“A Misleading Pretend Scandal”: It Turns Out IRS Commissioner Did Not Visit The White House 157 Times After All
One of the more enduring legends put forth by those working overtime to stoke the fires of scandal within the walls of the Obama Administration, is the often cited tale of how the now departed IRS Commissioner, Douglas Shulman, visited the White House 158 times during his years serving the Obama Administration.
Surely, as the logic goes, there could be but one credible explanation for an agency boss spending so much time within the epicenter of executive power. If Commissioner Shulman had pitched his tent and made the White House his second home, it could only mean that he was a co-conspirator in a well-coordinated effort on the part of the president and White House staff to influence the 2012 election by putting a beat down on conservative money groups looking to gain tax exempt status and the ability to hide the names of their contributors as they raised millions to defeat the Obama re-election effort.
So compelling is this argument that it has become a ‘go to’ bit of circumstantial evidence in the effort to take the IRS ‘scandal’ to the doorstep of the Oval Office and beyond.
And why not? The story does add up to a fairly decent piece of speculative evidence…or at least it would if the story were true.
Sadly (for the scandal mongers), it turns out that the entire meme falls dramatically short when someone actually takes the trouble to dig just a millimeter under the surface to discover what really happened here.
The ball on this enticing bit of scandal bait got rolling when The Daily Caller, the conservative hatchet rag operated by Tucker Carlson, reported in a May 29th piece that IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman had racked up more visits to the White House than “even the most trusted members of the president’s cabinet.” The article appeared to be carefully put together, so much so that it came complete with a chart revealing how the second most active visitor to the West Wing, Rebecca Blank, was a very distant second to the tally put up by Commissioner Shulman.
The problem is—in what is becoming something of a tradition for The Daily Caller—the website managed to sort of ‘semi-report’ the story without feeling much of a need or desire to gather or report all of the details and facts as, to do so, would have been highly inconvenient to the intent of the article.
Reacting to the Daily Caller story, Bill O’Reilly immediately demanded that Mr. Shulman “explain under oath what you were doing at the White House on 157 separate occasions.” Considering how odd such an extensive visitation history would be for the boss of a second level government agency, O’Reilly’s request was not an unreasonable one.
However, Mr. O’Reilly’s insistent demand turns out be unnecessary as readily available public records have already answered the questions he sought to have answered. All someone need to do is look at these records to know the reason for Shulman’s visits (which turn out to be far, far fewer than 157.)
As reported by Garance Franke-Ruta in The Atlantic —
“And yet the public meeting schedules available for review to any media outlet show that very thing:
Shulman was cleared primarily to meet with administration staffers involved in implementation of the health-care reform bill. He was cleared 40 times to meet with Obama’s director of the Office of Health Reform, and a further 80 times for the biweekly health reform deputies meetings and others set up by aides involved with the health-care law implementation efforts. That’s 76 percent of his planned White House visits just there, before you even add in all the meetings with Office of Management and Budget personnel also involved in health reform.”
If you are wondering why the IRS Commissioner would be so actively involved in meetings involving the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, you will want to keep in mind that the Internal Revenue Service is at the center of the action when it comes to enforcing the mandate and penalty provisions of the law. As a result, any serious meeting regarding the execution of the Affordable Care Act would not make much sense without Shulman, or a high-ranking member of his staff attending in his place.
But even this does not tell the entire story.
You see, while the records reveal that Mr. Shulman was cleared for entry into the White House 157 times, these records speak only to the result of the clearance required by the Secret Service for someone seeking entry into the building and do not speak to whether or not Shulman actually attended the meetings for which he was cleared.
As someone who has, myself, been to the White House on a few occasions, I am keenly aware that nobody without a permanent entrance pass (given to those who have their office in the complex) gets in the door of the White House or the Executive Office Building unless specifically cleared for entry on a particular date and time by the Secret Service. Indeed, on one occasion, I had been cleared by the Secret Service to attend an event but, at the last minute, I had to pass on the White House visit when something came up. Yet, using the list relied upon by The Daily Caller, my skipped visit would be counted as an additional visit on my part if someone were counting.
What’s more, Franke-Ruta’s research reveals that the records tracking the time and date that a visitor signs in and out of a White House event suggests that Mr. Shulman signed in for just 11 events during the years 2009 through 2012 and signed out of 6 events during that same time frame.
Given the discrepancy between the ‘sign in’ and ‘sign out’ records noted above, it is certainly possible that Franke-Ruta may have actually been at the White House on additional occasions. However, there is absolutely no record—as claimed—that Mr. Shulman was at the White House 157 times. All we learn is that Shulman was cleared to come into the building for various meetings and events; meetings and events that made all the sense in the world given his key role in implementing Obamacare.
If you are wondering why Mr. Shulman would require Secret Service clearance so many more times than, say, cabinet members, it turns out that there is a very simple and clear explanation for this too—along with some understanding of Shulman’s testimony before Congress when he referenced going to the White House for an Easter Egg Roll.
“But there is no record that Shulman attended a White House Easter Egg Roll under Obama, most likely because large events organized by the East Wing, like that one, don’t always show up in the visitor’s access records. Neither do visits by staffers, journalists covering large events, or people who enter the White House grounds in their pre-cleared cars, like Cabinet members, who do not wait for badge swipes at the gate with the policymaking hoi polloi.
So, how can there be so much confusion when it comes to White House records tracking who comes in and who comes out?
Prior to Obama’s arrival, there were no such records published for the public to review. The decision to do so was a part of Obama’s stated quest for transparency when he first took office. As Franke-Ruta adds, “The real problem with combing through the White House visitor logs is that they were a system designed for Secret Service clearance and White House security, not as comprehensive means of documenting every visitor to the White House, high to low. They miss the top end and some of the social end of people visiting the White House — people who are cleared through separate processes designed to protect presidential security other than getting swiped in at the front gate for an appointment.”
Clearly, there is nothing even close to evidence suggesting that Commissioner Shulman visited the White House anywhere near the number of times suggested by The Daily Caller and immediately seized upon as a juicy bit of supposed evidence of White House involvement in this juicy story perpetuated by Darrell Issa and friends.
The true bottom line, however, is that those trying—and failing miserably—to make these pretend scandals stick should themselves be investigated within an inch of their lives for failing to set forth the true facts and data when the same becomes readily available. Failure to do so—whether on the part of supposed journalists or supposedly concerned Congressional committee chairmen—is malpractice, pure and simple, and a purposeful, malevolent misleading of the American public who would actually like to know what really happened here.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, July 7, 2013
“Stop Kidding Yourselves”: No, Conservatives, You Won’t Stop Watching Football If The NFL Markets Obamacare
News broke last week that the Obama administration had reached out to the National Basketball Association about a partnership to promote the president’s health reform law. Now, it is seeking a similar deal with the National Football League that will involve “paid advertising and partnerships to encourage enrollment” in Obamacare’s new programs, according to The Hill.
I’ve explained why the Obama-NBA partnership makes sense for both parties, and that reasoning holds true for the NFL–and more importantly, the networks that air the games–too. Given the enormous amount of money television networks pay for the right to air football games, they’re unlikely to turn down advertising that will help them reach the break-even point on those investments. And for the Obama administration, football is a logical target. The NFL has the largest audience of any sport in America. It reaches people in demographics that the Obama administration needs to reach with basic information about. And beyond the ads, such a partnership meshes nicely with other corporate citizenship efforts the NFL has undertaken, like its health-driven Play60 campaign. Plus, it’s the law.
Conservatives, to no one’s surprise, are nevertheless outraged. The Weekly Standard’s Jeffrey Anderson said it would be “yet another reminder that football is best watched on Saturdays,” and Twitchy highlighted tweets from conservatives who said it would cause a “mass exodus of support.” “If the NFL backs Obamacare,” one Twitchy tweet says, “they can kiss this season goodbye.”
It’s unlikely the NFL is rethinking its strategy based on a few tweets, but here’s a word of advice in case they are: the idea that people are going to stop watching football because of a few pro-health care ads, most of which will likely deal more with the details of new programs instead of advocating for it on ideological grounds, is absurd. I might personally share Anderson’s view that football is, indeed, best watched on Saturdays, but the NFL is the most popular sport in America. Its TV ratings are sky-high from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. The league has endured two lockouts, the beginnings of a concussion crisis, and plenty of other on- and off-field controversies without turning the masses away. It’s going to take much more than a few health care ads to get people to stop watching.
The NFL, of course, knows that, but that doesn’t mean the partnership is going to happen. The cost of advertising may be too high for the government to pay on a regular basis, or the two sides may just fail to reach an agreement on other collaborations. If it does happen, though, conservatives might kick and scream and send angry tweets that the Twitchy team aggregates into a post every Sunday afternoon. To suggest that people will stop watching, though, is an exaggeration on the same level as cries of “government takeover of health care” and “death panels.”
By: Travis Waldron, Think Progress, June 28, 2013
“Holy Crap”: Christian Employers Claim Their Religion Puts Them Above the Law
Ready for the next court fight over Obamacare? Get to know Hobby Lobby, the chain of stores fighting the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that the health insurance employers offer their employees cover contraception, and the next Christian martyr to the unholy scourge of health coverage for employees. Hobby Lobby’s owners are conservative Christians, and though their company isn’t a church, they’d like to choose which laws they approve of and which they don’t, and follow only the laws they like. And a federal appeals court just ruled that not only can their suit go forward, but they’re likely to win. Because apparently, “This law violates my religious beliefs” is now a get-out-of-jail-free card.
The decision is simply mind-blowing, essentially finding that private businesses are just like religious institutions, and therefore they can decide which laws they have to obey:
“Hobby Lobby and Mardel have drawn a line at providing coverage for drugs or devices they consider to induce abortions, and it is not for us to question whether the line is reasonable,” the judges wrote. “The question here is not whether the reasonable observer would consider the plaintiffs complicit in an immoral act, but rather how the plaintiffs themselves measure their degree of complicity.”
Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., Mardel Inc. and their owners, the Green family, argue for-profit businesses — not just religious groups — should be allowed to seek an exception if the law violates their religious beliefs. The owners approve of most forms of artificial birth control, but not those that prevent implantation of a fertilized egg — such as an IUD or the morning-after pill.
Hobby Lobby is the largest and best-known of more than 30 businesses in several states that have challenged the contraception mandate. A number of Catholic-affiliated institutions have filed separate lawsuits, and the court suggested faith-based organizations can follow for-profit objectives in the secular world.
“A religious individual may enter the for-profit realm intending to demonstrate to the marketplace that a corporation can succeed financially while adhering to religious values. As a court, we do not see how we can distinguish this form of evangelism from any other,” they wrote.
I’m not a lawyer, so maybe there’s something I’m missing here, but my reaction upon reading this was, “Holy crap!” It’s not for the court to question whether Hobby Lobby’s interpretation of what laws it would rather follow is correct? Seriously? And they don’t see how they can distinguish selling pipe cleaners and finger paint from any other form of evangelism?
Before we get to the core question here, it’s just incredible that one of the reasons the court found in favor of Hobby Lobby was that the company didn’t want to pay for insurance that would pay for “drugs and devices that the plaintiffs believe to be abortifacients.” But what they believe is utterly irrelevant. One of the methods they object to is Plan B, the morning-after pill. But Plan B isn’t an abortifacient. The plaintiffs can choose to “believe” that it is if they want, but they’re asking that the state accept their belief as if it were true just because they believe it, and thereby exempt them from obeying the law. In effect that creates a justification for anyone who wants to ignore the law to create their own factual universe, then use that invented universe to say they’re exempt from the laws everyone else has to follow. If you get caught by a speed camera going 50 in a 35 zone, you can’t say, “Your honor, I believe that all speed cameras automatically register cars as going 15 miles per hour over their actual speeds. Therefore, I was going 35, and I am exempt from this fine.”
This is not the last challenge we’re going to see to this part of the ACA; there are going to be many other companies coming forward to say, “We’re Christian, so therefore the law doesn’t apply to us.” But just think for a moment about the principle they’re using to justify that position. There isn’t any question about the constitutionality of this provision of the ACA. It was passed by Congress and signed by the President. It’s the law of the land. But these private companies are saying that they have the right to choose which laws they obey, simply by saying “It’s my religion.”
To put this in context, the law doesn’t distinguish between “real” religions and fake religions, and properly so. One of the reasons we have the religious freedom we do in America is that the founders didn’t want to set up a system like the one that existed in Europe, where there was a single state religion and none others had protection. So if you want to get married by a clergyman from the Church of Holy Toenail, you might have to fill out some extra paperwork, but you’ll be able to do it.
And that means that if we apply this rationale more broadly, anyone, whatever religion they claim to believe in, should be able to declare themselves exempt from any law they don’t like. And what’s more, they don’t even need any evidence from their religious tradition or texts to justify it. You know what the Bible says about contraception? Absolutely nothing. Not a word. But along the way, some Christians decided that God disapproves of contraception, even though most Christians use it. So now anyone can declare that their religion, i.e. their personal interpretation of their religion, has a greater legal force than actual laws.
I have to pay taxes? Sorry, I’m a Hindu, so I think taxes are an abomination unto the Lord. Sure, there’s no justification for that position in any Hindu text, but the Bible says nothing about contraception either, and Christians are getting an exemption for that, so I decided that Hinduism forbids tax paying. You caught me breaking into my neighbor’s garage and stealing his nice new 18-volt cordless drill? Well, I’m a Buddhist, and I believe that private property is an impediment to enlightenment, so what’s his is mine. The zoning laws in my neighborhood forbid retail establishments? Sorry, I’m a member of the Church of the Homemade Energy Bar, which mandates that all adherents sell energy bars out of their homes, so the zoning rules don’t apply to me.
I only skimmed the decision in this case, so maybe there’s something there I missed that makes this seem less appalling. But religious organizations get all kinds of special treatment from the government as things stand today, and what the plaintiffs in this case (along with their supporters) seem to be arguing is that religious people ought to enjoy a special privileged status that puts them above the law.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 28, 2013
“A Minimum Threshold For Competence”: The Republican House Of Representatives Is Still Terrible At Everything
Somehow or other, the U.S. government, for the first time in years, is close-ish to being functional. Don’t read too heavily into that word “functional.” The government is not and will not probably be moving on your pet issue any time soon, sorry. But the Senate is actually moving, on bipartisan pieces of legislation that are in the public spotlight: a farm bill, a comprehensive immigration bill. GOP senators who typically pretend to negotiate compromises and then run for the hills once they near a motion to proceed, like Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker, are suddenly seeing out those compromises. One of the two houses of Congress, in our lifetime, may well be nearing the minimum threshold for competence.
Now then, what’s the problem? Oh right, it’s the House of Representatives, which is terrible at everything, and offers no indication of being any other way until at least 2023. Let’s give some credit: They’re adept at passing go-nowhere bills to repeal Obamacare or ban abortion or tattoo the words “Under God” to every baby’s forehead. Great work there from the House Republican Party. On issues that might appeal to an even slightly broader cross-section of the country, though, they’ve got nothing. You know this. You’ve seen the same routine in nearly every important vote since 2009. Remember that time the government considered arbitrarily defaulting on the public debt and destroying the global economy forever? That was a head-scratcher for the House; took some real “working out” before they concluded it would best be averted, for now.
It always works out the same way, at the 11th hour. A Senate-originated compromise, after much pouting, is taken up by the House after several defeats of their own insane legislation. Maybe a tweak or two is offered. The House passes it. Conservatives serve up uncreative epithets for John Boehner for exercising the only decent option available to him. The next big piece of legislation comes up. And, at least as of yesterday’s farm bill flop, they begin this same fatal cycle of time wasting again.
The House leadership seemed to think, this time around, at least, that a combination of cheap tricks and a backup plan called “blaming Democrats” would change this deeply entrenched dynamic of incompetence that surrounds everything it tries to do.
The House didn’t even get to a vote on the farm bill last year, knowing it didn’t have enough votes. What could the leadership do differently this time to make sure that a bill hated by most Democrats and still too many Republicans, facing a certain Senate death and then if necessary a White House veto, could pass for no productive reason?
It could … put Iowa Rep. Steve King in charge of whipping? Yes. Yes! This would change the dynamic altogether. If a nutbird like Steve King was the one pushing for this bill then surely all conservatives would fall in line.
There’s little we enjoy more than watching a useless no-voting screecher in Congress suddenly realize he needs his goddamn corn money and then desperately try to persuade his comrades for their votes. And then when it fails, he is just so disappointed in their ability to see the bigger picture. Come on, guys, it’s about the long game here:
GOP leaders blamed Democrats and insisted their whip counts were accurate, even as Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who helped whip support for the bill, said he was surprised at the 62 GOP defections.
“I was surprised by about half of them,” he said. “I thought they would have taken more of a 10,000-foot view.”
Yes, show a little maturity for once, Steve King said, to other people.
Then the Republican leadership blames Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for only bringing 24 Democratic “aye” votes to the table. Jesus. We’re not sure that Nancy Pelosi got 24 votes from the Republican Party on all major bills combined in the years 2009 and 2010. Also, there’s a reason that most Democrats didn’t vote for this farm bill, and that’s because they hate it, because it assaults the social safety net. But yeah, anyway, sure, this is Nancy Pelosi’s fault, boo, she’s evil and wears a lot of makeup, boo.
There’s only one way to a bill becoming a law in this government setup, which we’re stuck with for a while: The House has to work within the framework of a Senate-drafted compromise, and lean on Democratic votes. This is the only way things work right now, and no special guest whip or hollering at the mean San Francisco lady will change that.
And of course yesterday’s farm bill failure has implications on comprehensive immigration reform, which will most likely soon pass through the Senate. It’s hard to come to any other conclusion than Brian Beutler’s:
But more broadly, it’s tough to look at the farm bill fiasco and imagine the House passing an immigration reform bill that Dems don’t carry.
If that’s the case, then the key to the whole immigration reform effort really is John Boehner accepting the internal consequences of just putting something similar to the gang of eight bill on the floor and getting out of the way.
You can watch the farm bill fail and reason that Boehner might think immigration reform isn’t worth it. Or you can watch the farm bill fail and reason that he might decide to dispense with all the member management theatrics and throw in with Democrats and GOP donors. But you can’t watch the farm bill fail and see the House GOP passing a Hastert-rule compliant immigration reform bill and going into conference with the Senate.
We’d say Boehner will go with option 2, bringing immigration to the floor and leaning on Democrats. There’s no mysterious character quirk specific to Boehner that always leads him to this conclusion, as conservatives seem to believe. His decisions follow a fairly simple weighing of the pros and cons, and anyone in his position would make the same ones. That’s why he still has his job: because there’s no other way to do it, and those who would hope to become speaker can see that.
By: Jim Newell, Salon, June 21, 2013
“They Won’t Be Moving On”: What Will Republicans Do if Obamacare Turns Out OK?
Ramesh Ponnuru has a long piece at National Review imploring conservatives to come up with a health-care plan they can swiftly put in place when Obamacare inevitably collapses under the weight of its disastrous big-government delusions. Though I disagree with almost every point Ponnuru makes along the way, from his analysis of what will happen with Obamacare to his recommendations of what a conservative health-insurance system should look like (the fact that anyone, even a free-market dogmatist, thinks catastrophic coverage plus high-risk pools would work out great is just incredible), I’ll give him credit for trying to get his ideological brethren to come up with a proposal to solve what they themselves keep saying is a terrible problem. But alas, his effort is doomed to fail. Why? Because when it comes to health care, conservatives just don’t care. I’ll elaborate in a moment, but here’s the crux of Ponnuru’s argument:
Opponents of Obamacare should plan instead for the likelihood that in its first years of full operation the law will fail in undramatic and unspectacular ways. Premium increases, cost overruns, and the like may keep the law from becoming popular, but they will not prompt the third of the public that supports it to switch sides, or even get its many soft opponents fired up about it. Meanwhile, the administration will spend millions of taxpayer dollars to advertise the law’s benefits. The law’s dogged defenders will explain away all the disappointing developments, and the polls, as the result of continuing opposition in red states. A few conservative lawmakers have speculated that the law will crash so badly that the Democrats will themselves demand repeal in the next couple of years. That is not the way to bet.
Republicans’ confidence that Obamacare will collapse has contributed to their lassitude in coming up with an alternative. It is a perverse complacency. If the program were going to collapse in the next three years, it would be all the more important for Republicans to build the case for a replacement for it. We can be sure that the Left would respond to any such collapse by making the case for a “single payer” program in which the federal government directly provides everyone insurance.
The biggest problem with this kind of appeal is that he will never, ever get anything beyond a tiny number of Republicans to invest any effort in coming up with a health-care plan. That would involve understanding a complex topic, weighing competing values and considerations against one another, and eventually getting behind something that will be something of a compromise. And let me say it again: They. Just. Don’t. Care.
That isn’t to say there are no conservatives who care about health care, because there are a few (like the folks at the Heritage Foundation who came up with the individual mandate!). But they are few and far between on the right. Your typical Republican, on the other hand, cares deeply about issues like taxes and defense policy, and works hard to understand them and come up with ideas for where they should go in the future. But had President Obama not passed health-care reform, they would have been perfectly happy to let the status quo continue indefinitely. They donned their fervent opposition to Obamacare like a new jacket, for reasons of politics, not policy. Sure, it was in many ways a conservative plan, much of whose complexity comes from the fact that it works to expand coverage within the private market. But it was big and important, and it was Obama, and it was a way to articulate their anti-government philosophy, and so they got fired up about it. But it isn’t because health-care policy is something they’re passionate about. Republicans care about taxes whether or not at the moment we happen to be having a big public debate about taxes. But if we weren’t debating health care, they wouldn’t be staying up nights coming up with interesting solutions to health-care problems, because it just isn’t their thing.
Ponnuru doesn’t allow for the possibility that Obamacare will turn out to be something less than a total failure, and he says that conservatives all believe the same thing (though he does differ from some of his allies on whether it will collapse dramatically or simply limp miserably along). But let me suggest another possible scenario: It ends up working pretty well. It doesn’t turn America into a health-care paradise, and there are some implementation problems here and there, and we still have to pay more for our system than other countries do. But people like the fact that their coverage is guaranteed, and the doomsaying turns out not to be borne out. Critically, the middle class and wealthy people who collectively hold political influence discover that their lives haven’t really been changed all that much, except in some ways that are positive. And it becomes hard to get voters too angry about Obamacare.
What will Republicans do then, if the issue doesn’t seem to have much political potency? Will they keep working to come up with new health-care proposals more in line with their values? Or will they move on to some other issues that seem to offer better opportunities to gain political advantage? If you think it’s the former, you’re dreaming.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 13, 2013
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