Twenty-Six Letters

Cohen's Fractured Fairy Tale

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:44:00 -0500

Writing in the Washington Post, Richard Cohen relates the sad tale of Mitzie, a low-level IRS employee who found herself being perp-walked in handcuffs because of her role in the agency’s persecution of conservative groups:

Mitzie did not know anything about Kafka, but Kafka sure knew her. He had worked at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. This is how he learned that hell is a vast bureaucracy. Mitzie knew that. She was assigned to Group 7822 of the IRS office. This was part—or maybe not—of the Exempt Organizations division where no one wanted to work. It had to process 70,000 applications a year. It had to supervise 400,000 nonprofit groups that were either 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(3). If you were one, you didn’t want to be the other.
Congress kept changing the rules. The courts made things up. The tea party people came out of nowhere. How could all these applications be processed? Who knew what these organizations were really doing? Mitzie needed guidance. But supervisors came and went. Washington was hopeless—and all this talk about sequestration and shortened work weeks. She was overwhelmed and her daughter had put a ring through her nose.
Then she had an idea. She chose some keywords. Mitzie picked “educating on the Constitution” and “social economic reform movement” and maybe some others — she forgets. Much of this applied to conservative groups because they were the ones doing most of the applying. But Mitzie snagged some liberal groups, too. The politics of the group didn’t matter to her. My God, she was working for a Bush appointee! She just wanted the files off her desk.
But Washington did not understand. No one there had ever worked in a cubicle. No one there had ever read Kafka. They didn’t know the difference between a crime and a lost file. They made rules and regulations no one could follow. Mitzie moved her files from one pile to another. At the end of the day—an expression that made her laugh—it was really the end of the day. She had kids. She had to go home. So she did.

If this tale of woe disturbs you, let not your heart be troubled. The unfortunate Mitzie sprang fully formed from the imagination of Mr. Cohen, like Venus from the forehead of Zeus. It’s his way of dramatizing the Obama Administration’s not-very-credible excuse that IRS persecution of conservative organizations was simply a dumb mistake on the part of some underpaid, overworked agency underlings. And since the facts don’t support this pro-Obama fable, Cohen went ahead and invented Mitzie.

I’d call Cohen’s performance shameful, but what’s the point? A man capable of such belly-crawling servility is no doubt incapable of feeling the sting of shame. He even had the nerve to cite Kafka! Richard, may you wake up tomorrow morning in the body of a giant cockroach…

Good Advice, Lousy Propaganda

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:21:00 -0500

Writing for Bloomberg, Al Hunt genuflects in the direction of the White House with this header: How Obama Can Rescue His Presidency From Faux Scandals. But the body of his piece tells a very different story. Oh, he takes a few swipes at Republicans, e.g. Darrell Issa, “the gun-slinging chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.” But in his heart Hunt knows that the Benghazi, IRS and AP scandals are real, and that they’re doing serious damage to Obama and his administration. Consider Hunt's advice to the President: (1) appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS mess; (2) get rid of Attorney General Eric Holder; (3) drop the idea of naming UN Ambassador Susan Rice as his new National Security Advisor.

This is all sound advice. Hunt correctly notes that Holder’s credibility is gone and that Rice displayed “poor judgment” during her notorious tour of the Sunday talk shows last September. That the hubristic Obama would perform such a bow to reality seems to me doubtful—but Hunt gets an A for effort anyway.

I give him a D-, however, for the claim that the scandals are phony and that the Obama Administration “the most scandal-free administration in recent memory.” Come on, Al. If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be advising Obama to start defenestrating his loyal underlings.

Well, No Kidding!

Sun, 19 May 2013 10:03:00 -0500

Sometimes all one can do is smile and shake one’s head at the naiveté of one’s fellow human beings. From the Guardian (UK): This is not the President Obama we voted for

That sad line introduces Heather Long’s lament for the President Obama she and so many other young people voted for. But let her tell it in her own words:

I was in Washington DC the night that Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. As usual, people were hopping from bar to bar to watch the returns come in and high five friends (or boo, in some cases). When it became clear that Obama had won and he gave his victory speech, something happened that I have rarely witnessed in America: spontaneous demonstrations broke out. People started marching down some of the main streets, many shaking keys or banging on pots and pans. Others carried American flags. Cars honked (more than usual) in solidarity.
It was mostly young people marching – from varied backgrounds. Many of these parades ended up in front of the White House where chants of "goodbye Bush" (or some variation thereof) began. It was the same slogan heard as Barack Obama was sworn in as president in January 2009 and Bush flew away in a helicopter.
There was a belief, especially among voters in their 20s and 30s, that Obama was going to be different. That his promises to “change the culture in Washington” were real. That his administration wouldn't be beholden to lobbyists and conduct executive power grabs. That any wars would be justified.

Alas, though:

This isn't the president so many took to the streets to cheer on in 2008. And the blame for that can't be placed solely on partisan politics or the media's thirst for a good scandal.

Long, who describes herself as a “registered Republican,” seems typical of the young voters who swallowed the Obama snake oil in 2008. She really thought that Chimpy McBushitler and the Demon Cheney were in league with the Antichrist, and that Barry was the Messiah—a belief assiduously promoted by Team Obama. But now reality has come crashing down upon these shallow idealists. It turns out that Barack Obama is a mere mortal, subject to the constraints of politics, fallible to a fault, and that his grandiloquent promises were merely the stuff of bumper stickers and Facebook status updates. I could say that I feel Ms. Long’s pain—but to tell you the truth I think that she and her peers had this coming. It’s not as if they weren’t warned!

Just Being Helpful

Sat, 18 May 2013 09:54:00 -0500

Let no one say that I am unmoved by a spirit of bipartisan cooperation. President Obama, here’s a suggestion for you: End the Syrian slaughter and discombobulate the critics of activist government in one brilliant stroke by ordering our redoubtable IRS to audit the Assad regime. If it turns out that the Devil of Damascus has been illegally deducting expenses for genocidal mass murder, why, you’ve got him…!

Goodbye To All That?

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:24:00 -0500

If Barack Obama’s presidency could be summed up in a simple mission statement, it would read “restore faith in government.” That was the sine qua non of Operation Hope & Change. Obama’s overall success depended on his ability to persuade the American people that government is both worthy of trust and competent to solve the nation’s problems. But four years and four months on, it’s clear that the President has failed to rehabilitate the image of government. On the contrary, he and his administration have done much to undermine the people’s faith in progressive governance.

The signs were there even before the IRS scandal exploded. Obama’s much-ballyhooed stimulus bill failed to energize the economy. His green energy program failed to generate the promised millions of green jobs. Obamacare proved to be a slow-moving disaster. Far from learning to love America, the Islamic world hates us more than ever. For much of his first term, though, the President was given a pass by the mainstream media. And the American people have been patient with Obama. Despite a lackluster record during his first term, they reelected him in 2012. But virtually from the moment of his second inauguration, things have gone wrong. And now, amid the tumult of a triad of scandals—Benghazi, the IRS, the AP wiretaps—the energy and creativity of the second Obama Administration, such as remained, is leaking away.

In the media recently, there’s been good deal of speculation and chin-pulling over the President’s likely fate. Will this mess sink him, or will he be able to bounce back? In our celebrity-driven culture it’s natural enough to obsess over the fate of a prominent individual. But there’s more at stake in the current crisis than Obama’s approval rating, and some progressives understand this. Above all, the President has personified the idea that government is a force for social and economic good—that it embodies a superior level of benevolence, wisdom and expertise. Barack Obama’s personal failure to govern effectively has undermined that idea—and, not incidentally, has sharpened the conservative/libertarian critique of the government-centered progressive project. Now that’s what I call hope and change.

They Were Only Following Orders

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:35:00 -0500

Well, what do you know? It turns out that those “low-level front-line IRS employeesd who were targeting conservative groups got their marching orders from…Senate Democrats:

Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that.
The IRS’s admission last Friday that it had singled out tea party and other groups for extra audits and delays has raised concerns that President Barack Obama’s administration quietly attempted to stymy opponents through intimidation. But many prominent Democrats — including Montana Sen. Max Baucus, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the New York Times editorial board — had been publicly calling for tighter restrictions on 501(c)(4) groups affiliated with the tea party and conservatives.

Well, you certainly can’t say that the IRS was deaf to the commands of its political masters!

Here's a Thought

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:20:00 -0500

The burgeoning IRS scandal—a glaring instance of the abuse of government power—may well serve to undermine the already shaky case for federally mandated and managed universal background checks for firearms purchases.

Gosnell's Enablers

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:30:00 -0500

The recently concluded Gosnell case—so shocking and disgusting in its exposure of the operation of a bloodstained Philadelphia abortion mill—has whipped the pro-choice crowd into full damage-control mode. Kermit Gosnell is an aberration, they insist. His horrific malpractice is not at all typical of mainstream family planning clinics, such as those run by Planned Parenthood. This may be true—probably is true—but really, we have no way of knowing. For the Gosnell case has brought to light a disquieting fact that should concern all Americans, regardless of their views on abortion: It seems very likely that abortion clinics across the country receive virtually no government oversight.

That was certainly the situation in Pennsylvania. One of the prosecutors in the Gosnell case asked rhetorically why it is that beauty parlors receive more attention from government regulators than do abortion clinics. The answer is that politicians—including former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican who went on to become the first Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush— made a conscious decision not to regulate abortion clinics. After Ridge became governor in 1993, the Pennsylvania Department of Health stopped inspecting the state’s abortion clinics. The reason given for its decision was that inspections could be seen as “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions. There are some twenty-two abortion clinics in Pennsylvania and thanks to Ridge, not one of them has been inspected for the past seventeen years—this despite the fact that Pennsylvania has a law on the books banning late-term and partial-birth abortions. Then there’s this, from the grand jury report on the Gosnell case:

“The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and its subsidiary, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, are in the same neighborhood as Gosnell's office. Pennsylvania state law requires hospitals to report complications from abortions,” noted the report.
"At least three [other] Gosnell patients were brought to Penn facilities for emergency surgery; emergency room personnel said they have treated many others as well,” the report stated. “And at least one additional woman was hospitalized there after Gosnell had begun a flagrantly illegal abortion of a 29-week-old fetus. Yet, other than the one initial report, Penn could find not a single case in which it complied with its legal duty to alert authorities to the danger. Not even when a second woman turned up virtually dead...”

And needless to say, the pro-choice movement itself took scant interest in Gosnell’s gruesome activities:

“NAF [the National Abortion Federation] is an association of abortion providers that upholds the strictest health and legal standards for its members. Gosnell, bizarrely, applied for admission shortly after Karnamaya Mongar's death. Despite his various efforts to fool her, the evaluator from NAF readily noted that records were not properly kept, that risks were not explained, that patients were not monitored, that equipment was not available, that anesthesia was misused. It was the worst abortion clinic she had ever inspected. Of course, she rejected Gosnell's application. She just never told anyone in authority about all the horrible, dangerous things she had seen.”

Imagine that. No, really, try to imagine the mindset of a “healthcare professional” who keeps her mouth shut after seeing such things. Is that what it means to champion a woman’s right to choose? It’s fine to proclaim with all the piety one can muster that abortion is a decision that must be left to a woman and her doctor. But what if the doctor is Kermit Gosnell?

Many years ago, critics of the Supreme Court’s notorious Roe v. Wade decision predicted that legalizing unrestricted abortion on demand would trigger a process of moral corruption leading to the devaluation of human life itself. And here we are. The wretched Gosnell is going to prison at least—but Peter Singer is still snug and secure in his tenured Princeton perch.

He Said What?

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:45:00 -0500

What a difference a week makes!

I must say that Triscan (a Newspeak word of my own coinage meaning triple scandal) makes President Obama's condescending little lecture to people fearful of government power, handed down during his May 6 commencement speech at Ohio State University, look like one of the most ill-timed rhetorical sallies in American political history.

Our In-Touch Elected Representatives

Wed, 8 May 2013 13:44:59 -0500

According to Gallup, the two issues of greatest concern to the American public are jobs and the economy (tied at 86%). The two issues of least concern are gun violence (56%) and immigration reform (50%). So naturally our elected representatives are concentrating on…gun violence and immigration reform.