Obama Administration Hit With A Triple Whammy

While President Barack Obama was doubling down on his discredited narrative concerning the attack by terrorists on the Benghazi consulate, in the course of which Mr. Obama’s personal minister – that is what an ambassador is; the personal minister of the president – was murdered, it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had targeted Tea Party groups for what may turn out to be punitive audits.

National Public Radio briefly reported that when the president was asked a question concerning “reports that the IRS targeted organizations that identified themselves as ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot groups and gave their applications for tax-exempt status extra reviews, Obama said:

"’This is pretty straightforward. ... If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported ... and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous and there's no place for it.’ Those responsible, he said, will ‘be held fully accountable.’”

Mr. Obama was asked about the audits during a press conference that featured British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president’s initial response, the promise of a severe dressing down of the IRS, passed muster with the increasing band of journalists who thought Mr. Obama’s handing of the Benghazi assault was seriously deficient. Even Fox News, unrelenting on Benghazi, slathered the president with commendations. Brit Hume of Fox News generously allowed the president’s initial response was the right one.

An explanation offered by IRS tax-exempt chief Lois Lerner quickly came under fire. Ms. Lerner attributed the possible “outrageous” conduct to “line people” in Cincinnati, Ohio who had “used names like Tea Party or Patriots” as criteria for selecting tax-exempt applications for further scrutiny.

Chairman of Americans for Limited Government Howard Rich noted in a piece written for Forbes Magazine that Ms. Lerner pointedly did not mention that “the IRS’ Cincinnati office is the central location for all tax-exempt application evaluations – meaning the discrimination that took place there “wasn’t an isolated, dumb incident by some random field office,” as The Washington Post concisely noted. In other words this was no error: It was official policy – which directly contradicts testimony previously provided by the agency’s leadership to Congressional investigators.”

A Reuters report noted, “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’ …  At one point, the agents chose to screen applications from groups focused on making ‘America a better place to live.”  Other IRS search terms included: “Government spending”, “Government debt, or taxes.” On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,’ according to an advance copy of a report done by Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which notes that agency leadership was made aware of the discrimination nearly two years ago, who said nothing – and clearly had no plans to alert the public to what had happened.

On ABC This Week, columnist George Will remarked that the country had just celebrated – if that is the proper word – the 40^th anniversary of the Watergate summer and read from then President Richard Nixon impeachment records: “He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

Finally, shortly after the possible “outrageous” conduct of the IRS towards the much maligned Tea Party groups knocked the Obama administration on its noggin, a third shoe fell. The Justice Department, led by Fast and Furious Eric Holder, had wiretapped the phone lines of more than a hundred Associated Press reporters in an attempt to uncover the source of a leak of top secret information. Mr. Holder, who had recused himself from investigating the event, explained in a press conference that the taps were justified because of the nature of the leak.

This is not theway to gain friends and influence reporters among the national media. To judge from subsequent media availabilities in which presidential spokesman Jay Carney was relentlessly grilled, some worm had turned in the breast of reporters, and the Obama administration, which tends to treat words as incantations that magically alter objective reality, was playing hardball defense.

Malloy On The Stump

It should surprise no one that Governor Dannel Malloy is on the road again selling the usual product. This time, because elections are looming, he will be followed by Republican candidates for governor anxious to peddle their own prescriptions for what ails us.

Returning from a Middletown town hall meeting, though some in the audience objected to the format, Mr. Malloy sent around a sermon to the Hartford Courant. He began by noting that “Every budget is about setting priorities. That's true for every family in Connecticut, especially during tough economic times. It is equally true for state government.” Indeed, are we to suppose that President Barack Obama has set no priorities because he had presented no budget to Congress during his first term?

When middle class families in Connecticut encounter hard times, they cut back on spending, a remedy for budgetary red ink unknown in Washington and many states, including Connecticut. That is because workers in the private sector in Connecticut cannot force their employers to raise their wages. In this respect, private enterprise is qualitatively different than government. When a government runs into hard times, it may raise taxes and usually does. That is because governments find it painful to say “no” to those who use and provide their services. Independent Governor Lowell Weicker responded to a pre-income tax deficit by instituting a new income tax. Governor Dannel Malloy’s Democratic forebearers, Governors Ella Grasso and O’Neill resisted the effortless solution to which Mr. Weicker and Mr. Malloy so easily succumbed. Tax raisers in Connecticut are always careful to sugar their bitter pill with a bit of honey: “We don’t like taxes any more than you do, honey.” But they slather on the taxes anyway, heedless of predictable consequences. Connecticut’s present budget is three times larger than Mr. O’Neill’s last pre-income tax budget, and the bottom line increase in our budgets is a true measure of spending increases.

So then, the precipitous increase in budgets strongly suggests that the priorities of the governors who followed Mr. O’Neill lay in raising taxes rather than in cutting spending. Mr. Malloy’s tax increase was the largest in state history, and his spending cuts, to judge from the massive revenue increase in his first budget, were not commensurate with his tax increases -- which, come to think of it, is the very definition of “shared sacrifice,” Mr. Malloy’s campaign slogan when he first ran for governor.

In his latest sermon, Mr. Malloy notes that he has become an old hand at town hall meetings, having “done more than 30 of these town hall events since taking office.” He values such gatherings not only because they give him an opportunity to peddle his product from a bully pulpit, but more importantly because “they present the best opportunity for me to listen directly to the concerns of my fellow Connecticut residents.” And “Based on what I heard in Middletown, it is clearer to me than ever that many people share some simple, common-sense perspectives on what our state needs.”

Fortunately for Mr. Malloy, what he hears from citizens at these town meetings conforms precisely to his own prescriptions, which he is certain will bring prosperity and good fortune to the middle class in his state: “Connecticut's middle class doesn't need any more burdens. The middle class needs some breaks,” especially in these difficult days following “the worst recession since the Great Depression, and with a national economy that continues to grow too slowly.”

George Will’s definition of a “need” – a want that’s 24 hours old – is especially pertinent in the Malloy administration.

Surely in the course of 30 Connecticut town hall meetings, someone must have whispered in Mr. Malloy's ear that cuts in spending proportional to his tax increases might help middle class tax payers balance their own budgets. God, we are told, whispers to us in the whirlwind because He wishes us to attend to his message and wants us to learn how to listen. Perhaps Mr. Malloy has not been attentive to the whisperings of the state’s middle class: He is a very busy guy, and never busier than when he is telling the middle class to cough up a few more bucks he might distribute to Connecticut’s prosperous insurance companies, one of which is moving its in-state operations to South Carolina.

The simplest and truest way to give the middle class a break is to reduce their taxes – or, at the very least, not to raise their taxes –thus leaving them in command of their own salaries and futures. Mr. Malloy has done quite the opposite.

But never mind honey, here comes the honey: “That's why my budget contains no new taxes and puts us on a path to reinstating the sales tax exemption on clothing valued under $50. And that's why my budget would do away with the single most burdensome, most regressive and most unfair tax in our state — the car tax.”

Ah yes, the car tax. The car tax is a levy imposed by, collected by and spent by town governments. A short time after Mr. Malloy imposed upon Connecticut the largest tax increase in its history, the Yankee Institute, a right of center think tank, published a list of Mr. Malloy’s new taxes, many of which were regressive. Any imposition levied on a taxpayer who cannot comfortably pay the tax without depriving himself of necessary income is a regressive tax. Mr. Malloy’s revenueincreases spanned 25 categories of taxes and eliminated exemptions in about 37 different categories. The elimination of town property taxes on cars worth less than $28,571, which municipalities depend upon to finance their operations, is an invitation to municipal governments to either raise property taxes on middle class owners of houses or to cut town budgets. It takes little political courage for state politicians to eliminate someone else's tax. If Mr. Malloy wants to help the middle class by reducing state taxes, the list produced by the Yankee Institute presents some golden opportunities for him.