Tuesday, June 11, 2013
The Obama Scandals Part IV-1 - OMG, Not Another One
While I promised to move on from my list of Obama Scandals, I could not let this one pass. As Daniel Halper notes on today's Weekly Standard Blog, the Obama-Clinton State Department "deep-sixed" an investigation of a big Obama donor ($500,000 plus) who was appointed Ambassador to Belgium (how do you say quid pro quo?) and then apparently regularly ditched his security detail to hook up with prostitutes, some of whom were underage. The guy is still in place. The scandal is actually much broader according to CBS News and infects much of the Diplomatic Security Service which is tasked with protecting our diplomats overseas. Benghazi anyone? These scandals are starting to come back on themselves.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
The Obama Scandals Part IV - The Others
This will be the last installment listing the current Obama scandals. Partly it is because there are so many that the list might never end. And more importantly, it is time to get on with an analysis of why the most transparent administration in history is so mired. So we continue:
18. HHS Secretary Sebelius is soliciting money from companies she regulates, and others, to provide funds for the implementation of ObamaCare which Congress has refused to appropriate. This is not very different from Iran-Contra for which people went to jail. True, in Iran-Contra Congress explicitly prohibited the expenditures while in HHS Congress simply refused the appropriation request. But the Constitution already prohibits expenditure of funds not appropriated by Congress. On the other hand, unlike in Iran-Contra, the person doing the solicitation of funds directly regulates some of the persons from whom she is soliciting funds. There is clearly the implied threat, even if not explicit, that if you want discretionary administrative decisions to go your way, do what we ask.
19. ObamaCare itself is a scandal. All of the promises made to secure passage, that you could keep your coverage, that premiums would not go up, that you could keep your doctor, that it would bend the cost curve down, etc. turned out to be false. True, Republicans warned people that these were misrepresentations, and to anyone actually thinking about things it was obvious that these promises were false. But many Americans did believe these promises because they came from the President and because the media did not question them.
20. Even after all of disclosures, conservative groups are still not getting their tax exemptions while similar liberal groups have experienced no problems. And it now appears clear that the Administration was lying when it said this was a group of local rogue agents in Cincinnati. There were problems from other offices, and testimony from Cincinnati people that they were taking orders from Washington.
21. The disparate impact settlement scandal in which Thomas Perez from the Obama-Holder Justice Department effectively bribed Minneapolis to drop its appeal of a housing discrimination case in which the only evidence of prejudice or discrimination was the fact that the actions attacked - enforcing its race neutral housing regulations - affected minorities more often or to a greater extent. Perez was concerned that if the case were decided by the Supreme Court, the Court would rule against that dubious theory. As a result, Justice's ability to threaten local housing authorities with lawsuits would be substantially reduced. The bride was a result of the offer by Perez to not join in two False Claim Act cases against Minneapolis, at least one of which was thought to have a great deal of merit and was about to be joined by the government. By not joining, Minneapolis saved money, perhaps a lot of it, and the taxpayers of the rest of the country lost the chance to recover a bunch of money. Perhaps worse, the persons who brought the False Claims Act cases in the first place themselves lost out on very large sums they would have received from settlement. So this was not a victimless event. Frederick Newell and Andrew and Harriet Ellis, who brought the FCA cases, lost sums perhaps amounting to millions of dollars in order for Perez to pursue his ideological agenda. After all this, the President nominated him for a promotion to Labor Secretary where he could do even more damage with his ideological agenda which matches that of the President.
22. The Obama NLRB, despite the absence of a quorum, plows ahead in the face of rulings by two Circuit Courts of Appeal that it has no jurisdiction. And remember this all started with the NLRB filing a case against Boeing for opening a plant in South Carolina even though no current Union employees were affected.
23. The EPA discriminates against conservative groups, and in favor of liberal groups, in responding the FOIA requests including imposing substantially higher fees on conservative groups.
24. It now appears, in a little noticed scandal, that Google and its founder are in bed with the Democratic Party and the Administration. Google's founder started another company to do meta-data analysis similar to what was done by the Obama campaign in the last election, but only for Democrats - seems like a very large in-kind contribution to the Democrats which beats anything the Kochs or any other conservative donor has done. And how are we to know that Google is not also supplying the data (of which Google has by far the most) to Democrats only, and not to Republicans? Worse still, do we trust this Administration to keep all the information being collected by the IRS confidential and not "leak" it to this new outfit to benefit themselves politically. In a way this is the most dangerous scandal of them all because this could give Democrats a lock on elections for the foreseeable future.
25. The Gibson Guitar scandal where the Feds went after Gibson for importing illegal wood under circumstances where (1) Gibson had every reason to believe the wood was legal, and (2) other less conservative guitar makers doing the same thing were given a pass.
If I continued to think about this I am sure that I would continue to come up with additional scandals. Some of these scandals might be illegal, particularly the IRS disclosure of information, but illegal or not they are certainly corrupt. But this is really quite enough to get the idea, and find the commonalities. That will be the subject of the next blog in this series.
18. HHS Secretary Sebelius is soliciting money from companies she regulates, and others, to provide funds for the implementation of ObamaCare which Congress has refused to appropriate. This is not very different from Iran-Contra for which people went to jail. True, in Iran-Contra Congress explicitly prohibited the expenditures while in HHS Congress simply refused the appropriation request. But the Constitution already prohibits expenditure of funds not appropriated by Congress. On the other hand, unlike in Iran-Contra, the person doing the solicitation of funds directly regulates some of the persons from whom she is soliciting funds. There is clearly the implied threat, even if not explicit, that if you want discretionary administrative decisions to go your way, do what we ask.
19. ObamaCare itself is a scandal. All of the promises made to secure passage, that you could keep your coverage, that premiums would not go up, that you could keep your doctor, that it would bend the cost curve down, etc. turned out to be false. True, Republicans warned people that these were misrepresentations, and to anyone actually thinking about things it was obvious that these promises were false. But many Americans did believe these promises because they came from the President and because the media did not question them.
20. Even after all of disclosures, conservative groups are still not getting their tax exemptions while similar liberal groups have experienced no problems. And it now appears clear that the Administration was lying when it said this was a group of local rogue agents in Cincinnati. There were problems from other offices, and testimony from Cincinnati people that they were taking orders from Washington.
21. The disparate impact settlement scandal in which Thomas Perez from the Obama-Holder Justice Department effectively bribed Minneapolis to drop its appeal of a housing discrimination case in which the only evidence of prejudice or discrimination was the fact that the actions attacked - enforcing its race neutral housing regulations - affected minorities more often or to a greater extent. Perez was concerned that if the case were decided by the Supreme Court, the Court would rule against that dubious theory. As a result, Justice's ability to threaten local housing authorities with lawsuits would be substantially reduced. The bride was a result of the offer by Perez to not join in two False Claim Act cases against Minneapolis, at least one of which was thought to have a great deal of merit and was about to be joined by the government. By not joining, Minneapolis saved money, perhaps a lot of it, and the taxpayers of the rest of the country lost the chance to recover a bunch of money. Perhaps worse, the persons who brought the False Claims Act cases in the first place themselves lost out on very large sums they would have received from settlement. So this was not a victimless event. Frederick Newell and Andrew and Harriet Ellis, who brought the FCA cases, lost sums perhaps amounting to millions of dollars in order for Perez to pursue his ideological agenda. After all this, the President nominated him for a promotion to Labor Secretary where he could do even more damage with his ideological agenda which matches that of the President.
22. The Obama NLRB, despite the absence of a quorum, plows ahead in the face of rulings by two Circuit Courts of Appeal that it has no jurisdiction. And remember this all started with the NLRB filing a case against Boeing for opening a plant in South Carolina even though no current Union employees were affected.
23. The EPA discriminates against conservative groups, and in favor of liberal groups, in responding the FOIA requests including imposing substantially higher fees on conservative groups.
24. It now appears, in a little noticed scandal, that Google and its founder are in bed with the Democratic Party and the Administration. Google's founder started another company to do meta-data analysis similar to what was done by the Obama campaign in the last election, but only for Democrats - seems like a very large in-kind contribution to the Democrats which beats anything the Kochs or any other conservative donor has done. And how are we to know that Google is not also supplying the data (of which Google has by far the most) to Democrats only, and not to Republicans? Worse still, do we trust this Administration to keep all the information being collected by the IRS confidential and not "leak" it to this new outfit to benefit themselves politically. In a way this is the most dangerous scandal of them all because this could give Democrats a lock on elections for the foreseeable future.
25. The Gibson Guitar scandal where the Feds went after Gibson for importing illegal wood under circumstances where (1) Gibson had every reason to believe the wood was legal, and (2) other less conservative guitar makers doing the same thing were given a pass.
If I continued to think about this I am sure that I would continue to come up with additional scandals. Some of these scandals might be illegal, particularly the IRS disclosure of information, but illegal or not they are certainly corrupt. But this is really quite enough to get the idea, and find the commonalities. That will be the subject of the next blog in this series.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
The Obama Scandals Part III - Attacks on the Free Press
The Scandals continue:
12. First there is the culture, almost from the beginning of the Administration, of demonizing any news organization or commentator who criticized the President, starting with calling FOX News "not a legitimate news organization." This was, of course, another Alinskyite move (Rule 5 "Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon."; Rule 12 "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."). While the Administration has backed off somewhat from its direct attack on FOX, it continues to treat legitimate, but difficult, questions as merely political attacks, or irrelevant, or old news, or the like.
13. Second, there is the persistent insistence of this Administration, the "most transparent in history," of refusing to go "on the record" for much at all. Everything is on deep background so there is no accountability if it turns out to be false or misleading.
14. Third, is the overbroad and unnecessarily secret AP subpoena. Yes, the government has an interest in preventing disclosure of secrets which harm national security. And yes, sometimes that interest trumps the interests of the free press in gathering information. And yes, there was, in this case, a legitimate interest in protecting our sources and methods in this case because the leak endangered our agent within the enemy ranks. But our pursuit of such leaks from press sources should be carefully narrowed to the minimum necessary.
15. Fourth, and perhaps most dangerous of these abuses, was the subpoena naming FOX reporter James Rosen an unindicted co-conspirator and/or an aider and abettor of another leak. In the first place, the leak was of an opinion that the North Koreans would react to UN sanctions by detonating another nuclear device which was embarrassing to the Administration's position. But it hardly endangered national security in the same way as the leak involved in the AP matter. More importantly, the affidavit supporting the subpoena, signed off on by the Attorney-General himself, implied that news gathering under these circumstances is a criminal offense! The AP subpoena endangers the confidentiality of news sources, and is chilling to those sources. The Rosen matter is a direct threat to reporters themselves implying that they break the law when they seek information which might be classified. Thus it chills even attempts at news-gathering. And it exposes an administration that will just about anything to punish those who oppose it.
16. And the reaction of the Administration to exposure of these abuses is not to admit that it acted unlawfully and improperly, and vow not to do it again. No, the Attorney-General asserts that he was merely "wrong" to go as far as he did and promises to change his "guidelines." But guideline can always be changed or waived in "exceptional" cases. And if it is the Attorney General who determines whether a case is exceptional, the press will forever remain under the threat of prosecution if they displease the Administration. We don't need a shield law. What we need is a simple statement from the Attorney General and the President that what James Rosen did was not, and could not be, a crime under the First Amendment.
17. And finally, there is the hypocrisy of an Administration justifying these intrusions into press freedom by "national security" while not investigating far worse "leaks" from a national security point of view such as leaks surrounding the bin Laden raid which put the Pakistani doctor who helped us in prison for years, or the leak that confirmed we, along with Israel, had developed and deployed the Stuxnet computer virus against Iran which not only exposed our, and Israel's, covert operation but also effectively made it far more difficult for us to complain about other countries directing similar attacks against US interests. The differences between these "leaks" and the leak involved in the Rosen investigation are that these leaks were not only more serious, but they made the Administration look better and appear to have been sanctioned by the Administration - and, of course, there was no leak investigation.
One more installment in the list of scandals to come.
12. First there is the culture, almost from the beginning of the Administration, of demonizing any news organization or commentator who criticized the President, starting with calling FOX News "not a legitimate news organization." This was, of course, another Alinskyite move (Rule 5 "Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon."; Rule 12 "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."). While the Administration has backed off somewhat from its direct attack on FOX, it continues to treat legitimate, but difficult, questions as merely political attacks, or irrelevant, or old news, or the like.
13. Second, there is the persistent insistence of this Administration, the "most transparent in history," of refusing to go "on the record" for much at all. Everything is on deep background so there is no accountability if it turns out to be false or misleading.
14. Third, is the overbroad and unnecessarily secret AP subpoena. Yes, the government has an interest in preventing disclosure of secrets which harm national security. And yes, sometimes that interest trumps the interests of the free press in gathering information. And yes, there was, in this case, a legitimate interest in protecting our sources and methods in this case because the leak endangered our agent within the enemy ranks. But our pursuit of such leaks from press sources should be carefully narrowed to the minimum necessary.
15. Fourth, and perhaps most dangerous of these abuses, was the subpoena naming FOX reporter James Rosen an unindicted co-conspirator and/or an aider and abettor of another leak. In the first place, the leak was of an opinion that the North Koreans would react to UN sanctions by detonating another nuclear device which was embarrassing to the Administration's position. But it hardly endangered national security in the same way as the leak involved in the AP matter. More importantly, the affidavit supporting the subpoena, signed off on by the Attorney-General himself, implied that news gathering under these circumstances is a criminal offense! The AP subpoena endangers the confidentiality of news sources, and is chilling to those sources. The Rosen matter is a direct threat to reporters themselves implying that they break the law when they seek information which might be classified. Thus it chills even attempts at news-gathering. And it exposes an administration that will just about anything to punish those who oppose it.
16. And the reaction of the Administration to exposure of these abuses is not to admit that it acted unlawfully and improperly, and vow not to do it again. No, the Attorney-General asserts that he was merely "wrong" to go as far as he did and promises to change his "guidelines." But guideline can always be changed or waived in "exceptional" cases. And if it is the Attorney General who determines whether a case is exceptional, the press will forever remain under the threat of prosecution if they displease the Administration. We don't need a shield law. What we need is a simple statement from the Attorney General and the President that what James Rosen did was not, and could not be, a crime under the First Amendment.
17. And finally, there is the hypocrisy of an Administration justifying these intrusions into press freedom by "national security" while not investigating far worse "leaks" from a national security point of view such as leaks surrounding the bin Laden raid which put the Pakistani doctor who helped us in prison for years, or the leak that confirmed we, along with Israel, had developed and deployed the Stuxnet computer virus against Iran which not only exposed our, and Israel's, covert operation but also effectively made it far more difficult for us to complain about other countries directing similar attacks against US interests. The differences between these "leaks" and the leak involved in the Rosen investigation are that these leaks were not only more serious, but they made the Administration look better and appear to have been sanctioned by the Administration - and, of course, there was no leak investigation.
One more installment in the list of scandals to come.
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