Add Zell Miller and Reuben Askew to the list of Democrats who are in the rear view mirror of the Party.
On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Bruce Majors <[email protected]>wrote: > Democrats will be unable to process this information. Average Democrats > who pay no attention to who controls their party are unaware of how fascist > they have become. Democrats once had some good leaders like Eugene > McCarthy or William Proxmire. But they have long been run by liars, bailed > out bankers, corporate cronies, thieves and killers. > > Unable to reform themselves (all reform movements, like Howard Dean's anti > war campaign, are shot down by friendly fire and absorbed into the > establishment) they will have to engage in knee jerk defenses of Obama, or > sit on the sidelines dazed and paralyzed. > > > > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323582904578487460479247792.html > > This Is No Ordinary Scandal > > We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The > reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from > sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. > No one likes what they're seeing. The Justice Department assault on the > Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue > Service have left the administration's credibility deeply, probably > irretrievably damaged. They don't look jerky now, they look dirty. The > patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone. > > Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed. > > As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president's answers > when he's pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be > sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and > the Justice Department? You do not. > [image: image] > Corbis > > The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to > him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He > read about it in the papers, just like you. > > But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his > administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the > Justice Department. > > A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is > arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is to too partisan, too disrespecting of > political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves > and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency > across town. > > The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and > targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative > groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists. > > In order to suppress conservative groups—at first those with words like > "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their names, then including those that opposed > ObamaCare or advanced the second amendment—the IRS demanded donor rolls, > membership lists, data on all contributions, names of volunteers, the > contents of all speeches made by members, > Facebook<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=FB> > FB > -1.77%<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=FB?mod=inlineTicker>posts, > minutes of all meetings, and copies of all materials handed out at > gatherings. Among its questions: What are you thinking about? Did you ever > think of running for office? Do you ever contact political figures? What > are you reading? One group sent what it was reading: the U.S. Constitution. > > The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who > have opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an > Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a > million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last > June, for the first time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife > and his business were also soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, > also came to the government's attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that > nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly > criticized ObamaCare." Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he > believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has > written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing > income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. > People are not only afraid of being audited, they're afraid of saying they > were audited. > > All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 > election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the > privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The > purpose, obviously, was to overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, > question by question and audit by audit. > > It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. > Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even > remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. Lois Lerner, who > oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally > acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of > what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of > "frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, > including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the > work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The > word was out: Get the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible > nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The > Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached > the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency > had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its > chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting. > > The White House is reported to be shellshocked at public reaction to the > scandal. But why? Were they so high-handed, so essentially ignorant, that > they didn't understand what it would mean to the American people when their > IRS—the revenue-collecting arm of the U.S. government—is revealed as a low, > ugly and bullying tool of the reigning powers? If they didn't know how > Americans would react to that, what did they know? I mean beyond Harvey > Weinstein's cellphone number. > > And why—in the matters of the Associated Press and Benghazi too—does no > one in this administration ever take responsibility? Attorney General Eric > Holder doesn't know what happened, exactly who did what. The president > speaks in the passive voice. He attempts to act out indignation, but he > always seems indignant at only one thing: that he's being questioned at > all. That he has to address this. That fate put it on his plate. > > We all have our biases. Mine is for a federal government that, for all the > partisan shootouts on the streets of Washington, is allowed to go about its > work. That it not be distracted by scandal, that political disagreement be, > in the end, subsumed to the common good. It is a dangerous world: > Calculating people wish to do us harm. In this world no draining, > unproductive scandals should dominate the government's life. Independent > counsels should not often come in and distract the U.S. government from its > essential business. > > But that bias does not fit these circumstances. > > What happened at the IRS *is *the government's essential business. The > IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed > with all that position's powers. Only then will stables that badly need to > be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay > a price, because if they don't, the politicization of the IRS will > continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it > isn't stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the > revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again. > > And it would be shameful and shallow for any Republican operative or > operator to make this scandal into a commercial and turn it into a mere > partisan arguing point and part of the game. It's not part of the game. > This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity > of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our > ability to function. > > > > > PGP public key: http://tinyurl.com/SJPGP > > > -- > -- > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. > For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum > > * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. > * Read the latest breaking news, and more. > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "PoliticalForum" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
