IRS Scandal is 1000 days old

Cartoon credit: teachufr.org

A few days ago, Glenn Reynolds (Mr. Instapundit) published a column in USA Today about the IRS scandal and Tea Party groups:

Last week saw the passage of a grim milestone in government corruption: Pepperdine University Law Professor Paul Caron’s TaxProf blog marked the 1000th day of the scandal involving the IRS’s deliberate political targeting of conservative “Tea Party” groups. 

. . .

But what happened in the IRS scandal wasn’t a case of bureaucrats slow-walking ideas they think are dumb. It was, instead, a case of bureaucrats targeting people because of their political views.

Ohio Tea Party activist Justin Binik-Thomas noticed in 2012 that the IRS was asking Tea Party organizations if they knew him. The IRS denied that it was targeting people based on their political views, then admitted that it was doing so but blamed low-level employees in the Cincinnati office.

Then it turned out that, as the Treasury Inspector General found, there was much more going on. The next day, the acting IRS commissioner resigned.

There was much talk about accountability, even from President Obama, but, in the end, we got something that looked more like a whitewash. 

As Caron wrote:

"On May 22, 2013, the IRS director (of exempt organizations) asserted her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to testify before a House committee. She was placed on administrative leave. The following month, it was revealed that she received a $42,000 bonus. She retired in September.

"On Jan. 9, 2014, it was revealed that the Department of Justice attorney leading the investigation was a donor to the president's campaigns. A week later, the Justice Department revealed it would not bring any criminal charges. Attorneys for many of the targeted political groups complained that they had never been contacted in the investigation.

"On Feb. 2, 2014, the president stated in a televised interview before the Super Bowl that although there 'were some bone-headed decisions out of a local (IRS) office ... (there was) not even a smidgen of corruption.'

"On May 7, 2014, the House voted 231-187 to hold the former IRS director in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate in its investigation (six members of the president's party voted with the majority). The House also voted 250-168 to request the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate (26 members of the president's party voted with the majority)."

Of course, nothing happened. Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that the U.S. Attorney was using "prosecutorial discretion.” That discretion protected [former IRS director Lois] Lerner from the grand jury.

Read the rest here. 

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What's wrong with the GOP?

Art credit: Riehlpolitics.com

Some patriots may want to skip the links to Conservative Treehouse, because the principal blogger, Sundance, has come out in favor of Trump. Having disclosed that, here is the concluding section of a post from yesterday (here), summarizing why some of us are so angry at the GOP. You probably won't agree with every single point, but you will probably agree with most of the issues:  

• Did the GOP secure the border with control of the White House and Congress? NO.

• Did the GOP balance the budget with control of the White House and Congress? NO

• Did the GOP even pass a FY 2016 budget with control of the House and Senate? NO.

• Who gave us a $2.5 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill in December 2015? The GOP

• Who eliminated, not just raise but eliminated, the debt ceiling? The GOP

• Who gave us the TSA? The GOP

• Who gave us the Patriot Act? The GOP

• Who expanded Medicare to include prescription drug coverage? The GOP

• Who created the precursor of “Common Core” in “Race To the Top”? The GOP

• Who played the race card in Mississippi to re-elect Thad Cochran? The GOP

• Who paid Democrats to vote in the Mississippi primary? The GOP

• Who refused to support Ken Cuccinnelli in Virginia? The GOP

• Who supported Charlie Crist? The GOP

• Who supported Arlen Spector? The GOP

• Who supported Bob Bennett? The GOP

• Who worked against Jim DeMint? The GOP

• Who worked against Rand Paul? The GOP

• Who worked against Ted Cruz? The GOP

• Who worked against Mike Lee? The GOP

• Who worked against Ronald Reagan? The GOP

• Who is working against Donald Trump? The GOP

• Who said “I think we are going to crush [the Tea Party] everywhere.”? The GOP (McConnell)

[See yesterday's CTPP blog if you are not yet registered to vote.]

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Register to vote in Cuyahoga County

If you are not registered to vote in Cuyahoga County, you have until February 16 -- that’s next Tuesday -- to register to vote in the March 15 Ohio primary. The County’s Board of Elections web site here lists the dozens and dozens of locations for registering and has more information on eligibility requirements.

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Another GOP Debate tonight

Cartoon credit: cagle.com/tag/this-tall/

NOTE that some of the candidates caricatured here have suspended their campaigns.

The next GOP debate is tonight at 8pm from New Hampshire. Watch it on ABC News (channel 5 in greater Cleveland). Still too many candidates onstage. Still no objective moderators; from Conservative Treehouse:

Progressive favorites David Muir and Martha Raddatz will moderate the debate, and position the narrative to expose the Republican party to as much ridicule and marginalization as possible.

As of today, Real Clear Politics is showing the top five candidates:

Trump at 30.7

Rubio at 16.4

Cruz at 12.0

Kasich at 12.0

Bush at 9.1

Fiorina, Christie and Carson are in single digits.

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Special interests, SuperPACS, and the presidential candidates

photo credit: natcom.org

The OpenSecrets website lists contributors to candidates, and also tracks the SuperPACS:

Super PACs are a relatively new type of committee that arose following the July 2010 federal court decision in a case known as SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission.

Technically known as independent expenditure-only committees, super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates. Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs are prohibited from donating money directly to political candidates, and their spending must not be coordinated with that of the candidates they benefit. Super PACs are required to report their donors to the Federal Election Commission on a monthly or semiannual basis – the super PAC's choice – in off-years, and monthly in the year of an election.

As of February 03, 2016, 2,194 groups organized as super PACs have reported total receipts of $353,533,929 and total independent expenditures of $144,551,790 in the 2016 cycle.

The website further reports that

Super PACs allowed the [securities and investment] industry to gain an outsize share of the pie in 2015 as Wall Street gravitated to some candidates and utterly abandoned others. With billionaire investors giving right and left, total contributions from the industry to presidential super PACs rose to $81.2 million.

. . .

Investors made up the top donor industry to six of the current candidates when their campaign committees and super PACs are combined; the exceptions were retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

All four of those candidates nevertheless benefit from SuperPACS, including those receiving Wall Street money. Recently, the securities and investment industry donors are shifting to new favorites:

Despite huge contributions to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the first six months of 2015, securities and investment firms appear to have picked their favorite candidate on the Republican side: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

. . .

despite Rubio’s rise among securities and investment types, Iowa caucus winner Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) again showed evidence he has perhaps the strongest mix of funding sources in the race. Four of the top overall industries giving money were in the top five donors to Cruz super PACs and his campaign account: securities and investment, real estate (buoyed by huge contributions from the Texan Wilks brothers), oil and gas and retired individuals.

The leading five candidates in the GOP race, as of today via Real Clear Politics, are Bush, Carson, Cruz, Rubio, and Trump. (And as most patriots know, Rick Santorum,  Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee  just suspended their campaigns.)

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Cleveland Tea Party Patriots does not endorse Ted Cruz

Photo credit: democracychronicles.com

Cleveland Tea Party Patriots does not endorse Ted Cruz

Jenny-Beth Martin sent out a message from Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund with the following:

After four rounds of national voting, the supporters and activists of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund have spoken. And they have decided to endorse Ted Cruz for President.

. . . [fund-raising pitch] . . .

Our mission now is to harness all the might and fury of the Tea Party movement to build a massive grassroots operation for Senator Cruz.

Unlike the TPP Citizens Fund,  Cleveland Tea Party Patriots does not endorse candidates. When we tabulate report cards on candidates based on positions related to the three core values of Tea Party Patriots, we leave it to the voter to decide for him/herself who to support.

In this case, Cleveland Tea Party Patriots emphatically rejects the above mandate that dictates that all Tea Party Patriots support Ted Cruz. What about patriots who support other candidates, whether, e.g., Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, or Donald Trump?

In particular, Cleveland Tea Party Patriots is dismayed with the endorsement of Ted Cruz for several reasons, including Cruz’s decisions and actions within the Republican Establishment (GOPe). Not too long ago, when Glenn Beck withdrew his support from Sen. Rand Paul and transferred that support to Sen. Ted Cruz [via Conservative Treehouse]:

Beck claims he became disgusted with the Senator [Paul] when he made a deal with Mitch McConnell. 

. . .

The deal was to go along with Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell’s overall objectives, electoral objectives AND legislative objectives, as the GOP entered into the 2014 mid-term election cycle.

. . . [BUT]

Both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz agreed to stay out of the mid-term elections for incumbents at the request of Mitch McConnell.

Remember, this agreement is the set up to the Mississippi fiasco of 2014 with Thad Cochran and Chris McDaniel.  The agreement gave both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz leadership approvals for their 2016 presidential race.

. . .

Remember the 2014 Mississippi Primary Fraud?

Here’s is a video/audio [Mark Levin on the radio] you must ABSOLUTELY listen to, in order to understand what’s going on today – AND – how radio host Mark Levin has been covering for Senator Ted Cruz for more than just a couple of months.

. . .

Senator Cruz states the campaign conduct in the Mississippi runoff was “incredibly disappointing” etc. and even goes on to say an investigation is warranted.

Eventually, [Sundance at Conservative Treehouse] found out who paid for those racist attack ads [against McDaniel], and who paid for the phone calls, and who paid for the Democrats to come out and support Thad Cochran in the Mississippi primary runoff.

. . .

It was the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).

. . .

The NRSC, the actual Republican Party itself, was funding racist attack ads against its own party candidate, Chris McDaniel, in the runoff primary race.

Who was the Vice Chairman of the NRSC for Grassroots Outreach? TED CRUZ. Links galore to the videos of TV interviews, the FEC filing documents, and so on are here.

Treehouse predicted that Cruz would lose the Iowa caucus. As we all know, Cruz won. Treehouse’s prediction notwithstanding, the information on the blogsite is documented and linked. Check out the video and audio clips in particular.

For a previous CTPP blogpost on funding sources for Cruz’s campaign, go here.

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GOP campaign financing: Part 6

Photo credit: irishmirror.ie

GOP campaign financing: Part 6 ~ Donald J. Trump

The donors to Trump’s campaign are unlike those backing any other presidential candidate -- of either party. Trump is financing his own campaign. He’s accepting small contributions from individuals, selling hats and other merchandise online, but he is not accepting corporate gifts, he has insisted that no SuperPACS use his name, and he does not accept funding through SuperPACS. Smaller business contributions are listed here.

And nobody knows the racket between corporations and politicians better than Trump. He has used the system for years. Trump has talked about his past business practice of contributing to politicians in both parties to gain access. 

On the other hand, he is pandering like a politician when he supports ethanol subsidies to win the Iowa caucus.    

But there is one indicator that the hedge funds/SuperPACS/Wall Street/CoC donor class is concerned. According to the Wall Street Journal, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donahue, is worried about a Trump victory:

The head of the nation’s biggest business lobby inveighed against presidential candidates singling out immigrants, ethnic or religious groups, highlighting divisions among supporters of the Republican establishment and the party’s leading candidate Donald Trump.

“There are the voices, sometimes very loud voices, who talk about walling off America from talent and trade and who are attacking whole groups of people based not on their conduct but on their ethnicity or religion,” Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a speech on Thursday. “This is morally wrong and politically stupid.”

When asked if the comments were specifically about Mr. Trump, Mr. Donohue said they applied to any one of the candidates from the right who “stepped over the boundary” on issues such as immigration and trade.

“They lost track of who we are and what we stand for and how we fix this economy,” he said.

But the remarks closely echo similar comments from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and other Republicans who have pushed back against of Mr. Trump’s policy prescriptions on immigration and security.

In other words, the CoC is worried that they will not be able to influence Trump. Compare that with the latest exposé on Conservative Treehouse reporting on the SuperPAC money going into anti-Trump ads (and pro-Cruz ads) in Iowa.

It’s always the same: Follow the money. So far with Trump, it’s the ethanol subsidies.

For background on Chris Christie’s fund-raising, posted earlier on this blogsite, go here.

For background on Dr. Ben Carson’s fund-raising, posted earlier on this blogsite, go here.

For background on Jeb Bush’s fund-raising, posted earlier on this blogsite, go here.

For background on Marco Rubio’s fund-raising, posted earlier on this blogsite, go here.

For background on Ted Cruz’z fund-raising, posted earlier on this blogsite, go here.

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