The IRS Scandal and Apple's Taxes Augur Liberalism's Doom

What do the IRS scandal and the Senate's hearing on Apple's tax avoidance have in common? Both events lay bare modern American liberalism's Achilles' heel.

Just like Prohibition, Liberalism depends
on Americans' willingness to voluntarily
comply with laws requiring Americans
to do something they don't want to do:
give up drinking and paying taxes.

Liberalism depends upon a citizenry's voluntary payment of their hard-earned dollars into a massive wealth redistribution system. Voluntary tax compliance depends on one condition precedent: citizens must believe the tax system is fair. Once a citizenry loses faith that a tax system is fair, and that it is fairly and impartially administered, compliance falls precipitously. When voluntary compliance fails, the system itself fails.  And when the tax system fails, government runs out of cash.

Liberalism depends on redistributing scads and scads of cash. Some of liberalism's greatest hits are never going to be undone, regardless of conservative fantasies otherwise. Americans will never elect a politician promising to end Social Security, or gut Medicare, or eviscerate Medicaid. Never. 

And, to be fair to liberalism, the ideas behind the programs noted are not the problem. It's the implementation of the ideas that's bankrupting America. Who can dispute that America should take care of its destitute elderly? Anyone want to argue that uninsured poor folks shouldn't have access to preventive medical services? How about refusing to fund food for poor schoolchildren? It's not liberalism's idea(l)s, it's liberalism's fascistic implementation of those idea(l)s.

Liberals made fun of Ronald Reagan for his "Trickle Down Economics," as derisively named by media.  But Liberals have an economic outlook more scorn-worthy than anything Reagan ever dreamed up.  'Puter likes to call liberalism's favored system "Cram Down Economics."  While Reagan's economic tenets focused on growing wealth through voluntary transactions for the benefit of all, liberals insist on limiting wealth through involuntary transfers for the benefit of politically favored groups.

Liberalism's Cram Down Economics requires the government to forcibly take money from the wealthy, the rich and the not-so-rich so liberal politicians can "spread the wealth around" to the liberal cause du jour, not infrequently one and the same as core Democrat voting constituencies.

Readers need not agree with 'Puter's sharp-tongued criticism of modern American liberalism's approach to economics. However, it is beyond dispute that without a constant, unending flow of Other People's Money, liberalism fails.

And there's liberalism's Achilles' heel. Money.

Conservatives have known forever that to kill liberalism, it is necessary to starve it of funds. But conservatives have been unable to put forth an argument for reducing revenues compelling enough to convince the necessary supermajority of voters. We have been frustrated by frequently having the better policy argument when judged on logic and fact, only to lose out to liberalism's emotional "you're starving Granny" or "it's for the children" cris de coeur.

But things changed this week. Liberalism's foremost proponents in the Executive and Legislative branches made critical misjudgments, misjudgments that have put liberalism's monetary lifeblood at issue.

The Internal Revenue Service, seemingly motivated by a noxious cocktail of equal parts politics and malice, used the full force of the government's authority to destroy its enemy, conservative Tea Party organizations. Not only did the IRS use government force for political ends, it compounded its error by lying about it.

Americans don't agree on much, but they do agree that using the IRS to enforce your political will against groups the party in power perceives to be enemies is a Very Bad Thing. Americans don't trust entities that do Very Bad Things. Think Wall Street in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 Meltdown.  Once an entity loses trust, it's nearly impossible to get it back.  In the private sector, this frequently means declining revenues and eventual bankruptcy.  In the public sector, it means sneering disrespect and increased noncompliance with agency diktat.

The IRS has one job and one job only: collect taxes from Americans.  Because the IRS did a Very Bad Thing, Americans now regard it as untrustworthy, even biased. Prior to the IRS' self-immolation, there was talk on Capitol Hill about bipartisan agreement to simplify and restructure the tax code. Now there's bipartisan talk about how diseased the IRS is, and how corrupt the entire entity has become.  Not exactly a trust building assessment of the agency charged with forcibly taking taxpayers' money.

Coupled with the IRS' Executive Branch debacle, liberals in the Legislative Branch unwittingly decided to punch their cash cow while it was down, inexplicably holding hearings on Apple's tax compliance.

All Senate liberals managed to do is to call attention to the inherent opacity and unfairness of America's doddering, Rube Goldberg tax code.  Guess what, America? Lobbyists for mega-corporations paid Gucci wearing lobbyists to buy favorable tax treatment from our already hated Representatives and Senators.  Did 'Puter mention the Apple hearing's unfortunate highlighting of Congress votes for sale culture?

'Puter read about the hearings, and he's betting most Americans came to similar conclusions.

It appears former Congressman Barney
Frank (D-MA) taught this monkey how
to eat a banana, Provincetown style.

First, good for Apple for sticking it to the government.  Those bastards at the IRS are crooked, and Congress spends money like a drunken monkey in a banana shop. At least the monkey eventually quits spending money when he pukes up the thirty seventh banana he's crammed down his greedy maw. Congress doesn't have the monkey's decency or gag reflex, apparently.

Second, the fact that Apple paid an effective 1.9% tax rate on $37 billion in overseas profits in 2012 isn't Apple's fault, it's Congress' fault. Congress writes the tax code, Apple simply pays an army of accountants and lawyers to figure out how to pay the lowest rate it possibly can. In a just world, Congress would've held hearings where corporate executives and run of the mill taxpayers could grill them on the inherent stupidity of the tax code.

Third, how come our Senators appear to be blithering idiots, completely detached from reality and unacquainted with causal analysis? If 'Puter has to hear Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) explain how the tax code has absolutely no effect on taxpayer behavior, yet extol the efficacy of using the ObamaCare individual mandate's tax penalty as an effective means of changing taxpayer behavior, he's going shove the aforementioned drunken monkey's banana up the good gentleman from Michigan's no-no hole. Senator Levin, Apple is responding rationally to your incentives, lowering its losses (taxes are a loss) to benefit its shareholders.  If the senator can't understand that, it's time for him to retire.

Fourth, Americans are more aligned with Learned Hand than with Barack Obama. As Learned Hand wrote in Helvering v. Gregory, 69 F.2d 809, 810-11 (2d Cir. 1934), "[a]ny one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes." Got that, liberals? All taxpayers have to do is pay the taxes they owe and not one penny more. There's absolutely no duty, legal, moral or otherwise, to enrich others at your expense. In fact, doing so is a sign you may be in dire need of a court appointed guardian.

Albeit unintentionally, in the past week Congress and the IRS have done more to destroy liberalism than conservatives have managed to do since Ronald Reagan left office. Liberals and liberal government forced Americans to confront the ugly truth. Liberalism survives by using force to steal money to enrich liberals and their political catamites.

The IRS has shown itself deeply corrupt in service of Obama's liberal agenda. Liberals in Congress have shown themselves deeply corrupt in service of moneyed interests, aligned against the very constituents they have sworn to represent.

Americans won't tolerate government corruption. Americans will soon insist heads roll at the IRS, and not just the usual fall guys. Americans will soon insist that the tax code make sense again, for both huge corporations flush with profit and individuals scraping to get by. If government chooses to do neither, Americans will simply stop paying taxes to the extent they can get away with it.

When Americans insist on transparency and fairness in our revenue cycle, government slush funds get scarce, whether because Congress cleans up the system or because Congress won't and Americans stop paying. Without an endless flow of accountability-free dollars, liberalism withers.

And that, dear readers, is the importance of this week's events.

Czar's Mail Bag Now Emptier

It’s action-packed half-a-load of kung fu adventure today as we dig down deep in the mailbag, brush aside the shrunken heads that teenager in Olympia keeps sending us (people curry favor in different ways, one presumes) and respond to a couple of good ones.

Dearest Czar,

Is it possible for ordinary folks to write you?

—An imaginary person conceived as a contrivance for this topic

Yes, imaginary person, each of us welcomes submissions (but not arm bars) on pretty much any topic. Today’s real writers are good people such as yourself who send us thoughts on all sorts of things. Yes, thousands of people will read you, but don’t worry: we clean up the most egregious errors (if any) and protect your privacy. So go ahead! Drop each of us a line to say hello.

A less imaginary person, MC, writes in to ‘Puter and the Czar, but only one of us will bother replying because only one of us knows how to work electronic mailz:

Mr. 'Puter and The Czar (almost sounds like a 70s band),

A fascinating read, at least to me.

Up through page 17 is pretty much boilerplate, establishing that the information was classified TS/SCI, Kim knew it, and knew it was illegal to release it to uncleared people like James Rosen of Fox News.

The e-mail exchanges are pretty interesting. First, Rosen and Kim had amazingly sucky "tradecraft". Putting your code (one asterisk for "proceed as planned", two for "don't") in an e-mail? Duh, do that in person. Besides, bury it in innocuous text - an e-mail limited to just an asterisk or two is a big-ass "dig here" sign for an outsider. Item (k) on page 22 has Rosen's "Alex" alias in an e-mail from Rosen's *work* account with his work signature block appended. WTFO?! How effing sloppy can you get?

The warrant calls for (a) all emails between Rosen's account and Kim's known Yahoo/Gmail accounts, but also for (b) two days' worth of all e-mails from Rosen's account to anyone else. I can't see a purpose for the latter request other than to fish for other leakers (which seems to be an inappropriate use of this warrant).

If nothing else, this will keep people from conversing with Rosen because Rosen is careless.

Perhaps Puter can comment on whether the warrant was truly necessary to further the case, or whether it was a fishing expedition. I think a full case could have been made without the emails in Rosen's account to other individuals.

Rosen may have been careless, or he may not have sensed any real danger; the person who was careless, of course, was most probably Kim. Because The Media is a 14-year-old girl, they are eating this story up. Know how someone claims to have seen a seagull eating a bandaid on the beach, and the local 14-year-old girl becomes this outraged proselytizer at school, organizing fund raisers and beach clean-up events, and basically talking about nothing except saving the seagulls for two weeks? Rosen is the seagull.

The media is making a lot of hay out of this one, and even MSNBC reporters are talking the side of a FoxNews reporter. And why not: even the most lefty MSNBC meat puppet wants to be part of FoxNews’s ratings mafia. More people have probably heard about the DOJ’s overreach than they heard about Fast and Furious.

The real story here is that the DOJ is treating Rosen—in every real way—as a criminal. There is no presumption of innocence here, but they are treating him as a flight-risk murder suspect or as the kingpin of some masterful criminal enterprise. Think how many people were involved in this nonsense in which a reporter is a Wanted Man for basically following a good story. That’s the real heartbreaker: that a person performing well within his Constitutional rights is treated as a full-on Top Ten Wanted criminal.

ID writes back on the subject of ethics, for which we are grateful:

Your immenseness:

I have been musing on something of late, since the submission of my last post. This island is made for musing. We can call it Shangri-La.

I was not born here, but in a major midwestern city, the product of an education that culminated with the award of a degree from a Catholic university, a commuter college really, in that city. My instructors were in some cases Jesuits. One of the blessings - or curses - of a parochial education (if you take it to heart), including at university level, is that your instructors will not only teach you the mechanics of your chosen profession - but the morality of it as well. Trust me, in the line of work I retired from I had need of this education - especially toward the end.

I drew some flak in the past over statements I've made, voicing concern about the progressive creep toward moral relativism I've seen displayed in Federal law enforcement over my 23-year career. "Feds" are drawn from society. If moral relativism is taught in society in general, it will find its way into small and rather select bodies such as the military and Federal law enforcement as well. Because of this, it is no wonder even senior IRS personnel are behaving as they are, since they are ultimately come from society in general. Somehow, they have come to believe their first loyalty is to the temporary occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, instead of the Constitution of the United States, which they are sworn to protect. I'm not sure if the quote is exact (perhaps one of your time-traveling companions can correct me, if I err) but didn't some French monarch say something like, « L'Etat, c'est moi! » and another fellow say, „Deutschland ist Hitler, und Hitler ist Deutschland!“, thus equating Germany with Hitler. This is beginning to sound like our nation's leadership talking about itself - with its minions in government echoing the sentiment. It is becoming increasingly difficult for those in government to differentiate between the country and its leader; or perhaps, between the Constitution and the President. They are not one and the same, and the Nuremberg defense of "I was only doing what my boss told me to do" won't hold water any more, and, under these circumstances, never did anyway.

Yours in trepidation,

Island Dweller

Yeesh, one has a lot of thoughts in support of your observations. Here are two:

1. Your equation of education minus moral instruction equalling ethics-prone drones is spot on. And your historical support is right on the money: government employees are better at following party orders than believing in the Constitution. You could not have made a better argument.
2. Have you ever noticed that the President seems to be intentionally unaware of our divisions of government? To him, the Federal government is the only legitimate government there is—which is odd coming from a former State Senator. Not surprisingly, as Dr. J. would say, with Sauron’s gaze elsewhere, a lot can happen: the states have never become more solid and Republican during this presidency. This emphasis on federalism has forced the federal government to act as a cadre of Democratic Party lapdogs, yes, but has also allowed for a resurgence of government at the state levels to the chief benefit of Republicans.

Thanks, gentlemen, for encouraging us to think some more today.

Change you can believe in!

Dr. J. saw this over at IMAO. They poached it from the original source, Hope n' Change Cartoons.*

Don't have too many Harvey Wallbangers at the Leaping Peacock...

By the way, Dr. J. learned how to do transplant-grade nephrectomies back in medical school...black market kidneys, he'll make a killing!

* Reggie Love could not be reached for comment.

Speech Pattern

The other day, at a commencement speech, michelle Obama stated:

And then there’s this guy Barack Obama. … I could take up a whole afternoon talking about his failures, but he lost his first race for Congress, and now he gets to call himself my husband.

The Czar then noted she added:

All jokes aside, the point is that that resilience and grit, that ability to pick yourself up when you fall, those are some of the most important skills you’ll need as you make your way through college and through life.

Does the Czar depict a pattern here? A reassurance in one of her speeches that her husband is just a regular guy...but not quite, because he is so much better than people think. He’s really not a goofball.

Like many first ladies, Michelle Obama has been better than her husband at the respective role. But her speeches are starting to follow a weird pattern. Here’s why.

Longtime consigliere BG suggested the Czar research this, and indeed we did. Consider her speech at the DNC last year:

You see, even though back then Barack was a Senator and a presidential candidate...to me, he was still the guy who'd picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger side door...he was the guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he'd found in a dumpster, and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small....I love that he's never forgotten how he started. I love that we can trust Barack to do what he says he's going to do, even when it's hard – especially when it's hard. I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as "us" and "them" – he doesn't care whether you're a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above...he knows that we all love our country...and he's always ready to listen to good ideas...he's always looking for the very best in everyone he meets.

She followed almost this exact pattern at the 2008 DNC:

And you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he'd grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves. And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them.

In other speeches, she has explained that although he still like to have “steak and potatoes” with her at dinner, her “husband is handsome and charming and incredibly smart–yes, indeed–that is not why I married him,” and “[w]hat truly made me fall in love with Barack Obama was something that you all see every day–it is his character. It’s his decency and his honesty, the compassion and conviction that we have seen for four years in this man.”

Same theme: “Barack is a human being with flaws. And I can rattle down all the flaws and tease him about them every day, but those flaws are not fundamental. They don’t hit upon things that are intolerable to me. In terms of his core values, he has never disappointed me. He is a very consistent person—which is why I knew unequivocally that he would be a phenomenal president. He is steady.”

Okay, you get the point, this essay is getting long, and the Czar had a lot of Google hits with quotes of hers.

This seems to flow from the narrative the Democrats wanted to paint that Barack Obama—Barry, really—is just an ordinary guy from humble beginnings called upon to do great things, and not a spoiled weed-smoker who grew up in considerably comfortable circumstances in Hawaii, no less, and has been catered to his whole life.

Instead, this is more of a “My husband is such a pain in the ass, but what a great guy he is deep down” message. It’s one thing for Mrs. Obama to say her husband is a regular guy; it’s another thing to mock him, only to follow that teasing with reassurances that he is, indeed, truly superhuman. It is a very strange message, and it makes sense if you look at it another way: she is an apologist. Yes, yes, he can be a challenge, but really he isn’t all that bad. Just get to know him.

Keep watching. Now, the Czar neither promotes nor tolerates the idea that the Obamas have trouble in their marriage. Compared to other politicians, the two are quite impressive in their ability to raise two daughters. This isn’t a request to look for cracks in the foundation: just a suggestion to note how she follows a tease-then-praise pattern someone is scripting for her. And ask yourself if it doesn’t sound like an apology for someone who disappointed you.

Mailbag - Dying to Reply

Ewoks, it's what's for dinner...

Operative BAMF writes:

Dr J. 

While I agree that it is right to wish for the conversion and redemption of Dr. Gosnell I also feel that the death penalty is the best way to accomplish that. I offer a quote, "Nothing focuses the mind like knowing that you will be hanged in a fort-night." Right now what Gosnell needs is that focus, and considering the automatic appeals process, as well as further appeals, he will have a number of years to get that focus. Also important is his eventual just execution will demonstrate the terrible price to be paid by any who would engage in such crimes. Fr. John A. Hardon. S.J. offers an excellent defense here. 

Best regards, 

Operative BAMF, 501st Legion

Dear BAMF,

Dr. J. apologizes for the delay. He was dealing with your rebel friends on a Jedi Academy field trip to the forest moon of Endor. Lil Resident took care of a bunch of ort hating hippies with extreme prejudice as is her wont. (More on the ort hating hippies later).

Dr. J. reviewed your link and does not disagree. The key word for Dr. J. is nominal opposition. You won't be seeing him at any 'Free Mumia' rallies, nor holding vigil at any executions in his jurisdiction. That being said, he doesn't believe he could flip the switch himself.

He agrees with the thrust of both your and the Catholic Church's stance.

St. Thomas Aquinas made the classic defense of capital punishment. He reasoned that "if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good" ( Summa Theologica II, II, 64, 2). Certainly the crime had to be very serious, and the welfare of society was at stake. But there was no question about the moral validity of capital punishment.

There are folk whose crimes are so heinous that the world is a safer place without them. Dr. J. doesn't care if they're put to death or exiled to Ganymede to mine cobalt. The biggest problem with the death penalty as it currently exists in the US, is the appeal process is so protracted and sometimes politicized (e.g. Mumia) that it is a joke. While we all want a fair trial, it adds futility to the death penalty in some cases, which, in addition to Dr. J.'s own inability to pull the switch makes him wonder if we should put the worst of the worst away somewhere where they can't escape and have to live out their days in hard labor without hope of parole.

Quinn the Idiot

For all the sanctimony that Democrats fly on their recently multi-colored flag, they sure are into theatrics just as much as Republicans. Maybe more so, particularly in matters of good taste. In Illinois, beleagured—and that puts it mildly—governor Pat Quinn decided it was a good idea to have a handful of the Newtown victims’ parents on a stage and make them weepily recall how their lives have been shattered. Pure politics.

Quinn, as you know, is the least popular governor in America according to sequential polling. His image is so bad that the sole commencement address he is giving this year is at a far suburban Chicago community college. You read that right: one of the 50 governors of these United States—the one with the third largest city in the US—and the only job he can get is chatting before a bunch of people who just want their diplomas so they can maybe get one of the few jobs left in this state. He should expect very light applause.

And why indeed not? His entire political limelight has been a comedy of errors. He became governor only by being a little known and little respected lieutenant governor in quasi-power the moment that Governor Rod Blagojevich was removed from office. Flush with the success of being the next man standing, he promptly went after a series of bad political causes with the dogged determination of a village idiot trying to sit on a broken wall.

His most prominent—and most typical—cause is Illinois gun control. Quinn, make no mistake about it, hates those gun things, whatever they are. And he will do his utmost to swear and protect most of the Constitution to see they are disappeared from polite Zima-sipping society. The business of running Illinois less into the toilet has to wait so that he can make speech after speech about the Evils of Gunnitude to audiences of dozens.

The reality is that Illinois wants shall-carry issue; the polls show it, legislative bodies support it, and the real test is that the Illinois State Police (who also endorse concealed carry) have had to hire an outside agency to deal with the crushing load of Firearm Owner Identification (FOID) card applications. Illinois used to deal with a few thousand a year; now they are dealing with 10,000 per month, as residents recognize the inevitable is finally happening.

Just over the weekend, support for Quinn’s preferred tempered but still highly restrictive gun bill collapsed, as downstate Democrats joined Republicans to kill the bill in committee. In order to punish them, Quinn flew out—almost certainly at tax payer expense—the families of young Newtown victims to pimp them out on a stage and make them guilt those bad Republicans into supporting his measure.

And that shows how inept a politician Quinn is: there are more Democrats who support concealed carry than Republicans. The reader should remember, because Quinn doesn’t, that Illinois is not divided into Republicans and Democrats: they are divided into Cook County politicians and every-other-county politicians. Republicans and Democrats tend to get along pretty well in Illinois, except the Cook County politicians who hate everybody—and given the immense size of Cook County, they have a 55% or so majority in state politics. That’s just enough to kill Illinois for good.

Quinn, although he grew up in DuPage County, quickly joined the Cook County cabal early in his political career. That alone is easy proof that he rarely makes a good decision.

And Quinn continues his Quixotic quest, because if he thinks anyone can “guilt” state politicians into voting a certain way by showing them mourning parents, he is truly a man-child in political science.

A Telling Tale

GorT has been busy time-traveling and gathering information...well, ok, really, I've been swamped with work and family stuff.  So, I thought I'd take a few minutes on a quiet, misty Sunday morning to reflect on the current issues facing the Obama Administration.

Several times in the past few weeks, I've been party to conversations, both online and in-person, where some of my liberal acquaintances have written off these "scandals" as meaningless and ascribe it to just the GOP (or sometimes the Tea Party) trying to make mountains of out mole hills.  But is that really the case?  Are these events a bunch of disconnected, minor issues that we should all brush away with the flip of a hand and move along?  Let me outline a few things and we'll revisit that question later.

Consider for a moment that we, as the citizens of the nation for whom this administration works and by whom it is held accountable, has yet to explain the following:

1.  By whom and for what reason were the "talking points" regarding the attack at Benghazi were changed?  Keep in mind that the President is the top of the Executive branch, which includes the FBI, CIA, and State Department.  So why did someone under Obama, within his lanes of responsibility, alter what was presented to the public when they knew otherwise and why was that allowed to be made public as such?

Current answer by those close to the President: Eh, the CIA changed them, it wasn't us.

As the story unravels and the emails are being reviewed, you find things like the State Department's Victoria Nuland's concerns that the failure to act on the CIA intelligence would give the Republicans ammunition against Obama in the then upcoming 2012 election.

2.   We still don't have a clear understanding of why the Administration isn't more forthcoming with the information regarding the "Fast and Furious" case, why it had to go to court to enforce a subpoena, and why Holder continues to stonewall the oversight committee regarding this case.

Current answer by Obama's Executive branch: Eh, this is part of the give and take between the Executive and Legislative branch (who has oversight responsibility) and the Judicial branch shouldn't get involved.

3.  We don't know how pervasive is the IRS' political discrimination abuse.  Did officials outside of the IRS know - specifically those in the White House?  Many think that with Obama dodging the question of assigning a special investigator to look into the matter, that maybe there is more of a connection than what is known.

The President has at least stated his displeasure over the events.

4.  We don't know why the Justice Department seized a significant block of telephone records of AP reporters with what appears to be no adherence to standard, legal practices. 

Current answer (kind of) by the Obama Administration: Well, Holder is claiming he doesn't know why possibly due to his recusing himself from the case since he had the information.  Others say that it was to investigate a leak regarding a CIA sting operation.

Keep in mind that the Obama Administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers using the Espionage Act of 1917 than all the previous administrations combined.  The AP - and others in the press - are now getting concerned that this administration really is abusing its power.

So you read through these and you say, so what?  It sounds like a bunch of random scandals, cover-ups, mis-steps by an administration.  But wait, look at the answers and reactions by the administration.  They are shielding themselves behind the "I didn't know" - some of which is a paper-thin shield that's falling apart as we speak.  This seems to be a pattern of behavior and one, that I would argue, the country and the complicit press corps has enabled.  Through the course of his first campaign until recently, the press largely failed to ask any pressing questions that would have at least presented some degree of scrutiny to this administration.  Instead, the complicit nature of the press corps over the last 8 or so years, has, I would argue, empowered this administration into pushing the envelope in what it does and brushes aside.  One cannot argue that the press corps did not take the previous administration to task over a variety of issues but it's hard to say that they've done so here.

The road forward should be pretty clear:

1.  The IRS clearly has a corrupt culture and all of those employees who allowed this behavior to go unchecked - with even raising a hand and asking, "isn't this wrong" - should be let go.  Not transferred, like the political appointee who is now going to oversee the IRS involvement in Obamacare.  Let go.

2.  Eric Holder should be removed - while the President can repeatedly say that he has the utmost confidence in Holder, clearly many of us do not.  And to hold that position with that kind of power, even that of blocking Congress from doing it's job of oversight, is unacceptable.

3.  A special investigator should be named to look into what exactly happened regarding Beghazi.  The story is so muddled and shrouded, that it is discomforting and people need to know what happened.

So should we brush aside these issues?  I'd argue not...I'd argue that there is a systemic problem within the Obama Administration that, to date, has been largely "accepted" by the press and those on the left.  They should imagine for a moment what would happen if the political parties were switched for a moment, would their reaction be the same?  If not, why?

Two Ways Tea Party Can Use the IRS Scandal

If the Czar were a Tea Party—and trust us, he would show up with Irish whiskey and call it tea—he would be pretty eager to get up in the morning right about now. This IRS scandal is an untapped gold vein for two reasons:

1. Now that the IRS has been caught red-handed cheating on tax exemption status, they will have to approve anything and everything without delay. The number of Tea Party groups will increase by a big margin right in time for 2014, which means money will start flowing to better candidates right in time. Think about it: how many would-be Tea Party organizations had no power to raise funds in 2012 because their applications were held up?
2. Using a trick borrowed from the Left, the Tea Party should create a simplified narrative that the IRS was not simply delaying or obfuscating tax exemption status of conservative organizations in an effort to dissuade them from effective campaigning, but that “The IRS was totally screwing with Republican voters.” An over-simplification to be sure, but still understandable. And this can be powerful leverage: see? The IRS fears the Tea Party to the extent that it will break the law to oppose the Tea Party. So you know we’re making things happen, here. Don’t play for sympathy—go for outrage.

Frankly, this is just the sort of stuff the Tea Party organizations can capitalize on, unlike the Republicans who will find some way to forgive the Democrats on this just before the 2014 elections. The IRS scandal is, quite frankly, all the Tea Party should need to clean clocks in 2014.