ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Duh. Obama’s IRS Targeted Conservatives, Here’s Proof

Of course he targeted conservatives.

Fitton: Documents Confirm that Obama IRS Improperly Targeted Conservatives

We continue to undercover the details of the Obama IRS’s arbitrary and capricious behavior toward those presumed to be “enemies” of President Obama.

Last week we released 695 pages of new documents containing admissions by IRS officials that the agency used “inappropriate political labels” to screen the tax-exempt applications of conservative organizations. Other records reveal that the IRS was going to require 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations to restrict their alleged political activities if they opted for “expedited consideration” of their tax-exempt applications.

The documents were produced after a revelation by the IRS that it had located “an additional 6,924 documents of potentially responsive records” relating to a 2015 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit about the Obama IRS targeting scandal.  These new records are the first batch of nearly 7,000 documents that had been hidden from JW, Congress, and the American people. (Our FOIA lawsuit seeks records about the IRS’ selection of individuals and organizations for audits based upon applications requesting nonprofit tax status filed by Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations (Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:15-cv-00220)).

Of the 695 pages of documents released by the IRS, 422 (61 percent) were completely blacked out. Again, this new material was not in the “Congressional Database,” which the IRS created in 2013 to house records responsive to congressional inquiries into the IRS scandal.

Nevertheless, we extracted some key info – such as a June 20, 2013, memo from Karen Schiller, then-acting director, EO (Exempt Organizations) Rulings and Agreements, suspending use of the controversial Be on the Lookout (BOLO) and Touch and Go (TAG) lists:

EO Rulings and Agreements is undertaking a comprehensive review of screening and identification of critical issues. We intend to develop proper procedures and uses for these types of documents. Until a more formal process for identification, approval and distribution of this type of data is established, Rulings and Agreements will not use this technique to elevate issues.

In an August 9, 2013, memo, Schiller admitted the IRS used political labels in targeting the groups for special scrutiny and possible audit and that, going forward, the agency would screen organizations based only on their activities, “not words” or “labels of any kind:”

As Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel has said, the IRS has taken decisive action to eliminate the use of inappropriate political labels in the screening of 501(c)(4) applications. IRS policy is now clear that screening is based on activity, not words in a name. The new steps and current policies were outlined in the June 24 report, which noted: “In the absence of BOLO lists, the Determinations Unit will continue to screen for information affecting the determination of applications for tax exempt status, including activity tied to political campaign intervention, but it [will] be done without regard to specific labels of any kind.” The 30-day report also reflects the June 20, 2013 memorandum, which was issued to officially suspend the use of the BOLO list in the screening process.

The documents also include a “Dear [Applicant]” letter that offers an “expedited process” for 501(c)(4) groups in exchange for restriction on their activities:

This optional expedited process is currently available only to applicants for 501(c)(4) status with applications pending for more than 120 days as of May 28, 2013, that indicate the organization may be involved in political campaign intervention.

In this optional process, an organization will represent that it satisfies, and will continue to satisfy, set percentages with respect to the level of its social welfare activities and political campaign intervention activities (as defined in the specific instructions on pages 5-7). These percentage representations are not an interpretation of law but are a safe harbor for those organizations that choose to participate in the optional process.

In short, the Obama IRS, after lawlessly delaying the approval of Tea Party group applications, tried to extort restrictions – which had no basis in law – on these very same groups.

On September 30, 2013, Acting Director, Exempt Organizations, Kenneth C. Corbin, sent a memo to IRS staff providing detailed guidance on classifying applications when “‘merit approval’ is not an option,” emphasizing that the determination is to be based on “facts and circumstances,” not “words and labels:”

Classifier reviews the application and determines if it should be routed to a specialty group. This determination is based upon facts and circumstances of the stated activities within Part II of the application rather than names or labels. This is consistent with Karen Schiller’s August 9, 2013 memorandum …

The Schiller and Corbin memos came on the heels of the May 14, 2013, Inspector General report revealing that the IRS had singled out groups using conservative-sounding terms such as “patriot” and “Tea Party” when applying for tax-exempt status. The IG probe determined that “Early in Calendar Year 2010, the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status (e.g., lists of past and future donors)” and “delayed processing of targeted groups’ applications” in advance of the 2012 presidential election.

No wonder the Obama IRS hid these records. These new smoking-gun documents contain admissions by the Obama IRS that it inappropriately targeted conservative groups. But the records also show that the abuse continued – as the Obama IRS tried to force conservative applicants to give up their First Amendment rights in order to finally get their applications granted.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/10/documents-confirm-that-obama-irs-improperly-targeted-conservatives/

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Sessions Cracks Down In Immigration and Ends ‘Catch and Release’

Sessions: I still put America first, damit!

Crackdown: AG Sessions Vows ‘New Era’ at Southern Border

Attorney General Jeff Sessions broke from his tour of the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday to announce his Justice Department’s sweeping plans for securing the border.

“For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this country, be forewarned: This is a new era. This is the Trump era,” Sessions told the crowd of Customs and Border Protection personnel in the border town of Nogales, Arizona. “We hear you and we have your back!” he assured them.

Sessions proceeded to lay out a multifaceted plan to stop illegal aliens entering the country. All adults apprehended at the border are to be detained and at least 125 additional immigration judges are to be appointed and put in the field on an expedited basis. Twenty-five immigration judges have already been deployed to detention centers along the border to help alleviate the massive backlog of cases already piled up there.

Accompanying the address, the Attorney General’s Office issued a memorandum to all US Attorney’s offices, instructing them on dramatically stricter prosecution guidelines for immigration offenses: all repeat illegal entry offenders are to be referred for felony prosecution; all cases in which an illegal alien is caught reentering the United States after removal are now to be considered for felony prosecution, with priority given to those with other criminal records or gang affiliations; prosecuting those caught transporting three or more illegal aliens will now be a priority; illegal aliens and their smugglers caught with fraudulent documentation, as they often are, are to be charged with aggravated identity theft; and prosecuting any assault on federal law enforcement, included CBP personnel, is to be a “top priority.”

“The catch and release practices of old are over,” Sessions said.

By the beginning of next week, every US Attorney’s office is to have a “Border Security Coordinator” to help carry out the Justice Department plan. Not only will those coordinators be charged with overseeing and advising on the new guidelines, they are commanded to assemble and report statistics on their implementation.

The Attorney General touted the 40 percent reported drop in illegal crossings at the southern border since President Donald Trump took office while unveiling the plan. “This is no accident,” he said. “This is what happens when you have a President who understands the threat, who is not afraid to publicly identify the threat and stand up to it.”

Sessions closed by referring back to the crimes by “caught and released” illegals that captured the nation’s attention:

Why are we doing this? Because it is what the duly enacted laws of the United States require. I took an oath to protect this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. How else can we look the parents and loved ones of Kate Steinle, Grant Ronnebeck, and so many others in eye and say we are doing everything possible to prevent such tragedies from ever occurring again?

http://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2017/04/11/crackdown-ag-sessions-vows-new-era-at-southern-border/

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Sean Spicer Says Hitler Never Used Chemical Weapons. WTF?

Hitler used hydrogen cyanide to gas Jews. Sean Spicer is an idiot justifying bad policy.

Sean Spicer on Syria: ‘Hitler didn’t even sink to the level of using chemical weapons’

White House press secretary Sean Spicer incorrectly stated on Monday that even Adolf Hitler “didn’t sink to using chemical weapons,” during an attempt to amplify how abhorrent the Syrian government’s use of Sarin gas was.

“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Spicer said in an attempt to defend the president’s airstrikes response. “You had someone as despicable as Hitler, who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

It is widely documented that the Nazi leader used chemical gas to kill millions of Jewish Europeans.

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton was quick to chime in after Spicer’s comment, saying that she hopes he “takes time to visit @HolocaustMuseum. It’s a few blocks away.”

 https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/11/sean-spicer-syria-hitler-didnt-even-sink-to-the-level-of-using-chemical-weapons/22035674/

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WTF? Trump Picks Pro-Immigration, Pro-Outsourcing for Top Economic Advisor

Strike 5 Donald. WTF are you thinking?

Donald Trump’s Pick For Top Economic Adviser Is Pro-Immigration, Pro-Outsourcing

President Donald Trump has picked an economic advisor who believes in growing the nation’s economy by importing workers and consumers, and by expanding free-trade outsourcing, despite Trump’s “buy  American, hire American” campaign promises.

Kevin Hassett is slated to become chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors if he is approved by the Senate’s banking committee. If Hassett is confirmed, that will be a win for the corporatist, business-first faction in Trump’s White House, which fights for influence in the Oval Office against the populist, America-first faction that helped Trump win the election in November.

The Axios news site used three bullet points to describe what the views held by Hassett, formerly an economist at the American Enterprise Institute.

China: Hassett warned in 2010 that bashing China-U.S. trade policy would bring the U.S. back to the downward spiral in the 1930s.

Globalization: “An absolute prerequisite for long-term economic growth is full participation in the global economy and trading system.”

Immigrant workers: [E]conomic growth could expand significantly if immigration in the U.S. were expanded.”

The Financial Times said Hassett’s pick shows “nationalist forces have lost some ground when it comes to the economic advice reaching the president.” The Financial Times, in fact, used Hassett’s words to reveal his stance on issues.

• America Needs more workers

… With lackluster GDP growth threatening to become our new normal, allowing more immigrants to enter for the sake of employment is one of the few policies that might restore our old normal. If the U.S. doubled its total immigration and prioritized bringing in new workers, it could add more than half a percentage point a year to expected GDP growth.

• Understanding the role of the United States in the global economy

Liberalized trade — in broadly multilateral, regional, or bilateral agreements — is a key ingredient in the recipe for prosperity. … An absolute prerequisite for long-term economic growth is full participation in the global economy and trading system.

• Analysis of the economic effects of immigration reform

… This paper explores the economic consequences of expanded immigration on the U.S. economy. It begins by reviewing the immigration practices of our OECD trading partners, and documenting that immigration, as a share of the work force, is well below international norms. The literature identifying the economic impact of immigration is reviewed, suggesting that economic growth could expand significantly if immigration in the U.S. were expanded.

That’s a standard pitch from D.C.-based legislators, agency officials, and political advisors, all who stand to gain from a more powerful national economy and a greater inflow of taxes — no matter how immigration changes the distribution of income or the hurts the prospects of ordinary Americans and their children.

Breitbart News reported last year about a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:

“Deep in the report, but not in the press release, it shows how each new unskilled immigrant costs state and local taxpayers $1,600 per year. It shows how the annual cost of legal and illegal immigration to state and local taxpayer is at least $57 billion, and that each unskilled immigrant is a net loss to taxpayers for the next 75 years.”

The same study also showed how cheap-labor immigration cuts salaries and shifts wealth towards investors and company owners:

The jargon-filled, much-caveated, 495-page report does show the information needed to measure how legal and illegal immigration transfers $500 billion a year from the wages paid to working-Americans towards companies, Wall Street investors and to new immigrants. But the report does not provide a dollar figure for the ‘immigration tax.’

Immigration also provides companies with a huge new source of consumers, many of whom rely on welfare payments. For example, immigrants now comprise one-in-seven Americans, sharply increasing annual sales by retail stores, groceries, entertainment companies, and much else.

The inflow of cheap unskilled labor also slows U.S. companies’ investment in the labor-saving technology that would actually increase the average wealth of poor and rich Americans by increasing their productivity. That process is making Americans companies vulnerable to foreign companies that use robots and other machines to increase their workers’ productivity, to lower their production costs and increase their marketplace competitiveness.

But immigration makes the federal government more powerful, so the selection of pro-immigration Hassett is being cheered by D.C.- advocates, including his predecessor, Jason Furman, who chaired the CEA under former President Barack Obama.

Michael Strain, Hassett’s colleague at the AEI, also praised the pick. “Kevin is a fantastic choice for CEA chair,” Strain wrote. “He is a first-class economist. He understands economics research, holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and has a distinguished record of peer-reviewed academic papers. His deep knowledge of economics and of the economics literature will enable him to give truly expert advice to the president and to others in the Trump administration.”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/09/donald-trump-economic-adviser-pro-immigration-pro-outsourcing/

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Palm Sunday Massacre: An Attack on Christianity

Lobotomized GFP Mofos kill Christians.

Spectator: Egypt’s Palm Sunday Massacre Was ‘Attack on Christianity’

Writing for the Spectator magazine on Sunday, Damian Thompson pointed out that the twin bombings of churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday constituted a religiously motivated attack on Christianity that must be recognized and dealt with as such.

Thompson took issue with a tweet by a spokesman for the Egyptian ministry of foreign affairs that the Palm Sunday massacres were “another obnoxious but failed attempts against all Egyptians.”

 

The attacks, which killed 49 and left more than 100 injured, were not “against all Egyptians,” Thompson notes, but directed specifically to Christian in their houses of worship, precisely to avoid any ambiguity regarding the intent. This was rather “an attack on Christians simply because they are Christians,” he noted.

Thompson said that calling Sunday’s attacks an assault on “all Egyptians” would be like calling Boko Haram’s relentless slaughter of Christians an assault against “all Nigerians.” It simply isn’t the case.

The Spectator article points out something that should be obvious, but too often is brushed over or manipulated to look like something else. The people committing the massacre were Islamist radicals acting in the name of Allah and their attack targeted Christians in the act of worshiping God on the morning when Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem is commemorated.

Frustrated with the West’s misinterpretation of their motives, representatives of the Islamic State—which claimed responsibility for Sunday’s slaughter—produced a special issue of their propaganda magazine Dabiq last summer to disabuse Westerners of their misconceptions of jihad.

The issue, titled “Break the Cross,” intended to correct the “false narrative” about Islam, furnishing a litany of reasons “why we hate you and why we fight you.”

The list began with the most serious crime of the West: its failure to embrace Islam and convert. Christianity is blasphemy and an offense against Allah, the jihadists asserted, one which is punishable by death. The text stated:

We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah – whether you realize it or not – by making partners for Him in worship, you blaspheme against Him, claiming that He has a son, you fabricate lies against His prophets and messengers, and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices.

“Furthermore, just as your disbelief is the primary reason we hate you, your disbelief is the primary reason we fight you, as we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the authority of Islam,” the authors added.

“So in the end, you cannot bring an indefinite halt to our war against you. At most, you could only delay it temporarily,” they wrote.

Islamic State representatives took special offense at Pope Francis’ claims that their war was not being waged for religious motives, assuring the pontiff that their sole motivation is religious and sanctioned by Allah in the Qur’an.

ISIS criticized the Pope for his naïveté in clinging to the conviction that Muslims want peace and that acts of Islamic terror are economically, rather than religiously, motivated.

“This is a divinely-warranted war between the Muslim nation and the nations of disbelief,” the authors state in an article titled “By the Sword.”

The article directly attacked Francis for claiming that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Qur’an are opposed to every form of violence,” saying that by doing this, “Francis continues to hide behind a deceptive veil of ‘good will,’ covering his actual intentions of pacifying the Muslim nation.”

Pope Francis “has struggled against reality” in his efforts to portray Islam as a religion of peace, the article insisted, before going on to urge all Muslims to take up the sword of jihad, the “greatest obligation” of a true Muslim.

Despite the obviously religious nature of their attacks, the article states, “many people in Crusader countries express shock and even disgust that Islamic State leadership ‘uses religion to justify violence.’”

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/04/10/spectator-egypts-palm-sunday-massacre-was-attack-on-christianity/

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Woman Rapes Cab Diver at Knifepoint

She looks crazy.

Cops: Woman, 23, Charged In Sex Attack On Cabbie

APRIL 10–An Ohio woman has been charged with raping and robbing a male taxi driver while an accomplice held the victim at knifepoint, ccording to investigators.

Brittany Carter, 23, was named this month in a two-count felony indictment charging her with aggravated robbery and rape in connection with the alleged attack earlier this year in Findlay, a city about 40 miles south of Toledo.

According to cops, “two black males and a white female” called for a cab to pick them up at a TownePlace Suites hotel around 4:25 AM. During the subsequent trip, police allege, passenger Cory Jackson, 20, pulled out a knife and placed it against the 29-year-old driver’s throat.

While the victim was being held at knifepoint, Carter allegedly performed a sex act on the Trinity Express Cab Service driver. Before fleeing the vehicle, Carter and Jackson took $32 from the victim’s pocket, police charge. The driver, cops say, was not injured during the incident.

Carter’s indictment accuses her of “having purposely compelled” the victim to engage in sexual conduct “by force or threat of force.” Jackson has been charged with aiding and abetting Carter’s rape of the taxi driver. He has also been indicted for aggravated robbery. The third passenger will be charged once he is identified, police say.

Pictured above, Carter is being held at the Hancock County jail in lieu of $60,000 bond. Carter was indicted twice last year on felony drug charges, according to court records that show both cases are pending. One indictment accuses Carter of possessing heroin, while the second indictment alleges that she allowed her vehicle to be used in the trafficking of heroin.

Jackson, who remains at large, is also wanted on a murder warrant issued in a neighboring Ohio county.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/ohio-cab-attack-672893