The ObamaCare-IRS Nexus. Game over, Tyranny wins?

This post is primarily sourced from a recent OP ED from Wall Street Journal. As Obama legislates with his pen and overreach by Federal Agency after Federal Agency combines, America is approaching the end game.

Instead of the “Shining City on a Hill,” a Constitutional Republic noted for Freedom, Exceptionalism, and a Bill of Rights, America in 2014 is looking more and more like a socialist (or Alinsky communist, small “c”) State.  At a time when the world is moving away from Socialism and central control, America is rushing headlong for it, perhaps over the cliff and into decline.

For all practical purposes, America is becoming a nation with porous borders, run by a President with absolute power who uses faithless and selective enforcement of our laws to suit his own political agenda. We are close to the point where abuse or largesse can be selectively meted out to citizens by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to reward or punish political behavior.

How can citizens start to turn this around before we are crushed? What laws are the worst in American history? I’m sure experts can come up with a list, though it may take generations for honest discussions. If you want my three top candidates, how about these: Slavery, Prohibition, and ObamaCare?

All three were misguided attempts by the Federal Government to “do good” by limiting our personal freedoms. All three caused grievous and lasting harm. Even after the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act ended racial discrimination, it’s not over. Criticize Obama today, and you are branded “racist.”

ObamaCare Sink Hole

ObamaCare Sink Hole

There are other toxic bodies of law, of course. The tax code is a disaster, one that came from Prohibition, and one that makes citizens “guilty until proven innocent.” When you couple it to ObamaCare and put the IRS in charge, God help us all. Obama mucking around with his Imperial pen only makes matters worse.

Innocent citizens are not only losing our rights, we are being made into criminals. It is becoming eerily like the old Soviet Union where everyone was watched and everything they did was illegal, except that now the surveillance is more intense. Brad Thor, the novelist, has called this the “Total Surveillance Society,” while others are speaking of “Prisons without Walls.” My own novel, Privacy Wars, predicted both the NSA and IRS scandals, and here I thought I was writing fiction.

From BLM to OSHA, EPA,  NSA, FEC, DOJ, the VA, and even the Park Service there are reported abuses, but, above all, it stands out that the IRS is the agency most widely hated and feared — and the one chosen to oversee ObamaCare and the “ObamaCare core,” a massive database of  health, financial, and personal information on all Americans. This is not about healthcare, it’s about control.

As Dinesh DeSouza argues in his best-selling book, America: Imagine a World without Her, our nation is being erased. We are now undergoing the Second American Revolution, one that was started in 1968 by a band of revolutionaries and Vietnam Protestors from the far left. This is already well underway.

This book should be read by all Americans. In fact, it should be required reading in High School civics classes. Here is my short review:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1W124XJTQFTAP

“The end always justifies the means……… A lie is not a lie if it serves the greater good and furthers our cause.”

 Karl Marx

“Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”

Vladimir Lenin

 “The liberty of all future generations depends on what we do today.”

Founding Father Dr. Joseph Warren (Paraphrased by Brad Thor in his best-selling novel Act of War.)

***

Important Note: There is a misplaced belief that the IRS only targeted TEA Party groups and only in the run-up to the 2012 elections (this and the widespread “loss” of emails under subpoena is the focus of current investigations) but nothing could be further from the truth — which is starting to come out. THIS CORRUPTION EXTENDED TO PEOPLE OR GROUPS DOING ANYTHING THAT OPPOSED THE OBAMA AGENDA, AND IT STARTED ABOUT THE TIME OBAMA TOOK POWER.

The IRS attacked pro-Israel groups

By Rick Manning

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Internal Revenue Service used its power to attack pro-Israel groups.  While the WSJ article is subscriber only, here is the gist of it.

Not only did the IRS target politically conservative groups, they also sought to deny tax exempt authorizations to groups who, quoting the Wall Street Journal, “whose missions might conflict with Administration policies.  The IRS’s ‘Be on the Lookout’ list that November [2010] also included red flags for groups referring to ‘disputed territories.’”

The Journal goes on to report that Jewish groups seeking normal tax exempt status received questionnaires with ideologically oriented questions that are eerily familiar in their nature to the types of political inquiries made to tea party applicants.

According to the publication, “one questionnaire we’ve seen from the IRS to another Jewish group applying for tax-exempt status asked, ‘Does your organization support the existence of the land of Israel?’ and ‘Describe your organization’s religious belief system toward the land of Israel.’”

Now that we know that the IRS engaged in litmus testing of applicants based upon their support of Israel’s right to exist as a pre-determiner on whether a Jewish group should have received 501 (c) status, the Obama Administration can no longer cling to the notion that they were merely focusing upon conservative political groups.

The bald and ugly truth is that Obama’s IRS was being used for political purposes before even the Supreme Court Citizens United decision, and before the term “tea party group” was even included in the agency’s black list. As the Journal reports, “emails uncovered by the House Ways and Means Committee show that the IRS and State Department were conferring in 2009 about pro-Israel groups like Z Street and considering arguments to deny their tax-exempt applications.”

This disclosure should frighten every American as it is evidence that our nation’s tax collectors were more than willing participants in a scheme to regulate public discourse using their unique authority.

And it reveals an even seedier underbelly to the Obama Administration that can no longer hide behind the left’s outrage over the Supreme Court’s campaign financing decision.  They have been unmasked as little more than thugs using the government’s power to intimidate or coerce those whom they disagreed.

In today’s foreign policy environment, what does it say that the first groups that this Administration went after were not necessarily domestically focused tea parties, but instead those that supported Israel’s right to exist?  Given the Wall Street Journal’s revelations about the content of the IRS questionnaire, it is reasonable to ask how the Obama Administration would answer that very question.

The Internal Revenue Service scandal has always gone to the heart of First Amendment freedom of political activity in America.  Now, that it is clear that the Agency had broader litmus tests of political ideology than was previously known, House Republicans need to hold firm in any negotiation with the Senate and not allow any of the monies they cut from the tax collectors budget to be restored.

Failure to exact a harsh penalty against this rogue Agency would signify a tacit acceptance of their democracy threatening behavior.  What’s more, any individuals proven to be behind or involved in these attacks on freedom, should be tried and convicted for their crimes.

The power to tax is the power to destroy, and abusing the public trust by targeting perceived political foes using the tax collecting power can never be tolerated in a free society.

The author is vice president of public policy and communications for Americans for Limited Government. 

Read more at NetRightDaily.com: http://netrightdaily.com/2014/07/irs-attacked-pro-israel-groups/#ixzz38y621cN7

***

The ObamaCare-IRS Nexus

The supposedly independent agency harassed the administration’s political opponents and saved its health-care law.

By

Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal OP ED

July 24, 2014

One of the big questions out of the IRS targeting scandal is this: How can an agency that engaged in such political misconduct be trusted to implement ObamaCare? This week’s Halbig v. Burwell ruling reminded us of the answer. It can’t.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Halbig that the administration had illegally provided ObamaCare subsidies in 36 insurance exchanges run by the federal government. Yet it wasn’t the “administration” as a whole that issued the lawless subsidy gift. It was the administration acting through its new, favorite enforcer: the IRS.

And it was entirely political. Democrats needed those subsidies. The party had assumed that dangling subsidies before the states would induce them to set up exchanges. When dozens instead refused, the White House was faced with the prospect that citizens in 36 states—two-thirds of the country—would be exposed to the full cost of ObamaCare’s overpriced insurance. The backlash would have been horrific, potentially forcing Democrats to reopen the law, or even costing President Obama re-election.

The White House viewed it as imperative, therefore, that IRS bureaucrats ignore the law’s text and come up with a politically helpful rule. The evidence shows that career officials at the IRS did indeed do as Treasury Department and Health and Human Services Department officials told them. This, despite the fact that the IRS is supposed to be insulated from political meddling.

IRS + ObamaCare = Tyranny

IRS + ObamaCare = Tyranny

We know this thanks to a largely overlooked joint investigation and February report by the House Oversight and Ways and Means committees into the history of the IRS subsidy rule. We know that in the late summer of 2010, after ObamaCare was signed into law, the IRS assembled a working group—made up of career IRS and Treasury employees—to develop regulations around ObamaCare subsidies. And we know that this working group initially decided to follow the text of the law. An early draft of its rule about subsidies explained that they were for “Exchanges established by the State.”

Yet in March 2011, Emily McMahon, the acting assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department (a political hire), saw a news article that noted a growing legal focus on the meaning of that text. She forwarded it to the working group, which in turn decided to elevate the issue—according to Congress’s report—to “senior IRS and Treasury officials.” The office of the IRS chief counsel—one of two positions appointed by the president—drafted a memo telling the group that it should read the text to mean that everyone, in every exchange, got subsidies. At some point between March 10 and March 15, 2011, the reference to “Exchanges established by the State” disappeared from the draft rule.

Emails viewed by congressional investigators nonetheless showed that Treasury and the IRS remained worried they were breaking the law. An email exchange between Treasury employees in the spring of 2011 expressed concern that they had no statutory authority to deem a federally run exchange the equivalent of a state-run exchange.

Yet rather than engage in a basic legal analysis—a core duty of an agency charged with tax laws—the IRS instead set about obtaining cover for its predetermined political goal. A March 27, 2011, email has IRS employees asking HHS political hires to cover the tax agency’s backside by issuing its own rule deeming HHS-run exchanges to be state-run exchanges. HHS did so in July 2011. One month later the IRS rushed out its own rule—providing subsidies for all.

That proposed rule was criticized by dozens of scholars and congressional members, all telling the IRS it had a big legal problem. Yet again, the IRS did no legal analysis. It instead brought in a former aide to Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, whose job appeared to be to gin up an after-the-fact defense of the IRS’s actions. The agency formalized its rule in May 2012.

To summarize: The IRS (famed for nitpicking and prosecuting the tax law), chose to authorize hundreds of billions of illegal subsidies without having performed a smidgen of legal due diligence, and did so at the direction of political taskmasters. The agency’s actions provided aid and comfort to elected Democrats, even as it disenfranchised millions of Americans who voted in their states to reject state-run exchanges. And Treasury knows how ugly this looks, which is why it initially stonewalled Congress in its investigation—at first refusing to give documents to investigators, and redacting large portions of the information.

Administration officials will continue to use the IRS to try to improve its political fortunes. The subsidy shenanigans are merely one example. Add Democrats’ hijacking of the agency to target and silence political opponents. What you begin to see are the makings of a Washington agency—a body with the power to harass, to collect, to fine, to imprison—working on behalf of one political party. Richard Nixon, eat your heart out.

Write to kim@wsj.com

***

Action: If we want to stay free, the IRS must be held accountable and ObamaCare must be repealed or rewritten. A majority of the public has always opposed ObamaCare, but time is running out.

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8 Responses to The ObamaCare-IRS Nexus. Game over, Tyranny wins?

  1. John Trudel says:

    “The fact that I had a radical past allowed me to see much of this coming. But even I never thought we would be looking so soon at the prospect of a one-party state. Those words may sound hyperbolic, but take a moment to think about it. If you have transformed the taxing agency of the state into a political weapon – and Obama has; if you are setting up a massive government program to gather the financial and health information of every citizen, and control their access to care; and if you have a spy agency that can read the mail and listen to the communications of every individual in the country, you don’t really need a secret police to destroy your political opponents. Once you have silenced them, you can proceed with your plans to remake the world in your image.”

    David Horowitz

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/the-threat-we-face-2/

  2. John Trudel says:

    Nonconformity and Freethinking Now Considered Mental Illnesses
    The Mind Unleashed
    on 16 November, 2013 at 20:18

    Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.

    The DSM-IV is the manual used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental illnesses and, with each new edition, there are scores of new mental illnesses. Are we becoming sicker? Is it getting harder to be mentally healthy? Authors of the DSM-IV say that it’s because they’re better able to identify these illnesses today. Critics charge that it’s because they have too much time on their hands.

    New mental illnesses identified by the DSM-IV include arrogance, narcissism, above-average creativity, cynicism, and antisocial behavior. In the past, these were called “personality traits,” but now they’re diseases. And there are treatments available.

    All of this is a symptom of our over-diagnosing and overmedicating culture. In the last 50 years, the DSM-IV has gone from 130 to 357 mental illnesses. A majority of these illnesses afflict children. Although the manual is an important diagnostic tool for the psychiatric industry, it has also been responsible for social changes. The rise in ADD, bipolar disorder, and depression in children has been largely because of the manual’s identifying certain behaviors as symptoms. A Washington Post article observed that, if Mozart were born today, he would be diagnosed with ADD and “medicated into barren normality.”

    According to the DSM-IV, the diagnosis guidelines for identifying oppositional defiant disorder are for children, but adults can just as easily suffer from the disease. This should give any freethinking American reason for worry.

    The Soviet Union used new “mental illnesses” for political repression. People who didn’t accept the beliefs of the Communist Party developed a new type of schizophrenia. They suffered from the delusion of believing communism was wrong. They were isolated, forcefully medicated, and put through repressive “therapy” to bring them back to sanity.

    When the last edition of the DSM-IV was published, identifying the symptoms of various mental illnesses in children, there was a jump in the diagnosis and medication of children. Some states have laws that allow protective agencies to forcibly medicate, and even make it a punishable crime to withhold medication. This paints a chilling picture for those of us who are nonconformists. Although the authors of the manual claim no ulterior motives but simply better diagnostic practices, the labeling of freethinking and nonconformity as mental illnesses has a lot of potential for abuse. It can easily become a weapon in the arsenal of a repressive state.

    Sources:

    “Is Free Thinking A Mental Illness?,” from offthegridnews.com, where this was originally featured.

    http://www.naturalnews.com

    http://breakingdeception.com

    The DSM is now in its fifth edition, DSM-5, published on May 18, 2013.

  3. John Trudel says:

    The key things about ObamaCare are these:

    1. A majority of the public has ALWAYS OPPOSED IT.

    2. It was passed only by massive deception and lies, and without a SINGLE Republican vote.

    3. This is the ONLY major social legislation in America’s history that passed into law without any bipartisan support.

    4. It was NEVER about improving health care or reducing the cost of health care. It was about central control, health care redistribution (e.g., from Vets to illegals), and wealth redistribution.

    5. The infamous Death Panels are REAL. Rationing of care by unaccountable bureaucrats is built in, as an integral, essential part of the ObamaCare system. This has been admitted to by several on the left, from Guber to Krugman and beyond. The state will ration your access to health care. It can adjust your quality-of-life at its pleasure.

    6. Vladimir Lenin: “Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”

    How in the world did we get to something as Un-American ObamaCare? It was preplanned. Control of health care is a key part of the Obama/Soros plan to “Fundamentally transform America.”

    Can I prove it? Perhaps someday a select committee will, or perhaps some effort at impeachment, but, no, legal proof is not available at this time. What IS available is proof that this program fits exactly with the promises Team Obama was making to groups like CPUSA to get their support for his Presidential Campaign.

    Here is an example:

    “Should the 2008 elections go to the Democrats, as the Communist Party USA is working to accomplish, the direction of the nation will change dramatically. The direction will not be toward individual freedom, private property rights, and the pursuit of individual happiness. The direction will be toward the values of communism which holds the state as the grantor of all rights, including socialized medicine through universal health care; amnesty for all illegal aliens who want to come to America; cradle to the grave education by the state; surrender in Iraq; and acquiescence to all threats of violence; no right to own guns; and a state-assigned job for everyone.”

    Source: The Manchurian President, by Aaron Kline, pp. 148-149.

    http://www.amazon.com/Manchurian-President-Communists-Socialists-Anti-American/dp/1935071874/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420683618&sr=1-1&keywords=manchurian+president

    This was predicted PRIOR to the 2008 elections. In 2015 most of it has already come to pass, and the rest is in process.

  4. John Trudel says:

    THIS ONE IS VERY FUNNY. LOOKS LIKE THE SMART LIBTARDS AT HARVARD GOT GRUBERED ALONG WITH THE REST OF US.

    ***
    Heartwarming.

    Indescribably delicious.

    That’s to describe the response of the Harvard Faculty to the changes in THEIR health care mandated by Obamacare, otherwise now to be known as the Unaffordable Health Care Act. UCHA – maybe you have to be German to pronounce it.

    And the final, most unkindest, cut is that an MIT chap – Gruber, whom you may recall – predicted that it would pass due to the stupidity of the American people. So these, the brightest, are equally unable to see past the end of their noses. Who would have guessed. Perhaps only those who observed that congress had always exempted itself from its own laws until the Gingrich revolution brought them into the fold.

    Thanks to TonyP

    Here beginneth:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-05/obamacare-architects-harvard-furious-after-learning-they-are-not-exempt-obamacare

    OBAMACARE ARCHITECTS AT HARVARD FURIOUS AFTER LEARNING THEY ARE NOT EXEMPT FROM OBAMACARE

    The brain incubator at Harvard, the place which according to legend, and certainly the US News and World Report’s annual paid college infomercial, is the repository for some of the smartest people in the world, is furious.

    The reason – Harvard’s illustrious faculty has learned that they too will be subject to their own policy recommendations as relates to Obamacare, which they themselves helped conceive. As the left-leaning NYT reported earlier today, “for years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.”

    EVEN THE NY TIMES PICKED THIS ONE UP. They spun it heroically, of course, being great apologists for the radical left, but even their version is VERY amusing.

  5. John Trudel says:

    10,535 pages of Obama Care condensed to 4 sentences

    A nice summary by a Purdue engineer . . .

    Here are the 10,535 pages of Obama Care condensed to 4 sentences…
    As humorous as this sounds…..every last word of it is absolutely TRUE!

    1. In order to insure the uninsured, we first have to uninsure the insured.
    2. Next, we require the newly uninsured to be re-insured.
    3. To re-insure the newly uninsured, they are required to pay extra charges to be re-insured.
    4. The extra charges are required so that the original insured, who became uninsured, and then became re-insured, can pay enough extra so that the original uninsured can be insured, which will be free of charge to them.

    This, ladies and gentlemen, is called “redistribution of wealth” …
    or, by its more common name, SOCIALISM.

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