Pejman Yousefzadeh

I have a lot to write about.

I’ll start with the fact that the president has asked for the resignation of Steven Miller, the acting director of the IRS. There was a lot of tough talk from the president about how the IRS’s actions were supposedly inexcusable and intolerable, but note that the IRS makes it very difficult to actually bring it to account for any abuses it engages in:

The IRS has usually done an excellent job of stifling investigations of its practices. A 1991 survey of 800 IRS executives and managers by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics revealed that three out of four respondents felt entitled to deceive or lie when testifying before a congressional committee.

The agency also has a long history of seeking to intimidate congressional critics: In 1925, Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair personally delivered a demand for $10 million in back taxes to Michigan’s Republican Sen. James Couzens—who had launched an investigation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue—as he stepped out of the Senate chamber. More recently, after Sen. Joe Montoya of New Mexico announced plans in 1972 to hold hearings on IRS abuses, the agency added his name to a list of tax protesters who were capable of violence against IRS agents.

Meanwhile, for anyone who is still under the ridiculous impression that the IRS didn’t engage in any abuses when it came to its treatment of tea party groups …

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

I don’t envy anyone who is tasked with trying to defend this behavior, although some port-side commentators are still desperately trying to do so because in this case, the IRS targeted people they don’t like.

I’m going to link to an excerpt a bunch of material courtesy of Jim Geraghty’s excellent Morning Jolt below. Excerpt one:

At the time when tea party groups were targeted, Miller was a deputy commissioner who oversaw the division that dealt with tax-exempt organizations.

The report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration does not indicate that Miller knew conservative groups were being targeted until after the practice ended. But documents show that Miller repeatedly failed to tell Congress that tea party groups were being targeted, even after he had been briefed on the matter.

Excerpt two:

The director of the Internal Revenue Service division under fire for singling out conservative groups sent a 2012 letter under her name to one such group, POLITICO has learned.

The March 2012 letter was sent to the Ohio-based American Patriots Against Government Excess (American PAGE) under the name of Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division.

As Geraghty points out, this shows that “low-level employees” weren’t the ones primarily responsible for this scandal. Excerpt three:

In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn’t be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like “Progress” or “Progressive,” the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups. They included:

• Bus for Progress, a New Jersey non-profit that uses a red, white and blue bus to “drive the progressive change.” According to its website, its mission includes “support (for) progressive politicians with the courage to serve the people’s interests and make tough choices.” It got an IRS approval as a social welfare group in April 2011.
• Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment says it fights against corporate welfare and for increasing the minimum wage. “It would be fair to say we’re on the progressive end of the spectrum,” said executive director Jeff Ordower. He said the group got tax-exempt status in September 2011 in just nine months after “a pretty simple, straightforward process.”
• Progress Florida, granted tax-exempt status in January 2011, is lobbying the Florida Legislature to expand Medicaid under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, one of President Obama’s signature accomplishments. The group did not return phone calls. “We’re busy fighting to build a more progressive Florida and cannot take your call right now,” the group’s voice mail said.

Like the Tea Party groups, the liberal groups sought recognition as social welfare groups under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, based on activities like “citizen participation” or “voter education and registration.”

And finally, excerpt four from Geraghty:

Eight months passed without word from the agency about the group’s application, Ryun said. In February 2012, Ryun’s attorney contacted the IRS to ask if it needed more information to secure its non-profit status as a 501(c)3 organization. According to Ryun, the IRS told him that the application was being processed by the agency’s office in Cincinnati, Ohio—the same one currently facing scrutiny for targeting conservative groups—and to check back in two months.

As directed, Ryun followed up with the IRS in April 2012, and was told that Media Trackers’ application was still under review.

When September 2012 arrived with still no word from the IRS, Ryun determined that Media Trackers would likely never obtain standalone non-profit status, and he tried a new approach: Starting over. He applied for permanent non-profit status for a separate group called Greenhouse Solutions, a pre-existing organization that was reaching the end of its determination period.

The IRS approved Greenhouse Solutions’ request for non-profit status in three weeks.

Tell me again how this is not a scandal.

As expected, the White House continues to blame everyone but itself for the scandal. The newest scapegoat is the Treasury department. Because God forbid that the White House itself start taking some responsibility for how unbelievably awful this scandal has gotten. Dana Milbank is one of the worst columnists around, but unlike the Obama administration, at least Milbank has eaten his Wheaties:

… Nixon was a control freak. Obama seems to be the opposite: He wants no control over the actions of his administration. As the president distances himself from the actions of “independent” figures within his administration, he’s creating a power vacuum in which lower officials behave as though anything goes. Certainly, a president can’t know what everybody in his administration is up to — but he can take responsibility, he can fire people and he can call a stop to foolish actions such as wholesale snooping into reporters’ phone calls.

Mitt Romney had his faults as a presidential candidate. But anything would be better than having a pretend president right about now.

John Kerry believes that Iran has an “elected” government. As the article makes clear, that is just entirely untrue. See also this.

Is this the “smart foreign policy” we were promised in the second term of the Obama administration? Shouldn’t we be worried about the fact that the secretary of state doesn’t know the basics about the stolen 2009 presidential election?

Oh, and remind me again why Kerry ever thought he was in any position to make fun of Mitt Romney’s grasp of foreign policy? Say what you want about Romney, but I am sure that he knows the 2009 election was stolen.

Our new secretary of state is abroad in his first overseas trip. It has had its stumbles:

John Kerry has suffered his first gaffe as the new US secretary of state, inventing the nation of ‘Kyrzakhstan’

In an embarrassing slip of the tongue, Mr Kerry last week praised US diplomats working to secure “democratic institutions” in the Central Asian country, which does not exist.

The newly minted diplomat was referring to Kyrgyzstan, a poor, landlocked nation of 5.5 million, which he appeared to confuse with its resource-rich neighbour to the north, Kazakhstan.

The State Department kindly omitted the error in the official transcript of Wednesday’s speech, which Mr Kerry delivered on the eve of his first foreign trip as secretary of state.

Now of course, anyone can have a slip of the tongue. But this was just desserts for an arrogant politician who thought he was being funny and amusing when he made fun of Mitt Romney’s overseas trip last year. Somewhere, Romney must be chuckling to himself over Kerry’s performance.

newyorker:

In today’s Daily Comment, Jeffrey Toobin writes about how the disappearance of Republican presidential candidates from political life in the past couple of decades, aside from John McCain, “reflects a fundamental problem with the contemporary Republican Party.”

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/11Dbtcu

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty.

Actually, it reflects the fact that Bush is still unpopular and that losers of general elections tend to fade away. I didn’t hear much recently about George McGovern until he died, and I don’t tend to hear all that much from Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, or Mike Dukakis. Al Gore is in the news, but that is because he has a new book and because he made a fortune selling his failure of a television station to al Jazeera. John Kerry is in the news but that is because he is the secretary of state, and before that, because he was a sitting senator and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

I recognize that the New Yorker likes writing articles whose underlying premise is “Republicans suck,” but life—and politics—is just a wee bit more complicated than that. Of course, leave it to Jeffrey Toobin to fail to understand that.

Say, remember all of the fuss that got raised about Mitt Romney’s foreign accounts? Remember how his decisions to park money in the Caymans and in Switzerland showed that he wasn’t a patriotic American, or something?

Ahem:

As recently as 2010, Jack Lew, President Obama‘s nominee to be the next secretary of the Treasury, had $56,000 invested in a CitiGroup venture capital fund based in the Cayman Islands’ notorious Ugland House, a building whose mailboxes are home to nearly 19,000 corporate entities, many of them tax shelters.

The investment has been in public documents for years and drew no attention when Mr. Lew was confirmed to be deputy secretary of state in 2009 and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2010.

But the fund is coming to light as Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are zeroing on taxes lost to off-shore entities, including hedge funds, as a way to stave off $1 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts set to begin March 1.

Aides in both parties said it was quite likely to come up during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. Senate Democrats are struggling to come up with a package of spending cuts and tax loophole closings that could stave off the automatic spending cuts — known as sequestration — for at least three months. Tax breaks for hedge fund managers and offshore tax shelters are a prime target.

The Finance Committee held hearings in 2008 burrowing in on Ugland House, a nondescript white building in George Town, Cayman Islands, that shelters a bewildering number of corporate headquarters.

“Today we will take a look at some ostensibly crowded halls, those of the Ugland House in the Cayman Islands,” Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the committee’s chairman, said, opening the hearing. “That is a remarkable five-story building that the G.A.O. tells us has some 18,857 tenants. Today we will examine whether many of those tenants are feasting at America’s taxpayers’ expense.”

[…]

“President Obama has been almost obsessively critical of offshore investments,” [Senator Charles] Grassley said. “He called Ugland House ‘either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.’ That makes this Cayman Islands investment of his top official and now Treasury secretary nominee worthy of attention. The irony is thick. Members of the Finance Committee will question Mr. Lew about his foreign investments at the hearing.”

Now, let’s be clear about something. Unlike those who accused Mitt Romney of a lack of patriotism simply because of where his money was/is located, I am not about to make the same accusations when it comes to Jack Lew. That’s because I’m not a McCarthyite and that’s because Romney’s critics during the 2012 presidential election campaign proved the truth of Samuel Johnson’s saying: Patriotism really is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and I don’t feel like being a scoundrel, thank you very much.

But if Romney’s critics have any semblance of intellectual honesty, they will attack Lew as viciously as they attacked Romney. I doubt they will, of course. In addition to being scoundrels, they are likely hypocrites. They will hold their tongues and pretend that this story simply does not exist.

But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us ought to be silent about the story, or about the fact that there are a lot of port-side politicians and pundits who are as disingenuous and dishonest as they are demagogic.

Recall that it wasn’t until one day before election day that 60 Minutes finally admitted what most of us knew; after the attacks in Benghazi, Barack Obama initially refrained from calling the attacks an act of terrorism. This of course meant that Mitt Romney’s charge regarding the issue—allegedly “fact-checked” by Candy Crowley during the second presidential debate—was right all along. I’ll repeat what I wrote regarding this revelation:

The fact that this piece of news–which could have turned around the perception that Romney misstated the facts on Benghazi in the second debate–was not released until the day before the election is completely inexcusable and represents journalistic malpractice at its worst.

Of course, it ought to go without saying that I stand by those words. And of course, it ought to go without saying that 60 Minutes is nowhere near done shilling for the Obama administration.

Those who decided to sit through Steve Kroft’s interview with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton must have wondered why 60 Minutes was essentially giving free favorable publicity to both the Obama administration and to any Hillary-for-president campaign that we are forced to endure in the future. Eliana Johnson shows that when it comes to interviewing Democrats vs. interviewing Republicans, 60 Minutes has very different standards:

Because so much of an audience’s reaction hinges on these intangibles, it’s useful to compare last night’s interview with another, the one the program conducted last year with House majority leader Eric Cantor. I’ve put a number of clips from the two interviews side-by-side above. 

The warmth Steve Kroft displayed toward Obama and Clinton was, to me, unmistakable; the three laughed together like old friends. Leslie Stahl, on the other hand, brought no such levity to her interview with Cantor, which aired on January 1, 2012. At times, Stahl seemed downright hostile, at one point narrowing her eyes and asking “What?” 

Kroft asked questions such as, “Why did you want to do this together, a joint interview?” and “Why were you so insistent about wanting her to be secretary of state?” Kroft asked not a single follow-up question, even when the president made implausible assertions such as, “when it comes to Egypt, I think, had it not been for the leadership we showed, you might have seen a different outcome there.” This, by the way, as Muslim Brotherhood snipers gunned down protesters from the rooftops in Cairo. 

Cantor, on the other hand, was challenged at every turn. He fielded questions such as, “Why go through this brinksmanship, gamesmanship, one-upsmanship? Explain it. Maybe there’s a real good answer,” and “Congress has a 9 percent approval rating. What do you think this conveys about confidence in our government? Don’t you think this is shredding that?” Stahl challenged Cantor on his assertion that he is willing to compromise with the president on fiscal issues: “Okay, but what about revenues? A compromise. You wanted the spending cuts, they wanted revenues,” and, later in the interview, offered, “But revenues reduce the deficit.”

Stahl did her job. Politicians should be subjected to tough questions and have their assertions challenged, not swallowed wholesale, as America watched Steve Kroft do last night. 

No one should be surprised that Republicans get tougher treatment on 60 Minutes, but no one should complain about tough treatment per se. Politicians should be forced to go through the wringer when they sit down with journalists. The trouble is that in the world of 60 Minutes, the only politicians who appear to go through the wringer are Republicans. Imagine that.

Evidently, Steve Kroft is Barack Obama’s “favorite interviewer,” and the president “likes 60 Minutes.” It is not hard to understand why, but actual journalists should get at least a little bit worried if politicians claim to like being interviewed on their shows; it could be a sign that said politicians believe they are getting free passes from the journalists on those shows, and not being challenged on the issues of the day. I suppose that it is also worth noting that Kroft “thought” that the president and his secretary of state were “very affectionate with each other.” How this is newsworthy is anyone’s guess.

I’ll tell you what is newsworthy when the president and the secretary of state sit down for an interview: Foreign policy! Here’s Kroft on why he decided to surprise everyone and upset the expectations of any substantive viewers that he had by not delving into any serious foreign policy discussions when he had the chance to hold the feet of both the president of the United States and the secretary of state to the fire:

“I would have liked very much to delve into some areas of foreign policy and what is going on in the world, but it was not anything we could take on in 30 minutes,” Kroft said, noting the time offered by the White House.

Besides, he said, there are opportunities to ask those questions in presidential or state department briefings.

“What was not ever likely to present itself was the opportunity to sit down and talk to them about their professional relationship,” he said. “We thought that was the most important thing to do. You can watch their body language. You can judge what their relationship is.”

So, instead of discussing foreign policy, Kroft decided to be the Richard Attenborough of Obama-Clinton body language. And this is supposed to edify and educate us? This is supposed to ensure that we are caught up on the issues of the day? Given that Barack Obama, as president, is supposed to deal with foreign policy issues (and has a remarkably free hand to do so as president, compared to the constraints that are placed upon him by having to deal with Congress in the realm of domestic policy), and given that Hillary Clinton is the secretary of state for the love of all that is holy, one would think that foreign policy issues would receive some kind of serious attention. Alas, one would be wrong.

But at the very least, we might expect some attention to be paid to the prospect of Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016, right? Here’s Kroft on that issue:

“[Barack Obama is] not interested in endorsing somebody for president and she’s not, right now, interested in running, so the whole thing is kind of silly,” [Kroft] said.

It is not clear from that passage whether Kroft thinks that the discussion is silly, or whether the president does. If the latter, what does Kroft think of the president’s designation of the subject as “silly”? If the former, why does Kroft think that it is “silly”? Does Kroft really believe that the issue of whether the president supports a potential presidential run by his secretary of state—with whom he is sitting down for a joint intervew, for the love of Heaven!—is silly? Can he defend that proposition? Can he defend it if it is the president who thinks that the subject matter is “silly”? If so, how? We are not told. Presumably, Kroft is still too busy focusing on Obama-Clinton body language signals to give us an answer.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that when it comes to criticism of Kroft’s style and lack of substance, Kroft says “This is something that has not been on my radar screen.” Because, you know, God forbid that Steve Kroft should be forced to take heed of criticism and improve his work product.

So, let me see if I have this straight.

Leon Panetta—a man—is going to leave his position as secretary of defense. Barack Obama wants him to be replaced by Chuck Hagel—a man.

Michael Morell—a man—is going to leave his position as acting director of central intelligence. Barack Obama wants him to be replaced by John Brennan—a man.

Hillary Clinton—a woman—is going to leave her position as secretary of state. Barack Obama wants her to be replaced by John Kerry—a man.

Timothy Geithner—a man—is going to leave his position as secretary of the treasury. Barack Obama wants him to be replaced by Jack Lew—a man.

Since making Jack Lew—a man—the secretary of the treasury would require him to leave his current position as chief of staff, Barack Obama will have to nominate someone else for that position. According to the New York Times, the choice is down to Ronald Klain and Denis McDonough—both men. The Times further notes the following:

What is striking, especially at a time when Mr. Obama has come under criticism for the scarcity of women among his top officials, is that both the deputy chiefs of staff to Mr. Lew are well-regarded women and neither seems to have been considered for promotion.

More here. Don’t look now, but when it comes to personnel choices in the Obama administration, there appears to be some kind of war on women going on. I wonder—as others have—if at some point, the president is going to issue a call for binders.

1. There was only one Obama/Biden sign at my polling place, versus 6 Romney/Ryan signs. Conclusion: Romney will carry Illinois. (I can dream.)

2. I wrote my name in for an office because a Democrat was running unopposed. I don’t remember which office it was. This is a problem because if I win, I won’t know where to show up for work. All I know is that the office was not Emperor. Alas.