Peggy Noonan wants an investigation into the IRS and its behavior over the last few years. She has ample justification for one:
We do not know who ordered the targeting of conservative groups and individuals, or why, or exactly when it began. We don’t know who executed the orders or directives. We do not know the full scope or extent of the scandal. We don’t know, for instance, how many applicants for tax-exempt status were abused.
…state variety.
North Carolina is moving a bill along that would protect automobile franchisees in the state from competition.
Tesla says it is cutting out the middleman by allowing people to view different options in a showroom, but then ordering the car direct from the company online rather than buying from a salesman. …lobbying groups say franchise dealers invest more locally and provide customer service that Tesla cannot.
…
The North Carolina law…prevents customers in the state from making electronic purchases directly through manufacturers….
At the start of her testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS facility that ran the targeting of government-disfavored Americans and groups of Americans, made a brief statement, asserted her 5th Amendment right not to testify against herself, and then refused to testify further. Lerner said, in her statement,
On May 14th, the Treasury inspector general released a report finding that the Exempt Organizations field office in Cincinnati, Ohio used inappropriate criteria to identify for further review applications from organizations that planned to engage in political activity, which may mean that they did not qualify for tax exemption.
The proper lessons of the unfolding IRS scandal are twofold. First, any effort to have the IRS police advocacy activities of social-welfare organizations is bound to be clumsy and prone to degenerate into either selective or broad witch hunts. Second, the remedy is not to further limit political speech by nonprofit entities—which would certainly raise significant constitutional issues—but to encourage such speech by imposing fewer restrictions.
That combines with this:
Recall that the DC Circuit had struck down President Barack Obama’s “appointment” of three of his folks to the NLRB, ruling in blunt terms that these appointments were unconstitutional since they had been made while the Senate was in session.
Now the 3rd Appellate Circuit, centering its opinion on the “appointment” of Craig Becker in March 2010, has expanded on that for its area of jurisdiction (Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), ruling that rulings made by this unconstitutionally constituted board were without effect since the NLRB, lacking a quorum, had no capacity for issuing its rulings. The 3rd Circuit’s ruling says in part
Government, by its nature, is vulnerable to a broad reach of failure, and that becomes increasingly difficult to correct as government’s size grows and corruption, or even mere arrogance, increases. Ultimately, government becomes large enough that it deems itself no longer responsible to the people who created it, and it engages in activities for its own benefit instead of ours. Finally, these activities become centered simply on preserving and expanding its own power—which fosters corruption, which fosters further self-preservation and growth, which….
Here are some recent and current examples:
Joseph Muto was an employee working on a Fox News opinion program when he was caught stealing material from the show and using it for personal gain. What he and his lawyer said about the matter is instructive.
Muto:
I wouldn’t have done it had I known I’d end up in this courtroom. To answer your question of “was it worth it?” I wouldn’t have done it.
President Barack Obama wants to forgive another batch of debt, this time owed by America’s youth. This is another of those tidbits buried in his latest pseudo-budget proposal.
Obama wants to
increase the number of borrowers eligible for a program known casually as income-based repayment, which aims to help low-income workers stay current on federal student debt.
Borrowers in the program make monthly payments equivalent to 10% of their income after taxes and basic living expenses, regardless of how much they owe. After 20 years of on-time payments—10 years for those who work in public or nonprofit jobs—the balance is forgiven.
…of one group of Americans over another, courtesy of President Barack Obama, congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV), and their Obamacare.
Dr Ezekial Emanual, ex-health-care adviser to Obama and presently senior fellow at the Center for American Progress strongly recommended this grant in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
In touting Obamacare’s health “insurance” exchanges, he recommended government add overt pressure on our young to buy health “insurance,” in addition to the existing Individual Mandate requirement, because their participation is a necessary subsidy for others’ purchase.
The Heritage Foundation has released their study on a potential cost to existing US taxpayers of legalizing existing illegal aliens under the Gang of Eight’s immigration reform program. Andrew Stiles, writing for National Review Online, has provided a useful summary of that 100-page document.
Rather than commenting on the implications vis-à-vis immigration reform, though, I want to comment on the implications for us taxpayers with respect to the larger question of wealth redistribution in our country.
Stiles noted that