Politics and Stuff

[cletus1]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

[chuck white]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

The administration of the RVF has dumbed us down. I think the NSA got to Kam.
With half the forum gone and threads disappearing, It's like a creepy twilight zone or something.

[Wonky]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

The administration of the RVF has dumbed us down. I think the NSA got to Kam.
With half the forum gone and threads disappearing, It's like a creepy twilight zone or something.

I'm not so sure.
I doubt KAM is troubled by the NSA or even NOW.
I suspect we are going through a bit of a shift. We have always had the vitriolic radicals of both sides ranting and raving and saying little. While they are still with us and vocal, It seems to me that they are not posting as often.

I'm hoping our political discussions start to become more respectful and contain more information and less rancor. (I think Prospero has always been a good example of how this is done). For my own part, I hope to rant less and see more "sides" of political issues that others present.


as to the Republicans not doing anything until….
Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe the Dems should follow suit and we could relax a bit knowing that a least for a while nothing really awful is going to happen.

[Tiamat]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

Did you know that Pussy Riot ousted their two members who went to prison?

For intelligent political posting, we need prospero and a few others with actual brains to post.

[tvguy]

. We have always had the vitriolic radicals of both sides ranting and raving and saying little. While they are still with us and vocal, It seems to me that they are not posting as often.

Still with us? Scar was banned, Ponder was banned.

I'm hoping our political discussions start to become more respectful and contain more information and less rancor

Hope in one hand and crap in the other then see which hand is warmer. I think that's how the saying goes.
Anyway when you start getting lots of threads closed and and people banned you don't get more respectful and less rancor.
You get quiet time.

[tvguy]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

Did you know that Pussy Riot ousted their two members who went to prison?

For intelligent political posting, we need prospero and a few others with actual brains to post.

Yeah well I agree but Prospero averages one post a day and has only started TWO threads.

[orygunluvr]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

Did you know that Pussy Riot ousted their two members who went to prison?

For intelligent political posting, we need prospero and a few others with actual brains to post.

What's the point when ultimately every leftist poster on here pulls the race card? Yes prospero has as well.

[Prospero]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

Did you know that Pussy Riot ousted their two members who went to prison?

For intelligent political posting, we need prospero and a few others with actual brains to post.

What's the point when ultimately every leftist poster on here pulls the race card? Yes prospero has as well.

I'll have to take your word on that, because I'm not sure what you're referring to. I don't feel comfortable classifying people in terms of left and right. The conservative side isn't as roomy as it used to be, because people on the right are tending to exclude those with moderately conservative views who differ with them on single issues. The left wing is much more inclusive: they have to be, in order to get candidates elected as governors and congressmen in red states. When they have adhered more narrowly to a liberal agenda (notable in the McGovern candidacy in 1972) they got nowhere.

[cletus1]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

Did you know that Pussy Riot ousted their two members who went to prison?

For intelligent political posting, we need prospero and a few others with actual brains to post.

What's the point when ultimately every leftist poster on here pulls the race card? Yes prospero has as well.

I'll have to take your word on that, because I'm not sure what you're referring to. I don't feel comfortable classifying people in terms of left and right. The conservative side isn't as roomy as it used to be, because people on the right are tending to exclude those with moderately conservative views who differ with them on single issues. The left wing is much more inclusive: they have to be, in order to get candidates elected as governors and congressmen in red states. When they have adhered more narrowly to a liberal agenda (notable in the McGovern candidacy in 1972) they got nowhere.

OL, I am having a hard time following your thinking. Are all politics connected to race in your opinion? Unless you are playing a political version of 6 degrees to Kevin Bacon, I don't see race as the predominate issue.

For example: is raising the minimum wage racial? In convoluted thinking maybe, because poor people are often minorities, but whoa baby that is reaching. Perhaps I missed your point entirely.

[MarkM]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

Did you know that Pussy Riot ousted their two members who went to prison?

For intelligent political posting, we need prospero and a few others with actual brains to post.

What's the point when ultimately every leftist poster on here pulls the race card? Yes prospero has as well.

What does it mean to "play the race card"?

Does it mean to not talk about race? Or ignore it completely? Sorry, like it or not, race is a factor in politics. For instance, Oregon graduation rates for Native Americans are 52% while Whites matriculate at a 71% rate. Am I "playing the race card" to point that out? Or should we just be like Stephen Colbert and "not see race"?

[tvguy]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

Did you know that Pussy Riot ousted their two members who went to prison?

For intelligent political posting, we need prospero and a few others with actual brains to post.

What's the point when ultimately every leftist poster on here pulls the race card? Yes prospero has as well.

What does it mean to "play the race card"?

Does it mean to not talk about race? Or ignore it completely? Sorry, like it or not, race is a factor in politics. For instance, Oregon graduation rates for Native Americans are 52% while Whites matriculate at a 71% rate. Am I "playing the race card" to point that out? Or should we just be like Stephen Colbert and "not see race"?

You really know what it means right? IMO the whole Travon Martin Zimmerman incident was simply about one person going too far to do his neighborhood watch gig. And another person reacting to that in a violent manner.

I don't think it was about Martin being a teen and I don't think it was about Martin being black.
But people playing the race card made it all about racism.

The only thing I can figure that OL is talking about is that it's mostly the leftists who buy in to this bullshit.

[MarkM]

I don't think the Martin-Zimmerman conflict was motivated 100% by race or 0% by race. Somewhere in the middle. Which means race was a factor. The debate is over how much, and whether that influence is indicative of a larger trend or merely an isolated incident. Seems like that's the same discussion we'd been having over the "knockout game." Is that about race?

[tvguy]

I don't think the Martin-Zimmerman conflict was motivated 100% by race or 0% by race. Somewhere in the middle. Which means race was a factor. The debate is over how much, and whether that influence is indicative of a larger trend or merely an isolated incident. Seems like that's the same discussion we'd been having over the "knockout game." Is that about race?

I disagree. I think it was motivated by race quite a bit more than you seem to think. But it was just an example.You did ask. There was a shooting and people who decided Zimmerman MUST be a racist were in fact .. "pulling the race card" to help make what they thought was bad( shooting a child) even worse.... "Hunting him down" just because he was black.

And for such a smart guy Obama commenting on it was incredibly stupid.

I haven't paid much attention to the "knockout game " to decide if it's really blacks attacking whites.
I have an idea that a lot of it is indeed done by blacks who hate whites. IMO there are a lot of them. They think they are justified and a lot of white people think so too.
I don't think anyone of any color is justified to do something like that.

[Prospero]

The appropriate approach to race would be a scattershot technique, designed to totally confuse the issue until the experts in the Human Genome Project untangle the 6 billion DNA base pairs and tell us what it's all about.

Race is a code word in this country for "black", but as recently as the middle of the last century, it was applied to Jews, who were considered a distinct race by the Nazis, perhaps because of their consistently higher than average performance standards on achievement tests (don't ask me to document that, because I can't). And certainly, in the time of my childhood, Jews were more often presented as victims of discrimination (in such movies as "Gentlemen's Agreement") than blacks, who didn't become a hot topic until the Civil Rights movement got underway in the 50s and 60s. The British class system has a subtle racial overtone, as the conquering Normans survived as the nobility for centuries (and still trace their lineage back to William the Conqueror), while the peasants and servants, descendants of the original Britons, Saxons, and Gaels, became the underclass, easily identifiable as such by their accents, as demonstrated in Shaw's Pygmalion and the musical My Fair Lady. The Han Chinese, a majority in their country, lord it over Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongols, whom they consider inferior (along with Caucasians). The approximately 400 million Arabs in the world have a special status among the billion or so Muslims, because their chief religious work, the Koran, is regarded by many as authentic only in Arabic. In Central and South America, the invading Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries were Catholics who believed that the Indians had souls, and consequently married and bred with them (unlike the Protestant northern Europeans who settled the North American continent), producing a huge mestizo population whose desire to live in the US is now the subject of much debate and legislation.

Is that enough confusion? It would be better to forget about race altogether, because it will probably face into oblivion in a century or so (and is very close to that already in a real melting pot like Hawaii). I am descended on the maternal side from a Norwegian and a Swede whose ancestors were all inhabitants of Scandinavia back to the Middle Ages (my grandfather was as un-Vikinglike as you can imagine: 5'4" , portly, with black hair). Two of my grandchildren have unbroken lines of Irish ancestors on their father's side, three of them have paternal ancestors with roots in Central America, and one of my grandsons is descended (according to his mother) from Genghis Khan (I'm still waiting for the birth certificate). According to the geneticists, 99.9% of humanity is the same under the skin (with a bewildering amount of individual variation), so generalizations about racial differences are pretty meaningless.

[Wonky]

The appropriate approach to race would be a scattershot technique, designed to totally confuse the issue until the experts in the Human Genome Project untangle the 6 billion DNA base pairs and tell us what it's all about.

Race is a code word in this country for "black", but as recently as the middle of the last century, it was applied to Jews, who were considered a distinct race by the Nazis, perhaps because of their consistently higher than average performance standards on achievement tests (don't ask me to document that, because I can't). And certainly, in the time of my childhood, Jews were more often presented as victims of discrimination (in such movies as "Gentlemen's Agreement") than blacks, who didn't become a hot topic until the Civil Rights movement got underway in the 50s and 60s. The British class system has a subtle racial overtone, as the conquering Normans survived as the nobility for centuries (and still trace their lineage back to William the Conqueror), while the peasants and servants, descendants of the original Britons, Saxons, and Gaels, became the underclass, easily identifiable as such by their accents, as demonstrated in Shaw's Pygmalion and the musical My Fair Lady. The Han Chinese, a majority in their country, lord it over Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongols, whom they consider inferior (along with Caucasians). The approximately 400 million Arabs in the world have a special status among the billion or so Muslims, because their chief religious work, the Koran, is regarded by many as authentic only in Arabic. In Central and South America, the invading Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries were Catholics who believed that the Indians had souls, and consequently married and bred with them (unlike the Protestant northern Europeans who settled the North American continent), producing a huge mestizo population whose desire to live in the US is now the subject of much debate and legislation.

Is that enough confusion? It would be better to forget about race altogether, because it will probably face into oblivion in a century or so (and is very close to that already in a real melting pot like Hawaii). I am descended on the maternal side from a Norwegian and a Swede whose ancestors were all inhabitants of Scandinavia back to the Middle Ages (my grandfather was as un-Vikinglike as you can imagine: 5'4" , portly, with black hair). Two of my grandchildren have unbroken lines of Irish ancestors on their father's side, three of them have paternal ancestors with roots in Central America, and one of my grandsons is descended (according to his mother) from Genghis Khan (I'm still waiting for the birth certificate). According to the geneticists, 99.9% of humanity is the same under the skin (with a bewildering amount of individual variation), so generalizations about racial differences are pretty meaningless.

All good history of course. Valuable information as we attempt wind our way into the next hornets nest of social problems.

But I wonder if this is what Cletus was thinking about when he started this Topic.
Our political class is is a funk unlike anything since, maybe the late 1800's, and going down the tubes.
Can anyone here even guess, or imagine, events that might reset the behavior we see from our local offices all the way to the U.S. capital?
I'm afraid that grass roots corrections are now overwhelmed by Big Money, and that it will take a unique set of conditions to "right this ship of state".
Race is a problem and a huge one.
The entire culture is a far larger problem and will require some kind of leadership like we have not seen in (?) years. If ever.

I'm not optimistic.

[Tiamat]

Hey, what happened to the RVF? Aren't we talking politics anymore? For example: the leaders of GOP recently said, as reported in a Washington Post story that they were not going to do anything until after the 2014 elections. I mean zero, nada, zilch, not a damn thing. Doesn't anyone have an opinion. Personally, I won't have opinions till February 22 when I re-enter the US.

Hey again, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were recently detained in Sochi. How about that?

Did you know that Pussy Riot ousted their two members who went to prison?

For intelligent political posting, we need prospero and a few others with actual brains to post.

What's the point when ultimately every leftist poster on here pulls the race card? Yes prospero has as well.

Racist!

[Prospero]

But I wonder if this is what Cletus was thinking about when he started this Topic.
Our political class is is a funk unlike anything since, maybe the late 1800's, and going down the tubes.
Can anyone here even guess, or imagine, events that might reset the behavior we see from our local offices all the way to the U.S. capital?
I'm afraid that grass roots corrections are now overwhelmed by Big Money, and that it will take a unique set of conditions to "right this ship of state".
Race is a problem and a huge one.
The entire culture is a far larger problem and will require some kind of leadership like we have not seen in (?) years. If ever.

I'm not optimistic.

Global epidemic
Environmental organ failure of some kind
Asteroid collision
Alien invasion
Nuclear war, e.g. between India and Pakistan, or Iran and Israel
Global economic depression and famine

I think it would take a catastrophe to shake us out of our petty differences. 9/11 had that effect, in this country alone, and for a short time (up to the invasion of Iraq). A global one might unite humanity, but the effect would be temporary. I think as a species we are incurably cussed.

[cletus1]

I like discussing politics so here we go again. How many of my conservative friends here still believe the IRS scandal is real?

An expensive search for a fake scandal
02/26/14 11:45 AM

By Steve Benen


This photo taken March 22, 2013, shows the exterior of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington.

House Republican leaders have made no secret of the fact that, for all intents and purposes, Congress is done legislating for the year. If it seems awfully early in the calendar for lawmakers to simply give up on governing, that’s because it is.

But as Congress’ lower chamber stops thinking about legislating and starts focusing solely on elections, real priorities are replaced with political stunts.
A House committee is planning a showdown next week with a former Internal Revenue Service official who declined to answer questions last year about agency targeting of tea-party groups.

The former official, Lois Lerner, appeared at a contentious hearing House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last May, soon after news broke that the IRS had targeted grassroots conservative groups for special scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status.

As we’ve discussed on more than a few occasions, there’s just no point to any of this – unless your goal is to produce a few fundraising letters and keep confused activists motivated for the fall.

Congress has looked into the allegations and found nothing. The FBI has looked into the allegations and found nothing. Investigative journalists have looked into the allegations and found nothing. The story was discredited months ago.

But all of this raises a related question: exactly how much money are congressional Republicans spending investigating a “scandal” that doesn’t exist?

This morning, Reps. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the Ranking Members of the House Ways and Means Committee and Oversight and Government Reform Committee, respectively, issued a document intended to put a price tag on the GOP’s efforts. Based on the IRS’s own review, the investigation has cost $14 million.

[This includes] $8 million in direct costs – such as salaries, benefits, and travel – and an additional $6 million to $8 million to add capacity to information technology systems to process materials to investigators.

The IRS letter, which was sent in response to a request from Levin and Cummings on February 7, 2014, stated that 255 IRS employees have spent 97,542 hours responding to congressional investigations to date. It also said the IRS cost estimate is based on a “conservative approach” and does not take into account “ancillary support costs,” such as indirect work by the offices of Legislative Affairs, Public Affairs, Human Capital, and the Executive Secretariat.

As of this week, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen also concluded that 255 agency employees have logged almost 100,000 hours in accommodating congressional inquiries in this matter.

And with House Republicans eager to keep the charade going, the amount of wasted resources will continue to grow.

[SFLiberal]

I like discussing politics so here we go again. How many of my conservative friends here still believe the IRS scandal is real?

An expensive search for a fake scandal
02/26/14 11:45 AM

By Steve Benen


This photo taken March 22, 2013, shows the exterior of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington.

House Republican leaders have made no secret of the fact that, for all intents and purposes, Congress is done legislating for the year. If it seems awfully early in the calendar for lawmakers to simply give up on governing, that’s because it is.

But as Congress’ lower chamber stops thinking about legislating and starts focusing solely on elections, real priorities are replaced with political stunts.
A House committee is planning a showdown next week with a former Internal Revenue Service official who declined to answer questions last year about agency targeting of tea-party groups.

The former official, Lois Lerner, appeared at a contentious hearing House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last May, soon after news broke that the IRS had targeted grassroots conservative groups for special scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status.

As we’ve discussed on more than a few occasions, there’s just no point to any of this – unless your goal is to produce a few fundraising letters and keep confused activists motivated for the fall.

Congress has looked into the allegations and found nothing. The FBI has looked into the allegations and found nothing. Investigative journalists have looked into the allegations and found nothing. The story was discredited months ago.

But all of this raises a related question: exactly how much money are congressional Republicans spending investigating a “scandal” that doesn’t exist?

This morning, Reps. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the Ranking Members of the House Ways and Means Committee and Oversight and Government Reform Committee, respectively, issued a document intended to put a price tag on the GOP’s efforts. Based on the IRS’s own review, the investigation has cost $14 million.

[This includes] $8 million in direct costs – such as salaries, benefits, and travel – and an additional $6 million to $8 million to add capacity to information technology systems to process materials to investigators.

The IRS letter, which was sent in response to a request from Levin and Cummings on February 7, 2014, stated that 255 IRS employees have spent 97,542 hours responding to congressional investigations to date. It also said the IRS cost estimate is based on a “conservative approach” and does not take into account “ancillary support costs,” such as indirect work by the offices of Legislative Affairs, Public Affairs, Human Capital, and the Executive Secretariat.

As of this week, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen also concluded that 255 agency employees have logged almost 100,000 hours in accommodating congressional inquiries in this matter.

And with House Republicans eager to keep the charade going, the amount of wasted resources will continue to grow.

You live in a strange alternate universe if you believe what you just posted. Whatever you and Harry Reid are smoking I suggest you stop.

Harry Reid Denies All Obamacare 'Horror Stories'; 'All Are Untrue'
10:21 AM, Feb 26, 2014 • By DANIEL HALPER

"Despite all that good news, there's plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America," said Reid.

"The leukemia patient whose insurance policy was canceled [and] could die without her medication, Mr. President, that's an ad being paid for by two billionaire brothers. It's absolutely false. Or the woman whose insurance policy went up $700 a month--ads paid for around America by the multibillionaire Koch brothers, and the ad is false.

"We heard about the evils of Obamacare, about the lives it's ruining in Republicans' stump speeches and in ads paid for by oil magnates, the Koch brothers. But in those tales, turned out to be just that: tales, stories made up from whole cloth, lies distorted by the Republicans to grab headlines or make political advertisements.

"Mr. President, these two brothers are trying to buy America. They not only funnel money through their Americans for Prosperity, they funnel money into all kinds of organizations to do the same thing that they're doing. They're trying to buy America. I don't believe america is for sale. We'll see, Mr. President."

Harry Reid Denies All Obamacare 'Horror Stories'; 'All Are Untrue'

[SFLiberal]

I like discussing politics so here we go again. How many of my conservative friends here still believe the IRS scandal is real?

An expensive search for a fake scandal
02/26/14 11:45 AM

By Steve Benen


This photo taken March 22, 2013, shows the exterior of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington.

House Republican leaders have made no secret of the fact that, for all intents and purposes, Congress is done legislating for the year. If it seems awfully early in the calendar for lawmakers to simply give up on governing, that’s because it is.

But as Congress’ lower chamber stops thinking about legislating and starts focusing solely on elections, real priorities are replaced with political stunts.
A House committee is planning a showdown next week with a former Internal Revenue Service official who declined to answer questions last year about agency targeting of tea-party groups.

The former official, Lois Lerner, appeared at a contentious hearing House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last May, soon after news broke that the IRS had targeted grassroots conservative groups for special scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status.

As we’ve discussed on more than a few occasions, there’s just no point to any of this – unless your goal is to produce a few fundraising letters and keep confused activists motivated for the fall.

Congress has looked into the allegations and found nothing. The FBI has looked into the allegations and found nothing. Investigative journalists have looked into the allegations and found nothing. The story was discredited months ago.

But all of this raises a related question: exactly how much money are congressional Republicans spending investigating a “scandal” that doesn’t exist?

This morning, Reps. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the Ranking Members of the House Ways and Means Committee and Oversight and Government Reform Committee, respectively, issued a document intended to put a price tag on the GOP’s efforts. Based on the IRS’s own review, the investigation has cost $14 million.

[This includes] $8 million in direct costs – such as salaries, benefits, and travel – and an additional $6 million to $8 million to add capacity to information technology systems to process materials to investigators.

The IRS letter, which was sent in response to a request from Levin and Cummings on February 7, 2014, stated that 255 IRS employees have spent 97,542 hours responding to congressional investigations to date. It also said the IRS cost estimate is based on a “conservative approach” and does not take into account “ancillary support costs,” such as indirect work by the offices of Legislative Affairs, Public Affairs, Human Capital, and the Executive Secretariat.

As of this week, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen also concluded that 255 agency employees have logged almost 100,000 hours in accommodating congressional inquiries in this matter.

And with House Republicans eager to keep the charade going, the amount of wasted resources will continue to grow.

So did you see that Lois Lerner has been subpenaed to testify in front of Congress again? Her lawyer is demanding that she be given immunity from prosecution before she testify. So my question to you is why the request for immunity? After all if this is a fake scandal why not just testify? What is she afraid of?

Lois Lerner wants immunity in exchange for IRS testimony
Gregory Korte, USA TODAY 3:26 p.m. EST February 26, 2014
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/polit...y/5834321/