“Hey ya’ll, read this….”

In the age where everyone knows everything all the time, saying you don’t know would be professional suicide, methinks. What scares me is that I see this deliberateness going away even in the one field where I thought it would be protected – the academy. Instant reporting is horrible – instant scholarship, which we get on complex news stories now (the motivations of the Boston bombers perhaps the most recent example – try explaining Chechnyan history/politics in 144 characters – is, in ways that I fear will reveal themselves ever more frighteningly over the coming decade(s), worse….

You’ve proven, I think, that you’re a smart guy and I’m glad to hear about your positions on other issues – that you’re committed to providing your employees with a living wage and benefits, in particular, says very good things about you.

I’m someone who has lived in the world of words my whole life. I have been a poet (recently retired) and make my living in corporate communications. And I have a PhD in Communication. All of which makes me a) good with words, and b) keenly aware of how they can be put to use in service of various agendas. I’m a strategist from hell, and when I see words and ideas behaving in ways that subtly do more than they pretend, the bells go off. Can’t help it. You work in a Fortune 500 corpcomm environment and see what it does to you.

As I made clear, your comments behaved in a way that struck me as what I guess I’ll call misdirection with a purpose. I see corporations and political organizations do it every day and I have done it for a living. So I called it.

Your last two comments seem far more transparent. As for the TP, I have been lately thinking about a series on them and on the liberals we suppose to be so thoroughly at odds with them. If I get around to it, I think you’ll find much to agree with.

I am a 58 year old white male raised in a matriarchal single parent society who, while a registered Republican and NRA Patron member believes firmly in gay rights, women’s rights, a woman’s right to choose, and the responsibilities of a civilized society to provide for it’s lesser members.

Fiscally conservative, socially liberal, I served a few years in the Marines, and earned a BA in English lit on the GI Bill from a podunk West Virginia teachers college (Marshall). I am a business owner with 34 years on the job paying better than living wages and full healthcare and other benefits to 10 highly valued employees as well as engaging in significant tithing to Arvada and greater Denver charities because it’s the right thing to do.

I believe in Obamacare and speak vociferously on the subject and the Christian Right scares the dogshit out of me but believing in the constitutional republic in which we live I support their right to spout their dogma while still cringing at every word. I am also convinced global warming is a reality while holding significant reservations about the extent of human causation

Nothing is black and white, colors and shades permeate each of us and I would appreciate it if you would at a minimum hear me out and judge me by my words and actions rather than any particular affiliation. And if you find me to ultimately be an overbearing irrelevant pink power thug (we’re not really white are we?) then you’ll need ask only once and I will evaporate immediately back into the internet fog from whence I recently appeared.

Thank you!

To the points then and nothing but the points.

***Did the IRS do something egregious and beyond it’s mandate or was this just a goof up?

The IRS is an organization of 106,000 employees with a 12 billion dollar fiscal budget collecting in excess of 2 trillion dollars revenue a year. Did a small group of employees within the organization do something egregious and beyond the organizational mandate? Absolutely. Does it go all the way to the top of the IRS or beyond? Doubtful. I picture a scenario vaguely reminiscent of Lt. Calley standing outside the ville at My Lai in 1968, scratching his head saying, “Boys, I can’t tell who’s VC and who’s not. Let’s kill ‘em all and let God sort it out.” Afterwards he told his boss Capt. Medina what he’d ordered done and Medina said, “Well shit don’t tell anyone” and it snowballed from there.

***Does this sort of stuff go on under every administration or is it unique to this one?

If we’re running geddankenexperiments beyond a basic institutional failure, then yes the IRS has been used as a blunt club by more than a few administrations. Sometimes for justice as in the Al Capone case, sometimes for harassment of perceived rivals as Kennedy and Nixon.

While I feel Barack Obama is an amoral Chicago pol, I would never underestimate his intelligence. If the events unfolding resulted from a bug planted in the IRS’s ear, I highly doubt it was instigated by the President. More likely in such a case that a loyal minion acted in what he/she thought was good faith.

***Was it motivated by partisanship or by routine institutional self-preservation instincts?

Absolutely the former, somebody was bucking for a promotion.

***Should Obama be held to a higher standard?

That question only becomes germane if indeed he instigated this and I don’t think he did. “The Buck Stops Here” is a lovely axiom but of little use in a real world of almost infinite operators engaged in an astronomic number of scenarios. Obama didn’t kill Bin Laden, the SEALS did. Obama did not cause acting Ambassador Stevens death at Benghazi, the paralysis of analysis at AFRICOM did. American’s are big on blamestorming but the truth in many cases is much too complicated to pin on a single scapegoat. In risk analysis it would be called a cascade failure and I don’t see where our Cheerleader in Chief is accountable for systems long in place before he arrived.

So, in summary, do I agree with the premise that the IRS has overstepped it’s boundaries? Yes.
Do I agree the Koch brothers have mind fucked the TEA Party into acting as their evil corporatist zombie slaves because a UK journalist says so? Not in the least, but I do respect all of your opinions and have attempted with each post to speak civilly, intelligently, and directly to all of your words as presented and within the terms of use of this site as I understand them.

It’s a joke.

A bogus, privately owned “music appreciation club” put together by Jann Wenner and his minions to sell more products from his record companies.

That’s it.

Their fruity little club has zero creditability and just needs to close up shop (which is exactly what it is, a shop AKA – business venture). A “non-profit” organization who’s board are all privately selected by Jann Wenner. Their sole purpose is to help plug his products.

These people need to go back to whatever “rock” they crawled out from. The Home Shopping Network maybe? Yes! They could really maximize profits much, much better for Jann if they were to sell diamond tennis bracelets on HSN. Or they could always go back to selling their “rock” the old fashioned way — on the corner along side all of the other pimps & hoes.