IRS Scandal: “I was targeted and I’ve got proof it was a Democratically-led conspiracy”

Onetime Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root has the goods:

IRS Scandal: I was targeted and I’ve got proof it was a Democratically-led conspiracy

I was targeted by the IRS in a coordinated attack at the highest levels of government…and we now have the proof.

My IRS files, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, clearly implicate the IRS and a Democratic U.S. senator.

Per Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch:

“The Obama IRS obstructed the release of Wayne Root’s tax documents. The abuse of process Judicial Watch and Wayne suffered through to get these documents is scandalous. Now we know why the Obama IRS was hesitant to give Wayne his own IRS files. These documents show the Obama IRS scandal was more than just suppressing the Tea Party, it was also about auditing critics of President Obama. Richard Nixon had to resign from office for less. The first order of business for AG Loretta Lynch should be to appoint a special counsel who can convene a grand jury to look into the Obama IRS outrages.”

As you’ll read below, the fingerprints of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party are all over my case. Until now, no one could prove the IRS was using politics as a basis for vicious attacks against critics of the president. That just changed.

I was audited in 2011, and it started in a way that government officials and IRS spokesmen claimed in a recent Wall Street Journal article can never happen — with a phone call.

Read the rest. Nixon was hounded out of the White House for far less. Impeach and imprison those responsible for these abuses, and abolish the IRS so that this can’t happen again.

Extreme secrecy eroding support for 0bama’s trade pact

Most transparent administration evar.  It’s like 404Care all over again, where they’ll have to pass it before we can see what’s in it:

Extreme secrecy eroding support for Obama’s trade pact

If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.

If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.

And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.

“It’s like being in kindergarten,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who’s become the leader of the opposition to President Barack Obama’s trade agenda. “You give back the toys at the end.”

For those out to sink Obama’s free trade push, highlighting the lack of public information is becoming central to their opposition strategy: The White House isn’t even telling Congress what it’s asking for, they say, or what it’s already promised foreign governments.

This is getting ominous

150504092408-restricted-grace-lee-whitney-tease-large-169
First, it was Leonard Nimoy.  Now comes word that Grace Lee Whitney has passed.  That’s two this year, and not that far apart…here’s hoping there won’t be a third:

Grace Lee Whitney, Yeoman Rand on ‘Star Trek,’ dead at 85

Grace Lee Whitney, who played Yeoman Janice Rand in the original “Star Trek” series and a handful of movies based on the series, died Friday at her home in Coarsegold, California. She was 85.

[…]

On the official “Star Trek” website, startrek.com, Whitney was described as “one of ‘Star Trek’s’ greatest cautionary tales and also one of the franchise’s most satisfying renaissance stories.” She was written out of the show in its first season and struggled with alcohol and drug problems before finding recovery, reprising the Rand role in the “Star Trek” films and devoting her life to helping others.

The sick shouldn’t have to beg for life-saving drugs

An effort is under way in a number of states to pass “right to try” laws that would widen the availability of experimental drugs to patients who’ve exhausted their other options.  Here in Nevada, AB164 has passed the Assembly and is on its way to the Senate.  The hope is that it’ll fend off more instances like the following:

The sick shouldn’t have to beg for life-saving drugs

Mikaela Knapp’s story is one such example.

At age 24, Mikaela was diagnosed with a deadly form of kidney cancer that migrated into her bones before she even knew she was sick. She went through every known treatment for the cancer in a matter of months — nothing worked. Mikaela’s high school sweetheart, Keith, heard about a drug in development that was successfully treating people with this same cancer. Like Josh, Mikaela wasn’t allowed to enroll in the clinical trial.

Mikaela and Keith launched a social media campaign to try to get access to the drug, but it wasn’t enough. The FDA didn’t help, the drug company didn’t bend and Mikaela didn’t get access to the drug.

She died on April 24, 2014.

Five months later, on Sept. 4, the FDA gave final approval to the drug that could have saved her life.

No family should have to launch a social media campaign or beg the government and drug companies on national television for the chance to save their child, their wife or their mother.

Dealing with cancer is bad enough.  Being told you can’t have access to a potentially lifesaving drug because some faceless bureaucrat hasn’t signed off on it yet is not only frustrating, but it’s killing people needlessly.  Is it guaranteed that the drugs in question will save people’s lives?  No…but it’s one more shot against a disease that, left untreated, will kill.

The second coming of Leona Helmsley

dr-evil-george-sorosTaxes, after all, are for the little people:

George Soros Does Not Want To Pay Taxes, But He Wants You To Pay Yours!

George Soros likes to say the rich should pay more taxes. A substantial part of his wealth, though, comes from delaying them. While building a record as one of the world’s greatest investors, the 84-year-old billionaire used a loophole that allowed him to defer taxes on fees paid by clients and reinvest them in his fund, where they continued to grow tax-free. At the end of 2013, Soros—through Soros Fund Management—had amassed $13.3 billion through the use of deferrals, according to Irish regulatory filings by Soros.

Congress closed the loophole in 2008 and ordered hedge fund managers who used it to pay the accumulated taxes by 2017. A New York-based money manager such as Soros would be subject to a federal rate of 39.6 percent, combined state and city levies totaling 12 percent, and an additional 3.8 percent tax on investment income to pay for Obamacare, according to Andrew Needham, a tax partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Applying those rates to Soros’s deferred income would create a tax bill of $6.7 billion.

Riot-Plagued Baltimore Is a Catastrophe Entirely of the Democrat Party’s Own Making

pic_giant_042815_SM_Baltimore-Police-Car-G_0Riot-Plagued Baltimore Is a Catastrophe Entirely of the Democrat Party’s Own Making

Nancy Pelosi’s hometown, before she decamped to the Left Coast:

St. Louis has not had a Republican mayor since the 1940s, and in its most recent elections for the board of aldermen there was no Republican in the majority of the contests; the city is overwhelmingly Democratic, effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department. Baltimore has seen two Republicans sit in the mayor’s office since the 1920s — and none since the 1960s. Like St. Louis, it is effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department. Philadelphia has not elected a Republican mayor since 1948. The last Republican to be elected mayor of Detroit was congratulated on his victory by President Eisenhower. Atlanta, a city so corrupt that its public schools are organized as a criminal conspiracy against its children, last had a Republican mayor in the 19th century. Its municipal elections are officially nonpartisan, but the last Republican to run in Atlanta’s 13th congressional district did not manage to secure even 30 percent of the vote; Atlanta is effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department.

[…]

Would any sentient adult American be shocked to learn that Baltimore has a corrupt and feckless police department enabled by a corrupt and feckless city government? I myself would not, and the local authorities’ dishonesty and stonewalling in the death of Freddie Gray is reminiscent of what we have seen in other cities. There’s a heap of evidence that the Baltimore police department is pretty bad.

This did not come out of nowhere. While the progressives have been running the show in Baltimore, police commissioner Ed Norris was sent to prison on corruption charges (2004), two detectives were sentenced to 454 years in prison for dealing drugs (2005), an officer was dismissed after being videotaped verbally abusing a 14-year-old and then failing to file a report on his use of force against the same teenager (2011), an officer was been fired for sexually abusing a minor (2014), and the city paid a quarter-million-dollar settlement to a man police illegally arrested for the non-crime of recording them at work with his mobile phone. There’s a good deal more. Does that sound like a disciplined police organization to you?

Yes, Baltimore seems to have some police problems. But let us be clear about whose fecklessness and dishonesty we are talking about here: No Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation. Baltimore’s police department is, like Detroit’s economy and Atlanta’s schools, the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party enabled in no small part by black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing project, and a Democratic-party project.