Raining scandals in D.C.

It is starting to feel like every week there is a new scandal from the White House. Even the old scandals surface again with more life than ever. When will this all end for the Obama administration and why have we seen the recent escalation? They seem to have begun with Fast and Furious, then on to Benghazi, and more recently problems with the IRS targeting conservatives.

It doesn’t end there either. We now have the Justice Department’s secret subpoena of the Associated Press’ phone records. It just keeps coming. We also learn the DOJ has obtained the personal emails of Fox News reporter James Rosen, along with those of his parents. Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” referred to this as a Justice Department “out of control.” Even ABC and NPR’s Cokie Roberts, appearing on the same show, asserts that this is an “attack on the press big time.” Bloomberg’s Al Hunt also said James Goodale, who defended the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, says that when it comes to the press, “Obama is no better than Nixon.” Remember, this was all being reported on MSNBC and not Fox News.

By the president’s assertion of executive privilege to withhold information, the Fast and Furious case was blocked. This prevented the House Oversight Committee from charging DOJ’s Eric Holder with contempt of Congress. This clash between the two branches may not be resolved without the help of the courts.

“What difference does it make?” Hillary Clinton asked in her testimony before a congressional hearing on Benghazi. The question of truth or fiction always makes a difference. The Benghazi situation gained momentum again following the whistleblowers’ testimonies before the Congressional Oversight Committee. Gregory Hicks’ blow-by-blow and chilling testimony of what happened on that fateful night in Benghazi leaves little doubt, in my mind, that there was indeed a cover-up.

When you couple Hicks’ information with what has recently been made public about how the talking points were altered to fit the version of the account propagated by Susan Rice as well as Hillary Clinton and the president, it crystalizes this fact even more.

There has to be a reason why Susan Rice was chosen to hit the Sunday talk shows to erroneously explain the reason for the attack. The logical person to do this should have been the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, not someone from the United Nations. After all, President Obama defended Susan Rice by saying, “For them to go after the UN Ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi, is outrageous.” Mr. President, perhaps what’s outrageous is to have saddled her with that duty in the first place.

It is now being reported that there are more whistle blowers who are securing legal counsel before coming forth with their own testimony on Benghazi. Stay tuned.

What is the story behind the IRS scandal? We know that the inspector general’s report shed considerable light on the question. However, the report leaves unanswered questions, too. First, we know from the report that the targeting of conservative groups goes as far back as March 1, 2011, and certainly went beyond just Tea Party groups. According to the Washington Post, and as revealed in the appendix of the IG Report, by Jan. 15, 2012, the agency had decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the social economic reform movement.”

However, it wasn’t just organizations — individuals were targeted as well. One businessman in Idaho, Frank Vandersloot, reported he was targeted by the IRS because he contributed $1 million to the Romney campaign. At the time, the Obama campaign website assailed Vandersloot and seven other Romney backers, accusing them of being “wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records” and many “have been on the wrong side of the law…” A week later a Michael Wolf made inquiries at the courthouse in Idaho Falls specifically requesting legal records about Vandersloot. It turns out that Mr. Wolf was, at the time, a law clerk on the Democratic side of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Interestingly, Obama served on this committee while in the Senate.

Subsequent to all of this, Vandersloot was personally audited twice by the IRS and once by the Department of Labor, which cost him $80,000 to defend. The only bright side to this particular story is that the IRS wound up owing Vandersloot and he was cleared of any wrongdoing by both agencies.

On March 22, 2012, IRS commissioner, Doug Shulman, in testimony before Congress, emphatically denied any targeting by the IRS. When you consider that the inspector general report reveals targeting goes back as far as a year earlier, it is hard to believe he wouldn’t know about it when questioned. The IG report revealed that they informed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew less than three months later that they were investigating the IRS. It is also inconceivable to think that one of Obama’s Cabinet officers wouldn’t inform him of what was going on.

At the recent joint press briefing with the Turkish president, a Bloomberg reporter asked President Obama if he could assure the American people that no one in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before his counsel’s office found out on April 22. The president began his answer by saying, “Let me make sure I answer your specific question: I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press.”

Although the president said he wanted to be specific in answering the reporter’s question he succeeded in not answering it by merely saying he did not know about the inspector general’s report. In failing to answer the specific question, he also succeeded in not denying that anyone in the White House knew about the IRS’ actions.

President Obama is the CEO of the United States of America and seems to know nothing. Either the CEO knew about these scandals and did nothing to correct inappropriate potential illegal practices or he knew nothing about them and should be fired for incompetence. Which is it, America?

Arnold Glasow put it best when he said, “One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” Creating a tradition of hands-off, blaming others, being in denial, being in constant cover-up mode, lack of honesty, inability to handle criticism, reliance on derisive rhetoric, and a culture of intimidation, can inhibit successful leadership. As a good leader, one has to be prepared to assume and accept responsibility for decisions made within that organization. Harry Truman used the phrase, “the buck stops here” and had a sign on his desk that conveyed this message. He was basically saying “I’m not going to blame anyone else. If I can’t/won’t fix your problem, then at least I’ll take responsibility for not doing it.” President Truman wasn’t one to pull a Sgt. Schultz of “Hogan’s Heroes” and say, he knew nothing — he heard nothing — and he saw nothing.

From the president, Eric Holder and on down the chain of command, they all seemingly have been afflicted with convenient memory loss. Eric Holder used “I forgot,” “don’t remember” or similar phrases by one estimate 57 times in his latest testimony.

What more evidence do we need to see that the government and especially the IRS has become too large and powerful and that this whole thing cries out for major tax reform? To know that the IRS has used its muscle in such a reprehensible manner, it makes one shudder to think that they are going to be given even more power in managing Obamacare. This concern is made even worse when we learn the woman who was in charge of the scandal-tarnished tax-exemption division of the IRS will now head up the new Obamacare division.

Lester Still is a resident of Kalispell.