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Did the I.R.S. actually do anything wrong?

(The New Yorker) - The stories began to come to light on Friday, when the Associated Press reported that a draft report by a Treasury Department inspector general had found that the I.R.S. subjected certain Tea Party-affiliated groups to undue scrutiny. Lois Lerner, head of the I.R.S. tax-exempt-organizations division, said the agency was “apologetic” for what she termed “absolutely inappropriate” actions by lower-level workers.

It’s important to review why the Tea Party groups were petitioning the I.R.S. anyway. They were seeking approval to operate under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. This would require them to be “social welfare,” not political, operations. There are significant advantages to being a 501(c)(4). These groups don’t pay taxes; they don’t have to disclose their donors—unlike traditional political organizations, such as political-action committees. In return for the tax advantage and the secrecy, the 501(c)(4) organizations must refrain from traditional partisan political activity, like endorsing candidates.

If that definition sounds murky—that is, if it’s unclear what 501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to do—that’s because it is murky. Particularly leading up to the 2012 elections, many conservative organizations, nominally 501(c)(4)s, were all but explicitly political in their work. For example, Americans for Prosperity, which was funded in part by the Koch Brothers, was an instrumental force in helping the Republicans hold the House of Representatives. In every meaningful sense, groups like Americans for Prosperity were operating as units of the Republican Party. Democrats organized similar operations, but on a much smaller scale. (They undoubtedly would have done more, but they lacked the Republican base for funding such efforts.)

So the scandal—the real scandal—is that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way. As Fred Wertheimer, the President of Democracy 21, a government-ethics watchdog group, put it, “it is clear that a number of groups have improperly claimed tax-exempt status as section 501(c)(4) ‘social welfare’ organizations in order to hide the donors who financed their campaign activities in the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.”

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Read the full article, it kind of sums up what my thinking on this has been since the story broke.

“If left-leaning organizations were disguising their true purposes to obtain 501(c)(4) status, the I.R.S. should have turned them down, too.”

The Republican peanut gallery is cracking me up with all this “Obama should resign over Benghazi/the IRS bullshit.

Like, come on guys, the largest terrorist attack on US soil took place under Bush’s watch and now you all are going to act like anything that has happened during Obama’s term matches that magnitude?

It’s hard to take you folks seriously because of shit like this.

Boehner, McConnell Try To Thwart Obamacare Cost-Cutting Panel

(Talking Points Memo) - The top two Republicans in Congress informed President Obama on Thursday that they will refuse to fulfill their duty under the Affordable Care Act to recommend members of a new board with the power to contain Medicare spending.

It’s a dramatic power-play driven by the explosive partisan politics of Obamacare and with potentially important implications for federal health care policy.

In a letter to President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) noted their original opposition to Obamacare, reiterated their intent to repeal it entirely, and declared that they would not make any appointments to the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

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Holy SHIT these guys never give up. The law passed and was upheld by the supreme court … fucking deal with it.

As someone who works a cushy office job …

… and has worked several minimum wage jobs as second jobs, and worked a few minimum wage jobs before/while I was going to school, shit is hard work.

Burger flipping, washing dishes, washing cars, working in the kitchen at a restaurant, waiting tables, working a cash register at a gas station - I done all of these and got paid much less for doing MUCH harder work than I am doing these days.

I mean harder work in that these are physically (and often mentally) grueling jobs. I often came home feeling like I had my ass kicked and stressed as fuck because I wanted to choke a manager or punch the shit out of a customer.

Everyone wants to treat low wage workers like they’re shit or something less than human, they’ll argue with you over taxes on a purchase and say shit like, “Well, that’s why you work at a gas station” or other snide remarks.

Never mind the fact that it is HARD work. I get so fucking sick of people who want to act like low wage workers are lazy or only work for minimum wage because they want a government handout.

It’s bullshit. It’s hard work and I’m sure there are very few people who work low way jobs because they want to.

Eric Cantor sets repeal vote on Obamacare (AGAIN) for next week

(Politico) - The House will vote next week on a full repeal of the health law.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor just tweeted: “It just keeps getting worse. I am scheduling a vote for next week on the full repeal of #Obamacare.”

It will be the first vote against all or part of the law this year. The House had voted more than 30 times on repealing all or parts of the law since it passed in March 2010, but many members — especially first-year lawmakers — were pushing leadership to get a vote on the record in 2013.

Some conservatives are pushing for a more assertive stance against the health law in the final months before the big coverage provisions go into effect. Even some Democrats are worried about a bumpy start, which Republicans would like to highlight in the 2014 congressional elections.

source

*SIGH*

Conservative group suggests impeaching Obama over the (record-high) stock market

(Daily KOS) - From the Department of Particularly Bad Timing: A conservative group sent an email blast yesterday calling for the possible impeachment of President Obama. The reason given was the current disastrous stock market:

Fearing the very worst, the nation’s super-rich are unloading their stocks at an alarming rate.

Even more troubling, the wealthiest 1% of Americans, who typically know the most, are the ones most anxious to sell.

You see, Obama just allowed 13 new tax increases to further slow the economy, wreck the stock market and make it even harder on the 12 million Americans already looking for work.

Problem: The apparently “wrecked” stock market reached another record high even as they were sending their little letter, with the Dow closing above 15,000. There’s no evidence the “super-rich” are unloading anything except another few dump trucks full of money into their already bloated bank accounts. No, the “super-rich” are the one group of people in the country that’s doing very, very well right now.

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Next think you know, they are going to claim the stock market is “fixed” or “on Obama’s side” or some other shit like that.

You have to love how they constantly witch hunt and look for any reason they can to impeach the president, it’s precisely what all this Benghazi bullshit is about.

It all gives me flashbacks to the Clinton years when they pulled the same constant witch hunts and the same kind of bullshit, you guys lost the presidential election, get the fuck over it.

You also have to love how the email says “The wealthiest 1% of Americans, who typically know the most” - what the FUCK? Let’s lick those super-rich people’s boots just a little more, you dipshits.

North Carolina bill requiring teens to get notarized parental permission for medical and mental health care including STD testing heads to house floor

Raleigh, N.C. (WRAL) — North Carolina could be on the verge of implementing the nation’s strictest law on medical care for teenagers. 

House Bill 693 would require notarized written approval from a parent before a doctor or other provider could diagnose, treat or even counsel anyone under 18 for mental health or substance abuse. Parental approval would also be required for contraception, pregnancy care and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

North Carolina would be the only state in the nation to require parental consent for STD testing.

Sponsor Rep. Chris Whitmire, R-Transylvania, says the bill “strengthens parental rights in their determination of what’s appropriate in terms of their child’s medical needs.”

Whitmire said that, if a minor needs mental health, substance abuse, STD or contraceptive care, “it reflects a risky behavior that goes down a primrose path that yields these outcomes. It’s very behavioral related.”

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So, now teens who are at risk of or think they may have an STD won’t get tested, are these fucksticks TRYING to make North Carolina the STD capital of the US?

Because that’s what’s going to happen if this bill passes.

Children with abusive parents will have no safe way of seeking help with mental health issues related to that abuse.

This is so fucked up on so many levels, way to go North Carolina GOP, small government, huh?

GOP’s New Outreach to Women: It’s a Trap - Republicans launch 1st concerted effort to win back female voters with ‘Working Families Flexibility Act’, a bill packaged as a lifeline to working moms. It’s a cruel hoax—a slick attempt to give employers more power & hourly workers much less.

(The Nation) - House Republicans are launching their first concerted effort to win back female voters on Tuesday with the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013, a bill that’s being packaged as a lifeline to working moms across the country.

Unfortunately, the legislation is a particularly cruel hoax—a slick attempt to give employers more power, and hourly workers much less.

At first blush, the idea sounds good. The bill would allow hourly workers to convert overtime pay into time off: in other words, instead of getting paid for extra hours, they could stockpile additional vacation time. The pitch here is that working parents could have more flexibility in their schedule and an enhanced ability to balance work and family. “This week, we’ll pass [Representative] Martha Roby’s bill to help working moms and dads better balance their lives between work and their responsibilities as parents,” House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday.

The GOP is specifically invested in convincing women this bill is for them. The GOP spent $20,000 last week on a digital ad campaign focusing on so-called “mommy blogs,” like Ikeafans.com and MarthaStewart.com, and geo-targeting Democrats in swing districts. “Will Rep. Collin Peterson stand up for working moms?” one iteration of the ad asked.

A fawning National Review profile of Roby, the bill’s sponsor, explains how she wasn’t sure she could handle a run for Congress in 2009 because of concerns about taking care of her children while running for a House seat and potentially becoming a member of Congress—and how those concerns have now inspired her to push this important legislation.

But it’s not too hard to see how pernicious this legislation truly is. “Flexibility” is a word that should make hourly workers check for their wallets—employers hold most of the power in the relationship with hourly workers, which is all the more true if they are not unionized. So “flexibility” to decide if you want to get paid for overtime work, instead of getting fewer hours later on, can quickly become a way for employers to withhold payment for overtime work while also cutting your hours down the road.

Over 160 labor unions and women’s groups sent a letter to members of Congress on Monday, protesting that the Working Families Flexibility Act is “a smoke-and-mirrors bill that offers a pay cut for workers without any guaranteed flexibility or time off to care for their families or themselves.”

Republicans say this isn’t true, and that there are safeguards in the bill that would prevent employers from muscling their employees into surrendering overtime pay. “It is illegal for them to do that. There are enforcement mechanisms in the bill,” Eric Cantor said in February.

But this is where they’re being really tricky—the bill does give workers the right to sue over such intimidation, but denies them the right to use much quicker, and cheaper, administrative remedies through the Department of Labor. It also gives the Department of Labor no additional funds to investigate nor enforce provisions of the act.

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Yeah, I know exactly how this is going to pan out if it passes. Employers will pressure workers to work more overtime, then pressure them to take comp time instead of pay. It would be far too easy for an employer to imply that you will be replaced if you don’t comply.