Patterico's Pontifications

6/23/2014

Open Thread: IRS Head Raked Over Coals

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:58 pm



High drama on C-SPAN.

Really.

UPDATE: Trey Gowdy in the video you want to watch:

UPDATE x2: Watch all the testimony here.

70 Responses to “Open Thread: IRS Head Raked Over Coals”

  1. Ding.

    Patterico (3914b5)

  2. False advertising, Patterico! No heads were taken!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  3. Zero budget! No emails, no money. Smirk that off.

    Mojo (00b01f)

  4. john koskinen is gross and disgusting in a way that’s hard to articulate

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  5. Koskinen refuses to concede that he has done anything inappropriate of unethical, but the totality of the evidence so far presented does not support that. I think it’s only a matter of time that a Contempt Resolution against him is passed.

    Mr. Cummings confirms his hackery. He is the philosophical heir to Henry Waxman – thank goodness he has no chance to become chairman of this, or any other committee of Congress.
    Listening to his obsequiousness is painful, and should (on his part) be shameful. But, being a Progressive, shame is never part of the equation.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  6. Koskinen: “Because I didn’t think….”
    and that is the problem.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  7. Koskinen: “I’ll do my best.”
    Well, that’s really reassuring.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  8. If they cannot retrieve archived emails for their several hundred thousand employees, how in the Hell are they going to store, monitor, and retrieve, the millions of health-care records of the American People?

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  9. The insolence of office.

    nk (dbc370)

  10. For such an experienced SES executive, he seems to say “I don’t know” quite a bit when dealing with the nuts and bolts of his job, and agency.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  11. Well, that “I don’t know” seemed to work for him at Freddie Mac, no?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  12. “Bring me the head of Johnfredo Garcia”…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  13. Chairman Issa is not pleased with the lack of timely response to questions posed by the committee to the IRS.
    More fireworks to follow (regardless of MA rules).

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  14. I wish some of the Republican members had done better on their questions. Regardless, I really hope the Democrats continue to be the “Party of the IRS.”

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  15. The interesting thing to me was the the GOP members were asking actual questions, and expecting an answer.
    The other side of the aisle was doing the usual hearing two step of making a speech and telling the witness what response they expected.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  16. This is completely unexpected….

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  17. this john koskinen
    challenge HIS integritay?!?!
    what integritay?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  18. Yawn.

    Wake me when that committee actually DOES SOMETHING. Until then it is a bunch of sound and fury with nothing accomplished.

    I pray that Trey Gowdy does better with his committee on Benghazi.

    in_awe (7c859a)

  19. One of the Dem members did point out that the Bush administration also lost emails about something or another, I really can’t remember.

    Regardless, that’s an excuse? I mean this is the Oversight Committee. Telling the taxpaying public that the IRS should be excused because of something that happened in another administration more than six years ago is so mind-bendingly stupid that I typed mind-bendingly.

    Incredible.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  20. I wonder how many of the establishment Repubs were encouraging Tea Party harassment? Hence the Kabuki nonsense. The Sergeant at Arms should arrest Lerner; that should help her find her singing voice.

    Gazzer (6a76d0)

  21. #12, Colonel, “I don’t recall” worked pretty well for Hillary. I continue to be amazed that anyone who could turn $5,000 into $100,000 in a week of commodity trades by reading the WSJ would ever have difficulty with finances. If she was worried about money, she could have continued her trading career for another 3 months and she would have owned every dollar ever printed … at least prior to helicopter Ben.

    bobathome (903208)

  22. they apparently are using those 70’s mainframes from that Captain America movie;

    Shirley they can’t be serious;

    http://therightscoop.com/turns-out-some-of-lois-lerners-emails-were-backed-up-but-it-was-too-expensive-to-extract-them-or-something/

    narciso (3fec35)

  23. Could they arrange a session with both Koskinen and Lerner at the table –
    and then arrest both of them!

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  24. Yes, the Bush White House had an email problem, and Waxman went ballistic, requiring that every email be recovered and archived from printed copies at a very unreasonable cost. As Issa explained, all they want are Lerner’s emails, and a few others – not the entire agency.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  25. UPDATE: Trey Gowdy in the video you want to watch:

    Patterico (9c670f)

  26. How could he claim he had never heard of spoliation of evidence? Can you graduate law school without ever hearing that concept?

    JD (6ef8ed)

  27. He is like Josh Earnest. He lies poorly.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  28. I missed Gowdy. Wow.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  29. If there ever is another Republican administration, first, Gowdy should be a part of it and second, it should put an end to this bureaucratic corruption. Koskenin may be an OK guy. He may be someone the White House just threw into a bad situation and he’s doing his best.

    Regardless, he has pretty much admitted that he does not know what is going on and has no inclination to find out. Evidence indicates he is a Dem Pol and will do Dem bidding.

    The problem, of course, is that you have an out-of-control agency that affects every citizen in the country. When that happens, the government no longer works for the people.

    By the way, I did not type this. I have no knowledge of who did type this. My household recently experienced a break-in and I can only assume that the burglar typed this message. I was not at home at the time and I am sure that my computer crashed during the burglary. Without back-up.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  30. 22… point taken, bobathome. Truth be told there’s always been something very slimy about both Clintons. I could put my finger on it, but I find slimy stuff very distasteful to teh touch.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  31. I hope people get the goody-two-shoes slapped right out of them when it comes to our noble government and our heroic IRS. Simply put, one major opinion poll taken not too long ago indicated a fairly large percentage of the public apparently still buys into the idea that each and everyone of us should be prim and proper towards the IRS probably based on the notion that we are a nation of laws (“and not men”) and therefore should be as prim and proper as our betters are (eg, at the IRS, etc), because they deserve it, and we deserve it too.

    Hugs, hugs, kisses, kisses, tears, tears.

    Pffft.

    You broke it (by putting that godawful person into the White House), now you pay for it.

    Mark (d0a45a)

  32. How could he claim he had never heard of spoliation of evidence? Can you graduate law school without ever hearing that concept?

    I wonder what they’ll be saying when Tax Court defendants start demanding email records.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  33. I hate to sound trivial, but this guy really does kind of look like an alien Gray. Check it out.

    http://runelore.it/images/Articoli/alien.JPG

    It might explain quite a bit.

    Simon Jester (9fd137)

  34. These hearings seem like a godsend for anyone running against these Dem Congressmen. A nice one-minute spot of your Congressman toadying to a crooked IRS Commissioner has got to be worth a few votes.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  35. alien Gray

    They Live! was a documentary.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  36. La, la, la I can’t hear you.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  37. Kevin, I will stay away from sunglasses and keep a lot of bubblegum around. For now.

    Simon Jester (9fd137)

  38. Evidence indicates he is a Dem Pol and will do Dem bidding.

    That’s sort of like saying the Pope appears to be Catholic and the sun appears to be hot.

    Kosiken just about swooned and gushed over the supposed innocence of the White House. But his loyalties are hardly surprising and are merely one more indication of just how corrupt the IRS is.

    publicintegrity.org, May 2013: President Barack Obama collected more than $110,000 from employees of the Internal Revenue Service during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns — significantly more money than any other contemporary political candidate, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission filings maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

    During the past two decades, individual employees of the agency have collectively increased their political giving, which has overwhelming benefited Democrats and liberal-leaning organizations.

    Overall, rank-and-file IRS employees donated more than $840,000 to federal candidates and committees from 1989 to 2012, according to the Center’s analysis. Democrats and liberal-leaning organizations received about two-thirds of this sum.

    The Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee, John Kerry, who is now serving as secretary of state, ranked second behind Obama and ahead of Romney among candidates to benefit from the financial largesse of IRS employees, collecting about $31,000 during his failed presidential bid.

    Mark (d0a45a)

  39. He says he “gave the law up for lent and never went back”, and then laughed at his own joke. What a jackalope.

    elissa (af2728)

  40. Gowdy finally got a good haircut and, man… did he gut that gasping bottom feeder! That man was on fire!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  41. Gonna wipe that smirk right offa his face…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  42. Honestly, the only thing between Gowdy and the national stage is a good haircut. Today’s was not good. I don’t know why that is hard. I you are going bald, just go bald.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  43. I read that Dana Perino said the Bush administration might have lost emails during the Plame scandal but later noted the emails were not lost. She pointed out that she brought the matter to attention proactively and then backtracked later when they’d been found rather than the reverse approach being used by the Democrats here.
    So Cummings is just running interference for Obama trolling out a talking point for the media to glom onto: Bush did it too!

    SteveG (794291)

  44. Gee, the IRS commissioner graduated from Yale, too…

    Dana (6875fb)

  45. 5. john koskinen is gross and disgusting in a way that’s hard to articulate
    happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2014 @ 7:26 pm

    Let me try to articulate, feets. He looks like a rodent. It’s like he answered an ad that read, “wanted, pencil-necked freak with beady, shifty eyes for WTF.”

    I had a pet rat with more endearing qualities, so comparing him to a rodent may not be entirely fair. To rodents.

    Steve57 (334088)

  46. I found Perino’s quote in response to Cummings on Bush Admin losing emails re: Plame and the fake scandal surrounding her.

    “I disclosed we worried we’d lost them, but then we found them. They said they had them, then they lost them.”

    She doesn’t mention that all those emails they asked for about Plame were pointless… well except for trying to tie it to Cheney, which was a failure too.

    SteveG (794291)

  47. it’s creepy thinking that he’s got kids and neighbors and stuff just like normal people

    it’s one thing to know he’s an ivy league trash fascist government flunky

    but he’s also wormed his way into real people’s real lives

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  48. 49. …but he’s also wormed his way into real people’s real lives
    happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2014 @ 9:57 pm

    I’d bet fairly substantial cash he collects kiddie porn.

    Steve57 (334088)

  49. They guy is completely beyond shame, but he certainly is comfortable lying and splitting hairs.
    Plus it was fun to see him hold his ground against Gowdy’s charges that laws were broken by simply saying a version of: I don’t know what the law is… and then when Gowdy describes what laws and regulations were broken he smirks and says a slightly different version of: I don’t know that.
    Good news is nearly everyone who sees this can tell Koskinen is lying.

    By the way, Koskinen reminds me of the sad turtle in the old Saturday cartoons

    SteveG (794291)

  50. Cecil the Turtle

    SteveG (794291)

  51. If you have not already gone to view the Megyn Kelly “interview” with the 33 year old State Dept. chica trying to spin her way into making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear in Iraq you should. It’s really good watching. Narciso linked it up at 43. The video might cut out in the middle but if it does, just refresh and then move the line the place where it stopped. Megyn was almost shaking with rage.

    There is also word that the Iraqi judge who convicted and sentenced Saddam to death has just been captured and executed.

    elissa (af2728)

  52. Instant ad for any opponent of any Dem on this committee:

    “This is YOUR voice speaking for YOU in the IRS scandal. [Insert actual audio here] If this does not sound like anything you would say, use the sound of your vote to let Washington know they no longer speak for you.”

    The Bush “missing” communications mentioned earlier were FOUND and they were shared with the appropriate congress critters. Nice try.

    Ed from SFV (3400a5)

  53. When in South Africa, I store my guns at City Guns.

    http://cityguns.co.za/

    The funky gun laws in SA make it virtually unpossible to keep your rifle in your hotel room, if you’re hunting Namibia or Zimbabwe.

    Steve57 (334088)

  54. 54.There is also word that the Iraqi judge who convicted and sentenced Saddam to death has just been captured and executed.
    elissa (af2728) — 6/23/2014 @ 10:18 pm

    Figure the odds of us hooking up with another doctor, to help us nail the neXt UBL.

    Steve57 (334088)

  55. If you have not already gone to view the Megyn Kelly “interview” with the 33 year old State Dept. chica trying to spin her way into making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear in Iraq you should.

    Forgive me for not accurately remembering the line or being able to find it, but isn’t Marie Harf the spoksgal of whom Iowahawk Tweeted something along the lines of “It’s like taking a random Tri Delt pledge, giving her a pair of costume glasses, then sending her out to explain Obama’s foreign policy.” But naturally his quip was way better than my recollection could give it justice.

    JVW (feb406)

  56. Spoliation of Evidence….

    He isn’t an idiot, he only plays one at Congressional Hearings.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  57. elissa (af2728) — 6/23/2014 @ 9:28 pm

    elissa, that is an insult to the Jackalope population around Douglas WY.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  58. “In a desperate bid for sympathy, the State Department issued an Amber Alert for its spokeswoman…

    …Boko Haram vows to leave no stone unturned.

    …Film at 11”

    Steve57 (334088)

  59. I like the way Marie claimed to have National Security/Intell experience….
    what was she, a Donut Dolly?

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  60. IRS Head Raked Over Coals

    I’d prefer to see him given a Singapore-style caning.

    Blacque Jacques Shellacque (e817d3)

  61. We need more leaders like Mr. Gowdy if we plan on taking this country back.

    mg (31009b)

  62. Actually askeptic, ‘Bunny, wasn’t that the head of the sorority in Animal House, has some serious chops, snorfle;

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/fashion/weddings/marie-harf-joshua-lucas-weddings.html

    narciso (3fec35)

  63. They guy is completely beyond shame, but he certainly is comfortable lying and splitting hairs.
    Plus it was fun to see him hold his ground against Gowdy’s charges that laws were broken by simply saying a version of: I don’t know what the law is… and then when Gowdy describes what laws and regulations were broken he smirks and says a slightly different version of: I don’t know that.
    Good news is nearly everyone who sees this can tell Koskinen is lying.

    By the way, Koskinen reminds me of the sad turtle in the old Saturday cartoons

    Given his answers, he made the right choice to give up practicing law.

    Hadoop (f7d5ba)

  64. Heh, Thanks Narciso, Marie’s bio in the NYT wedding article pretty much says it all. She looks way better and age appropriate without her glasses, but I suppose they think the costume glasses give her heft and gravitas when she’s out spouting bs about Barack Obama and the world’s most troubled and dangerous spots. Pro tip, Marie,–they don’t, and you come across as an idiot.

    JVW, your remembered “random Tri Delt pledge” quip was great! (as elissa wipes brow in relief that she was not a Delta Delta Delta.)

    It appears that the IRS and the State Dept. have both been hopelessly corrupted by politics and political considerations. As Megyn kept saying to Marie, “The American people just want to hear the truth”. That’s absolutely spot on, and a winning midterm slogan, I think.

    elissa (af2728)

  65. She was associate policy director, and CIA spokesperson, ‘we’re in the hands of top men’ like the Vietor and gals like her,

    narciso (3fec35)

  66. I think Megyn went too easy on her. Barf claims there is an ongoing investigation that precludes conclusions, yet that was exactly what she came to in dismissing Bergdahl’s comrades. Plus every time she starts a sentence with “Today, we are focusing on…” she should be punched in the face.

    Gazzer (6a76d0)

  67. I found Perino’s quote in response to Cummings on Bush Admin losing emails re: Plame and the fake scandal surrounding her.

    “I disclosed we worried we’d lost them, but then we found them. They said they had them, then they lost them.”

    See, Dems just don’t understand something like this. They know they would never behave like that, and they don’t understand that there exist people who do. Cummings knows that he would never let anyone know that he was “worried” about email “possibly” being lost unless he’d already ascertained that they were definitely lost, and that it was going to come out one way or another, so he’d better put the best spin he could on it first. If there was a chance that they might be found, and nobody had yet suspected they were missing, it wouldn’t occur to him to open his mouth. So when he came across Perino’s initial disclosure he didn’t bother following up to find out whether the emails ever turned up; he assumed that they couldn’t have done.

    I could cite you dozens of similar cases, where Ds jump to the conclusion that Rs must be doing something wrong, because in similar circumstances it would never occur to them not to, and they can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t. So they ask the question, confident that they’ve found a smoking gun, and are flabbergasted when the R answers that they did the honest thing, of course, and doesn’t everybody?

    Milhouse (b95258)


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