How do you know that the various functionaries testifying before Congress about what the IRS did to Tea Party, libertarian, pro-Israel, and a few other sorts of organizations filing for 501(c)(4) status are lying? Former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith catalogs the systematic lies:
We were told that the White House, like the rest of the country, learned about the program on May 10 through a planted question asked of then IRS official Lois Lerner at an American Bar Association conference. Turns out the White House knew earlier. We were told the targeting was the work of a few rogue IRS employees in Cincinnati. Then those employees insisted that they were being managed from Washington.
We were told that no political appointees were involved, but now we know the scandal goes at least to the office of Obama appointee and IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins. We were told that liberal groups were targeted, too. But then the IRS’s inspector general, whose report exposed the harassment, clarified that only conservative groups were targeted.
He sees it as a conspiracy against the First Amendment. I see it a little differently—as the obvious consequence of a game in which the stakes are very high.
Remember, the people who are lying are the same people who are tasked with protecting us from abuses of the tax system. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? There are only a handful of ways dealing with the abuses we’re seeing. My preference would be to lower the stakes but it’s pretty clear that my fellow Americans disagree with me on that.
The other alternatives include increasing the risks for abuse by federal bureaucrats, something I think is long overdue. The path we’re embarked on, which involves putting guards to watch the guards and then more guards to watch the guard-watching guards, is not only doomed to failure but it will inevitably make the Stasi look like underachievers.
How can you safeguard against governmental abuses towards it’s citizens when those abusive entities of government are doing so to safeguard the viability of the government they work for and politically support? Firing abusive government employees would be one solution. But, how can you even do that when the strength of the unions prohibits such reasonable rectification? Just look at Lois Lerner. She typifies the position of a protected government employee — stand by your party, no matter what, and they will not only stand by you, but promote you too!
Again, even though there are abuses committed by both political parties when they are in power, I still believe that when it’s a democrat in the Oval Office, there is double protection, as the press also circles the wagons and mutes their investigations on wrongdoing, as much as possible. However, when it is a republican, they go for the jugular. That’s why I have always wished it were a republican POTUS when Benghazi blew up, as we would have had answers, administrative culpability and the perpetrators in custody or killed by now. Instead, all we have is superficial administrative cooperative, major stonewalling of the errors and omissions in the Benghazi fiasco, a scapegoated filmmaker in jail, and all others responsible for this attack unaccounted for and free to engage in more chaos elsewhere.
@jan
… Just look at Lois Lerner. …
I would rather not.
… the press also circles the wagons and mutes their investigations on wrongdoing …
Their credibility is crumbling. Their hubris pushed them over the edge sometime in the last two years. It will take them some time to figure it out, but they are mostly done. The WaPo selling for $250 million is just the start.