The Daily Caller showed a clip from January in which Trey Gowdy asks the questions that bother me with the Benghazi debacle. I like all of Trey’s questions and have one more. Was the Benghazi failure an indicator of a broader policy failure? I cannot help but wonder if our policy in Syria and Ukraine would be a bit more coherent to the rest of the world if the “Media” had started asking some serious questions about a broader policy failure. It took Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine before the Administration got a clue.
Politics
An Independent Voter’s Hope For The Benghazi and IRS Investigations
When I look at the Benghazi and IRS investigations I am reminded of children who can no longer play well together without adult supervision. I have no sympathy for their plight. The Democratic party knew where the political boundaries were in government meddling and crossed over them. They killed four people in Benghazi because it was inconvenient for a presidential campaign and used the IRS to suppress political opposition. The Republicans are reminding them of these sins at every opportunity. Now the Democrats are complaining that they did nothing wrong and the voters and media should break up the fight. I am kind of old school on this matter and am willing to let them fight it out. They have way too much piss and vinegar in them to break them up now. It is sad but they have to hurt each other before they can get better. Eventually the vitriol will be replaced with reluctant respect and new boundaries will be drawn to avoid future confrontations. Promises will be made. It has been a long time since the Nixon resignation but it served its purpose. Hopefully these scandals will serve a similar purpose. If the Democratic party gets away with these actions with just a hand slap, they will have set a new standard for political meddling and suppressing political opposition for future administrations. This is not good for either party or a well functioning government during presidential campaigns.
The Case For A Broader Policy Failure Is Rooted In The Unanswered Benghazi Questions
My problem with the Administration’s story about the Benghazi attack is rooted in the question, “What was Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi?” Last week we saw a Ben Rhodes Rhodes email that instructed Susan Rice “to underscore that these protests are rooted in [an] Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” After almost two years I think the case for a broad policy failure is getting stronger and is rooted in these unanswered Benghazi questions.
- What was Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi when Britain was pulling out?
I partially accepted the State Department admission that they were stupid when they sent Ambassador Stevens to Benghazi. Considering that Britain and others had pulled out of Benghazi due to attacks, this implies that the State Department deliberately ignored the security situation in Benghazi. So far I have not seen any action by the Administration or the State Department that shows that they have learned anything from this fatal attraction with insularity. So when is the State Department going to start sounding like they have read and understand the local intelligence reports and are listening to what our friends and foes are saying? That is their job. - What was our foreign policy at the time and has it changed for the better?
If we move from the local intelligence failure to policy failure, I am still not sure what our foreign policy objectives are in Benghazi, Syria, or the Ukraine. It looks like we are making it up as we go along and Mr. Putin noticed. I do not think it is much of a stretch to think that our flopping around in Benghazi and Syria gave Mr. Putin the green light to invade Ukraine. Underestimating Mr. Putin was a policy failure. I realize the Administration wanted to distinguish itself as different than the previous Administration but you still have to be a winner. Mr. Putin looks at foreign policy as a war by another means and the Administration looks at foreign policy as t-ball! I doubt that even the most ardent Administration supporter will try and make the argument that the foreign policies decisions in Benghazi, Syria, or Ukraine are working. - Was there a cover-up so that the President could get re-elected and what political changes need to happen to prevent cover-ups by future Administrations?
This is an unforced error by the Administration. Everything they have done to impede the investigation has made the case for a broader policy failure more apparent. Are those four men deaths collateral damage from a Presidential campaign?
Can We Ever Trust The IRS Again?
I hold government bureaucrats to a much higher standard than the average citizen. Government bureaucrats have been given both power and the trust of people. So whether your primary concern is cronyism or government corruption or just plain incompetence, government bureaucrats are guilty until proven innocent. They must embody both virtue and integrity if our government is to function in a reasonable manner. Our founding fathers wrote extensively about virtue so I am puzzled why anyone would let Lois Lerner and the IRS dabble with politics. It was not in the best interest of the IRS or the country.
So let’s review what we know about the IRS targeting particular 503c4 applications for more scrutiny. The advantage of 503c4 corporations is that the donations they receive are tax deductible and anonymous as long as they were focused on social welfare issues like voter registration. This was pretty handy to the NAACP in the early years when they were trying to get more blacks registered to vote. If an organization steps over the political line, the remedy is that the IRS pulls their tax exempt status. If we look at the True The Vote website we can see that their mission is equipping citizens to take a stand for free and fair elections. Using the NAACP as the standard then the True The Vote effort looks very similar but for a different group of people. If the IRS is following standard practices they should approve the True The Vote 503c4 status and gently remind them that they will yank their tax exempt status if they cross over the line. That is what they should have done.
Instead the IRS chose a variety of tactics that brings in to question the integrity of the organization.
- They targeted certain group based on their use of certain words for extra scrutiny.
- They requested more information from the organizations than was required for the IRS to do their job.
- They delayed the approval status for a very long time.
Obviously this involves a lot more effort by IRS then the traditional route of granting 503c4 status and threatening to yank the tax exempt status later. The IRS had the means and opportunity to harass prospective 503c4 organizations but what was the motive?
In the Washington Times today we have begun to gain a little insight into the motive.
IRS emails released Wednesday show that just before the tea party targeting scandal was revealed last year, Lois G. Lerner and her colleagues at the tax agency were talking with the Justice Department about making examples out of nonprofit groups that they felt were violating campaign laws by playing political roles.
Okay, why was the IRS considering suing nonprofit groups when they could easily yank the tax exempt status? Who put them in charge of enforcing campaign laws? This sure looks like a motive and makes it look like they deliberately chose to violate the trust of the people so they could play hard ball politics from the security of the IRS office! Now we are confronted with the dilemma of how to rebuild trust in the IRS without firing everyone. If Congress does not set an example with the IRS now then what will stop a Republican president from using the IRS in the same manner? Thanks to Lois we are reminded that trust is easy to lose but very hard to win back.
Is Federal Land Ownership In The Same Political Quagmire As Slavery in the 1800s?
The federal land ownership question has me puzzled. I understand why it may have been good for the federal government to reserve vast amounts of land from the states when they applied for statehood but I do not understand why they are still doing it now. It kind of reminds me of the problem our founding fathers had with the slavery issue. It was necessary for our founding fathers to agree to protect the slave trade for twenty years so that they could get the votes to pass the Constitution. However when the twenty year time limit expired, Congress quickly passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807. The shelf life for the slavery issue had expired and it was stinking up the place. It was pretty obvious to the supporters of slavery that most of the country had decided that the practice of slavery should be abolished and that slaves should be freed. It was not obvious how this could be accomplished politically. In the end there is nothing like a very uncivil war to remind us that this political issue was not handled well. Not only did both the North and the South lose a large number of men to finally settle the slavery issue but the economy of South was devastated and the job opportunities for the newly freed slaves was primarily as sharecroppers. It was the classic lose-lose scenario that got worse with age.
Once again our country is caught up in another lose-lose opportunity. The country is in an absentee landlord relationship with the western states. If the saying “All politics is local” is true, for whose benefit is the federal government trying to keep up with these local grievances? Even though I question the legality of Mr. Bundy’s actions, he has shown the Putin approach to dealing with the federal government works. Now we get to see if the Administration can be more successful at talking down this situation then they have been with convincing Putin to not invade Ukraine. If the talks with Bundy stall what is the federal government going to do? I am sure that invading Nevada would be amusing spectacle to most people outside of Nevada. Maybe it is time for the federal government to do something it should have done more than 100 years ago and scale down the federal ownership of western lands. It is time to start selling the land and the first place to start would be to sell the grazing land to Mr. Bundy. It is the right thing to do. The shelf life for this absentee landlord relationship has expired and it has begun to stink.
Former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio Tells Story of Fight Against NSA, SEC
My wife was adamant that I listen to this interview between Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business and former Qwest CEO, Joe Nacchio. She thought it was the most explosive story about the NSA this year. She is right and I think the NSA should be worried. Mr. Nacchio looks like he is getting his ducks in a row to publish a book that will question the practices of the NSA for over a decade. This has to be a very inconvenient time for a book about alleged illegal NSA practices. In the interview I think that he made three good arguments.
- The NSA started illegal surveillance of American citizens prior to 2001.
- The NSA engaged in a war against Qwest that was not wise and definitely sounds like it was not in the best interest of the American people or the intelligence gathering effort.
- As a result of this war between Qwest and the NSA, he did not get a fair trial and was unduly punished for a crime he did not commit.
This is not a new story. The first reference I found on the Internet to this story is a Electronic Frontier Foundation article in 2007, Qwest CEO: NSA Punished Qwest for Refusing to Participate in Illegal Surveillance–Pre-9/11! An interesting comment made by Mr. Nacchio had to be the one he made about retroactive telephone company immunity legislation in 2007. Here is a quote from Wikipedia on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act(FISA) history.
At the same time, the Senate Intelligence Committee reportedly reached a compromise with the White House on a different proposal that would give telephone carriers legal immunity for any role they played in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program approved by President Bush after the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.
I am guessing but this looks like the telephone companies thought their activities prior to 2007 were probably illegal and they wanted a get out of jail free card from the government. They were probably afraid of getting the Nacchio treatment. This looks like a lousy way to run an intelligence operation. I doubt the NSA had the hearts and souls of the telephone companies on their side when the telephone companies’ most important issue appears to be retroactive immunity. It implies a degree of incompetence or corruption in the NSA. So now we get to the big question, how do we reform the NSA? If a good NSA exists and how do we get there? Edward Snowden has his ideas on how to accomplish this. I have a different idea. As a former Qwest stock holder I have to wonder whether my losses were because of bad luck or illegal activities by the NSA. Here is a strange thought. If Mr. Nacchio is successful in his argument that he failed to get a fair trial because of retribution by the NSA then how long do you think it will take before some aspiring lawyer files a class action suit against the NSA for Qwest stock market losses caused by the NSA vendetta. I suspect the NSA will be more willing to look at reform as we get closer to the Presidential election and it looks like the public flogging will go on forever. Of course, that would require that the NSA turn over a new leaf and negotiate in good faith. Good luck with that!
Former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio Tells Story of Fight Against NSA, SEC
Thing That Make Me Go Hmm… Reflecting On Ohio’s Economic Turnaround
I was fascinated with the Fox News interview of Governor Kasich this morning. Chris Wallace asked Governor Kasich the following question.
You have engineered quite a turnaround at Ohio since you took office in 2011 and let’s put up part of your record. Your state has been the number five job creator in the nation over that period of time. And number one in the Midwest. Unemployment is now 6.5 percent. The lowest in your state since June of 2008. And Ohio has gone from an $8 billion deficit to a $1.5 billion surplus. Question: what is the secret to your success?
The alleged job creation performance was pretty amazing considering that the last time I looked at Ohio’s job creation performance I was not impressed. So I decided to crunch the numbers. I picked up the job creation numbers from the Job Growth Update page at Arizona State University and found that Ohio’s 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 job growth performance was definitely middling. They were ranked number 26,18, 25, and 33. This was less impressive than the performance of Indiana which was ranked 5, 8, 40, and 20. So how did Fox come up with the optimistic talking point?
Since the question talked about jobs created, I put the data into a spreadsheet and calculated the actual number of jobs created. In this case Ohio ranked 7th since Ohio has a larger population than most of the states. However if we use this definition of job creation than the number one job creator in the Midwest is Illinois since it has the largest population in the Midwest. Hmm…
Why Not Delay The Affordable Care Act Forever?
If the most popular “fix” to the Affordable Care Act has been to delay it, you have to ask the question what is the end game for fixing the Affordable Care Act? Delaying the Affordable Care Act has been a simple and popular “fix” for the Administration. If the delay is successful with its targeted population in 2014 then the politics gets even stronger to continue to delay major provisions of the Affordable Care Act till a more opportune time. That opportune time does not look like it is going to be 2015 or 2016. The longer this delay goes on the more likely the voters will be more confortable that there will never be a opportune time. At some point the “Doc Fix Follies” becomes the political model for health care reform. So why should a politician attempt to “fix” the Affordable Care Act when repeated delays is the simple, popular, and successful political answer?
Was The Republican Party Snub of John Becker Another Example Of What Is Wrong With Our Political Parties?
Yesterday I found out that the Enquirer is reporting that the Ohio Republican Party failed to endorse John Becker and two other area Republican state representatives. I am a constitutional libertarian with Republican leanings who voted for John in the last election. Based on my voting record I am not a reliable Republican voter so what is the Republican Party saying to me about John and the Ohio Republican Party? I can see that the Ohio Republican Party sounds petty. On the other hand the Ohio legislature has plenty of people who can spend money and relatively few people who have a clue how to balance a the budget. Considering Ohio’s poor performance at controlling spending Ohio probably needs more people like John. He has the skills we need for our future well being. It may be inconvenient for both political parties but it is hard to imagine Ohio taking businesses and jobs from Indiana and Illinois without getting its financial books in order. So why should voters choose Republicans over Democrats to govern the next four years? For most voters the top two issues is the economy and jobs. Instead of a growing Ohio economy and jobs we seem to have settled for a Medicaid expansion. Not exactly an inspiring future for my kid. Maybe the current situation is dire enough that the winning party will get some bipartisan cooperation that gets businesses to expand while both parties promise to fight the good political fight another day. This may sound silly but this type of political bargain has worked in the past. The first step is getting along with people you disagree with. If Republicans want to be the winning party you have to ask if they cannot get along with people like John, what are the chances they will get along with Democrats who are still smarting from some pretty bad decisions over the last six years? Between the failed roll out of the Affordable Care Act, the questionable foreign policy decisions of Benghazi, Syria, and the Ukraine, and the never ending saga of the IRS targeting the Tea Party, you would have to say the Democratic Party has made a very persuasive argument that they are the stupid party. It is accomplishment they are not particularly proud of. After twelve months trying to defend the Affordable Care Act we should expect them to be a little testy. My favorite response by an Administration official has to be this comment about the Benghazi response 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.
One thing we should have learned at the expense of the Democratic party was that “the my way or the highway approach” leads to bad decision making and impairs your re-election chances. So here is the big question. Has the Republican Party learned anything or are the Republicans doomed to make the same mistakes as the Democratic Party?
Did The President Join The Tea Party This Week?
I am still pondering the President’s plan for the individual mandate. I realize that the executive branch has been given a lot of leeway in implementing the Affordable Care Act but his recent actions concerning the individual mandate are humorous at best. Just last year the Democratic party railed against the Tea Party as legislative arsonists for their efforts to defund Affordable Care Act. Here is a Nancy Pelosi quote from Mediate.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi appeared on State of the Union Sunday morning to discuss the looming budget showdown, and told host Candy Crowley that the House GOP, which just passed a continuing resolution that did not fund ObamaCare, were legislative arsonists intent not on cutting government but crippling it.
Although defunding the Affordable Care Act was not likely even to the Tea Party faithful there was a lot of political agreement by both parties to postpone the individual mandate. Postponing the individual mandate was the political middle ground since it polls badly and it is an election year. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. The Administration had a great opportunity to give a little on the individual mandate in exchange for laying the ground work for bipartisan cooperation in fixing the Affordable Care Act. The greatest political opportunity to rescue the Affordable Care Act was staring the administration in the face and they fumbled it. Now we find that their plan is to postpone the individual mandate by executive order! They chose the solution with all of the problems and none of the benefits. I don’t get it! It is as if the Administration is deliberately setting fire to their signature legislation. Can we discern a difference between the Administration’s handling of the Affordable Care Act problems and the efforts of the Tea Party last Fall? Therefore if we believe Nancy Pelosi’s definition that acting like a legislative arsonist is one of the defining characteristics of the Tea Party then it follows that the President must have joined the Tea Party.