- Okay — show of hands. How many of you believe the IRS “accidentally” lost two years of Lois Lerner’s emails? Sharyl Attkisson offers a list of very specific questions Congress should be asking.
- IRS honesty is like NHTSA voluntaryism.
- Yeah, if the defense did it, people would be going to prison for witness tampering. How widespread is this, anyhow? (H/T S)
- Oh yeah, Mr. Obama. Homicides committed with firearms are off the charts.
- Flags, true and false. The latest speech from Mike Vanderboegh.
Great questions by Attkisson.
I am sure she understands that the answers to these questions will be forthcoming….right after this regime answers those questions re: Fast & Furious.
Anyone who believes that the federal government of the U.S. is not a full blown criminal conspiracy should have their head examined!
The decline is moving at an exponential rate and it will only get uglier from here.
Claire: Keep in mind that FIfth Amendment rights do not apply to anyone employed by states or the federal government in relation to their job. Government employees are required to provide information to investigators if they have any knowledge about wrongdoing by themselves or others. It is a condition of employment. The fact that Lerner is still employed after refusing to testify demonstrates that there are many who have an interest in hiding the information.
As someone who has kept one eye on the IRS’s information technology modernization efforts over the last several years, yeah, I can totally believe they lost her email, and yeah, it doesn’t surprise me that it took them this long to figure out it was lost. They probably had to search every floppy disk in the building.
Someone dug up this part of the Internal Revenue Manual — http://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-010-003.html#d0e131 — which says, I kid you not, that IRS employees are responsible for printing out hardcopies of all emails and attachments they send and receive in the course of their duties, and filing these appropriately.
It will probably be considered “scandalous” when the IRS is also unable to find these paper records, but I’d be more scandalized if they can. Imagine printing out and filing every email and attachment you exchange in the course of your work day every day… when would you have time for anything else but changing toner cartridges?
I think I overheard on the TV this am someone say…” hey shouldn’t the NSA be able to track them down.
David Gross:
You may believe the lies, but there are an awful lot of people that don’t. No back-ups? Not a single inter-office memos saved? None of the spooks in NSA can find the emails either?
It’s all about floppy discs and toner cartridges? We are supposed to believe that this is all just a big computer glitch or operator error? No coincidence that the emails in question could provide evidence of criminal activity? It was all just a big oops? Yeah….right.
You are either gullible in the extreme (Not unlikely. Many Americans are.) Or, you are shill and a troll.
Kevin 3% — No name-calling please. You can disagree without that. Thank you.
BTW, David Gross is a long-time freedomista who walks the walk in ways that many wouldn’t dare and knows the IRS pretty well. While I disagree (I don’t believe even the IRS couldn’t be so inept as to lose everything, including those paper backups, floppies, etc. so conveniently), he definitely has expertise.
I don’t think the agency is saying they lost everything. They’re saying that they can’t recover the email folders on the hard drive of the computer that L.L. had during a certain span of years until it crashed. If there was anything on there that couldn’t be found in a search of the IRS’s email server archives, or on the drives of other IRS employees who were cc’d on the emails and whose computers didn’t crash, it’s lost to the IRS tech sleuths. I suppose that’s convenient, and therefore suspicious, but it’s not implausible in the least.
I’m a long time foe of the IRS, and I follow the news about the agency in gleeful pursuit of schadenfreude, and when I find good dirt, I love to kick them when they’re down. See this index of my blog for many good kicks: http://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=outline5#Bcfd1d8a6
So when this latest “scandal” hit, I was on it like flies on shit. But the more I looked into it, the more I discovered that there just isn’t anything there. The whole thing is just a steaming pile of campaign finance sewage slogging, bureaucratic bumbling and ass-covering, Republican base-riling, and general outrage-mongering.
There are so many good reasons to be outraged by the federal government (or by the IRS in particular), this “scandal” just happens not to be one of them.
That said, the more people who hate the IRS the better. I recently read part of a paper from a trembling liberal academic who believed that the Republican party was being so successful in their campaign to malign the agency that the U.S. tax system was in danger of being completely undermined by a culture of widespread tax noncompliance. Boy did my schadenfreude gland twitch when I read that.
Re. Steve Stockman (R-TX) has formally asked the NSA to turn over to his committee all of the metadata it collected on LL’s emails during the period in question. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/13/the-clever-way-gop-congressman-is-pushing-back-after-irs-claims-lois-lerner-emails-were-erased-by-a-glitch/
Maybe the NSA is of some use after all!
Oh, and in answer to your first question, no I don’t for a minute believe that the IRS truly lost Lois Lerner’s emails (notwithstanding David “Shill for the IRS” Gross’ protestations to the contrary). There are too many backups in the system, and the emails would have passed through too many servers and recipients’ computers with their own backups, for them not to be somewhere.
However, I am prepared to believe that the IRS isn’t willing to conduct anything more than a cursory and half-hearted “search” for the emails. Even if a computer crash did (conveniently) bring down LL’s own computer and lose the email file, the raw data is still there. Congress should demand that the IRS sent it the physical hard drives from that computer and have its own experts try to retrieve the emails. As well submitting Sharyl Attkisson’s fine list of questions.
Something I heard long ago which might be of some value here……
‘Never attribute to a conspiracy something that can be explained by greed or stupidity’
I agree, it stretches the credulity to believe that the IRS actually ‘lost’ emails that would prove what we already know to be fact: that the IRS is used by administrations to persecute political foes.
But….I have seen more than enough bureaucratic incompetence in this world to deny that its possible that they are that sloppy internally.
Finding the email won’t change anything, obviously… There are always plenty of young, bright bureaucrats willing to fill any holes in the fabric of the tyranny.
This email flap strikes me as just more hacking at the branches. Sounds furious, and spends a lot of time and effort, but the beast lives on…
Apologies, Claire and to David.
And for the IRS and NSA snoops watching the boards, I am going to expose myself to possible retribution of some sort by the following statement;
In 1995, I quit the whole damn business of filing and paying the so called “Federal Income Tax”. It was after much research that I was convinced there is no law that requires an individual American citizen to file or pay it. To the best of my research there simply is no law. The whole thing is a fraud, just like the Ponzi scheme known as “Social Security”.
That decision was based on principle and rooted in outrage over the criminal endeavors of the fedgov at many levels. My decision came on the heels of years frustration dealing with them and witnessing their destruction of good men engaged in honest business. It was also my way of saying F-off for the fedgovs actions in the Waco debacle. I reasoned that I would never pay for the stick with which they intended to beat me.
At the time, I thought, naively, that I could educate others on the issue. Sadly, I learned that most Americans are too fearful of their master and would choose servitude over freedom for the sake of creature comforts. For nearly 20 years, I have stewed and simmered as I watched the ever increasing rot continue to destroy the freedoms we once had. My decision cost me business contracts and personal relationships on a scale that I could never have imagined.
David, while I respect the work that you have done, I do not agree with your bottom line. Yes, of course the Dead Elephants are trying to use it as a political wedge from which to make hay, but I just don’t believe anything coming from the cesspool known as the fedgov in Washington, D.C.
Respectfully,
Kevin
How many of you believe the IRS “accidentally” lost two years of Lois Lerner’s emails?
Perfectly believable.
“Oops, Congress is about to issue a subpoena. Schedule Ms Lerner for an accidental computer crash.” 😉
Yes, the drive crash could have been intentional. Any number of ways to do it.
I too am skeptical. Anyway they must have some idea who the emails were going to or from, especially if they get the metadata from NSA. The emails they are looking for are on those other computers, if they care to look.
But folks, we have a case of the government investigating itself. The whole thing will depend on the decision on high, whether to 1) throw LL under the bus, or 2) close ranks behind her.
As to the other links…
NHTSA voluntaryism – anyone who gives a sample deserves to be a slave.
Prosecution tactics – just more evidence the criminal “Justice System” is dead. The Gulag Archipelago is here, folks. It no longer makes sense to submit to arrest for any reason.
Obama on guns – who cares what he thinks? The populace is moving the opposite direction. Can we say, “liberals with guns”?
Mike V’s speech – He reports noncompliance of 85% in CT and 95% in NY. According to (I think) David Kopel, gun bans ALWAYS generate such noncompliance rates. Even in foreign countries, never mind the US.
So the IRS has “lost” the emails of 6 more key officials in addition to LL: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380576/irs-has-lost-more-e-mails-eliana-johnson
Is anyone still buying that load of BS?
Boy, this is turning into a heck of an 18-1/2-minute gap, isn’t it?
http://www.forensicmag.com/articles/2011/02/cracking-watergates-infamous-18-1/2-minute-gap