditions, one of which is the RPI’s ‘continuous physical presence.’ In other words, for being in the country illegally, the RPI may get his illegal status reversed at the pleasure of The Secretary.

Is this not Kafkaesque? It is for any American who imagines that government ought to, at the very least, stand sentinel against unsolicited and unjustified trespass.

Almost all powers specified in the Bill are the prerogative of the Secretary of DOHS, although DOJ will get a chance to bolster its banana-republic credentials. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice gets bigger and badder under the Gang of Eight’s plot to reel-in more ‘undocumented Democrats.’

For instance, were an employer to hire, fire or verify an RPI’s employment eligibility in a manner that might be construed as a discriminating ‘immigration-related employment practice,’ the proprietor is in hot water. In defending their rights of private property, ‘foreign labor contractors’ will be, moreover, going up against tax-paid litigators, to whom the amnestied will have access.

You’d think that an expansion of the frivolous and counter-intuitive grounds upon which private-property owners may be prosecuted goes against libertarian sensibilities.

Another burden business will bear is …”

Read the complete column. “Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is now on WND.

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