Thursday, July 10, 2014

Do You Believe the IRS Lost its Emails about the Tea Party?

As someone who is registered as a non-partisan, I try to look at both political parties with a skeptical eye.  In the 2014 open California primary, I voted for five Republicans and five Democrats, for a variety of elected office.  I do not have a vested interested in either party, other than hoping that they will remain honest (which may be a pipe dream).

I am also old enough to remember the Watergate scandal and the missing 20 minutes of dictaphone tape that were supposedly erased by Nixon's secretary.  I was a young legal secretary at the time and, along with several other secretaries, I tried to re-enact the way that tape was supposedly erased, as described by the secretary.  We decided it was absolutely ridiculous that anyone could maintain such an awkward position for so long.  There was no way that the Watergate tape was accidentally erased.

As a result, I am very skeptical of the latest government scandal involving missing IRS emails.  Supposedly, IRS employee Lois Lerner had her computer crash in 2011.  She was the head of the IRS division that handled the tax exempt status for groups and is accused of having unfairly delayed the applications of organizations that were known to lean towards the Tea Party.  Some of the applications were delayed by as much as a year, a crucial delay during an election year.  The missing emails covered a two year period between 2009 and 2011. 

Now the IRS has asserted that they also lost emails on other computers that crashed, including the computer of Nikole Flax who was the chief of staff for Lerner's boss.

Doesn't that seem like an incredible coincidence?

This is especially disconcerting since all IRS emails, as well as the emails of other government departments, are supposed to be stored "in the cloud."  Apparently, these particular emails were not properly handled or saved.  This seems especially hard to believe since the emails were written over a two year period.  Really?  None of them were properly saved over a period that lasted that long?

If an individual made the same claims to the IRS, they would not believe us.  Why should we believe the IRS?

I'll be interested to hear what you believe.  Please feel free to leave a comment below.

You are reading from the blog:  http://lies-and-liars.blogspot.com

Source:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/lawmakers-irs-lost-emails-tea-party-probe-24175196