I've been in charge of various IT departments for small and medium-sized businesses over the years, and my duties included responsibility for the mail server(s). I have quite a bit of trouble comprehending how an IT support organization could allow such a loss of data. Aside from anything else, there are logs on the mail server which should be preserved which should show a time/date and to/from for every email going in or out of every mailbox hosted on it.
To make sure those important messages were preserved and reviewed for retention, IRS employees were told to print out and file a hard copy of those messages. Lerner printed out at least some of her e-mails, so she appeared to be following this policy at some level.
As contrary to common sense as "printing out e-mails" may sound, it’s an entrenched part of government workflow, particularly with more senior officials. Some career government managers and military officers I’ve dealt with actually have administrative assistants print out their correspondence for them and place it into physical inboxes.
Some will argue that the IRS could have easily prevented the loss of records with regular enterprise desktop backups and that it’s inconceivable that a government agency would have such incompetent IT management practices. To which the only response is: yes, the IRS has lots of IT management problems. For starters, the IRS missed the deadline to get off Windows XP and is paying Microsoft for extended support while it completes a migration to Windows 7. Back in April, Koskinen told Congress that the IRS needed another $30 million to finish the upgrade to Windows 7—money that it was diverting from the IRS' tax enforcement budget.
A Treasury Department audit last year found that the IRS wasn’t properly performing even fundamental system management functions like software license management for desktops and laptops—something that was potentially causing the IRS to spend millions of dollars unnecessarily.
I actually hope it is corruption rather than the alternative because that level of incompetence is just unspeakably pathetic, especially for an agency that will jump down your throat and fine you for the smallest mistake.
Is there anyone in government that can use a computer for anything other than social media?
I love how it's never their fault, it's always the "we need more money" excuse as though any government agency in history has ever said "nah we have enough funding"
I actually hope it is corruption rather than the alternative because that level of incompetence is just unspeakably pathetic, especially for an agency that will jump down your throat and fine you for the smallest mistake.
Is there anyone in government that can use a computer for anything other than social media?
I love how it's never their fault, it's always the "we need more money" excuse as though any government agency in history has ever said "nah we have enough funding"
My comment was relevant to the fact that everytime people work themselves into a lather over some new Obama controversy directed by the GOP, it is a bunch of crap. More than that, it is often horribly misleading if not downright factually incorrect and slanderous. Are we supposed to ignore the fact that this is a recurring theme?
Seeing the news sources linked in the OP, Katzilla isn't even trying. You can't link the Blaze and not get away with at least one post pointing all this out.
The emails show former IRS official Lois Lerner mistakenly received an invitation to an event that was meant to go to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
The event organizer apparently offered to pay for Grassley's wife to attend the event. In an email to another IRS official, Lerner suggests referring the matter for an audit, saying it might be inappropriate for the group to pay for his wife.
"Perhaps we should refer to exam?" Lerner wrote.
It was unclear from the emails whether Lerner was suggesting that Grassley or the group be audited — or both.
The other IRS official, Matthew Giuliano, waved her off, saying an audit would be premature because Grassley hadn't even accepted the invitation.
"It would be Grassley who would need to report the income," Giuliano said...
...In a statement, Grassley's office said the senator did not attend the event, and did not receive any invitation intended for Lerner.
"This kind of thing fuels the deep concerns many people have about political targeting by the IRS and by officials at the highest levels," Grassley said. "It's very troubling that a simple clerical mix-up could get a taxpayer immediately referred for an IRS exam without any due diligence from agency officials."...
..."We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States senator is shocking," Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said. "At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights."
Surely an organization whos Union(NTEU) donated 94% of their money in 2012 to Democrats wouldn't do such a thing?
The Daily Signal has learned that, under a consent judgment today, the IRS agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage as a result of the unlawful release of the confidential information to a gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, that is NOM’s chief political rival...
...In February 2012, the Human Rights Campaign posted on its web site NOM’s 2008 tax return and the names and contact information of the marriage group’s major donors, including soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. That information then was published by the Huffington Post and other liberal-leaning news sites.
HRC’s president at the time, Joe Solmonese, was tapped that same month as a national co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.
Eastman said an investigation in the civil lawsuit determined that someone gave NOM’s tax return and list of major donors to Boston-based gay rights activist Matthew Meisel. Email correspondence from Meisel revealed that he told a colleague of “a conduit” to obtain the marriage group’s confidential information.
Testifying under oath in a deposition as part of the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Meisel invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself and declined to disclose the identity of his “conduit.”
To get at that fact, Eastman said, the National Organization for Marriage has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to grant immunity from prosecution to Meisel.
The $50,000 to be paid by the IRS represents actual damages NOM incurred responding to the illegal disclosure, not punitive damages, since the marriage group was unable to prove disclosure of the confidential records was deliberate after Meisel took the Fifth.
There's that pleading the 5th again!
Surely someone will investigate this unlawful act?
Unauthorized disclosure of confidential tax information is a felony offense that can result in five years in prison, but the Department of Justice did not bring criminal charges.
WASHINGTON, D.C., October 31, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The IRS agent responsible for leaking confidential tax documents from the National Organization for Marriage to homosexual activists and left-wing media outlets has been identified after a Congressional investigation. But in an ironic twist, the Internal Revenue Service is forbidden from disclosing whether the employee has been prosecuted, fired, or even reprimanded.
The pro-family movement and its allies are demanding full prosecution, if it has not been carried out.
Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it's hard to see the humor. Surely he's aware that other presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, have abused the power of the Internal Revenue Service to harass their political opponents. But that abuse generated a powerful backlash and with good reason. Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system.
Our income-tax system is based on voluntary compliance and honest reporting by citizens. It couldn't possibly function if most people decided to cheat. Sure, the system is backed up by the dreaded IRS audit. But the threat is, while not exactly hollow, limited: The IRS can't audit more than a tiny fraction of taxpayers. If Americans started acting like Italians, who famously see tax evasion as a national pastime, the system would collapse.
One reason why Americans don't act like Italians is that they see the income-tax system as basically fair in execution. A tax audit or a tax-fraud prosecution is still seen, usually, as evidence that someone has done something wrong. If it comes instead to be seen as "just politics" then the moral component of the system will be gone. For the system to work, people have to believe that it is fundamentally fair.
This is why the IRS is so strict with its own employees. Paul Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who writes the TaxProf blog, noted in response to Mr. Obama's remarks that the law calls for the termination of IRS employees who make audit threats for illegitimate reasons. He suggested that Mr. Obama's "joke" might be grounds for firing if he were an IRS employee.
Thanks Obama!
I just learned that Lois Lerner was dead serious about auditing Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
If she was just joking, she'd be fired.
Yep, and some of us are/were fairly annoyed and disbelieving about that, too.
Perhaps we need to take a poll every once in a while.
Did you think there were WMDs in Iraq?
Did you think Clinton was guilty of perjury?
Did you think the tapes of terrorist interrogations were accidentally destroyed?
Did you think Holder approved the FastandFurious operation?
Do you think Joe Biden is a moron?
Do you think Dubya Bush is a clever person?
A score of either six yes OR six no automatically excludes you from participating in discussions regarding current controversies, but does qualify you to be a career politician or television blowhard.
A score of either six yes OR six no automatically excludes you from participating in discussions regarding current controversies, but does qualify you to be a career politician or television blowhard.
Its more of a strange feeling of dejavu. Given that Republicans more or less set the bar when G.W.Bush simply refused to testify under oath or in public when 9-11 occurred. Bin laden determined to attack inside the US and so on.
IRS targeting tea party charity, non political, social welfare groups will should be classed as a scandal, its like some small mole hill scandal maybe worthy of investigation and someones head should roll. But the coverage and whipped up outrage over this is just political show, disgusting political zero sum gaming.
Its more of a strange feeling of dejavu. Given that Republicans more or less set the bar when G.W.Bush simply refused to testify under oath or in public when 9-11 occurred. Bin laden determined to attack inside the US and so on.
IRS targeting tea party charity, non political, social welfare groups will should be classed as a scandal, its like some small mole hill scandal maybe worthy of investigation and someones head should roll. But the coverage and whipped up outrage over this is just political show, disgusting political zero sum gaming.
Government targeting groups due to political antipathy towards the government, is... not really a small hill scandal Some other benevolent democracies moved on to try to ban political parties for the greater good of democracy and so on. Can't have the little people voting for whoever they want now.
Government targeting groups due to political antipathy towards the government, is... not really a small hill scandal Some other benevolent democracies moved on to try to ban political parties for the greater good of democracy and so on. Can't have the little people voting for whoever they want now.
I find this hilariously ironic, given that the tea party groups have been gerrymandering, pushing through voter laws, racial profiling and stacking elections are the same one screaming that they are being targeted by the government.
God forbid the IRS use its brain to try and target groups of people trying to form "non political social welfare organizations" which are tax exempt because they are "charities". Republican charities helping the poor very rich.
Next Republicans will claim that targeting Muslims for racial profiling as terrorist is a huge thing.
Black people targeted for voter fraud
Hispanics targeted for illegals
Police targeting the poor
Scandal: Yes
Heads roll: Yes
Huge issue over worth nation wide attention and unending coverage: No
It won't really be a big scandal because the GOP burned its impeachment card with Clinton. Boehner is now threatening to sue the President when the Constitution clearly lays out impeachment, not tattling to the judicial branch, as the remedy. The GOP knows how much a real impeachment attempt would backfire on them.
I actually hope it is corruption rather than the alternative because that level of incompetence is just unspeakably pathetic, especially for an agency that will jump down your throat and fine you for the smallest mistake.
Is there anyone in government that can use a computer for anything other than social media?
I love how it's never their fault, it's always the "we need more money" excuse as though any government agency in history has ever said "nah we have enough funding"
There isn't anything unique or noteworthy concerning the IRS in this regard. It affects virtually all US governmental agencies, and the primary reason is that they do indeed typically have inadequate budgets for properly administrating and maintaining their infrastructure.
If Republican congressmen really wanted copies of Lois Lerner's emails so badly, they should have demanded that the NSA provide them. Now there is an agency that doesn't seem to have any difficulty at all getting whatever technology they desire for some odd reason.
Man, when I saw the title on this thread I thought the GOP had finally found out where Obama's real birth certificate went. What a disappointment this is.
Thousands of lost Lois Lerner IRS emails found by IG
An Internal Revenue Service watchdog has located an estimated 30,000 of the lost Lois Lerner emails, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration told congressional staffers Friday the emails belonging to the most controversial figure in the IRS controversy were located on disaster recovery tapes.
The IRS told Congress in late spring that it had lost two years worth of the former head of the tax-exempt division’s emails in a 2011 hard drive crash. They didn’t believe the emails had been backed up anywhere and said her broken hard drive had been recycled.
Lawmakers balked at being told more than a year after the original scandal broke — and several months after the IRS and White House found out.
Republicans said they didn’t believe the IRS and Lerner about the crash — particularly because of the period for which the emails were missing, between 2009 and 2011. That’s around the time the IRS began singling out conservative groups for additional scrutiny...
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Some other benevolent democracies moved on to try to ban political parties for the greater good of democracy and so on. Can't have the little people voting for whoever they want now.
