Politics in the Zeros

WaPo implies the IRS Tea Party debacle was due to insubordination and thus not that big a deal. Excuse me? Why did a group of IRS officials deliberately and knowingly disobey orders from the director? That’s the question. Instead we get spin from the Washington Post, the Beltway attempts to protect its own.

In the summer of 2010, in response to a huge surge in 501(c)(4) applications and media stories that some of these groups were illegally acting like political organizations, a group of IRS officials developed inappropriate criteria for identifying overly politicized 501(c)(4)s applicants. Those criteria included looking for the words “tea party” or related terms. In July 2011, the director of the IRS told them to knock it off and use more politically neutral criteria that focused on the activities of the group rather than the name or ideology of the group.

Here’s where things get interesting: In January 2012, that same group of IRS officials goes rogue and changes the test back without getting management approval.

Why did the officials do this? And why did other officials lie about it to Congress? WaPo is decediely uncurious. Sounds like a limited modified hang-out to me.

The LA Times is considerably more damning and suspicious.

A new report by the Internal Revenue Service’s inspector general offered a few new details Tuesday about the scandal revolving around the IRS’ treatment of “tea party” groups seeking tax-exempt status. Those details were in part damning and in part exculpatory. Collectively, though, they shred the argument from the agency’s defenders that the IRS was right to crack down on those groups. Nor does it address why top IRS officials were telling Congress repeatedly in 2012 that there was no targeting of conservative groups.

Bear in mind that the report doesn’t address important aspects of the scandal. Most notably, it says nothing about any communications IRS officials may have had with the White House or President Obama’s political appointees about the reviews.

Indeed.

Mash up 3D printing and augmented reality and you get to see an visualization of what the 3D object will look like when completed, as it prints, with annotation.

Both 3D printing and augmented reality are seen as the two most impactful and radical innovations of our time. Thanks to these techniques, we now to live in a true DIY world. Want something? Make it! Be it not ‘for real’, then virtual.

Although the techniques share a similar vision, they are opposites as well. Whereas augmented reality is instant and infinitely customizable, 3D printing takes time but the output is a ‘true’ physical manifestation. But what is the result when both are combined?

Via Zenpundit who has links to the originals. The amount of drinkable water on the planet seems vanishingly small as the population keep rising. Water and population are inextricably linked, and not just for drinking . Water is also heavily used in manufacturing and generating electricity. Many areas in that population bubble are already severely water-stressed and getting worse, like in Bangladesh, where climate climate, natural calamities, and population growth in areas like Dhaka are causing groundwater to disappear. people in outlying areas may have to walk hours to get water.

Even more mindblowing: [the population] circle is mostly water.

Water spheres showing:
(1) All water (sphere over western U.S., 860 miles in diameter)
(2) Fresh liquid water in the ground, lakes, swamps, and rivers (sphere over Kentucky, 169.5 miles in diameter), and
(3) Fresh-water lakes and rivers (sphere over Georgia, 34.9 miles in diameter).

Between the unprecedented seizure of AP phone records and TeaPartyGate, the Obama Administration will be preoccupied for months. Obama’s agenda is dead. For the foreseeable future instead it’ll be damage control and CYA. Of course, CYA is what brought down Nixon.

IRS officials in DC and at least three other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups. Confidential documents were sent to news organizations, something which is a firing offense at the IRS. What were they doing with the information and who told them to do it? The IRS is tasked with being completely non-partisan and non-political. Not only is this an egregious breaking of IRS rules, if defies logic to think they did this solely on their own.

The IRS cover-up so far has been remarkably inept. This will only make things worse as the lies are uncovered. The mass seizure of journalist phone records is something even Nixon didn’t try doing.

A Facebook friend says “We are starting what used to be called “limited modified hang-out“.

A limited hangout, or partial hangout, is a public relations or propaganda technique that involves the release of previously hidden information in order to prevent a greater exposure of more important details. It takes the form of deception, misdirection, or coverup often associated with intelligence agencies involving a release or “mea culpa” type of confession of only part of a set of previously hidden sensitive information, that establishes credibility for the one releasing the information who by the very act of confession appears to be “coming clean” and acting with integrity; but in actuality, by withholding key facts, is protecting a deeper operation.

Credit: krypt3ia.wordpress.com/

Buried in the proposed new immigration bill is truly noxious “digital authoritarianism” that would monitor all citizens all the time. Not only is it Orwellian, it is also security theater that doesn’t make us safer.

Immigration bill to treat American citizens as conquered subjects

This provision is flatly unconstitutional, but the Bill of Rights is not held in high esteem by most members of Congress or the largest donors to the Democratic and Republican parties. Big Data corporations intend to make enormous profits helping advocates of Big Government transform the “normal” of American life into what formally used to be considered appropriate for inmates in a minimum security prison.

The bill requires employers look up prospective employees to insure their photo matches. But with the obvious (and probably intended) possibility of mission creep, the government may well keep track of most everything we do. The possibilities for abuse are obvious. Political enemies of someone in power could simply be made non-persons, either deleted from the database or marked as dangerous.

Imagine, you have offended some local worthy with your letter to the editor or your campaign donation to their opponent and suddenly….your debit and credit cards stop working, your employer can no longer issue you your paycheck, you can’t enter any public facilities (the biometric scan rejects you as a “security threat”)

Don’t think it can’t happen here.

Teapartygate just keeps getting worse.  The Cincinnati office sent nonprofit applications from conservative groups that had not yet been approved to Propublica. Applications are not public until they are approved. Disclosing confidential docs is an immediate firing offense at the IRS and this is blatant breaking of the rules.

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.

Update: IRS officials in DC involved in targeting, multiple offices involved.

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Yes, we were (mostly.) No regrets either.

Not only does information want to be free, it can’t really be blocked any more. Eric Schmidt of Google explains how the government trying to ban 3D printing just makes things worse for the government and everyone else.

The perfect example of a collision of many things on the Internet today, all of which we talk about in our book  http://www.newdigitalage.com/

1. 3D printing can in principle be used to build a personal weapon hard to detect

2. Plans are uploaded to the Internet and becomes a big story

3. The government asks the information be removed, but as there is no delete button, copies are kept on foreign sites

4. The resultant publicity makes the problem worse.

This is reminiscent of when Phil Zimmermann almost got indicted for putting PGP encryption software on a server where he could have been downloaded by someone overseas. He didn’t back down, the fledgling net then supported him, and now PGP is everywhere.

Both with him and with Cody Wilson, the Fed’s issue is not that the software / plans are illegal but that they can’t be exported. Which is a ludicrous rule now to impose much less enforce.

I’m sure copies of the 3D gun are on Dark Web sites accessible only using Tor where you have to know the URL. Or on Goggle docs.

Obama just told the IRS they’re on their own in the erupting scandal of the IRS targeting conservatives, saying those responsible should be held “fully accountable.”

“This is pretty straightforward. If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and intentionally targeted conservative groups, then that is outrageous and there’s no place for it.”

Conservative columnist George Will suggests that Obama could be impeached and at least two Congressional investigations are coming. This is a train wreck and the first rule of politics in DC (and elsewhere) is never be found near the scene of the crime.

A somewhat innocent explanation is that low level IRS employees filtering through all the nonprofit applications wanted a way to target those groups that could be political masquerading as nonprofits. However, they way they did was braindead, made worse by those three levels down from the IRS Commissioner knowing and approving. A less innocent explanation is that operatives inside and outside the IRS somehow got this done.

It wasn’t just conservative groups that were targeted, it was any group that criticized the government in a meaningful way.

My prediction: Several top level IRS personnel will resign after public spankings and strict rules will be instituted to avoid this outrageous behavior in the future.