Interesting, thanks. Any clue why a union would want to report differently to the IRS vs. the Department of Labor?
Also covered at some depth. IRS practices as such existed long before the scandal. The reasons are immaterial to the issue of a conspiracy that righties are so determined to find.
It's just mud to smear on the IRS so as to promote suspicion.
One just for old times sake Haven't needed em much lately.So when does the firework show begin? I want some explosions dammit!
LOL Who could have predicted this? Oh, right - everyone.
Motto: The IRS - because fuck you, that's why.
IRS says it has lost emails from 5 more employees
On Friday, the IRS said it has also lost emails from five other employees related to the probe, including two agents who worked in a Cincinnati office processing applications for tax-exempt status.
The agency blamed computer crashes for the lost emails. In a statement, the IRS said it found no evidence that anyone deliberately destroyed evidence.
Reminds me of the guy found stabbed 35 times. Police say it was the worst case of suicide they ever investigated
Here's a more detailed article about this, from Politico: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/irs-emails-lost-110648.html
Unfortunately, it appears the actual TIGTA report hasn't been released yet, so there are a lot of gaps in the information. Still, there are a lot of new details.
It appears that this new set of crashes overlaps the previously reported 7 drives (based on the names reported). If I can count correctly, we now have a total of 10 of 82 people with drive crashes, 5 of whom had "a probable loss of emails." (This assumes the earlier story of 7 drive failures was accurate, and the names listed then were accurate.)
It's also notable that this new information is for a 4.5 year period (9/2009 - 2/2014); the earlier set of 7 came from a 3-year period. With 10 drive failures out of 82 over 4.5 years, there was a failure rate of 2.7% per year. That's a pretty ordinary failure rate for cheap consumer drives.
Another interesting tidbit in this story is that according to Rep. Jim Jordan's letter, TIGTA reports there are "760 exchange (sic) server drives", and/or "exchange (sic) servers" and/or "760 exchange (sic) server tapes" that the IRS did not search for Lerner's emails. (Issa, et al, uses all three phrases interchangeably. I assume TIGTA said tapes.) I'm sure in part due to Jordan's confusion, the media are really butchering this part of the story, usually calling them either servers or drives, and completely ignoring the tape reference. This, of course, has the denizens of the nutter bubble in full clown mode, never realizing it was Jordan who is apparently so clueless.
Anyway, I suspect these are the same tapes mentioned a couple of months ago, when the IRS hedged it's earlier statement that all backups were destroyed after six months. Once again, I hope the full report is released. It may answer a lot of questions.
Here is a direct link to the full letter from Jordan: http://jordan.house.gov/uploadedfil...nen-irs_-_confirming_appearance_sept_2014.pdf
(The letter itself puzzles me a bit. It is signed by Jordan, with his Subcommittee on Economic Growth... title, yet it is on Issa's Oversight Committee letterhead. It's not clear if he's freelancing this, or if it falls under the Issa investigation.)
Says the boy who's clearly never worked in an enterprise IT environment. Consumer PC drives (like you play with) are indeed inexpensive. Enterprise SAN is not cheap even today, and its price has dropped substantially since 2009 when this saga started. Mind you, I agree it was a poor place to cut corners, but don't kid yourself that it is a trivial expense.
Yep. me either. I'd like to clear up some of the FUD and find out whether these union reporting differences were legitimate due to different reporting requirements, or whether those unions really were gaming the system.I know zip about DoL reports so I don't know.
Fern
I didn't say that. Did I? I think I said they need to be forced to properly maintain their data.
Interesting, thanks. Any clue why a union would want to report differently to the IRS vs. the Department of Labor?
If the IRS wants to know, they can get the info from the Labor Dept anyway just by asking for it.
Your prices are low, but no matter. How many PBs does it take to indefinitely store all the email for 90,000 employees? Some tens of millions of dollars worth. Again, I agree it was a dumb corner to cut, but I have seen several large corporations take the same tactic (including two Fortune 100s), at least until they recognized it was a bad idea.SAN is CHEAP AS FUCK SON. Not soccer mom cheap, but enterprise cheap. It was $3mil/1 PB 5 years ago. So no sir, not even close to an excuse. It's 1.7 mil/PB now for a high end san, 800K for a dell.
Lets compare that to their published budget? 300Million for IT Modernization, and close to 2 billion in IT general. So, how is 3 million in storage expensive again? 5? 20?
The emails were lost intentionally.
Non partisan hacks don't have trouble seeing this. All we are seeing with the IRS scandal is increasing politicization of intelligence.
The hacks here defending the procedure and plausibility that the IRS losing emails surrounding the scandal was just good ole chance would flip a bitch on their stance quick enough to snap necks if this was going on under a republican administration.
Anyways, your solution is built in the wrong construct. Emails were not lost due to procedure, they were lost in spite of it.
You need to look in a mirror when you pontificate about partisan hacks. The fact remains that Lerner's disk crash came almost a year before the investigations and lawsuits started. The fact remains that two IRS technicians gave sworn statements that Lerner's system showed no evidence of external damage, and that they were unable to access Lerner's drive using any of their specialized equipment. The fact remains that a 2.7% annual failure rate is very typical for cheap consumer drives, no matter how much the ignorant can't grasp probability and coincidence. Regardless of what else one may choose to believe about Lerner and the IRS, clinging to this conspiracy theory that Lerner intentionally destroyed her own email (a year before they asked about it) is purely partisan sock-puppetry. Move on.The emails were lost intentionally.
Non partisan hacks don't have trouble seeing this. All we are seeing with the IRS scandal is increasing politicization of intelligence.
The hacks here defending the procedure and plausibility that the IRS losing emails surrounding the scandal was just good ole chance would flip a bitch on their stance quick enough to snap necks if this was going on under a republican administration.
Anyways, your solution is built in the wrong construct. Emails were not lost due to procedure, they were lost in spite of it.
Give us some cliffs here. Should we concentrate on your habitual re-assertion that we can't really know anything yet because we don't know everything yet? Or perhaps on your masterful imagination that hard drive failure rates automatically equate to data loss?You boys should probably read this, and realize your uninformed, knee-jerk attacks just make you look like asses:
(The letter itself puzzles me a bit. It is signed by Jordan, with his Subcommittee on Economic Growth... title, yet it is on Issa's Oversight Committee letterhead. It's not clear if he's freelancing this, or if it falls under the Issa investigation.)
Almost a year before the information was officially requested. Ten days after a Republican Congressman sent a letter of inquiry about the very practices in which Lerner was engaged - practices which cost her job.You need to look in a mirror when you pontificate about partisan hacks. The fact remains that Lerner's disk crash came almost a year before the investigations and lawsuits started. The fact remains that two IRS technicians gave sworn statements that Lerner's system showed no evidence of external damage, and that they were unable to access Lerner's drive using any of their specialized equipment. The fact remains that a 2.7% annual failure rate is very typical for cheap consumer drives, no matter how much the ignorant can't grasp probability and coincidence. Regardless of what else one may choose to believe about Lerner and the IRS, clinging to this conspiracy theory that Lerner intentionally destroyed her own email (a year before they asked about it) is purely partisan sock-puppetry. Move on.
I think you should concentrate on making honest arguments based on what people have actually said rather than your habitual use of dishonest straw man claims. It reflects poorly on your character and your intelligence.Give us some cliffs here. Should we concentrate on your habitual re-assertion that we can't really know anything yet because we don't know everything yet? Or perhaps on your masterful imagination that hard drive failure rates automatically equate to data loss?
You DO know you're on a tech site, right?
There is absolutely nothing you will accept as an honest argument if it does not absolutely uphold your position of necessity. Everyone knows this. Some here applaud it - but everyone here knows it.I think you should concentrate on making honest arguments based on what people have actually said rather than your habitual use of dishonest straw man claims. It reflects poorly on your character and your intelligence.
Isn't that exactly the conundrum here? The labor dept reports different numbers than the unions? Then those discrepancies were ignored? I can't wait for the full report, but this is the narrative Fox news wants us to believe, and MSNBC is just screaming about the vast tea-bagger conspiracy.
Wrong again. It was ten days after the Republican head of Ways and Means (the committee tasked with IRS oversight) sent a letter about gift taxes. Camp mentioned not one single word about the approval process for 501(c) applications. Given his oversight role, Camp routinely sends such correspondence to the IRS. He just cherry-picked one with the right date range and general area of the IRS. You've once again swallowed the RNC propaganda without bothering to fact check.Almost a year before the information was officially requested. Ten days after a Republican Congressman sent a letter of inquiry about the very practices in which Lerner was engaged - practices which cost her job.
Nice deflection, sweetie, but it's really not hard. All you have to do is respond directly to something I actually said, instead of your usual caricature of what you pretend I said. It usually begins with an actual quotation, something even you could figure out were you honestly inclined to.There is absolutely nothing you will accept as an honest argument if it does not absolutely uphold your position of necessity. Everyone knows this. Some here applaud it - but everyone here knows it.
Almost a year before the information was officially requested. Ten days after a Republican Congressman sent a letter of inquiry about the very practices in which Lerner was engaged - practices which cost her job.
Yes, Jordan is listed on the Oversight letterhead. I just thought it was odd he used a subcommittee title instead of the Oversight. Of course he is the chair of that particular subcommittee, so maybe it's just an ego thing.Good question.
According to Wiki Jordan is on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He appears to be on some subcommittees of Oversight, apparently including The Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation, and Regulatory Affairs. I.e., they are all tied together.
House committees and subcommittees: http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/cgi-bin/committee_list.cgi?site=congressmerge
Fern
Actually it was about big Republican and conservative donors to existing and application-pending conservative 501(c)(4) groups being audited without reason and threatened with tax code violations for those donations. Which, remember, was an integral part of this process. Put the applications in limbo, demand donor lists, begin taxing the donations, subject the donors to audits and threats, leak their privileged information to left wing organizations for smearing. From Camp's letter:Wrong again. It was ten days after the Republican head of Ways and Means (the committee tasked with IRS oversight) sent a letter about gift taxes. Camp mentioned not one single word about the approval process for 501(c) applications. Given his oversight role, Camp routinely sends such correspondence to the IRS. He just cherry-picked one with the right date range and general area of the IRS. You've once again swallowed the RNC propaganda without bothering to fact check.
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/non_6103_ltr_final.pdfOn May 13, 2011, the IRS confirmed that it began examination of five taxpayers that donated money to IRC 501(c)(4) organizations to determine whether "the donations were taxable gifts and if a gift tax return should have been filed." The applicability of the gift tax to 501(c)(4) donations is an unsettled area of tax law and it appears that it has been applied only a handful of times. Both taxpayers and tax practitioners were stunned at the IRS interest in this issue after decades of silence.
As Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, I find the lack of IRS transparency deeply troubling. Taxpayers already struggle to comply with a Tax Code that is too complex. Now, with no warning, the IRS appears to have selectively targeted certain taxpayers who are engaged in political speech. Not only does this threaten political speech, it casts doubt on the IRS' credibility as an impartial enforcer of the nation's tax law. The IRS's ability to effectively enforce tax law and work with taxpayers to ensure compliance is not served by auditing unsuspecting taxpayers for violating tax laws the IRS has not acknowledged for decades.
Yawn. If you want to start a Gift Tax Scandal, start a thread for it. Your wall of text doesn't change the fact that Camp's letter said not a single word about the approval process, which is the foundation for the current IRS "scandal". If you remember, the current issue began when conservative groups complained their applications were being delayed, and TIGTA discovered the IRS was using partisan keywords to quickly identify political groups. It didn't begin in 2011 when Camp inquired about gift taxes, though it did involve the same area of the IRS. This, of course, is why I specifically stated Camp picked this particular letter (out of so many) because it had "the right date range and general area of the IRS."Actually it was about big Republican and conservative donors to existing and application-pending conservative 501(c)(4) groups being audited without reason and threatened with tax code violations for those donations. Which, remember, was an integral part of this process. Put the applications in limbo, demand donor lists, begin taxing the donations, subject the donors to audits and threats, leak their privileged information to left wing organizations for smearing. From Camp's letter:
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/non_6103_ltr_final.pdf
Now obviously this will have zero effect on you, but it was worth retyping the first two paragraphs just for the unlikely event that someone here might be thinking "Maybe Bowfinger isn't 100% dishonest, only mostly dishonest." In that vein, let's look at the situation a bit more closely. This wasn't merely gift taxes as you assert; it was specifically in response to the IRS changing its decades-long policy and treating lack of a gift return for donations to conservative 501(c)(4) not-for-profits as a violation of tax law - but ONLY for those contributing to conservative groups. The exact groups targeted by Lerner and her pack, most of whom are still gainfully employed advancing the DNC's aims inside the IRS or other government agencies. In fact, I see over a dozen references to 501(c)(4) groups in his three page letter.
Note also that in his letter exercising his responsibilities as Oversight Committee Chair he specifically requests all emails between the IRS and the Department of the Treasury. Either the IRS never consulted with nor informed Treasury of its sudden reversal of a thirty-five year policy, or his oversight was request was ignored and the requested documents then "accidentally" lost due to a score of convenient "crashes" among the key players.
Furthermore, we now know that this goes back at least to late 2009 and was being orchestrated from D.C. from at least early 2010. Camp also asserts that the IRS also targeted existing 501(c)(4) groups for surveillance, that 83% of these were conservative groups, and that 100% of those selected for auditing were conservative groups.
Again, the complaints in Camp's letter are exactly the activities of Lerner et al - the exact activities for which Lerner fell on her sword. Donate to a conservative 501 group, get audited, leaked and smeared. File an application to start a conservative 501 group, have it placed in limbo while its donors are identified, audited, threatened, leaked and smeared. If anyone is wavering on whether Bowfinger is being less than 100% dishonest, please read Camp's letter and note that he mentions the IRS' treatment of conservative 501(c) groups and their donors in every fucking part of it. Then decide for yourself whether Lerner's loss of emails - and those of "less than twenty" (the IRS' term) of those under her or otherwise directly involved in this - likely fits the definition of accident.
Then decide if Venezuela is the model you want for America.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-...ents-show-irs-hq-control-tea-party-targeting/
http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/irs-hq-foia-1559-full-production/