Ramirez Cartoon: The Obama Administration
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
The Obama administration has a penchant for releasing damaging disclosures on Fridays.
The most recent example was last Friday’s admission by the IRS that – in addition to losing potentially incriminating emails from Lois Lerner’s account – it also can’t find emails from five other employees connected to the conservative targeting scandal.
Two of the five worked in the agency’s Cincinnati office where most of the bad behavior took place. The others include Lerner’s technical adviser, a group manager in the tax-exempt division and a tax law specialist, reports Fox News.
The IRS says all five permanently lost access to emails sought by congressional investigators when their hard drives crashed. The agency’s Inspector General is testing the drives to see if any emails can still be recovered.
Republicans in Congress are not amused.
“The IRS’s ever-changing story is practically impossible to follow at this point, as they modify it each time to accommodate new facts,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said. “This pattern must stop.”
More likely it will continue.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
From issues like ObamaCare to immigration to the ongoing administration scandals, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses several questions that should be put to Members of Congress at town hall meetings during the August recess.
On the day Hillary Clinton joins Twitter, the Washington Post reports that her popularity is dipping as Independents turn a bit sour on the former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and First Lady.
A big factor affecting the public’s perception of Clinton is the Benghazi scandal that helped to accelerate her exit from office. Because of her defiant testimony in the aftermath of the terrorist-led killings of four Americans, congressional investigators have been laying the groundwork to summon her to Capitol Hill to clarify her remarks, and this time as a private citizen.
A private citizen with an eye toward running for President of the United States in 2016, that is. So far, Clinton has been able to avoid culpability for Benghazi, in part because the fiasco seems like anomaly in an otherwise scandal-free tenure at State.
But as of today, that perception may be changing. Radically.
CBS News is reporting that “Uncovered documents show the U.S. State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal behavior ranging from sexual assaults to an underground drug ring.”
An internal investigation now made public cites examples of an ambassador being allowed to continue at his post despite deliberately losing his security detail “to solicit sexual favors from prostitutes,” and several instances where investigators “were simply told to back off investigations of high-ranking State Department members.”
If this story gets legs – and with all the attention paid to whistleblowers at the moment, I expect it will – it looks like the Hillary 2016 speculation will first have to overcome revelations of gross mismanagement that enabled criminal behavior and exposed four Americans to a deadly, and avoidable, attack.
Not exactly the profile of a future president.
What’s in a name?
If you’re Lois Lerner, an IRS division head in charge of approving groups for non-profit status, seemingly everything.
By now, just about everyone in America knows that the IRS division tasked with scrutinizing non-profit applications deliberately and consistently targeted groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their name.
No similar litmus test was used for liberal or progressive groups, indicating a clear and convincing bias by the government against ideological opponents of the White House.
In fact, in at least one case, it looks like the very same IRS agents who persecuted conservative groups fast-tracked approval for an outfit whose name practically screamed for – and received – special treatment.
The name of the organization: The Barack H. Obama Foundation (BHOF). Though not formally affiliated with President Obama, the group is headed by one of his half-brothers, Abon’go Malik Obama, and named for their mutual father.
Organized in 2008, “BHOF operated illegally as a non-profit group and falsely claimed tax-exempt status – for which it had not yet formally applied,” according to research released by Discover the Networks, an online database that keeps track of the connections between leftwing groups and activists.
But once BHOF did get around to applying for tax-exempt status, the IRS’ penchant for favoritism really showed itself. Per Discover the Networks, “The foundation finally submitted its 2010 application for non-profit, tax-exempt status on May 23, 2011; seven days later, it submitted its filings for 2008 and 2009. Within just one month of these filings – on June 26, 2011 – Lois Lerner, the senior official who headed the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations office, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to BHOF.”
Here’s the best part. Apparently, “Lerner broke with the norms of tax-exemption approval making BHOF’s tax-exempt status retroactive to December 2008.”
Maybe the next time Lois Lerner appears before the House Oversight Committee the members will ask her to explain how, with the Tea Party and BHOF examples in mind, they can draw any other conclusion about her stewardship at the IRS than that it has been characterized by the most obvious case of unethical – and potentially illegal – partisan bias.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, says the group is readying a federal lawsuit to be filed next week on behalf of at least 25 conservative groups targeted by the IRS, in an interview with National Review.
On its website, ACLJ provides a list of sample questions the IRS asked various conservative applicants, showing clear instances of intrusion into out-of-bounds issues.
This likely will be the first of many, many lawsuits against the IRS.
Politico reports that an Inspector General’s investigation concluded the Department of Energy’s loan to Solyndra corrupted a process to serve a political agenda.
The Treasury Department’s review of Solyndra’s $535 million federal loan guarantee was “rushed” through in about one day in March 2009, “based on an expedited review request from DOE so that a press release could be issued,” according to a Treasury inspector general report that gives further evidence of the early Obama administration’s eagerness to announce progress in funding clean energy.
…
The report also found that DOE didn’t consult with Treasury on the terms and conditions of the loan deal before or during the Energy Department’s own review process, including the review of Solyndra’s credit worthiness.
Nor did DOE include Treasury in negotiations that later allowed private investors to skip past taxpayers in the repayment line in the event – which turned into a certainty – that Solyndra went bankrupt.
The corruption in the Solyndra loan process is unique in that – so far – no one inside the government has been accused of being bribed for making so many financially ruinous decisions with taxpayer money.
The only explanation is the triumph of ideology over process.
In the Teapot Dome scandal members of the Harding administration got kickbacks for no-bid contracts on oil drilling. The HUD scandals of the late 1980’s made some officials, lobbyists, and construction companies rich at the expense of the poor. But with Solyndra and other failed alternative energy busts, Obama’s DOE blew billions of dollars on nothing more than a bankrupt ideology; namely, the fantasy that green technology can be subsidized into sustainability.
At least with bribes you can follow the money. The Obama administration’s version of corruption is something arguably new. The only way to ensure its eradication is to fire the people who hire the ideologically-driven bureaucrats.
In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino points to the mounting scandals – Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Lightsquared – hitting the White House to refute claims that the Obama Administration has been “scandal free.”
Fox News reports that ATF’s Fast and Furious botched gun-tracking operation to Mexican drug cartels didn’t stop at encouraging private gun owners to sell to known criminals with assurances of surveillance. Six months before Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered with one of these weapons, ATF supervisors in Phoenix directed field agents to sell the guns directly.
The result was the same as when the guns came from private sellers: no surveillance was initiated by ATF to track the guns. Instead, the buyers for the cartels were allowed to store them in a stash house and ship them south with impunity.
These are the kinds of revelations that get bureaus like ATF shut down. Could it also be the scandal that sinks Attorney General Eric Holder, the man who oversees ATF’s operations?
Read the whole story here.
At the rate Senator Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) is having to write checks to cover her growing tax fraud scandal, it may be time for her supporters to organize a fundraiser or two for the rainy days ahead.
Only days after announcing she owed $287,000 in back property taxes for a private plane she owns with her husband, McCaskill now says she really owes $320,000.
It’s amazing to see such a quick escalation.
Less than a week ago McCaskill went from one contested $1,200 political flight to refunding the U.S. Treasury for $88,000 in suspect trips. Now the hit on her bank account is over $400,000 with seemingly no end in sight.
Forget all the media salivating for the 2012 presidential campaign. The Missouri Republican Party is launching its first attack on Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill’s liberal use of taxpayer money.
Over the weekend, the Missouri GOP printed a full-page ad in the Springfield, MO News Leader demanding that McCaskill explain why she paid the U.S. Treasury $88,000 for flights on one of her husband’s private jets. McCaskill continues to claim that only one of the flights was for a purely political reason (and thus ineligible for taxpayer reimbursement), yet her check covers 89 trips.
Since McCaskill’s seat is seen as a great pickup opportunity for Republicans, don’t expect the Missouri GOP to let the self-styled accountability watchdog off the leash easy.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2012 campaign cycle!
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