Talking sense about the scandals

From Daily Inter Lake

Does GOP even have principles?

By TOM SHAUGHNESSY
(An excellent read. Click on the link to read the rest of the article.)

Is it really raining scandals in Washington? How is it that when four people are killed in Benghazi, it is a scandal but 4,500 of America's finest killed in the Bush-Cheney neo-con war in Iraq, a war started on lies, that is just fine, no problem?

In 2011 the House Republicans cut $150 million from security for our embassies; in 2012 they cut $300 million more. Did those cuts have anything to do with four Americans being killed? Is that not a scandal? How is Fast and Furious not a scandal when the Bush administration starts it, but it is a scandal when Obama stops it? When the IRS spends $50 million to party, that is a scandal. For the IRS to investigate groups asking for tax-exempt status, that is their job. They should investigate them all.

In a recent hearing Sen. Baucus revealed that in 1959, the Eisenhower administration, the IRS illegally changed the wording of the law on 501(c)4 groups from "exclusively" to "primarily," thus all 501(c)4 groups that have any political action, all the Tea Party groups complaining to Congress, do not qualify for tax-exempt status. The only scandal would be if they are not all denied.

If there is a scandal in Washington it is that the House Oversight committee under Republican Darrel Issa, which is supposed to investigate government wrongdoing, has been used as a political smear machine to defeat Obama.

When that failed, it is being used to promote a continual string of supposed scandals to try to distract the American people and discredit the Democrats. Isn't the fact that Republican House Speaker Boehner only has the House working less than half the time a scandal? How many taxpayers get to work half time for full pay? Isn't spending 50 million tax dollars to vote 38 times to kill the health-care law a scandal? That's 38 wasted votes on repealing health care and not one vote on a jobs bill that could create jobs like the bypass here in Kalispell. A jobs bill that could rebuild our crumbling bridges.