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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On May 12 2013 09:26 farvacola wrote:Feels like I keep sayin the same thing over and over again....... Show nested quote +A group of bankers have just dumped two more problems on the Federal Reserve's plate.
The Federal Advisory Council, made up of 12 bankers who meet quarterly to advise the central bank, warned that farmland prices are inflating "a bubble" and growth in student-loan debt has "parallels to the housing crisis," which was the primary cause of the Great Recession in the U.S.
Their alarm comes at a time when financial heavyweights on the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve's policy-making arm, are debating whether the benefits created by their monthly purchases of $85 billion in bonds outweigh the risk of financial instability.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has argued time and again that the program is essential to the economic recovery, but others are less convinced. Fed Governor Jeremy Stein and Kansas City Fed President Esther George have raised concerns the extended period of low interest rates is increasing the risk of asset bubbles.
"Agricultural land prices are veering further from what makes sense," noted the minutes of the FAC's Feb. 8 gathering, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg news service through Freedom of Information Act requests. "Members believe the run-up in agriculture land prices is a bubble resulting from persistently low interest rates."
As for student loans, recent growth has pushed debt levels to nearly $1 trillion, meaning it "now exceeds credit-card outstandings and has parallels to the housing crisis," the council said after its Feb. 3, 2012, meeting. The bankers told the FOMC that student lending exhibited characteristics similar to those seen in the housing crisis, including "significant growth of subsidized lending in pursuit of a social good" — in this case, higher education rather than expanded home ownership.
Just as the mortgage lending boom pushed home prices upward, student loan lending has put upward pressure on tuition. The bankers said both examples showed a "lack of underwriting discipline."
Bernanke has dismissed parallels between student lending and the subprime mortgage crisis. "I don't think it's a financial stability issue to the same extent that, say, mortgage debt was in the last crisis because most of it is held not by financial institutions but by the federal government," Bernanke told a Bloomberg reporter on Aug. 7.
After the Fed first lowered its target interest rate to near zero in December 2008, the central bank promised to keep it at that level until the unemployment rate — currently at 7.5%, drops to 6.5% or the annual inflation rate rises above 2%. The Fed has also launched three rounds of bond purchases, called quantitative easing, which have pushed its balance sheet to a record $3.3 trillion as of May 1.
The QE spending's impact on farmland prices is being documented by regional Fed banks, particularly across the Midwest's corn belt. The Chicago Fed said the value of irrigated cropland in its district rose 16% in 2012, while the Kansas City Fed reported a 30% jump in the same period.
"Investors who are seeking a positive return on their funds have shied away from bond markets," the council said, according to a Bloomberg story. Instead, they opted for real estate "as both a hedge against inflation and a means of achieving better than the negative real return associated with fixed-income securities."
Increases in land prices have continued even as commodity prices have weakened. Since hitting a record high in March 2011, the S&P GSCI agriculture index, a broad measure of price pressures on commodities, has fallen 25%.
The FAC said it supports the central bank's monetary policy at their February meeting, noting that the recoveries in the housing and auto sectors have been "especially encouraging."
Yet, there have been "collateral consequences" of the current policy; the low-interest environment has pushed "many to seek higher returns by accepting greater interest rate or credit risk," the FAC's minutes said. "As the period of low rates is extended, these pressures have increased." Bankers: College debt bubble mimics housing bubble
I think this is more evidence of lacking demand as opposed to interest rates that are too low. There's nowhere for investment money to go, and large capital entities are sitting on piles of cash. They can't move the money into bond markets because governments are looking to cut costs instead of fund new projects and invest in long term initiatives. They can't move the money into increased production of durable goods; Tech stocks are already over-inflated and under-performing on profits, car and home markets are still on shaky grounds, and appliances are doing worse. About the only thing you can rely on consumers to spend on now is food, since those purchases are guaranteed by the government through farm subsidies and food stamps. However, they can't reliably put their money into food futures with the droughts still fresh on everybody's mind, so they turn to land as their mid and long term investment options.
Student debts are likely skyrocketing due to underemployment and stagnating wages. Underemployment is forcing many people to reskill, which means getting some form of education and/or training, constraining resources of the education infrastructure which is currently taking a public funding hit. Stagnating wages is making it so people can't pay for these rising costs that come from constrained resources, so they're forced to borrow it up front.
In all, though, Bernanke is right. These debts don't carry the same risks as housing. You can't normally default on student obligations, those student loans ARE guaranteed by the government, and increased farm prices just mean increased government propping up of food (through food stamps and subsidies). I'd be willing to bet the biggest problem with either would be decreased output in the future as a more lengthy deleveraging process took place and food prices ate up a larger chunk of middle class income.
Long story short, invest in Japanese firms and short the Yen.
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Obama really needs to be convicted of war crimes by the ICC. There is no justification for that shit.
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On May 12 2013 10:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:
Obama really needs to be convicted of war crimes by the ICC. There is no justification for that shit.
If Bush, Cheney, and co. can't get convicted for war crimes, there's no chance Obama will ever get convicted.
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This has all the hallmarks of a single employee having a nervous breakdown/psychiatric episode and them having to cover it up to me. Especially if the same language was found in all the people that were flagged for more review.
Edit: Or it might end up like the whole federal judge deal with Bush, but that seemed more systematic.
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On May 12 2013 01:11 Derez wrote:
I'm not sure what you think the news is in that story, or why you feel mainstream media have been avoiding it.
It names three things: legality under international law, legality under US law, legality under pakistani law. All of them have gotten plenty of attention in the media. Everyone that has been paying attention knows the issues surrounding the legality of drone strikes, the reason that this isn't news is that it doesn't change anything.
As far as the awful MSM have been able to dig things up, what is happening in pakistan is technically legal even under pakistani law based on a classified agreement between pakistan and the US. The conflict of sovereignty the court cites is only there as long as the pakistani state had not agreed to drone strikes, but they have. This verdict won't change anything, what might change things are the pakistani elections though, which news media have been paying plenty of attention to, including the possible security implications.
(The relationship between pakistan and the US is incredibly complicated: The strike on bin laden for example, was not a violation of sovereignty based on an agreement made with musharraf in 2004 (?) that allowed the US to strike if bin laden was found within pakistan, while at the same time allowing the pakistani's to pretend the agreement didn't exist and to raise hell against the US internally in order not to seem weak.)
It does not matter whether General Pervez Musharraf gave the CIA a wink and a nod when he was the country's dictator. "[T]here is nothing in writing to the effect," writes the chief justice. In any event, no government can legitimately authorise the murder of its own citizens – certainly not without a public announcement through the democratic process. Indeed, Musharraf is currently facing the music for a number of illegal acts he allegedly took while in office.
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Guess it's a slow burner.
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The high and wildly varying prices for hospital services revealed by President Barack Obama's administration last week likely aren't going away any time soon because the antiquated system that generates them is intricately threaded throughout the health care system, according to industry representatives.
The Obama administration revealed more than 160,000 charges for inpatient procedures at more than 3,300 U.S. hospitals Tuesday. With the data disclosure, the administration was aiming to increase public pressure on hospitals, especially those with much higher prices than nearby competitors, to bring down charges to prices more in line with local norms. The primary beneficiaries of such a change would be the roughly 49 million Americans who are uninsured, as they are virtually the only people who can be asked to pay outright what the hospital is charging.
Hospital trade associations acknowledged that the dysfunctional character of the price lists, called charge masters, harms patients without health insurance. But they also sought to downplay the negatives of the price disparities released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, saying that few patients actually see those charges on their bills. Hospital industry sources also highlighted the magnitude of the effort that would be required to devise a new system for establishing list prices for their services.
"I can promise you that if you got into the weeds here, you would immediately discover that it ain't as easy as it sounds," said Chip Kahn, the president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, a Washington-based trade group that represents investor-owned chains including HCA Holdings and Tenet Healthcare.
"If someone decided tomorrow to do it, everybody could do it. But I'm telling you, it would cost billions of dollars -- probably small billions, not big billions -- because it's not a minor task," Kahn said.
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It'd be nice if someone could counterpoint their statement that "But I'm telling you, it would cost billions of dollars -- probably small billions, not big billions -- because it's not a minor task."
Having read that Time article on charge masters, it'd just depressing how arbitrary (and high!) the inflation of material costs are for these hospitals.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.
In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.
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http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-tea-party-also-disclosed-confidential-docs
IRS scandal gets, somehow, even worse for IRS:
The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.
The IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica.
In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/irs-says-current-acting-commissioner-learned-in-may-2012-that-tea-party-groups-were-targeted/2013/05/13/21657c88-bc15-11e2-b537-ab47f0325f7c_story.html
IRS says current acting commissioner learned in May 2012 that tea party groups were targeted.
Gee, I wonder if a certain event in November 2012 had anything to do with the IRS covering this up for over a year (May 2012 - May 2013). I wonder if a certain event in November 2012 had anything to do with the IRS deliberately targeting anti-administration conservative and Jewish groups.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/senator-obama-should-condemn-irs-targeting
WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Steven T. Miller failed to tell Congress that tea party groups were being inappropriately targeted, even after he had been briefed on the matter.
The IRS said Monday that Miller was first informed on May, 3, 2012, that applications for tax-exempt status by tea party groups were inappropriately singled out for extra, sometimes burdensome scrutiny.
On June 15, 2012, Miller wrote a member of Congress to explain the process of reviewing applications for tax-exempt status without mentioning the controversy.
Maybe TenthDoc can tell us all how it's some rogue crazy inside the IRS again and not part of some concerted effort to harass and constrain conservative groups. Not to mention the IRS's lack of ethics in not reporting it to Congress.
Some have suggested in their typical snarky way (not here, elsewhere on the interwebs) that since Shulman was a Bush appointee, so what. Too bad that Miller isn't a Bush appointee.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Minnesota Senate voted Monday to make gay marriage legal, the last legislative step before Gov. Mark Dayton’s promised signature will make the state the 12th in the U.S. to do so.
The Senate vote of 37-30 came four days after the House passed the bill on a 75-59 vote. A cheer erupted in the chamber after the vote was announced, and spectators in a small gallery area stood and applauded.
Minnesota will become the first state in the Midwest to make gay marriage legal via a legislative vote. Iowa legalized same-sex marriage in 2009 through a court ruling.
Last week, Dayton, a Democrat, called the bill “one of those society-changing breakthrough moments.” Aides said he was likely to sign the legislation in a ceremony Tuesday evening on the front steps of the Capitol in St. Paul.
Under the legislation, gay couples will be able to get married starting on Aug. 1.
It’s a rapid turnaround for gay marriage backers, who just six months ago had to organize a massive effort to defeat a constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage. The groups who defeated the amendment quickly turned their attention to legalizing gay marriage, and their efforts were aided by Democrats capturing full control of state government in November.
In the last week and a half, Rhode Island and Delaware became the 10th and 11th states to legalize gay marriage. In Illinois, a gay marriage bill has cleared the state Senate but awaits a House vote.
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So the DOJ didn't secretly record just obtained phone logs...?
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On May 14 2013 12:45 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So the DOJ didn't secretly record just obtained phone logs...?
I think so... the early stories were very badly worded and gave the impression that wiretaps were involved, now it looks like just monitoring of phone logs.
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_politics/2013/05/dems_vow_hell_to_pay_if_irs_allegations_ring_true
Outraged Bay State Democrats are blasting President Obama for exhibiting a Nixonian abuse of power after the stunning news that the Department of Justice secretly obtained Associated Press phone records and the IRS targeted conservative groups — new scandals emerging against the backdrop of heightened Benghazi criticism.
“There’s no way in the world I’m going to defend that. Hell, I spent my youth vilifying the Nixon administration for doing the same thing. If they did that, there should be hell to pay,” U.S. Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Somerville) said about the IRS scandal. “Not only is it bad government and bad to society, it is horrendous politics. The worst thing you can do is give your opponent an easy hammer with which to hit you.”
“It doesn’t seem to be a couple rogue employees. This appeared to be a systemic issue,” said U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-South Boston), who wants to investigate the matter as a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee already has scheduled a hearing on the issue for this week, Lynch said, adding, “No American should find themselves the target of the IRS or any other federal organization because of their political beliefs.”
Both U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Malden) and the GOP’s Gabriel Gomez, rivals in the Senate special election, slammed the administration’s actions, as new reports emerged yesterday that the Department of Justice seized two months’ worth of phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors. Gomez called it “another troubling example of overzealous federal agencies restricting our First Amendment rights.”
Wow. I did not expect this IRS scandal to blow up so quickly, to the point where Massachusetts Democrats are flipping out at the Obama Administration bare days after the story finally broke the MSM. From Friday to now this thing has turned from a GOP pile-on of the IRS to a bipartisan pile-on of the Administration itself.
That second-term mandate is looking a little raggedy today... never underestimate the power of government being stupid or malicious or stupidly malicious to make the triumphalism of elections won fade into the background. George W. Bush was a crippled president by the end of Term 2 Year 1. Obama's sprained an ankle so far but he better look out or it will get worse.
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On May 14 2013 12:45 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So the DOJ didn't secretly record just obtained phone logs...?
You're the one posting the article! That's what it looks like though. I don't like it either way.
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Other than subject the Tea Party groups to a larger scrutinizing glance, is there any evidence they were denied status or fined because of their political affiliations?
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-denounces-reported-irs-targeting-of-conservative-groups/2013/05/13/a0185644-bbdf-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_print.html
Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.
In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.
http://news.yahoo.com/irs-kept-shifting-targets-tax-exempt-groups-scrutiny-041423528.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When tax agents started singling out non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in 2010, they looked at first only for key words such as 'Tea Party,' but later they focused on criticisms by groups of "how the country is being run," according to investigative findings reviewed by Reuters on Sunday.
Gee, I wonder if certain events in November 2010 and November 2012 had anything to do with this IRS practice.
Looks like the "it's Cincinnati's fault" excuse is right out the window too. More lies from this Administration.
Other than subject the Tea Party groups to a larger scrutinizing glance, is there any evidence they were denied status or fined because of their political affiliations?
Delaying status by asking lengthy, involved and inappropriate questions is denying status. When this happens in an election year it may not exactly be worse, but the reason why is a lot more transparent.
Was the IRS targeting audits as well, based on the Obama campaign's already shameful personal attack on Romney donors?
http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team/entry/behind-the-curtain-a-brief-history-of-romneys-donors/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577396412560038208.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577537233908744496.html
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/flashback-romney-donor-vilified-by-obama-campaign-then-subjected-to-2-audits/
How did the White House get confidential tax information about the Koch brothers that it released to the press? Did the Obama White House / campaign get to look at some papers from the IRS that it shouldn't have had access to?
Just what did Dingy Harry Reid mean when he said it was "evident" Romney was hiding something about his tax returns? Did Dingy Harry get to look at some papers from the IRS he shouldn't have had access to?
Thug government. Brought to you by Hope 'n Change "Hit back twice as hard!" Chicago Thug-in-Chief Obama. Oops, calling someone a gangster when he acts like a gangster is racist if his skin is brown. I'm sorry Barack, don't audit me or ask for a list of all my friends bro.
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Not quoting all of your nonsense babbling. By definition, delaying is not the same as denying. You (and conservative outlets it seems) are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is the "Benghazi coverup" all over again, where mistakes were made on some level, but are made out as some sort of grand conspiracy by right wing nutjobs.
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On May 14 2013 13:21 DeepElemBlues wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-denounces-reported-irs-targeting-of-conservative-groups/2013/05/13/a0185644-bbdf-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_print.htmlShow nested quote +Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.
In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote. http://news.yahoo.com/irs-kept-shifting-targets-tax-exempt-groups-scrutiny-041423528.htmlShow nested quote +WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When tax agents started singling out non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in 2010, they looked at first only for key words such as 'Tea Party,' but later they focused on criticisms by groups of "how the country is being run," according to investigative findings reviewed by Reuters on Sunday. Gee, I wonder if certain events in November 2010 and November 2012 had anything to do with this IRS practice. Looks like the "it's Cincinnati's fault" excuse is right out the window too. More lies from this Administration. Show nested quote +Other than subject the Tea Party groups to a larger scrutinizing glance, is there any evidence they were denied status or fined because of their political affiliations? Delaying status by asking lengthy, involved and inappropriate questions is denying status. When this happens in an election year it may not exactly be worse, but the reason why is a lot more transparent. Was the IRS targeting audits as well, based on the Obama campaign's already shameful personal attack on Romney donors? http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team/entry/behind-the-curtain-a-brief-history-of-romneys-donors/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577396412560038208.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577537233908744496.htmlhttp://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/flashback-romney-donor-vilified-by-obama-campaign-then-subjected-to-2-audits/How did the White House get confidential tax information about the Koch brothers that it released to the press? Did the Obama White House / campaign get to look at some papers from the IRS that it shouldn't have had access to? Just what did Dingy Harry Reid mean when he said it was "evident" Romney was hiding something about his tax returns? Did Dingy Harry get to look at some papers from the IRS he shouldn't have had access to? Thug government. Brought to you by Hope 'n Change "Hit back twice as hard!" Chicago Thug-in-Chief Obama. Oops, calling someone a gangster when he acts like a gangster is racist if his skin is brown. I'm sorry Barack, don't audit me or ask for a list of all my friends bro.
I just shot dr. pepper and captain morgan out my nose when I read that last sentence. Lol.
On May 14 2013 13:48 aksfjh wrote:
Not quoting all of your nonsense babbling. By definition, delaying is not the same as denying. You (and conservative outlets it seems) are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is the "Benghazi coverup" all over again, where mistakes were made on some level, but are made out as some sort of grand conspiracy by right wing nutjobs.
If American citizens dying due to carelessness is a molehill I guess...downplay more.
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On May 14 2013 13:21 DeepElemBlues wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-denounces-reported-irs-targeting-of-conservative-groups/2013/05/13/a0185644-bbdf-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_print.htmlShow nested quote +Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.
In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote. http://news.yahoo.com/irs-kept-shifting-targets-tax-exempt-groups-scrutiny-041423528.htmlShow nested quote +WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When tax agents started singling out non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in 2010, they looked at first only for key words such as 'Tea Party,' but later they focused on criticisms by groups of "how the country is being run," according to investigative findings reviewed by Reuters on Sunday. Gee, I wonder if certain events in November 2010 and November 2012 had anything to do with this IRS practice. Looks like the "it's Cincinnati's fault" excuse is right out the window too. More lies from this Administration. Show nested quote +Other than subject the Tea Party groups to a larger scrutinizing glance, is there any evidence they were denied status or fined because of their political affiliations? Delaying status by asking lengthy, involved and inappropriate questions is denying status. When this happens in an election year it may not exactly be worse, but the reason why is a lot more transparent. Was the IRS targeting audits as well, based on the Obama campaign's already shameful personal attack on Romney donors? http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team/entry/behind-the-curtain-a-brief-history-of-romneys-donors/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577396412560038208.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577537233908744496.htmlhttp://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/flashback-romney-donor-vilified-by-obama-campaign-then-subjected-to-2-audits/How did the White House get confidential tax information about the Koch brothers that it released to the press? Did the Obama White House / campaign get to look at some papers from the IRS that it shouldn't have had access to? Just what did Dingy Harry Reid mean when he said it was "evident" Romney was hiding something about his tax returns? Did Dingy Harry get to look at some papers from the IRS he shouldn't have had access to? Thug government. Brought to you by Hope 'n Change "Hit back twice as hard!" Chicago Thug-in-Chief Obama. Oops, calling someone a gangster when he acts like a gangster is racist if his skin is brown. I'm sorry Barack, don't audit me or ask for a list of all my friends bro.
I'm sorry, has anyone here accused you of racism or something? Or are you that defensive about it solely due to some small sense of self-awareness?
I won't accuse you of racism for calling Obama a "thug", but I will accuse you of obscene sensationalism and making gross assumptions. There is absolutely nothing in anything you've posted, that suggested that Obama, the "Thug-in-Chief", had anything to do with procuring confidential information.
No, calling a gangster a gangster isn't itself racist. Calling Obama a "thug" (I thought he was a weak-willed apologist, or was that last year?) because of a conspiracy theory you concocted in your head on the other hand, is at the very least moronic, as is deflecting accusations of racism before ever being called a racist.
As for the right-wing hyperbole regarding Benghazi and the IRS: campaign staffs are large organizations. Our military and intelligence agencies are large organizations.
Mistakes happen on all levels. And let's be honest, none of this is anywhere near as disastrous, blunderous, or stupid as the 9/11 hijackings or our subsequent invasion of a country that had nothing to do with it.
If you want to accuse Obama of something specific, substantial and corroborative, that'd be great.
Otherwise I really think this forum doesn't need to be subjected to conspiracy-theories over how every bad thing to happen at a federal level is somehow due to Obama's personal machinations.
Reading one WSJ article, which talks about a website making these lists of Romney donors. I'm sorry, do you really think Obama is in the business of creating websites? How fucking dumb can you be? Even if we think there is wrongdoing here, there is absolutely nothing in anything you've linked, that ties anything to the White House, let alone the President himself. It isn't just sensationalism to post some links and then talk about what a thug it makes our President out to be -- it's just pure bullshit.
User was warned for this post
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If American citizens dying due to carelessness is a molehill I guess...downplay more
It would be if it hadn't happened several times during the bush administration, or if part of (if not the whole) reason that there was inadequate protection at the embassy was due to the gop cutting the budget for such matters.
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EPT
