Monthly Archives: June 2016

More Stonewalling

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The CFPB, which was created after the financial crisis and began operation in 2011, is the latest federal agency to reject requests using a “Glomar response,” named after the Glomar Explorer, a Cold War-era ship used by intelligence officials to retrieve sunken Soviet submarines.

A Glomar rejection of a FOIA request for information is a rejection based on the premise that the agency saying “No” cannot either confirm or deny that the requested records even are in its possession.  This is an intelligence-related claim; yet the the requests are consumer-related information, and the CFPB is reputed to be a consumer-oriented Federal government entity.

With consumer-related FOIA requests, there are no intelligence questions involved.  Of course, the bureaucrats of the CFPB know this.

Sam Gilford, a CFPB spokesman, had this on the matter:

Disclosing whether the bureau possesses records about a pending or potential investigation would effectively disclose whether it has in fact investigated the institution [which could hamper an investigation].

This is disingenuous.  If an “investigation” is pending, it’s under consideration for being initiated.  If an “investigation” is merely potential, it’s just a thought in a CFPB agent’s mind.  There is no investigation extant in either case, and so there can be no hampering of one.

The CFPB is simply stonewalling.

IRS Shenanigans

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The IRS, after three years of stonewalling and after a Federal judge’s explicit order to stand and deliver, has at last released the list of the organizations it claims to have targeted for blocking from tax exempt status.  “Claims” because the list has grown, from the 298 avowedly conservative organizations originally identified by the Treasury Department’s IG to a total of 426 that the IRS finally listed for the judge.

Edward Greim, a lawyer for NorCal Tea Party Patriots, a party to the suit demanding the IRS give up its list, had this about the difference in size between the list Treasury released three years ago and the list the IRS released:

Based on these changes, which to date remain unexplained, a very real possibility—if not probability—exists that the IRS modified its targeting in light of the investigations, packing its own internal lists of targeted groups to support its preferred narrative, including by adding ideologically diverse groups[.]

It would be interesting to see the dates of something representing the initial delay applied to each of these groups.

Stonewalling

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This blatantly insults our intelligence.  The Republication National Committee sued in Federal court to enforce a FOIA request for a years’ worth of correspondence involving then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aides, including her former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills; Jacob Sullivan, one of her advisers; and Patrick Kennedy, a senior State official at the time, a FOIA request against which State had already been stonewalling.  In response, State had a filing:

The State Department has told a federal court that processing a Republican National Committee demand for documents relating to Hillary Clinton and her aides would take as long as 75 years—and would stretch “generations.”

Generations to check out a year.  State expanded on those 75 years:

…it would take approximately 16-and-2/3 years to complete the review of the Mills documents, 33-and-1/3 years to finish the review of the Sullivan documents, and 25 years to wrap up the review of the Kennedy documents — or 75 years in total[.]

Because, State says, it’ll only process 500 pages, per month, and there are 450,000 pages of these documents.

The presiding judge should hold those State Department bureaucrats in contempt of court and send his bailiff to seize the records and the computers on which they sit, as well as any hard copy files, and bring them to his court where a court-appointed team of evaluators can go over them.

Fat chance, unfortunately.

Reassigned

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But not terminated.  She’ll complete her 20 years and get her pension, just as if she’s done nothing wrong.

Irene Martin, who has been with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services for 16 years, was the CIS field supervisor in San Bernardino who delayed for an hour and a half DHS agents (assigned to Homeland Security Investigations, a DHS sister agency of the CIS) attempting to interview and arrest Enrique Marquez, one of the terrorists involved and who was in her custody; from getting access to related records held by her office, and then requiring they make only hand-written copies; and who disdained even meeting with the agents for a half hour.

DHS’ IG report had this about her performance:

We have also concluded that the Field Office Director was not candid with OIG investigators during her interview.

And

We concluded that the USCIS Field Office Director at the San Bernardino office improperly delayed HSI agents from conducting a lawful and routine law enforcement action….

She made conflicting statements to the IG personnel interviewing her:

According to the FPS [Federal Protective Service] contract guards, the Field Office Director did not answer her phone, so an FPS guard searched the building, subsequently found her, and advised her that HSI agents were looking to obtain information regarding a Russian female and Hispanic male who may have been connected to the shootings the previous day.  (When interviewed by OIG agents, the Field Office Director stated that she was notified via phone that HSI agents had arrived at USCIS San Bernardino and wanted to detain and interview someone.  She said in her interview that she was not told for whom they were looking, or why they were looking for the individual.)

And

When interviewed by OIG, the Field Office Director [Irene Martin] denied telling the agents they were not allowed to arrest, detain, or interview anyone in the building.  However, her account is contradicted by that of the other HSI agents present.  Moreover, the Field Office Director herself reiterated to OIG agents during her interview her belief that it was against USCIS “procedure” for law enforcement to detain or interview individuals on USCIS property.  She also gave inconsistent answers about when she discovered that the HSI agents were investigating the shootings from the day prior.  She told OIG in her interview that she discovered the connection between [Mariya, the other terrorist in the San Bernardino attack, and Marquez’ wife] Chernykh and the shootings while reviewing Chernykh’s file.  She also stated that she was only told by the agents that they were investigating the shootings after she gave them the photograph.  In her written statement, however, the Field Office Director stated that the agent told her that they were investigating the shootings when she initially met with him in the conference room.  Either version is contradicted by the building security officer, who said he told the Field Office Director of the purpose behind the agents’ arrival when he first notified her.

The IG report goes on in this vein.

It is not clear what disciplinary action Martin could face….

Under this administration?  Yes, it is.

States Competing for Corporations

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Competition is at the heart of America’s economic success, but not every type of contest benefits society.  Consider the growing trend of businesses cajoling states and politicians to compete for who can dole out the most corporate welfare.  It’s especially frustrating because there are already plenty of ways to promote job growth without robbing taxpayers.

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States could start with eliminating tax carve outs and replacing them with lower-overall tax rates and lighter regulatory burdens.  Federal lawmakers could also do their part by lowering America’s highest-in-the-developed-world corporate tax rate.

And

Embracing these policies would protect taxpayers…multinational firms with multimillion-dollar profit margins.

You bet.  Lower-tax rate policies, among other things, would directly increase those entities’ profit margins by reducing the size of a cost center.  They also would let these entities lower their prices (if only slightly), which would increase their sales (if only slightly), which would then increase their profits if not their profit margins.

In the end, States compete better on the basis of who has the lower tax and regulatory rates over all rather than who gets to the better carve-outs and special treatments.  In fact, the carve-out/treatment path, among other things, leads to an enormously byzantine tax structure within which it’s increasingly difficult to measure which State’s carve-outs/treatments are better.