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Paul L. Caron
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Wednesday, September 2, 2015

The IRS Scandal, Day 846

IRS Logo 2Wall Street Journal editorial, The Off-Grid Administration: The Many Ways Obama Officials Have Ducked Public Accountability:

In a famous remark two years ago during a Google Plus Hangout, President Obama boasted that “this is the most transparent administration in history.” This is belied by Administration officials, from Hillary Clinton on down, who have run their communications off the government grid. A bipartisan consensus has long held that a healthy democracy requires a significant measure of government transparency. That is why since 1950 Washington has operated under the Federal Records Act, which requires the government to preserve documents about its decisions.

Since the 1960s the government has been subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving citizens the right to view those records. In 2009 the National Archives issued rules requiring agencies to preserve employee work on nonofficial accounts in a government record-keeping system. Then came the Obama Administration, whose modus operandi has been to hide from this legal regime. ...

Last Monday the IRS was forced to acknowledge to a federal court that it recently discovered that Lois Lerner (of political targeting fame) used a second, private email to conduct government work. The account was set up under the name “ Toby Miles,” and the IRS still can’t account for its contents.

It has been two years since Congress first subpoenaed Ms. Lerner’s emails. In 2013 when Mrs. Lerner was still directing the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit, she cautioned colleagues to be careful what they said on email; then she inquired whether the agency’s instant-messaging system was archived. Told it wasn’t, she responded by email: "Perfect."

Last week a federal court subpoenaed former EPA official Phillip North after a complaint by a mining concern called the Pebble Partnership. Mr. North worked from inside the EPA with outside activists to scuttle Pebble’s proposed Alaskan mining project, and he did so on private email.

The Lerner and North cases also highlight the Administration’s sloppy, or willfully obstructionist, approach to recordkeeping. Recall the crash of Ms. Lerner’s hard drive, and the IRS’s claim for months it had no backup of her work. Treasury’s Inspector General would later find some. Mr. North’s hard drive also crashed, and Pebble claims that key North emails and documents have gone missing from EPA’s official record. ...

Government officials need some modicum of privacy to get work done. But this Administration’s evasion goes way past a reasonable standard of conduct. Why shouldn’t the public conclude that officials serving in the Obama Administration are flouting the disclosure system because they are engaged in practices they wish to hide from public knowledge and debate?

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Comments

Its an activist administration, meaning it fills its ranks with people out of the Democrat's militant activist community. Groups whose understanding of law, ethics, and morality are tangental at best and open hostility at worst. These activist groups regularly engage in deceit and violence. This administration takes the kookiest and most corrupt elements of far left extremest groups and places them in the most powerful positions in our country.

Are we to be shocked at how they act? Are we to deny the things we see and believe fairy tale narratives?

No one can clean up the Democrat party but themselves. More regulations won't prevent criminals from breaking laws, only the inner id can do that. But Democrats wallow in this. Activism is like a religion and can do no wrong. So we are stuck until the Democrats have a reformation.

Posted by: wodun | Sep 2, 2015 9:12:39 AM