PROOF Internal Revenue Service targeted Tea Party Donors

 

Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday.

Republicans argue that the Internal Revenue Service still hasn’t come clean about the full extent of its targeting, which swept up dozens of conservative groups.

“The committee uncovered new information indicating that after groups provided the information to the IRS, nearly one in 10 donors were subject to audit,” Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr., Louisiana Republican and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee’s oversight panel, told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at a hearing Wednesday.

“The abuse of discretion and audit selection must be identified and stopped,” he said.

Mr. Koskinen didn’t specifically address the accusations during the hearing, and the IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment late Wednesday evening.

The revelation was made on the same day that the House voted on a nonbinding resolution asking the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS targeting.

Investigators last year reported that the IRS singled out tea party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and gave them special scrutiny, including asking inappropriate questions about their activities and membership. The request for donor lists was among the inappropriate activities.

The IRS initially denied to Congress that it was singling out tea party groups, despite vocal complaints from groups that had their applications delayed for years. But faced with the internal audit, the agency admitted it had been subjecting these groups to special scrutiny.

Read More: The Washington Times

What does Hillary Clinton have to do with the Terrorist Kidnappers in Nigeria?

 

Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department repeatedly declined to fully go after the terror group responsible for kidnapping hundreds of girls. 

 

The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls.

In the past week, Clinton, who made protecting women and girls a key pillar of her tenure at the State Department, has been a vocal advocate for the 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the loosely organized group of militants terrorizing northern Nigeria. Her May 4 tweet about the girls, using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, was cited across the media and widely credited for raising awareness of their plight.

Clinton said that the abduction of the girls by Boko Haram was “abominable, it’s criminal, it’s an act of terrorism and it really merits the fullest response possible, first and foremost from the government of Nigeria.” Clinton said that as Secretary of State she had numerous meetings with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and had urged the Nigerian government to do more on counterterrorism.

What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

Read More: The Daily Beast

Why is the US Navy wasting our Green on the Green Hoax?

 

The Department of Defense (DOD) paid $150 per gallon for alternative jet fuel made from algae, more than 64 times the current market price for standard carbon-based fuels, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in its report that a Pentagon official reported paying “about $150 per gallon for 1,500 gallons of alternative jet fuel derived from algal oil.”

GAO’s report examined the financial challenges facing increased purchases and use of alternative jet fuels by federal agencies. “Currently, the price for alternative jet fuels exceeds that of conventional jet fuel,” the report noted.

The price for conventional jet fuel is currently $2.88 per gallon. GAO’s report reveals that federal agencies have paid significantly higher prices in an effort to promote biofuels in commercial and military aviation.

“Of the two alternative jet-fuel production processes approved for use in commercial and military aircraft (Fischer-Tropsch and HEFA), DOD, according to a DOD official, paid from about $3 to $150 per gallon,” GAO reported.

HEFA is an acronym for Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids, and refers to “renewable oil (e.g., vegetable oils, animal fat, waste grease, and algae oil) … processed using hydrogen treatment (hydroprocessing) to yield a fuel in the distillation range of jet fuel and diesel.”

GAO interviewed 23 “academic, federal government, and private industry stakeholders” about challenges facing the increased adoption of alternative jet fuels. Twenty-two of them cited the fuels’ exorbitant costs.

“Five of these stakeholders noted that for fuel produced using the HEFA production process, the cost of some types of feedstock—even before it is transported or converted—currently exceeds that of conventional fuel,” the report says.

Read More: The Washington Free Beacon

What would our economy look like if Reagan were President today?

 

Five years into a recovery, the economy has grown by about 12 percent. That may not sound too bad, but over the first five years of the Reagan recovery, the economy grew 24 percent. Why does this matter? Because if the economy had grown as fast under Obama as it did under Reagan, according to Congress’s bipartisan Joint Economic Committee, the economy would be more than $2 trillion larger today. If that extra $2 trillion were divided evenly among all households, the economy would be about $17,000 bigger per family. Meanwhile, the average family has lost nearly $2,000 in income over this “recovery.”

The Left howls in protest over this comparison. Obama, they claim, inherited a financial crisis that was deeper than anything Reagan ever saw. Obama, by his own admission, saved us from a “second Great Depression,” blah, blah, blah. Of course, the economy really was flat on its back in 2009 when Obama walked into the Oval Office.

But how was that different from 1981? I would say the wreckage that Reagan inherited from Nixon-Ford-Carter might well have been worse: Obama didn’t have to deal with 14 percent inflation, 20 percent mortgage interest rates, an America that was rapidly deindustrializing, and a twelve-year bear market in stocks.

Let’s just accept the proposition that both presidents inherited terrible economic crises. What was different was the policy remedies. Reagan cut tax rates, slashed regulations, trimmed excess money supply (with the help of Fed chairman Paul Volcker), and let the private businesses — the supply side — grow their operations less hindered by government interference.

Obama did, well, pretty much the opposite. At the time of the mighty economic recovery of 2003–09, liberals explained the ferocious burst of growth and employment by saying it was a “classic Keynesian recovery” financed by debt spending. Except if that was the case, why is it that after Obama borrowed twice as much money, this Keynesian recovery has proceeded at half that pace? I’ve never heard an answer to that one. Never.

I’m not saying that the economy would be growing twice as fast and be $2 trillion bigger if Obama had gotten it right. But even if we had had just an average recovery, the economy would be $1.4 trillion larger today. These kinds of counterfactuals are impossible to prove. But it’s a pretty fair bet that things would be a lot better today for middle-class families if we had done Reaganomics, not Obamanomics.

Read More: Heritage

The United Nations IPCC Deliberately Misrepresents Climate Change

 

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is releasing its latest report, the “Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report.” Like its past reports, this one predicts apocalyptic consequences if mankind fails to give the UN the power to tax and regulate fossil fuels and subsidize and mandate the use of alternative fuels. But happily, an international group of scientists I have been privileged to work with has conducted an independent review of IPCC’s past and new reports, along with the climate science they deliberately exclude or misrepresent.

Our group, called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), was founded in 2003 by a distinguished atmospheric physicist, S. Fred Singer, and has produced five hefty reports to date, the latest being released today (March 31).

So how do the IPCC and NIPCC reports differ? The final draft of the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers identifies eight “reasons for concern” which media reports say will remain the focus of the final report. The NIPCC reports address each point too, also summarizing their authors’ positions in Summaries for Policymakers. This provides a convenient way to compare and contrast the reports’ findings.
Here’s what the reports say:

IPCC: “Risk of death, injury, and disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones and small island developing states, due to sea-level rise, coastal flooding, and storm surges.”
NIPCC: “Flood frequency and severity in many areas of the world were higher historically during the Little Ice Age and other cool eras than during the twentieth century. Climate change ranks well below other contributors, such as dikes and levee construction, to increased flooding.”

IPCC: “Risk of food insecurity linked to warming, drought, and precipitation variability, particularly for poorer populations.”
NIPCC: “There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO₂ levels. Farmers and others who depend on rural livelihoods for income are benefitting from rising agricultural productivity throughout the world, including in parts of Asia and Africa where the need for increased food supplies is most critical. Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO₂ levels play a key role in the realization of such benefits.

IPCC: “Risk of severe harm for large urban populations due to inland flooding.”
NIPCC: “No changes in precipitation patterns, snow, monsoons, or river flows that might be considered harmful to human well-being or plants or wildlife have been observed that could be attributed to rising CO₂ levels. What changes have been observed tend to be beneficial.”

IPCC: “Risk of loss of rural livelihoods and income due to insufficient access to drinking and irrigation water and reduced agricultural productivity, particularly for farmers and pastoralists with minimal capital in semi-arid regions.”
NIPCC: “Higher atmospheric CO₂ concentrations benefit plant growth-promoting microorganisms that help land plants overcome drought conditions, a potentially negative aspect of future climate change. Continued atmospheric CO₂ enrichment should prove to be a huge benefit to plants by directly enhancing their growth rates and water use efficiencies.”

IPCC: “Systemic risks due to extreme [weather] events leading to breakdown of infrastructure networks and critical services.”
NIPCC: “There is no support for the model-based projection that precipitation in a warming world becomes more variable and intense. In fact, some observational data suggest just the opposite, and provide support for the proposition that precipitation responds more to cyclical variations in solar activity.”

IPCC: “Risk of loss of marine ecosystems and the services they provide for coastal livelihoods, especially for fishing communities in the tropics and the Arctic.” NIPCC: “Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO₂ levels do not pose a significant threat to aquatic life. Many aquatic species have shown considerable tolerance to temperatures and CO₂ values predicted for the next few centuries, and many have demonstrated a likelihood of positive responses in empirical studies. Any projected adverse impacts of rising temperatures or declining seawater and freshwater pH levels (“acidification”) will be largely mitigated through phenotypic adaptation or evolution during the many decades to centuries it is expected to take for pH levels to fall.”

IPCC: “Risk of loss of terrestrial ecosystems and the services they provide for terrestrial livelihoods.”
NIPCC: “Terrestrial ecosystems have thrived throughout the world as a result of warming temperatures and rising levels of atmospheric CO₂. Empirical data pertaining to numerous animal species, including amphibians, birds, butterflies, other insects, reptiles, and mammals, indicate global warming and its myriad ecological effects tend to foster the expansion and proliferation of animal habitats, ranges, and populations, or otherwise have no observable impacts one way or the other. Multiple lines of evidence indicate animal species are adapting, and in some cases evolving, to cope with climate change of the modern era.”

IPCC: “Risk of mortality, morbidity, and other harms during periods of extreme heat, particularly for vulnerable urban populations.”
NIPCC: “A modest warming of the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from temperature-related events. More lives are saved by global warming via the amelioration of cold-related deaths than those lost under excessive heat. Global warming will have a negligible influence on human morbidity and the spread of infectious diseases, a phenomenon observed in virtually all parts of the world.”

How could two teams of scientists come to such obviously contradictory conclusions on seemingly every point that matters in the debate over global warming? There are many reasons why scientists disagree, the subject, by the way, of an excellent book a couple years ago titled Wrong by David H. Freedman. A big reason is IPCC is producing what academics call “post-normal science” while NIPCC is producing old-fashioned “real science.”

Read More: Forbes