Editor’s Note – The fish rots from the head down, but the buck never stops at the ‘Resolute Desk’!. “Jeffy” from the “Family Circle” cartoon ghost says it best: “Not Me!”
In what has now become all too familiar, bit by bit, information emerges on yet another scandal. Some say this one could be Nixonian, but that may not be true. What is true though, is the totality of all the scandals. Currently most call three the ‘triumvirate’ or ‘trinity’ scandals but they are only the latest. In total, the picture is criminal.
We must avoid losing sight of the older scandals as the latest three emerge and the Obama Administration covers, ducks, obfuscates. And let’s not forget how many “I don’t know”, “I don’t recall”, “there’s an investigation” and other lame excuses repeated so often one could bet against the over/under in Vegas likely as to how many we will hear each time.
Always remember where Benghazi-gate’s roots emanate, ‘Extortion 17’, the deaths of many SEAL Team VI members in a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan in 2011. Then there is still Fast and Furious, Solyndra, HHS secretary Sebelius pressuring private entities to help fund PPACA, or ObamaCare – illegally, circumventing Congress.
Anonymous Cincinnati IRS official: “Everything comes from the top.”
By Sean Higgins – Senior Editorial Writer – The Washington Examiner
A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents.
The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters:
As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy.
“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”
The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office.
This pretty plainly contradicts the story coming out of the IRS that rogue agents in Cincinnati were responsible:
News of (acting IRS commissioner Steve) Miller’s resignation followed revelations that the IRS has identified two “rogue” employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for the “overly aggressive” handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, a congressional source told CNN.
Miller said the staffers have already been disciplined, according to another source familiar with Miller’s discussions with congressional investigators. The second source said Miller emphasized that the problem with IRS handling of tax-exempt status for tea party groups was not limited to these two employees.
In related news, I also noted how the Post’s story on the Cincinnati office also appears to contradict what Miller told Congress this week about how many auditors the IRS has covering nonprofit groups. Miller said the figure was between 140-200, but the Post story puts the figure at 900. The Post doesn’t source the figure, but presumably that also came from people the reporters talked with in Cincinnati.