RESPONSE ACTION NETWORK 06/28/2014

Response Action Network Newsletter
Here is your weekly update on the politics and policies affecting our liberties.


WHERE ARE THOSE IRS EMAILS?

The IRS says a batch of emails that House investigators want to review in the widening IRS scandal has vanished. The agency's excuse? Lois Lerner's computer crashed and all that information is lost forever.

The problem is, the IRS had a contract with a small firm called Sonasoft to back-up all of its emails, including Lerner's . . . a contract the IRS cancelled just as House investigators started digging for answers:


"Lois Lerner's computer allegedly crashed in June 2011, just ten days after House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp first wrote a letter asking if the IRS was engaging in targeting of nonprofit groups. Two months later, Sonasoft's contract ended and the IRS gave its email-archiving contractor the boot."

It stands to reason Lerner's emails still exist and the "dog ate my homework" excuse is just a delaying tactic. Republican Rep. Steve Stockman, however, authored a bill that would give taxpayers the right to use flimsy, IRS-style excuses if the agency should ever demand documents from them, including one Hillary Clinton will find familiar:

"At this point, what difference does it make?"


VA HANDS OUT BONUSES TO JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY

The scandal-plagued Department Veterans Affairs thinks that despite unconscionable delays in providing veterans with medical care, and covering-up those delays whenever possible, its staff has been doing excellent work. So good, in fact, that it handed out bonuses to 80 percent of its senior administrators:

"Nearly 80 percent of senior executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs got performance bonuses last year despite widespread treatment delays and preventable deaths at VA hospitals and clinics, a top official said Friday.

"More than 350 VA executives were paid a total of $2.7 million in bonuses last year, said Gina Farrisee, assistant VA secretary for human resources and administration. That amount is down from about $3.4 million in bonuses paid in 2012, Farrisee said.

"The totals do not include tens of millions of dollars in bonuses awarded to doctors, dentists and other medical providers throughout the VA's nearly 900 hospitals and clinics."


OPPOSE OBAMACARE? YOU'RE A RACIST

It's not the first time people who oppose the Obama administration have been called racist. And it won't be the last. But this heated exchange between Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson about the rampant racists opposing Obamacare is particularly good, because it was caught on video.

Rockefeller is, thankfully, retiring from the Senate this year.


ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER SCANDAL

This time, it's the internal affairs division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection - the folks who are supposed to investigate wrong-doing within the agency. It appears internal affairs has been doing some very shady things:

"The internal affairs division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is being investigated for falsifying documents, intentionally misplacing employee complaints and bungling misconduct reports as part of a cover-up to mask its failure to curb employee wrongdoing, a McClatchy investigation has found.

"The inquiry of the nation's largest federal law enforcement agency also involves a much broader array of allegations, including an inner-office sexual relationship between two high-ranking officials, who themselves sometimes oversee investigations of similar illicit affairs. According to three Customs and Border Protection officials, investigators quietly interviewed witnesses this spring as part of a potential criminal case that reflected badly on the leadership of former division chief James Tomsheck and at least two of his deputies."


BLAME GLOBAL WARMING

Global warming alarmists would be an amusing group if they weren't so deadly serious - if not downright daffy -- about the alleged perils and plagues higher temperatures will visit upon humanity. What will a warmer planet do to civilization? Here are 24 gems, including the looming threats to your vacation plans:

"Airline passengers might want to use those seatbelts on their next flight because of greater turbulence. Thanks to global warming, life in Asia is generally miserable and England will be too wet, and too dry…and too cold…and too hot. That hike you may have been planning to the peak of Mt. Everest will be harder, in case it wasn't hard enough already, and out of good eco-conscience you probably shouldn't run another marathon because of all the unnecessary CO2 emissions. And the migration of the Baird's sparrow away from North Dakota to Canada is threatening to cut into the hordes of tourists coming to bird watch."