The Myth that Progressives were Targeted the Same as Conservatives by the IRS

Jehmu Greene was on Fox News with Katie Pavlich on a segment that got cut short so I'm hard pressed to find the video. But in essence Jehmu stated the myth that progressives were targeted the same as conservatives. 

Bullshit.

IRS’s three “test” cases were all conservative organizations: Prescott Tea Party, American Junto, the Albuquerque Tea Party. (pp. 14-18)

Congressional Democrats made misleading claims about the targeting. Democratic Members of Congress, including Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, Ranking Member Sander Levin, and Representative Gerry Connolly, made misleading claims that the IRS targeted liberal-oriented groups based on documents selectively produced by the IRS. (pp. 7-13)

IRS selectively released documents supporting the misleading claims. The IRS cited 6103 protections for taxpayer information to withhold details about the targeting from the American public, but reversed its decision in August 2013 to release information helpful to its cause. (pp. 11)

MYTH: Progressive groups were also targeted.Only seven applications in the IRS backlog contained the word “progressive,” all of which were then approved by the IRS, while Tea Party groups received unprecedented review and experienced years-long delays. While some liberal-oriented groups were singled out for scrutiny, evidence shows it was due to non-political reasons. (pp. 32-35)

MYTHS:  False Democratic claims of political targeting about specific groups exposed: Where the IRS identified liberal-oriented groups for scrutiny, evidence shows that it did so for objective, non-political reasons and not because of the groups’ political beliefs. (p.32)

ACORN groups – IRS employees testified that former ACORN affiliates were scrutinized out of concern that they were old organizations improperly applying as new ones and not because of their political beliefs. (pp. 40–42)

Emerge America – IRS employees testified that Emerge Groups were scrutinized after some had already been approved and the IRS became concerned about improper private benefit – not because of their political beliefs. (pp. 42–44)

Occupy Wall Street – The Committee has found no evidence that the IRS subjected Occupy applicants to burdensome and intrusive information requests or even seen evidence that “Occupy Wall Street” or an affiliate organization applied to the IRS for non-profit status. (pp. 44–45)

Want the whole report? Here you go.

When they get on even Fox News and this lie is uncontested, please help us out and let her know she's an idiot. Or more specifically, let's let the world know Jehmu Greene is a hack.

Holy Crap, the EPA Can't Keep Email Either?

"Hey Ed."

"Yeah, Bob?"

"So this thing with the IRS, losing the email? You know?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Seems to be working."

"Ya wanna use it for us too?"

"What the hell. It couldn't hurt."

Via @Iowahawkblog and Ace:

The hearing also included a bit of deja vu for the committee when members grilled McCarthy on lost emails from a hard-drive crash (the same issue that wiped out emails from IRS employee Lois Lerner). In this case, the emails in question were from retired EPA employee Philip North, who was involved in the agency's decision to begin the process of preemptively vetoing the Pebble Mine project in Alaska. 

North, who declined an interview request by the committee, is retired, and committee staff say they have been unable to track him down. According to a committee aide, North's hard drive crashed in 2010—which was around the same time that the committee is investigating the agency's discussions of a potential veto—and the emails were not backed up.

Maybe it was all the mercury in those curlyQ light bulbs in the server rooms. 

Paul Ryan: Devastator of IRS Officials "You should apologize to the Taxpayers!"

You go, Paul.

Pull Quote:

"You can reach into the lives of hardworking taxpayers and with a phone call or an email or a letter, you can turn their lives upside-down. You ask taxpayers to hang on to seven years of their personal tax information just in case they are ever audited and you can't keep six months worth of employee emails?!"

Well I can't say it any better myself. My amazement is how the dems are oh-so-horrified at Paul Ryan's apparent rudeness in his 3+ minutes of talking. The abuse of the IRS for the last 4+ years? No big deal. 

Assholes.

IRS is a Bunch Of F***ing Liars. Lessons in Email

Here's the latest round of horseshit from the IRS:

The IRS said it cannot locate many of Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year. 

Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party and other conservative groups. 

Republican congressional leaders were incensed. 

"The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS's response to congressional inquiries," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the inspector general."

Guys, this cannot happen. Not because it's a bad thing to happen but because it's damn near impossible unless they are total and complete incompetents.

I have been in IT for 20 years. One of my specialties is Microsoft Exchange, which I have been working with since 1998. In Exchange 2007, 2010, and 2013, this is nearly impossible unless you are a complete idiot.

Let me explain. In Exchange, there are servers that hold your mailbox. Each mailbox is stored in a database called an Information Store. An information store can hold many or all the mailboxes but for say a 200 users organization, you would probably have about 5-10 stores. It really depends on how big you let the mailboxes get. You can put limits and quotas but typically organizations tend to just let the boxes grow. Keeping the stores around 100 gig is generally a good rule of thumb. Mailboxes get around 2-5 gigs for most users in businesses and government so 20-50 mailboxes is typical.

Now it is real easy (and pretty mandatory) to set up a second server and create synchronized copies of all the information stores. Every time you get an email, a copy of it created in the other store. Should the server crash, the other server would take over with generally little if any loss of data.

It is possible they have Exchange 2003. In that case, the information store usually set up on a SAN (Storage area network) and multiple servers can access the same store. If a server goes down, another takes over.

No IT administrator worth his salt would set up an exchange server without these safeguards, not in an organization as big as the IRS. It doesn't happen. Secondly, let's say all the servers crashed, it would destroy just Lois Lerner's emails? No it would destroy everyone's email.

Now let's talk about backup and archiving. Every one uses some sort of tape backup to move the email to tape. Then there is software like Source One which archives every single mail ever sent. Which means, even if you delete an email from your mailbox, it's still there. These kind of systems are mandatory for financial firms, legal firms, etc. You gonna tell me the IRS doesn't have it? BS.

What they say is that Lois's workstation crashed and that's what lost the email. Email doesn't reside on the workstation. Could it? Could this happen? Yes, it is possible but it is so unlikely that it is nearly not worth talking about.

Email is always sent back and forth between servers using a protocol call SMTP. However email retrieval is a little different. In the early days and for many people using home email systems (hotmail, their ISP's email, GMAIL, etc.) they may use a protocol called POP3. POP3 will retrieve the email from the server and store it on the local machine. Once it's retrieved, it's deleted from the server.

However in Exchange systems, they use MAPI. This is a little different than POP3 in that it never removes the mail from the server. Exchange does more than email, it schedules appointments in a calendar, it creates tasks, it stores your contacts, and much more. Pop3 would make using the collaborative functions of Exchange useless.

So was Lois Lerner keeping her emails local? There are possibilities that she could have been, I can't say it's completely impossible. But to set up the circumstances so that this kind of failure could happen means that the technical staff at the IRS is completely incompetent, or the IRS is lying, committing fraud, and destroying evidence.

It's the latter. I'm telling you, they are criminally responsible and did it on purpose. There is no way the system is set up that badly for one person who just happens to be target of an investigation. It's too much to believe.