Tag Archives: government

An Outcome of Big Government

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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:

There are two valid takeaways from the IRS scandal [and the other scandals: AP; Benghazi; Sebelius’ HHS “fund-raising” for Federal government’s health exchanges, just exposed this year].  First, it confirms that big government, whose power Obama is bent on expanding, cannot be trusted to behave properly.  Second, it calls for further investigation to determine how high up the chain the wrongdoing extends and whether the administration acted promptly to stop the targeting once it learned of that activity.

The need for an investigation and the firing of miscreants and subsequent jailing of those miscreants whose behavior was criminal certainly is warranted.  However, the IRS’ unconscionable behavior, and the Obama administration’s behavior vis-à-vis the other…scandals…, aren’t unique to the Obama administration.  These are the inevitable outcomes of Big Government, even when that government acts with the best of intentions.

Our Federal government needs to be drastically shrunk in size and scope, returning it to the small, limited, and so controllable, entity that it was designed to be.

A first step in this, in the present context, would be to do away with the distinction between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations—the legal distinction is wholly artificial and without meaning, anyway.  All entities engaged in otherwise tax exempt activities must be able to engage in some political activity.  That’s at the core of the speech clauses of the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There’s nothing in there about “except for when individual Americans or groups of them peaceably assembled are doing certain government-identified things.”

Subsequently, reform the tax code altogether to a single low, flat tax and thereby eliminate the need for tax exempt status for any organization.

This is Amazing

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What a breathtaking failure to communicate.  Regarding the IRS failure to perform, The Wall Street Journal reported this tidbit over the weekend.

The Internal Revenue Service’s watchdog told top Treasury officials around June 2012 he was investigating allegations the tax agency had targeted conservative groups….

The disclosure to the Treasury general counsel and the deputy secretary was a cursory one, according to J Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.  He said he didn’t reveal conclusions of the probe, which was in its early stages….

Thus we now see confirmed what was hinted at during Friday’s House of Representatives hearing concerning the IRS’ misbehavior vis-à-vis its targeting of government-disfavored groups and individuals, and IRS officials’ subsequent dissembling about that targeting.  Senior officials in the Obama administration knew of these misdeeds—or at least the allegations of those misdeeds and the investigation into those allegations—for nearly a year, and for months prior to the campaign season Party Conventions.

Then,

Treasury…said Neal Wolin, the deputy secretary, didn’t notify anyone outside of Treasury….

Then,

White House officials say they learned about the targeting of conservative groups from the [IG] report, and not before.

And yet “White House officials” seem to be lying:

The White House’s chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday.

Somebody told Kathryn Ruemmler, that chief lawyer. Then Ruemmler told Obama’s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and others members of Obama’s senior cotery.  She told them further, according to Obama (through Jay Carney), that

this is not a matter she should convey to the president.  Her opinion that this is not the kind of thing that requires notification to the president.

This says amazing things about the judgment and competence of the men and women that President Barack Obama has brought into his Executive Branch: they didn’t think it necessary to inform anyone up the chain–that would be the President–that such politically, not to say legally, explosive doings were afoot.

I have no reason to believe that Ruemmler–or McDonough or that cotery–did, in fact, sit on that bomb.

Update: via The Wall Street Journal [emphasis added]:

The Internal Revenue Service briefed the Treasury Department extensively last month about a looming inspector general’s report that would find the agency had inappropriately targeted for extra scrutiny applications from conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, a new timeline of events shows.

The IRS consulted Treasury in late April about its plans to pre-emptively apologize for its actions….

Two people kept out of the loop, according to administration officials, were President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. Neither was consulted, administration officials said, because their staff wanted to ensure that it didn’t appear they had interfered in any way in the process.

Yeah.  I still have that beachfront property north of Santa Fe, too.

Of What Are They Afraid?

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British PM David Cameron, in another step in his push to give the British people a vote on their continued membership in the EU, has

given his Conservative Party’s backing to a draft bill that would commit the UK to holding an EU referendum by the end of 2017[.]

Of course many of his governing coalition partners oppose this bill—they not only want continued membership in the EU, they want the matter closed without the people’s further input.

Opposition cronies also oppose the thought of acknowledging the people’s view—and the primacy of that view—in the matter, fearing the referendum might actually come out in favor of leaving the EU.  One such crony, John Cridland of something called the Confederation of British Industry, insists

For those of us in the business world, it feels like a diversion from what we should be doing in Europe, which is restoring growth, through trade deals, and championing the reforms that we want to see….

Europe is more important than Great Britain?  What “reforms” does Cridland seriously think he’s going to get through the EU?  Why not focus on helping Great Britain first?

The EU, in fact, is doing nothing serious for Great Britain; it does, in the larger picture, endanger British fiscal soundness with the EU’s own continued demand for bailouts of spendthrifts (which only condones that irresponsibility).

Of what are the opponents of the British voice so afraid?  Or is it simply that the people shouldn’t be allowed waste government resources on making a choice that their Betters already have made for them?

Progress

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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

We hold that the “the Recess of the Senate,” in the Recess Appointments Clause refers to only intersession breaks.  As a consequence, we conclude that the National Labor Relations Board panel below lacked the requisite number of members [three] to exercise the Board’s authority.

The narrow outcome of the ruling is this:

…a disputed union election that occurred at a New Jersey nursing home.  The NLRB denied the nursing home’s motion that the board illegitimately forced the company to recognize unionized managers.  The Appeals Court ruled that the board did not have the authority to dismiss the motion because of the recess appointments.

The broader outcome of the ruling is to invalidate over 900 rulings issued by the NLRB while it had no quorum with which to do so, including more than 200 since the board’s current makeup was ruled unconstitutional by the DC Circuit, which has national jurisdiction in such matters.

This can have only salutary effects for our country.

The Morality of the Left, Redux

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Via Peter Baker of The New York Times, comes this…gem.  Baker quotes David Axelrod, long-time senior advisor to President Barack Advisor and heavy-hitting campaign supporter in 2012, as saying this:

[T]he reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you’re saying.

So, the plain, unvarnished truth isn’t practical, is that it?