Monthly Notes

Briefly Noted: July 2014


The dog ate my homework: The Internal Revenue Service says it has lost former tax-exempt division chief Lois Lerner’s potentially scandalous emails from January 2009 to April 2011. As a result of a supposed computer crash, the agency now claims it possesses only Lerner emails to and from other IRS employees during this period in which Lerner and her colleagues were illegally cracking down on conservative nonprofit groups. In other words, the IRS is unable (or unwilling) to hand over emails written to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, Federal Election Commission, or from the offices of Democratic lawmakers.

“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 Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.). “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.”

The left-wing group MoveOn.org Political Action is encouraging its members to sign a petition urging President Obama to avoid taking new military action in Iraq, which is now being overrun by the brutal al-Qaeda linked terrorist group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). “The solution to the chaos is not another American military intervention, including bombing strikes. President Obama was right to end the Iraq War in 2011, and it would be a tremendous mistake to restart it now.”

Second Amendment-hating billionaires led by George Soros are gearing up for a fresh assault on your constitutional right to defend yourself, your family, and your property. The Democracy Alliance, a donors collaborative of well over 100 far-left venture capitalists, heirs and heiresses, Hollywood moguls, and unethical bankers, is throwing millions of dollars at left-wing gun-control groups in hopes of preventing a possible Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate this November. The progressive plutocrats plan to send upwards of $175 million to left-wing organizations this year to push gun control and the rest of the Left’s agenda, according to documents left behind at a recent Alliance meeting in Chicago. Some of the groups slated to receive grants include: Brennan Center for Justice ($2.7 million); Catalist ($750,000); Center for American Progress ($5.5 million); Center for Community Change ($3 million); Media Matters for America ($3 million); and Organizing for Action ($1 million).

Meanwhile, the Democracy Alliance announced on its website that its new chairman of the board is John C. Stocks, executive director of the National Education Association. His NEA bio states that the signature of his career has been “an unmatched drive for social justice and positive change in education.” He also served as a Democratic member of the Idaho state senate and was honored in 2007 by the Saul Alinsky-inspired Midwest Academy, which trains community organizers. Stocks succeeds Taco Bell heir Rob McKay as Alliance chairman.

The Obama administration is finally getting around to contacting hundreds of thousands of people with subsidized health insurance under the auspices of the dysfunctional Affordable Care Act regime to verify their eligibility, reports the New York Times. The administration claims, but has not provided proof, that eight million people signed up for private health care coverage through government-run insurance exchanges, but the personal information provided by two million of those people is fishy, federal officials say. Predictably, left-wing groups are upset. Mara Youdelman of the National Health Law Program, said some consumers say they already filed the documents and now “they don’t understand why they are being asked to send them in again.” Ronald F. Pollack of Families USA also griped about the minor inconveniences those receiving taxpayer-supplied benefits are suffering. “We share concerns that the longer the process of verifying and resolving inconsistencies takes, the more some consumers will owe when they reconcile their tax returns.”

Matthew Vadum

The author of Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books, 2011), Vadum, former senior vice president at CRC, writes and speaks widely…
+ More by Matthew Vadum