House Speaker ‘Bonehead’ Boehner leads the way to sell out the GOP. (Gary Cameron, Reuters)

And they also agreed to keep the agreement secret until the bill is approved by the full House!

Orlando Sentinel:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prospects for passage of a major immigration bill improved on Thursday when a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives declared they had reached a tentative deal, resolving disputes that had threatened to torpedo negotiations.

The breakthrough came at the end of a two-hour private meeting of seven Republican and Democratic negotiators. The eighth negotiator in this so-called House Gang of Eight was unavailable after undergoing surgery on Wednesday.

The final sticking point, according to congressional sources, was over whether illegal immigrants now in the United States who gain legal status under the bill could participate in the new healthcare law known as “Obamacare,” which Republicans want to repeal.

None of the negotiators would comment on how the matter was resolved. Nor would they provide other details of the deal.

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Isn’t there one, just one, honest person that can be elected or appointed to office in the federal government?

I mean just ONE?

Chief IRS tyrant, Sarah Hall Ingram’s salary was raised from $172,500 to $177,000 per year from 2009 through 2012 while she also received $103,390 in bonus money.

Washington Examiner:

IRS lawyer Sarah Hall Ingram received four bonuses totaling $103,390 between 2009 and 2012 while managing the tax agency’s division that harassed conservative Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt non-profit status. She was then promoted to manage the IRS role in implementing Obamacare. Big bonuses like those awarded Ingram typically require presidential approval.”

At least one ‘alphabet news’ company failed to ‘notice’ the lavish bonuses paid to Sarah….

ABC News:

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

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Poor old Joseph. He was only second in command so obviously he should be sainted, not tainted. But….but, there’s NO evidence that poor old Joe (OR Sarah) knew what was going on! Really? You mean these people are paid $200K/yr. of taxpayer money to ignore what their employees are doing? — That lame-brain excuse, dear reader, is pure unadulterated BULLS**T!

The Eagle Forum: Take Action Now!

An email from The Eagle Forum:

May 16, 2013 – ObamaCare is falling apart. Two-thirds of the states have refused to set up the health insurance exchanges. Only 26 Governors support Medicaid expansion. And, as Phyllis [Schlafly] noted in a recent column, even one of ObamaCare’s leading architects, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana), admits it is heading for a “train wreck” later this year.

ABC News reported that the IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations from 2009 to 2012, when tea party conservative groups were improperly targeted for scrutiny and harassment, is now in charge of the office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare! The IRS official, Sarah Hall Ingram, received over $100,000 in bonuses during the years 2009-2012 on top of her $170,000 annual salary.

This evening, in the House of Representatives, two Democrats voted with 227 Republicans and passed another full repeal of ObamaCare. This is the 37th bill to pass the U.S. House that repeals or rescinds funding for all or part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Seven of these bills have been passed by the Senate and signed into law by the President. See that list here.

It is important to follow up with your Representative on this vote by either thanking them or disapproving of their position. Click here to send your member a note, with talking points provided, according to their vote.

Source

With $42.5K in bonuses, exec at center of corruption was paid $740,931 over four years.

Washington Examiner:

Lois Lerner, the senior executive in charge of the IRS tax exemption department and the federal employee at the center of the exploding scandal over the IRS targeting of conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel non-profits, was given $42,531 in bonuses between 2009 and 2011.

That figure was included in data provided by the IRS in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Washington Examiner. Lerner is director of the IRS exempt organizations division, which processes and approves or denies applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Lerner received $17,220 for 2010, $14,691 for 2011 and $10,620 for 2012, the most recent year for which the IRS said data was available.

Her annual salary in 2009 and 2010 was $172,200, and $177,000 in 2011 and 2012. With the bonuses, Lerner was paid a total of $740,931 for the four-year period.

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Historically at the IRS, Acting Commissioners do not accede to Commissioner.

Steven T. Miller, Acting IRS Commissioner and 25-year bureaucrat at the IRS has resigned effective when his term ends in June, 2013.

There was no mention that it has been widely rumored for some time that Miller would be leaving the agency anyway when his term as Acting Commissioner expires in June.

Obama says he demanded Miller’s resignation but he didn’t explain what role (if any) Miller played in the IRS’s corrupt activity of targeting conservative groups for ‘special scrutiny’ leading up to the 2010 midterm elections and 2012 presidential election.

The real target of Congress and the public should be political operatives in the White House, Obama’s reelection campaign and Douglas Shulman, Comm. of the IRS from March, 2008 till November 2012.

Soon after the IRS scandal broke, Obama made a big deal of describing Shulman as a holdover appointee of George W. Bush but ‘The Father of Open Government’ omitted a little detail. Shulman was a Democrat supporter in both the 2010 and 2012 elections.

[Look at Shulman's background. I think you'll conclude - as I did - that Shulman was appointed by GWB because of his highly relevant experience, not his politics.]

Also, nobody mentions the fury that would’ve raged had Obama fired Shulman in January 2009. After all, the IRS is an independent agency and commissioners are appointed and confirmed by the Senate for five year terms. Shulman resigned after 4-1/2 years with the glowing praise of the NYT.

Kelly Phillips Erb at Forbes:

Earlier today [May 15], Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Steven T. Miller offered his resignation to President Obama. …

[...]

While I’ll admit that the timing of the resignation threw me off, the move didn’t. Those in positions of power have been calling for his head – heck, anyone’s head – since the story was made public last week. Notwithstanding the fact that Miller happened to be in charge when the accusations flew, there was a more damning fact: it has been reported that, in May 2012, former Commissioner Doug Shulman was briefed about the then-percolating scandal. Miller was said to have learned about it at roughly the same time. – [Bold added]

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You can bet the farm….If Shulman had been a GWB supporter (a Republican, i.e., Mitt Romney supporter) he would’ve blown the whistle on the corruptocrats before Election Day 2012; in May, 2012, when he purportedly first heard about it….or sooner.

Heritage.org:

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) Report and the Heritage Proposal

The Heritage Foundation’s New Flat Tax (NFT), part of Saving the American Dream, replaces today’s complex tax system with one that is simple and fair. The New Flat Tax would help more Americans save and invest, and it would encourage economic growth without raising taxes.

MARGINAL TAX RATES (2012)

Sources: Heritage Foundation calculations and the Internal Revenue Service.

Obama: Turning America purple. Click image for full view.

NPR‘s Carrie Johnson:

As his Justice Department faces bipartisan outrage for searching phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder says he is not sure how many times such information has been seized by government investigators in the four years he’s led Justice.

During an interview with NPR’s Carrie Johnson on Tuesday, Holder was asked how often his department has obtained such records of journalists’ work.

“I’m not sure how many of those cases … I have actually signed off on,” Holder said. “I take them very seriously. I know that I have refused to sign a few [and] pushed a few back for modifications.”

What’s as bad as Holder’s conduct is that of Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). She had the audacity to appear for an interview on TV and to wonder aloud if the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny ‘could have been political’! – UFB!

Last week’s testimony under oath about events in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 makes it painfully clear that Obama, Hillary and Susan Rice lied.

Thomas Sowell at Townhall:

What we were told repeatedly last year by the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the American ambassador to the U.N. [Susan Rice], was that there was a protest demonstration in Benghazi against an anti-Islamic video produced by an American, and that this protest demonstration simply escalated out of control.

This “spontaneous protest” story did not originate in Libya but in Washington. Neither the Americans on duty in Libya during the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, nor officials of the Libyan government, said anything about a protest demonstration.

The highest American diplomat on the scene in Libya spoke directly with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by phone, and told her that it was a terrorist attack. The president of Libya announced that it was a terrorist attack. The C.I.A. told the Obama administration that it was a terrorist attack.

With lies, as with potato chips, it is hard to stop with just one. After the “spontaneous protest” story was discredited, the next claim was that this was the best information available at the time from intelligence sources.

But that claim cannot survive scrutiny, now that the 12 drafts of the Obama administration’s talking points about Benghazi have belatedly come to light. As draft after draft of the talking points were made, e-mails from the State Department pressured the intelligence services to omit from these drafts their clear and unequivocal statement from the outset that this was a terrorist attack.

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When Obama leaves office he’ll leave behind more than $9.3 trillion in red ink.

Did the White House order the release of IRS malfeasance to take our minds off Benghazi?

The Washington Times:

The American Center for Law and Justice and the Landmark Legal Foundation began documenting the misconduct [of Obama admin.], encouraging the House Ways and Means Committee to ask questions. “I can give you assurances,” IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified in a March 2012 hearing. “As you know, we pride ourselves on being a nonpolitical, nonpartisan organization. … There is absolutely no targeting.”

Presidential apologists point out that Mr. Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush as if to identify him as a loyal Republican. Federal Election Commission records show that Mr. Shulman contributed to the Democratic National Committee when Mr. Bush was a candidate for a second term. – [Bold added]

Mr. Shulman, so far as we know, has not done anything wrong. What we do know is that the assurances he gave to Congress last year were false — a disturbing and common practice of this administration. We don’t know who gave the order to lie about Fast and Furious, nor about Benghazi, nor about the IRS audits. The answers to the questions have grave consequences, especially if the IRS campaign of intimidation was orchestrated from the very top. Nearly four decades ago, the House Judiciary Committee voted 28 to 10 to say that it is an impeachable offense for a president personally, or through his subordinates, to cause “income-tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

It’s critical for the president and the White House to do everything needed to clear the president of suspicion. If Mr. Obama has nothing to do with these scandals, he should say so, and release all related documents and emails to dispel doubt. The integrity of the presidency, important to everyone — liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican — demands it.

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Related, Fresh Ink:

This late evidence that the rhinestone glitteries of the media do, after all, inhabit the same planet as the rest of us is reassuring, even if the glitteries are nevertheless still eager to protect Mr. Obama from his emerging legacy. “It’s terrible,” Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward broke the Watergate scandal a generation ago, says of the IRS targeting conservatives for audits: “Outrageous. Heads ought to roll. Simple as that. From what we know so far, some high-up heads.”

But just not too high up. “We know a lot about President Obama, and I think the idea that he would want the IRS used for retribution – we have no evidence of any such thing.”

Well, not yet. And maybe not ever. But Carl’s Watergate scoop from that earlier century was dismissed for weeks as “a third-rate burglary,” so if we know anything about Washington cover-ups we know that it takes time to unravel them. A new poll, by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, finds that Republicans are angrier about Benghazi than about the discovery that the IRS has been keeping a little list of Mr. Obama’s enemies. This is welcome news at the White House, which is expected to play the scandals against each other. In fact, there’s fanciful speculation that the White House leaked the IRS disclosure specifically to distract attention from Benghazi. The IRS scandal might be successfully laid to benign incompetence. The indifference to saving American lives in Benghazi was criminal.

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Republicans are determine to give away more taxpayer money than Obama but the stupid asses will get no credit from gullible voters.

Drew White at Heritage Action:

Mark up week for the $1 trillion food stamp and farm bill has finally arrived and with it the ominous prospect of self-styled conservatives and Republicans rubberstamping President Obama’s big-government agenda. Both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees released the draft text of their respective bills last week and the contempt for the American taxpayer could not be more evident.

The bills look remarkably similar to last year’s legislation: chock full of special interest handouts, market-distorting subsidies, taxpayer-funded shallow loss crop insurance, and of course hundreds of billions of dollars in food stamps. Whether it’s the consumer-crushing sugar program or a dairy program with a Soviet-style flare, the farm bill is an American taxpayer’s worst nightmare.

The Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), is already putting on his best “don’t look behind the curtain” routine when it comes to the enormity of his proposed bill. He would have us believe that the Ag Committee really scraped the bottom of the barrel to save money this go around!

Instead of the $35 billion in “savings” from last year’s proposed bill, Rep. Lucas was able to stretch things out to find $38 billion for this year’s mark up. “I was compelled to match his [President Obama] number. I’m saving $38 billion from the farm bill process,” Lucas said.

Indeed. The problem of course is that this bill doesn’t save much of anything considering the cost is some 60% higher than the original estimate for the 2008 farm bill. And there’s also that slight little hiccup courtesy of CBO showing the $35 billion in “savings” from last year’s proposed bill was actually more like $26 billion. – [Bold added.]

Nothing to see here, folks, move along!

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