Politics

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The Game is On!

Wow! On Sunday the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released partial transcripts of its interviews with several IRS agents. The Administration releases important data on Friday afternoon and Congress releases explosive testimony on Sunday. The game is on and John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog was on top of it. It is hard to reconcile micromanagement with the Administration’s rogue agent explanation. The cover-up just reached a new level. Here is part of what he said. You can read the rest of it here.

Earlier today, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released partial transcripts of its interviews with several IRS agents. These interviews formed at least part of the basis for Chairman Darrell Issa’s characterization of White House spokesman Jay Carney, who claimed that the IRS scandal was the work of a couple of rogue agents, as a “paid liar” on CNN this morning. You can read the partial transcripts here. These are some excerpts:

Q: But just to be clear, she told you the specific names of these applicants.
A: Yes.
Q: And she told you that Washington, D.C. had requested these two specific applications be sent to D.C.
A: Yes, or parts of them.

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The IRS Efficiency Argument

Okay, let’s go down the rabbit hole again. In testimony by outgoing acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Steve Miller he explains the targeting of groups with “tea party” and “patriot” as an inadvertent result of trying to improve efficiency in the IRS group for non-profit applications. So let us assume that you are in charge of this group and you are being swamped with new applications. You are confronted with several choices. The “efficient choice” is to let most of them through with just a cursory review. Desperate times calls for desperate measures and this is the choice that cleans up your backlog the quickest. If upper management wants a more thorough review then the they need to increase the budget for this group.

Instead IRS management chose the least efficient method to deal with the backlog. Instead of quickly dispensing with the non-profit applications, they chose to scrutinize primary small “tea party” groups in greater detail. These groups are pretty small fish in the pond. Whatever! As shown in the hearings this involved a lot of communication between the IRS and the applicants. A lot of the questions asked by the IRS in these communications do not appear to be relevant to the application. Some of the questions were against IRS policy and some are probably illegal. So as Hillary Clinton might say, “What was the point of all of this?” If efficiency was the primary concern, the IRS created more work for themselves in processing the backlog and opened the door to increased Congressional oversight and public scrutiny. Yea, that is how we improve efficiency in the IRS!

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Yearning for a “Buck Stops Here” President

Ever since I was in business school at the University of Houston I have been fascinated with the different management and leadership styles. While in school I learned that different groups of people responded differently to the management styles. A management style that works successfully with software developers in Silicon Valley will probably be unsuccessful with workers on the assembly line in Detroit. From Jim Peters with his book, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies, to Jim Collins book, Good to Great, there has been a steady stream of authors highlighting the essential characteristics of successful organizations that transcends their particular industry. Many successful management characteristics from the private sector have been successfully transferred to the public sector. With this wealth of management knowledge, what is the Obama management style and is it successful?

The most common description for the Obama management style is “lead from behind”. I am not sure what this really means since the statement is nonsensical. I cannot think of a management style  being used in the private sector version that compares to the administration management style. What I do know is that based on the recent scandals, their management style is not only uniquely different but it is not working. The proof is how the administration reacts to a crisis. Of the many explanations I have read about the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack, we have this comment by an Obama administration official to CBS News.

We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots," said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. "It’s actually closer to us being idiots.

The administration’s choices appear to be between labeled a liar or an idiot. It is not much of a choice but the administration apparently decided that being labeled an idiot is preferable than a liar.

On Friday I had the opportunity to listen to the live testimony of outgoing acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Steve Miller who said "I did not mislead Congress or the American people" to the House Ways and Means Committee. He explained the IRS actions as a simple, innocent mistake. He also mentioned several times how “truthful” he was to the Committee. At almost the same time we find out that IRS’s Lois Lerner planted a question at the ABA conference in order to leak the Inspector General’s report that raised serious questions whether the IRS deliberately mislead Congress. If Mr. Miller was being “truthful”  to Congress then why did his subordinate orchestrate this misleading response to a simple mistake?

Are the four active scandals a natural result of this administration’s management style? Are we looking at a random event in which the administration made a few simple, innocent mistakes that is best handled by being selectively “truthful” about? Is plausible deniability a plan or a coffin? We have already seen how this selective “truthfulness” easily transformed itself into a situation where being considered an idiot is preferable to being a liar.  Bad luck finds bad managers. There are probably a slew of aspiring leadership author getting ready to write the next best seller on this administration but it is safe to say that this management style plan seems to be dependent on “fooling all of the people all of the time”. The author of this quote, President Lincoln, was skeptical that this could ever be a successful political strategy. Yet the number and severity of the scandals has Americans yearning for a simpler, honest time that both President Lincoln and Truman understood. A time in which Presidents did not try to fool all of the people all of the time and President Truman proudly posed with a sign that said, “The buck stops here”. Honesty and accountability worked for many Presidents. It works for businesses and is a theme of Dave Ramsey’s best seller book, EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches. We can learn from the past. This new fangled management style is not working.

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Maybe It Is Time to Restrict Anonymous Donations but Who Can You Trust?

The Washington Post has a nice post on the subject aptly titled, What is a 501(c)(4), anyway? I wanted some examples of 501(c)4 corporations so I investigated the typical organization classifications a little bit further. Most churches and charitable organizations like Habitat for Humanity get their tax exemption under section 501(c)3. Labor unions get their their tax exemption under section 501(c)5 and Chambers of Commerce get their their tax exemption under section 501(c)6. I thought the section 501(c)4 might cover the Knights of Columbus but they are covered under section 501(c)10. The most prominent group besides a few political groups to register under section 501(c)4 appears to be volunteer fire departments.

The crux of the problem is that according to OpenSecrets.org is that the 501(c)4 nonprofits outspent super PACs in 2010 and three conservative nonprofits accounted for over half of those expenditures. If this money was spent on valid political speech, I am not sure what the problem is other than the Democratic party is irked with the three conservative nonprofits who accepted large, anonymous donations. I have mixed feelings on the anonymous donations issue. In theory I agree with Democrats who want to restrict anonymous donations. However in the real world I understand that some big donors who are expressing their right to free speech are concerned that elected officials will use their position in the government to illegally harass and intimidate them. Their concerns sounded like paranoia until the IRS admitted that they targeted organizations with “Tea Party” and “patriot” in their applications to additional scrutiny that violated IRS policies. To make things even worse, the Administration denials over the IRS actions are sounding just like they did during the Watergate years. With people starting to compare the IRS actions to Nixon’s enemies list, who can we trust in government to do the right thing with hot button political issues like campaign finance reform and anonymous donations? The trust is gone. It is not surprising that several lawyers on MotherJones think that this debacle has seriously hurt the IRS efforts to restrict anonymous donations to 501(c)4 corporations.  Both campaign finance reform and the war against “dark money” contributions have been severely impaired by these actions and the Democratic party has no one to blame but themselves. With great power comes great irresponsibility.

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Separated at Birth, Watergate and the IRS Scandal

The IRS scandal in which they targeted 501(c)4 applications with Tea Party or Patriot on them for further investigation is the most bone headed political maneuver since Watergate. Every time I think about Watergate I am amazed someone thought this was both necessary and that they could get away with it. I read Ezra Klein’s article expressing his concern that “the IRS has permitted 501(c)4s to grow into something monstrous”. When I tried to figure out how dangerous 501(c)4s had become, I was not impressed. If there is a problem with money in politics, it is represented primarily by 527 corporations like Moveon.org for the progressive side and Crossroads for the conservative side and not 501(c)4s. You would think the IRS had enough problems with the public’s perception of the organization without adding partisan politics to the mix. Talk about an organization that took its eye off of the ball. That leaves me with the unenviable comparison to the abuse of political power demonstrated in the Watergate scandal. I was hoping we had learned our lesson in Watergate.

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Are We Safer Now Than Five Years Ago?

I think what I learned from the Benghazi hearings is that our foreign policy goes stupid around election time. The Administration admits that mistakes were made and they are working at fixing the “problems” but I am still struck with the sentiment that the Administration’s concern for how things would look to voters in the upcoming US election killed Ambassador Stevens and three other people. Maybe the State Department should take the month of September off every year as a holiday commemorating the victims. It sure seems they won’t be missed.  As Forrest Gump might say, “Stupid is stupid does”.

I understand that the American people and this Administration wanted to scale back our involvements in foreign countries. The question is whether the rest of the world will allow America to shirk their foreign policy responsibilities. We are looking for an adult in the room and the UN has proven they are not up to the task. It is inevitable that this Administration will be compared to both the Bush and Carter administrations as it tries to find the happy middle ground between interventionism and isolationism. An Administration that is perceived as weak as the Carter administration has a different set of problems than the administration during the Bush years. Our foreign policy may have changed but I am not convinced we are safer. We replaced one set of problems with a different set of problems and called it progress.

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Openly Practicing Equestrian

I saw @KarlRove on a ABC panel discussion this morning where he cracked a “gay” joke where he described Ann Romney as an “openly practicing equestrian”. I am not sure why she deserves to be the butt of his joke. Her public figure stature ended when the election ended and I am not sure why he needs to tell “gay” jokes. Is making jokes about a Presidential candidate’s wife and alienating gay people part of his plan for the new and improved Republican party? Talk about someone not learning from history! Unfortunately this joke makes fun of Ann and every heterosexual man and woman who rides a horse. Is Karl making a “gay” joke about equestrians in general or just dressage riders? In either case he is making a joke about me. Once a week I ride a horse and I ride dressage just like Ann Romney. You could say that I am a dressage rider with an ambition to be a cowboy someday. It is not much of a stretch to believe that he is attacking the cowboy lifestyle, too. Yes, cowboys are “openly practicing equestrians”! Through cowboy movies the cowboy lore is known and loved around the world. So in one ill advised joke Karl has not fun of Ann Romney but of the cowboy lifestyle which is as emblematic of the American lifestyle as baseball and apple pie. Oops! That brings me to my second point. Since most equestrians are women, is this Karl’s attempt to be inclusive of women? How do you spell tone deaf? R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N

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No, Marco Rubio, government did not cause the housing crisis

Mike Konczal presented a nice rebuttal to Marco Rubio’s claim that the government caused the housing crisis in the post, No, Marco Rubio, government did not cause the housing crisis. Unfortunately both men seem to ignore the first conclusion listed in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report. The Commission laid  the blame equally at the feet of captains of finance(i.e. business) and public stewards of our financial system(i.e. government). Although I believe the greed of the American people deserve equal billing in this blame game, here is the Commission’s eloquent explanation of the blame.

    We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable.The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire. The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand, and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble. While the business cycle cannot be repealed, a crisis of this magnitude need not have occurred. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not in the stars, but in us.

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    Only 5.2% of Highway Funds Used to Build New Roads | CNS News

    81 percent ($94 billion) of the Highway Trust funding is spent on “construction and maintenance purposes.” 19 percent($22 billion) is spent on “Transportation Enhancements” and “Other” costs that included but were not limited to: “planning,” “Rail/Highway crossing,” and making carpool (HOV) lanes operational. Here is the pertinent question. Why are they spending more than they are taking in for the last decade? Is this a sign of bad management, a temporary necessity due to infrastructure priorities, or an unfortunate result of political expediency? A decade of spending more than your revenues is hard to justify as a sign of good management. Maybe it is time to limit the political expediency to what you bring in? Spending restraint has to start some place.

    A May 2012 report from the Congressional Budget Office  noted that for much of the past decade, the Highway Trust Fund’s outlays have exceeded receipts. In recent years, the shortfall has been covered by transfers from the U.S. Treasury’s general fund.

    Only 5.2% of Highway Funds Used to Build New Roads | CNS News