Conservatism

My longish piece about Ken Minogue

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It was actually late on Friday evening when an American friend put up the news on Facebook: he had heard from another friend and colleague that Ken Minogue had died on the way home from the Mont Pelerin Society meeting at the Galapagos. Why has it taken me so long to write about a man I liked and admired as a thinker, a great force in politics and as a dear friend? Somehow, I feel it is appropriate to write about him on July 4, American Independence Day, when many English and, as some of us say, Anglospheric ideas were codified on the other side of the Pond, even if it meant a break with the mother country.

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Although Ken Minogue wrote for the fabled Encounter magazine at the time my father did as well, my own friendship with him is much more recent. Ken was one of the founders of the Bruges Group, chaired it for some years and retained a close interest in its doings. It was through that and other eurosceptic organizations that I knew him and through other friends became friends with him and Beverley. There are few things in my life I am more pleased and proud of than this friendship and few things I shall recall with greater pleasure than the various lunches, dinners, outings to the theatre (once to see the wonderful production of Guys and Dolls with Adam Cooper as Sky Masterson) and the cinema, and the many talks about subjects that ranged from musicals and Hollywood films to serious political ideas.

The rest of the posting is on my blog, Your Freedom and Ours.

What is a conservative ?

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Right now we have the immigration bill that has been passed by the Senate after being written by the “Gang of 8.” This bill, like so many major pieces of legislation lately, was written in secrecy and has not been through the usual committee process. “We have to pass it to see what is in it.”

As if Obamacare were not enough, here we have another opaque and mysterious bit of legislation that is thousands of pages of incomprehensible legalese.

Jennifer Rubin weighs in with a rather beltway-oriented view. Fair enough as she writes in the Washington Post.

The immigration battle, the debate over U.S. involvement in Syria and the flap over NSA surveillance have suggested two starkly different visions of the GOP as well as two potential paths for the GOP.

The question remains whether the GOP will become the party of: Sen. Rand Paul, Ky., or Sen. Kelly Ayotte, N.H., on national security; The Gang of Eight or the Gang of Three (Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions) on immigration; Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio, or Rick Santorum on gay marriage; Broad-based appeal (e.g. Govs. Chris Christie, Gov. Scott Walker) or losing ideologues (Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Michele Bachmann). I don’t know that Angle and O’Donnell were “ideologues.” Angle, at least was an amateur, somewhat like other candidates supported by the Tea Party.

I’m not sure I agree with her choices but let’s think about it.

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Security Theater

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“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin.

“The president has put in place an organization that contains the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life. That’s going to be very, very powerful. That database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.” Rep. Maxine Waters

Who expected that 1984 has arrived? I recall that in the actual year of 1984, a great many commenters in the political arena rejoiced that the whole Big Brother thing had not arrived, but it looks like such rejoicing was premature. Now we have the NSA collecting telephone records from Verizon wholesale for the ostensible purpose of security reasons … not so much for tracking specific suspected terrorists, but rather for data-mining … and very likely for opposition research. The revelations of the IRS stalling Tea Party groups’ applications for 501 status? Almost certainly this distracted or discouraged those groups from going all-out in last year’s election season, which I believe was the primary purpose.

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Obama’s IRS Management Problem

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The Obama administration has a huge “management problem” with its spin of the nakedly partisan and highly illegal IRS denial of Tea Party non-profit tax status. One that makes the IRS scandal an “on-going criminal conspiracy” in the RICO sense and places “Nixon offense” impeachment charges in Pres. Obama’s future.

This is the IRS Tea Party Case Timeline Courtesy of ABC News:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Appendix%20VI%20and%20Appendix%20VII.PDF

This is my list of the Cincinnati, Ohio and IRS HQ management positions involved in Tea Party cases by title, location and first date mentioned from the linked document.

1. Determinations Unit Group Manager (Ohio?) [1] — 1 Mar 2010
2. Acting Manager, Technical Unit [1] (Ohio) — 16 Mar 2010
3. New Acting Manager, Technical Unit [2] (Ohio) — 1 Apr 2010
4. Determinations Unit Program Manager (Ohio?) — 25 Apr 2010
5. Determinations Unit Area Manager (Ohio?)– 26 Oct 2010
6. Technical Unit manager (Ohio) — 16 Nov 2010
7. Senior Technical Advisor to the Director, EO (IRS Washington DC) — 13 Dec 2010
8. New Technical Unit Acting Manager [3] (Ohio) — Jan 2011
9. Acting Director, Rulings and Agreements [1] (IRS Washington DC) — 1 June 2011
10. Director, EO. (IRS Washington DC) — 29 June 2011
11. -Title or titles unknown- in EO function (IRS Washington DC) Headquarters office — 5 July 2011
12. IRS Chief Counsel (IRS Washington DC) — 4 Aug 2011
13. New Acting Director, Rulings and Agreements [2] (IRS Washington DC) — October 2011
14. New Acting Group Manager “of the team of specialists” (Ohio?) — March 2012
15. Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement (IRS Washington DC) — 8 Mar 2012
16. Senior Technical Advisor to the Acting Commissioner, Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division (IRS Washington DC) — 23 Mar 2012
17. Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement (IRS Washington DC) — 23 Mar 2012
18. Senior Technical Advisor to the Acting Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division Commissioner (IRS Washington DC) — 23 Apr 2012
19. Director, Rulings and Agreements (May be same as #10 above, IRS Washington DC)– 17 May 2012
20 -Title(s) Unknown- Quality Assurance Unit (Ohio?) — May 2012
21 -Title(s) Unknown- Operations Unit (Ohio?) — May 2012
22. New Acting Determinations Unit Group Manager [2] (Ohio) — 15 July 2012

In August March 2012 then IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified before Congress that the IRS was not harassing or making a special effort to deny Tea Party affiliated organizations their non-profit tax status. The above list either makes IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman a liar or a sock puppet for Obama administration IRS appointees who did lie. Douglas Shulman is going to need to lawyer up regardless.

The fact that there were, by my count three different “Manager, Technical Unit” and two “Determinations Unit Group Manager” in Cincinnati, Ohio involved over several years makes this Tea Party witch hunt anything but a “local IRS unit run amok.” This was an on-going criminal conspiracy involving IRS senior management over a matter of years.

A class action RICO lawsuit by the Tea Party against the IRS is very much on the table and the IRS won’t have sovereign immunity for “criminal actions taken under the color of law.” That point about federal government criminality was decided decades ago in various US Government high level nuclear waste dumping law suits before the Supreme Court.

Impeachment of President Obama for IRS-related “Nixon Offenses” is now on the table.

Note — This is the 3rd 4th Update of this post