It’s Friday, May 17th, 2013…and here’s The Gouge!

First up on the last edition of the week, the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel details how Team Tick-Tock’s rotting just like a fish:

The IRS Scandal Started at the Top

The bureaucrats at the Internal Revenue Service did exactly what the president said was the right and honorable thing to do.

Was the White House involved in the IRS’s targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an “independent” agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. “He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?” asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a “wealthy individual” with a “less-than-reputable record.” Other donors were described as having been “on the wrong side of the law.”

This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. Vandersloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.

The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn’t account for what the president’s vilification has done to his business and reputation.

The Obama call for scrutiny wasn’t a mistake; it was the president’s strategy—one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as “less than reputable” to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn’t need a telephone; he had a megaphone.

The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, claiming that it “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests” (read conservative groups).

The president derided “tea baggers.” Vice President Joe Biden compared them to “terrorists.” In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. “Nobody knows who’s paying for these ads,” he warned. “We don’t know where this money is coming from,” he intoned.

In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: “All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation.”

Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having “failed to address” the “problem” of groups that were “improperly engaged” in campaigns. Because guess who controls that “independent” agency’s budget?

The IRS is easy to demonize, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It got its heading from a president, and his party, who did in fact send it orders—openly, for the world to see. In his Tuesday press grilling, no question agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney more than the one that got to the heart of the matter: Given the president’s “animosity” toward Citizens United, might he have “appreciated or wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those . . .” Mr. Carney cut off the reporter with “That’s a preposterous assertion.”

Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is “outraged” and “angry” that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, even lawbreaking. After all, he expects the IRS to “operate with absolute integrity.” Even when he does not.

And, to be brutally honest, never has!

Be it Benghazi…

…the mushrooming IRS scandal…

…or APgate…

…these clowns quite literally don’t know…

…let alone keep track of their innumerable lies.

Were we Darrell Issa, we’d have taken a cue from Office Space and used The Bobs’ approach with Eric Holder:

And then posed the same question to Der Obafuhrer and Billary.  Seriously; if they haven’t a clue what their people are doing, why on earth do we need them?!?

In a related item, courtesy of the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney exposes the truth behind yet another Liberal lie:

The IRS is deeply political — and very Democratic

Federal officials used the power of the state to intimidate and harass critics of President Obama and the federal government. When the higher levels of the Internal Revenue Service learned that one office was inappropriately targeting Tea Party groups, these officials nevertheless denied it — until they were forced to fess up.

If you needed another reason to distrust your government and oppose its expansion, the IRS just gave it to you.

Judging by available evidence and an inspector general’s report released this week, the story here is not a Nixonian White House using all of government’s tools to punish critics. The story is instead one of government power so great that, even in the hands of nonpolitical career civil servants, politically motivated abuse is inevitable. And the ultimate problem is that our tax code and campaign finance laws put the IRS in the business of policing political speech. Politics inevitably comes into play.

The basic facts are these:

The Cincinnati office of the IRS, which covers tax-exempt groups for the whole country, created inappropriate standards to determine which nonprofits it would target for added scrutiny. If your group set off one of Cincinnati’s red flags — say, by having the words “Tea Party” in your name — the IRS would pummel you with probing questions, including asking about your donors’ political intentions and your book club’s reading lists, and threaten you with taxes and penalties if the agency deemed you to be overly political.

After Tea Party groups complained, IRS officials in Washington repeatedly insisted that there was no political targeting. The IG report suggests these officials knew otherwise and thus were lying.

White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed the idea that singling out Tea Party groups was politically motivated. “The IRS is an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees,” Carney said at a news conference.

The Wall Street Journal set the record straight: “The IRS is many things, but ‘independent’ isn’t one of them. It is formally part of the Treasury Department and is headed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed by the President. The Commissioner is accountable to the President reporting through the Treasury Secretary.”

And while it’s true that the IRS is populated almost entirely by career civil servants, that doesn’t preclude it being stacked with political partisans.

To see how meaningless the career-vs.-political distinction can be at the IRS, consider the case of Mark Ernst. He was H&R Block’s CEO as recently as 2007, but when Obama took office in January 2009, Ernst joined the IRS as a deputy commissioner and helped craft new regulations governing tax preparers — H&R Block and its competitors. How did this not violate Obama’s revolving-door rules? “Mark Ernst is a civil servant at the IRS,” an IRS spokesman explained to me. “He is not a political appointee.”

But Ernst had spent decades in the private sector. He came in with the new administration. His stint at the IRS lasted less than two years. And he certainly was political: Federal Election Commission records show he contributed more than $49,000 to federal candidates and political action committees. His donations favor Democrats.

So, being a “career civil servant” doesn’t mean you’re making a career out of the job, or that you’re not political.

In the past three election cycles, the Center for Responsive Politics’ database shows about $474,000 in political donations by individuals listing “IRS” or “Internal Revenue Service” as their employer. This money heavily favors Democrats: $247,000 to $145,000, with the rest going to political action committees. (Oddly, half of those GOP donations come from only two IRS employees, one in Houston and one in Annandale, Va.)

IRS employees also gave $67,000 to the PAC of the National Treasury Employees Union, which in turn gave more than 96 percent of its contributions to Democrats. Add the PAC cash to the individual donations and IRS employees favor Democrats 2-to-1.

The Cincinnati office where the political targeting took place is much more partisan, judging by FEC filings. More than 75 percent of the campaign contributions from that office in the past three elections went to Democrats. In 2012, every donation traceable to employees at that office went to either President Obama or liberal Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

The IRS officials whose names appear in the IG report are also Democrats with partisan histories. William Wilkins, IRS general counsel and one of the agency’s two explicitly political appointees, is a former Democratic congressional aide, lobbyist (clients included the Swiss Bankers Association), and Democratic donor. Joseph H. Grant, who ran the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division that includes the Cincinnati office, is a former Democratic staffer on the House Ways & Means Committee.

Many dedicated and professional civil servants serve the IRS. But the recent revelations still aren’t surprising. If you give people the terrifying power to tax and the right to police political speech, some partisans will abuse that power.

Particularly when they’re Progressives.

And if all of this isn’t bad enough, as this next item from Bill Meisen confirms, it gets worse:

IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation. Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit. Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

As the House voted to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, House Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer.

…Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also reacted to the revelation in a brief statement late Thursday. “Stunning, just stunning,” McConnell, R-Ky. stated.

Think about.  Ingram oversees the specific, politically-driven, illegal targeting of a wide variety Conservative groups, and is promoted to oversee the IRS implementation of Obamascare.

Nothing to see here, folks…

…move along!

Since a picture’s worth a thousand words, we’ll let this photo from the great Wink Martindale be our last word on the matter:

On the Lighter Side…

Then there’s this video clip forwarded by Bill Meisen, which, after watching the endless litany of personal political statements masquerading as ineffectual questioning of Eric Holder by Republicans, makes us wish Darrell Issa would just turn the entire proceeding over to Trey Gowdy, the Honorable Gentleman from South Carolina:

Imagine Gowdy in Lindsay Grahamnesty’s Senate seat; NOW we’re talkin’!

Finally, we’ll call it a week with the Teddy Kennedy Memorial “Aruh…Oy seem to have terned roight instead of left!” segment, courtesy James Taranto:

Mary Jo Kopechne Could Not Be Reached for Comment

How serious is the IRS scandal? “The IRS softball team canceled its previously scheduled game against Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn’s (R., Texas) office on Friday,” reports the Washington Free Beacon:

“Team Cornyn softball team was scheduled to play the IRS team on Friday, ‘the Cheetahs,’ ” Cornyn wrote on his Facebook page. “Game has been cancelled by IRS, without rescheduling.” . . .

Cornyn gave a fiery floor speech on Tuesday, blasting the IRS for targeting conservative nonprofits for heightened scrutiny and comparing its actions to those of “corrupt tin pot dictators.” “When the IRS starts behaving like a rogue agent that considers itself above the law, we’ve entered truly dangerous territory,” said Cornyn.

We have to admit, “Cheetahs” is almost as funny a name as Ted Kennedy’s dog “Splash.”

Which reminds us…

Oh…never mind; he’d still be dead.

Magoo