IRS Scandal - Lost Emails

[Dartz]

The effect is much the same, unfortunately.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Bob Schroeck]

Which is why so many conspiracy theorists confuse the two.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[ECSNorway]

Let's put it this way:

Whatever may or may not have been done by the IRS under previous administrations.

Is it acceptable, to ANY of us, for them to target ANY organization based solely on that organization's political affiliations?

Is there any doubt in ANYONE's mind that this is exactly what they have done, under the direct orders of the current administration?

Is it AT ALL acceptable that they be allowed to do this, EVER again, for ANY administration?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[khagler]

ECSNorway wrote:

---

Let's put it this way:

Whatever may or may not have been done by the IRS under previous administrations.

Is it acceptable, to ANY of us, for them to target ANY organization based solely on that organization's political affiliations?

Is there any doubt in ANYONE's mind that this is exactly what they have done, under the direct orders of the current administration?

Is it AT ALL acceptable that they be allowed to do this, EVER again, for ANY administration?

I'd answer "no" to all of those. And here's another question with a "no" answer:
Is there ANY chance that the IRS will EVER stop being a weapon to bludgeon the enemies of whoever occupies the White House?

[Valles]

And one more: Are the consequences of not having a government - of not having regulated food, water, electricity, road standards, and all the million other things the Gubmint Iz Ebil propaganda reels ignore - even close to outweighing the inconvenience of keeping political jockeying like this trimmed back to a tolerable level?

As Justice Holmes put it, "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Logan Darklighter]

Edit: I allowed myself to answer the above, and I shouldn't have. The above was an effort to derail this topic. I responded to it when I shouldn't have, which was a mistake. 

[nemonowan]

If you tax a rich man 90% of his income, he remains a rich man.If you tax a poor man 90% of his income, he starves.

[Logan Darklighter]

You want to discuss arbitrary standards for who pays what taxes, I recommend you start your own thread. This one is about a different topic.

[Valles]

I would be extremely interested to see how you propose to gather the required funds to operate the mechanisms of government without a bureaucracy to organize the accounting and collection of delinquent payments.

Especially when you've just declared your own previous suggestion off-topic when someone pointed out why it was untenable in the humane sense that is your proported goal. (It's also untenable in the economic sense, since completely destroying the numberically-largest class of Americans would have an even worse effect on the economy and survival of the rest of the country than the Grover Norquist Nonsense plan, but you're right that that's aside the point.)
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Logan Darklighter]

Because it was a mistake to go off-topic and allow this be side-tracked. I acknowledge that.
Now - 
DIFFERENT THREAD. Or I start asking Bob to lock this down.  That. Is. The. LAST. I speak. Of. That. Here.

[Logan Darklighter]

[Rajvik]

As to the claim that"every administration uses the IRS as a weapon" the only other attempt apparently was Nixon and according to the articles of impeachment against him the IRS of the time resisted and he was only able to "attempt to use them" as far as I know that is the only other time it has occurred, if I am wrong in this please someone point out reference to other occasions.
 

[khagler]

There's a page on just that subject at Wikipedia: List of incidents of misuse of the Internal Revenue Service

[Logan Darklighter]

*Waggles hand back and forth*  ehh... That Wikipedia article may be a little iffy on the accuracy and sources, but likely close enough.

[Rajvik]

Unfortunately i trust Wikipedia about as much as I trust a politician to tell the truth, (meaning not hardly) and as far as an unaugmented human could throw a Cat D9 bulldozer
 

[Logan Darklighter]

Increasingly, those who continue to insist that there was no cover-up at the IRS after it was revealed that administrators consciously targeted conservative groups with undue scrutiny are finding that the burden of proof is on them to substantiate this outlandish claim. The undeniable evidence of malfeasance and criminality at the nation’s tax collection agency is mounting.
On Monday, the watchdog group Judicial Watch published a statement from the organization’s president which indicates that the IRS believes that Lois Lerner’s supposedly lost emails do exist, but that they would simply be difficult to uncover.

Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. The DOJ attorneys also acknowledged that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating this back-up system.
We obviously disagree that disclosing the emails as required would be onerous, and plan to raise this new development with Judge Sullivan.
This is a jaw-dropping revelation. The Obama administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner’s missing emails. There are no “missing” Lois Lerner emails – nor missing emails of any of the other top IRS or other government officials whose emails seem to be disappearing at increasingly alarming rate. All the focus on missing hard drives has been a diversion. The Obama administration has known all along where the email records could be – but dishonestly withheld this information.

“Too onerous to search” basically reads as -  yet another excuse the IRS has made in its own defense that they would never let you get away with amid an audit.
The indications of criminal conduct out of the IRS did not stop there. On Monday, court filings revealed that the tax agency destroyed Lerner’s blackberry on which the suspect emails were contained after the agency learned that her computer had crashed and a congressional inquiry was already underway.

Via the New York Observer’s Sidney Powell:

Judge [Emmet] Sullivan has had to pry information from the IRS to learn anything about Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry. Now, with these latest revelations, I’m confident he’s not finished.
In two elusive and nebulous sworn declarations, we can glean that Ms. Lerner had two Blackberries. One was issued to her on November 12, 2009. According to a sworn declaration, this is the Blackberry that contained all the emails (both sent and received) that would have been in her “Outlook” and drafts that never were sent from her Blackberry during the relevant time.
With incredible disregard for the law and the Congressional inquiry, the IRS admits that this Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” This is a year after her hard drive “crash” and months after the Congressional inquiry began.

In June, the White House suggested that the Republican-backed probes into the IRS’s behavior amounted to little more than the servicing of their paranoid “conspiracy theories.” Increasingly, though, tax agency officials appear to have been involved in a something closer to a genuine plot to hide evidence of wrongdoing from the public.
Those who continue to defend this agency out of some misguided sense of loyalty toward the president will find themselves in an increasingly untenable position. Those smart enough to read the writing on the wall see that. The dam is about to burst.

Somebody at the IRS, and/or the DOJ, needs to go to prison for the rest of his or her natural life.

[Logan Darklighter]

Yup - it's time to revisit this topic. No - it won't go away. 


This story failed the smell test before Obama ever even dismissed it as a “phony scandal. 

The IRS’s inspector general confirmed Thursday it is conducting a criminal investigation into how Lois G. Lerner’s emails disappeared, saying it took only two weeks for investigators to find hundreds of tapes the agency’s chief had told Congress were irretrievably destroyed.
Investigators have already scoured 744 backup tapes and gleaned 32,774 unique emails, but just two weeks ago they found an additional 424 tapes that could contain even more Lerner emails, Deputy Inspector General Timothy P. Camus told the House Oversight Committee in a rare late-night hearing meant to look into the status of the investigation.

“There is potential criminal activity,” Mr. Camus said.

Remember when the IRS commissioner, the smug John Koskinen, testified that IRS backup tapes for emails in question from around the time Lois Lerner was doing her thing didn’t exist? He was lying or doesn’t have a firm grip on how his agency operates:

But under questioning from Mr. Chaffetz, Mr. Camus said it took him only two weeks to track down the backup tapes, and when he asked the IRS depository for them, the workers there said they’d never been contacted by the agency itself.
Republicans said that was stunning because IRS Commissioner John Koskinen repeatedly assured Congress the emails were irretrievably lost.

This is an actual email from Lois Lerner that was recovered: 


(Original Source for Image)