Rubio calls for IRS commissioner to resign.

Newtons Bit said:
He lied to members of Congress. That'll get you fired every time.

JoeTheJuggler said:
That a serious accusation. In the country I live in, a person accused is presumed innocent. Due process and all that.

Newtons Bit said:
Yea, it's hard to keep your job as a federal employee after doing that.
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You've lost the thread of the discussion.

You have made a claim that someone lied. Before you fire someone for an accusation shouldn't you first investigate and obtain some proof? When I said "pretty serious stuff" I was referring to assumptions and based on unsubstantiated allegations. The Duke Lacrosse players were accused of rape. That's a serious accusation. But was it serious enough to discipline the boys without due process?
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Failure to acknowledge that conservative groups have been improperly targeted for closer scrutiny is not itself perjury.

Indeed, the fact that we're talking about a matter of opinion makes it even more difficult to prove that it's perjury. Also, from what I've read groups were flagged by a set of key words that included "tea party," "patriot", "9/12 project". It's arguable whether or not the motive was to flag conservative groups or to flag groups that might reasonably be trying to wrongfully get status as a "social welfare" organization when they are in fact primarily a political group and should be a 527 groups.

There may well have been wrongdoing in the IRS (especially, as I've noted, if they continued using these flags after it became apparent that they were not productive in identifying problematic applications). But reasonable minds can disagree over that point, and it's not perjury to disagree over what is or is not proper.

So unless someone has evidence that Miller was involved in wrongdoing or intentionally covering up wrongdoing, he should not have been pressured to resign. As Mooseman noted on page 1, the correct sequence of events should have been investigate, verify, then (depending on the outcome of the investigation) terminate (and possibly prosecute).
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I don't believe in knee jerk reactions and personally think more time should have been given before he was pressured by the administration. But I don't agree he needs to have been involved in wrong doing or an intentional cover up in order to warrant firing or pressure. People can be rightfully fired for making poor decisions regardless of their intentions and at a glance he at the least falls into this category.
 
It'd be nice if the people he wants to be held accountable actually existed, though.
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Originally Posted by eeyore1954
The president last night asked a non existent person who was not accountable to resign.
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JoeTheJuggler said:
Actually, he asked a real person to resign. I strongly disapprove.

We used to consider someone innocent until proven guilty. Here, a person's career can be ended without even evidence that a crime took place (much less that that person was responsible for the crime).
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My only point in that statement was to point out to the people who belittled Rubio there was a person who was accountable and existed. Or at least the president agrees there was.
 
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eeyore1954 said:
My only point in that statement was to point out to the people who belittled Rubio there was a person who was accountable and existed. Or at least the president agrees there was.
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And I disagree with the President on this. I don't think there was a wrong for which anyone was accountable. Or at the very least, the case for such a wrong to warrant firing someone hasn't been made.
 
eeyore1954 said:
People can be rightfully fired for making poor decisions regardless of their intentions and at a glance he at the least falls into this category.
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They can also be fired for incompetence. But the case hasn't been made for that. What was the poor decision Miller made?

If anything, he seems guilty of not being good at playing politics and CYA and nothing else. Those ought not be characteristics we look for in that particular office holder.
 
eeyore1954 said:
Plus I would suspect he choose his words wisely so it would not be an outright lie.
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Probably. Shulman went before Congress and said no targeting was going on in 2012. The IRS management already knew about it by then. It'd be interesting to know when (or if) he knew.
 
RandFan said:
You've lost the thread of the discussion.

You have made a claim that someone lied. Before you fire someone for an accusation shouldn't you first investigate and obtain some proof? When I said "pretty serious stuff" I was referring to assumptions and based on unsubstantiated allegations. The Duke Lacrosse players were accused of rape. That's a serious accusation. But was it serious enough to discipline the boys without due process?
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My mistake. I presumed you actually read the news articles talking the issue.

Try this:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politic...issioner-resignation-20130515,0,1521161.story

He became aware that there were potential problems in the way the IRS was handling applications more than a year ago, an inspector general’s report said this week. In late March 2012, amid media stories that tea party groups were having difficulty getting their applications approved, he asked one of his managers to find out what was going on and make recommendations.

On May 3, 2012, Miller learned that the agency had improperly singled out groups by name for additional examination of their applications for tax-exempt status, the IRS said this week.

But six weeks later, in a letter to the chairman of a key House oversight subcommittee, Miller made no mention of the problems and wrote that after an increase in applications for tax-exempt status in 2010, the agency "took steps to coordinate the handling of the cases to ensure consistency."
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Or CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/15/politics/irs-conservative-targeting
The official, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, was aware employees were targeting conservative groups in May 2012, according to the agency.
But Miller, then the agency's deputy commissioner, didn't tell Congress about it when he testified before an oversight committee in July -- despite being questioned on the issue. He was named acting commissioner in November.
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Newtons Bit said:
Try this:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politic...issioner-resignation-20130515,0,1521161.story
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You mean you think he was less than honest? Or is there a direct outright lie? Isn't what he did known as spin? I do not know who Miller is personally and I am no sycophant of the IRS that's for damn sure. I don't see anything particularly remarkable here.

Had Miller been recruited by the Obama administration and there was a coordinated effort by the admin to permanently deny these groups status I'd be there with bells on. There is no evidence of that as there was in the previous administration. Instead we have a couple of chuckleheads who went against the rules and the acting chairman was covering his ass. In the grand scheme of things this is worthy of oversight, investigation and action (remove the acting commissioner and anyone directly involved). Move on.

There is a backlog of thousands of troops who have been maimed serving in the armed services. When is anyone going to hold hearings on that? I'm not trying to make a false consolation. I'm trying to say that given the context its a non-story and the wrong thing for us to be focusing on. Waiting to have your non-tax status approved isn't the end of the world for a number of reasons. Each and every group held up only needs to pay or not pay taxes once a year and if they had to pay taxes one year they can file an amendment the next year.

There is no harm here. The commissioner wasn't directly lying. He was spinning. No one was prevented from speaking. No one was prevented from providing services.

Soldiers not getting their benefits, THAT'S HARM. Who is going to get fired for that? Who the hell cares? Not Obama that's for sure. Not the GOP that's for damn sure.

Veterans Wait for Benefits as Claims Pile Up

I don't mind that people at the IRS are held accountable. I care very much that it's made into such a scandal when very real and very serious problems are being ignored and the outrage is saved for people who had to wait to get their non-profit status. And it's in the past. The back-log of soldiers benefit's is right now and it is estimated that it will take years to resolve. It's already been years.

Where do we go to solve that problem? Who the hell cares?
 
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You're welcome to your own beliefs, RandFan. But even Obama disagrees with you.
 
Small roundup of organizations/people who piled into the "non-existent" official malarky:

New York Magazine
Rubio Demands Resignation of Nonexistent IRS Commissioner
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/05/rubio-demands-nonexistent-irs-commissioner-quit.html

The Raw Story
Sen. Marco Rubio demands resignation of non-existent IRS commissioner
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/13/rubio-demands-resignation-of-non-existent-irs-commissioner/

Slate / Matthew Yglesias
Marco Rubio Calls on Nonexistent IRS Commissioner to Resign
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/13/marco_rubio_irs_commissioner_resignation.html

MSN
Marco Rubio calls for nonexistent IRS commissioner's resignation
http://now.msn.com/marco-rubio-asks-nonexistent-irs-commissioner-to-resign

Drudge
Rubio: Non-Existent IRS Chief Should Resign
http://www.drudge.com/news/168327/rubio-non-existent-irs-chief-should-resign

Rachel Maddow
Officials who don't exist can't resign
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/05/13/18230699-officials-who-dont-exist-cant-resign?lite
 
RandFan said:
Your citations for this compiling of conservative donor lists is missing.
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Yes, it/they is. I didn't record the hearing this morning but the requests for that data were sent to many of the targeted conservative groups,

You are entitled to an opinion. We are entitled to evidence. Got any?
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See answer above.
 
AlBell said:
Yes, it/they is. I didn't record the hearing this morning but the requests for that data were sent to many of the targeted conservative groups,

See answer above.
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So no evidence? Okay then.
 
eeyore1954 said:
Plus I would suspect he choose his words wisely so it would not be an outright lie.
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Both Miller and George did their best to answer wisely, and only if paper/electronic trails prove they didn't answer questions they knew the answer to would perjury become an option. They were both offering sworn testimoney to congress as they were reminded several times.

Other lesser rank IRS agents will imo also be sworn and questioned; any of them could also prove lies had been offered.
 
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Newtons Bit said:
You're welcome to your own beliefs, RandFan. But even Obama disagrees with you.
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I'm going to let you in on a little surprise. Obama disagrees with me on lots and lots of things. Who the hell cares? He's a slave to politics. It angers the hell out of me but I accept a certain amount of it.
 
applecorped said:
Obama is a slave???:eek::jaw-dropp:eye-poppi
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...to politics. You got me. It was a thoughtless thing to have said and I apologize. I certainly didn't mean anything racist by it but I accept that it was the wrong thing to have said. Thanks for the smilies. They make the social stigma a lot stronger and reinforce the serious nature of my error.
 
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