IRS scandal: Lois Lerner's secret, personal email account was perfect cover

By Jay Sekulow

Published August 25, 2015

FoxNews.com

FILE: May 2013: IRS official Lois Lerner on Capitol 

Hill in Washington. (AP)

It reads like another page out of a Hollywood script.
Former top IRS official Lois Lerner – at the center of a well-orchestrated scheme targeting conservative organizations – used an alias while at the IRS.
In new documents just released, an IRS attorney has confirmed that Lois Lerner used another email to conduct IRS business – under the name of “Toby Miles.”
That revelation prompts this question: why would the director of the Exempt Organizations Unit use an alias – a secret, personal email account while at the IRS?
You don’t have to think very long to come up with the answer.
Lois Lerner – who was permitted to retire from the agency with a reported $100,000 a year pension paid by taxpayers – is under investigation by Congress for her role in unlawfully targeting and discriminating against conservative organizations.
We know that Lerner used her official IRS email to participate in the orchestration of this targeting scheme – even plotting with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to fabricate evidence – to, as she put it, “piece together false statement cases” so the DOJ could launch criminal prosecutions of law-abiding citizens in the absence of any complaints or evidence of wrongdoing.
That stunning admission was communicated via Lerner’s official IRS email account. A secret, personal email account gives her cover – an opportunity to communicate even more outrageous and illegal tactics – without her real identity tied to the emails.
We can only imagine what kind of information is included in emails from “Toby Miles.”
Of course, this newly discovered email account should come as no surprise to anyone. As the Washington Times reports, this email discovery underscores what’s become standard operating procedure inside the Obama Administration:
“The use of secret or extra email accounts has bedeviled the Obama administration, which is has tried to fend off a slew of lawsuits involving former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her top aides, the White House’s top science adviser, top Environmental Protection Agency officials and the IRS.”
The revelation of Lois Lerner’s alias while at the IRS is certain to prompt even more questions by Congressional investigators – including whether privacy laws were violated with the use of this personal email account.
Earlier this month, the Senate Finance Committee released its findings on the IRS targeting scheme concluding that in addition to gross mismanagement at the IRS, the evidence showed partisan political animus resulted in the unwarranted targeting of conservative groups because of their political beliefs.
Lois Lerner wasn’t shy about putting her thoughts in emails. In documents recently released, Lerner called Republican critics “evil and dishonest” and “hateful.” She even chastised members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee following a hearing in 2014 – labelling their pursuit of the truth as “bad behavior.”
We know Lois Lerner used her official IRS email account to communicate about the targeting scheme. And now, we look forward to finding out what “Toby Miles” had to say about all of this, too.

Jay Sekulow is Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which focuses on constitutional law. He is a New York Times bestselling author. Jay's latest book is "UNDEMOCRATIC: How Unelected, Unaccountable Bureaucrats Are Stealing Your Liberty and Freedom" (Howard Books May 19, 2015). He hosts "Jay Sekulow Live"-- a daily radio show which is broadcast on more than 850 stations nationwide as well as Sirius/XM satellite radio. Follow him on Twitter @JaySekulow.

IRS Ignores Deadline to Hand Over Lerner Emails

By Gerri Willis

Published July 13, 2015

FOXBusiness

The Internal Revenue Service is ignoring a court-imposed deadline to turn over newly found Lois Lerner email documents essential to investigations of the IRS tax-exempt scandal.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan last week ordered the agency to turn over 1,800 new emails from Lerner, who ran the tax exempt unit which decided which organizations could receive tax exempt status. The government watchdog group Judicial Watch has sought the emails in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Monday, a spokesperson told  FOXBusiness.com that the group would not oppose the IRS producing something this Wednesday and every 2 weeks thereafter, assuming the Court agrees. At the time of publication there was no word from the IRS on this development or an amended order from the court.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said his organization has agreed to receive the information this week, but as of today no information has been received. Lerner is at the center of a scandal in which conservative groups, especially those that identified themselves as Tea Party groups, were denied tax exempt status.
Updated to include comments from Judicial Watch.
Gerri Willis joined Fox Business Network (FBN) in March of 2010. Willis is an anchor and personal finance reporter for the network.

IRS' Lois Lerner Got Pension, $129K Bonus, New Call For Criminal Charges

Robert W. Wood Contributor

I focus on taxes and litigation.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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Many Republicans are still upset that Lois Lerner of the IRS got a pass from the Obama Justice Department. As the IRS scandal hit day 750, 24 Republicans sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who recently replaced Eric Holder as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. It seems unlikely that the new AG will upset the apple cart. Still, the 24 House members want the new AG to criminally prosecute Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center–if not the top–if the agency’s targeting scandal.
Here is the letter to Ms. Lynch asking for her to take up the panel’s 2014 request to charge Lerner for possible crimes: 

As Members of the House Ways and Means Committee we are writing to inquire about the status of the Committee’s April 9, 2014 referral of Lois Lerner to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution as supplemented July 30, 2014. See attachments.
On March 31, 2015, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ronald Machen, wrote U.S. House Speaker John Boehner stating that the U.S. Attorney’s office would not prosecute Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress based on her refusal to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, despite offering a brief opening statement before asserting her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Mr. Machen’s letter responded to Speaker Boehner’s referral of Ms. Lerner of May 7, 2014.

Mr. Machen’s letter did not address the April 9, 2014, criminal referral of Ms. Lerner issued by the House Ways and Means Committee under my predecessor, Chairman David Camp. In that referral, the Committee identified three specific acts undertaken by Ms. Lerner that may have violated one or more criminal statutes, including that: Ms. Lerner used her position to improperly influence agency action against only conservative organizations, denying these groups due process and equal protection rights under the law.
Ms. Lerner impeded official investigations by providing misleading statements in response to questions from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Ad ministration (TIGTA).
Ms. Lerner risked exposing, and may actually have disclosed, confidential taxpayer information, in apparent violation of Internal Revenue Code section 6103 by using her personal email to conduct official business.

The Committee continues to believe that these serious charges should be pursed by the Department of Justice. We would appreciate receiving an update on the status of the referral as soon as possible. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Congress found Ms. Lerner in contempt after she professed her innocence, and thereafter took the Fifth. Much later, Ms. Lerner broke her silence to Politico, saying she did nothing wrong, and claiming she was the victim. The U.S. Attorney’s Office was supposedly considering prosecution, but announced she would not be charged with contempt. A seven-page letter the U.S. Attorney sent to Speaker John A. Boehner gave the news and its rationale.
Ms. Lerner and Justice Department officials met in 2010 about going after conservative organizations after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case. In August 2010, the IRS distributed a ‘be on the lookout’ list for Tea Party organizations. By March 2012, amid reports of targeting, former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman testified there is “absolutely no targeting” by the IRS.

On November 9, 2012, Mr. Shulman stepped down, replaced by Steven Miller. On May 10, 2013, Ms. Lerner admitted targeting, calling it “absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate.” Four days later, on May 14, 2013, the Inspector General issued a report confirming targeting. Attorney General Eric Holder announced an FBI investigation, and Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller resigned.

On May 22, 2013, Ms. Lerner professed her innocence, then took the Fifth. Next day, she was placed on administrative leave. On September 24, 2013, Ms. Lerner’s retirement was announced with full pension. President Obama said there is “not a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS, but the Committee on House Oversight and Reform issues a report on Lois Lerner.

On April 8, 2014, the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform said it would pursue contempt charges against Ms. Lerner. On May 7, 2014, the House of Representatives held Ms. Lerner in contempt of Congress. On June 13, 2014, the IRS first stated that it lost Ms. Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.

The IRS said hard drives and backups are destroyed for six other IRS employees too. The IRS spent $10 million unsuccessfully trying to recover them, but much later, the Inspector General found them, noting that IRS IT professionals said no one ever asked for them. It is still possible Ms. Lerner could be queried over the hearings revealing 32,000 more emails, and possible criminal activity.

But on his last day in office, U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen concluded that Ms. Lerner’s statement was not a waiver of her constitutional right against self-incrimination. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz complained that, “Mr. Machen attempted to absolve Ms. Lerner of her actions by substituting his judgment for that of the full House of Representatives. It is unclear whether the Administration directed Mr. Machen not to prosecute Lois Lerner, or whether he was motivated by an ideological kinship with IRS’s leadership.”

Ms. Lerner will probably not face any further action. Yet while she presided over alleged discrimination against conservative nonprofits, Ms. Lois Lerner received $129,000 in bonuses. Some people have asked but for what.

Kennedy-KGB collaboration

By

The Washington Times

Friday, October 27, 2006

History has long since vindicated Ronald Reagan’s Cold War policy. Even Sen. Ted Kennedy, whom no one would accuse of harboring pro-Reagan sympathies, had to admit that Mr. Reagan “will be honored as the president who won the Cold War.” But opinions have not always been so united.
In his new book, “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism,” Grove City College professor Paul Kengor sheds light on a letter written by KGB head Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. The letter is dated May 14, 1983, right as the debate was heating up over Mr. Reagan’s proposed deployment of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe to counter the Soviets’ medium-range rockets in Eastern Europe.
Most Democrats and much of the left were universally opposed to Mr. Reagan’s plan, which they argued would lead to nuclear war. Heading the list of critics was Mr. Kennedy, who had, according to the Soviet letter, sent former Sen. John V. Tunney to meet with Kremlin leaders. Chebrikov writes that Mr. Kennedy “charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to… Andropov.”
According to the letter, Mr. Kennedy was concerned with “Reagan’s belligerence,” which he felt was in part the result of the president’s popularity. “The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” wrote Chebrikov, relaying Mr. Tunney’s message. “These issues, according to [Mr. Kennedy], will without a doubt become the most important of the [1984] election campaign.”
The letter goes on to say how Mr. Kennedy felt that the Soviets’ peaceful intentions were being “quoted out of context, silenced or groundlessly and whimsically discounted.” Conversely, Mr. Reagan “has the capabilities to counter any propaganda.” In other words, if the letter is to be believed, Mr. Kennedy felt his own president was the real aggressor.
Mr. Kennedy had two proposals for Andropov, according to Chebrikov. First, he asked for a meeting later that summer in order “to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.” Second, that “Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize … televised interviews with [Andropov] in the USA.”
If Chebrikov’s account of events is accurate, it’s clear Mr. Kennedy was actively engaging the Russians to influence the 1984 election. He also seems to have genuinely believed that Mr. Reagan’s policies were endangering U.S.-Soviet relations and that the best solution was to get Mr. Reagan out of office. The letter closes with Chebrikov saying that “Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988,” possibly suggesting Mr. Kennedy had other, more selfish motives.
As Mr. Kengor concludes, “if the memo is in fact an accurate account of what transpired, it constitutes a remarkable example of the lengths to which some on the political left, including a sitting U.S. senator, were willing to go to stop Ronald Reagan.”
We agree. Even in a jaded world, it is breathtaking to discover a U.S. senator — brother of a former president — actively and secretly collaborating with Soviet leaders in an attempt to undermine the president of the United States’ nuclear defense policy during the height of the cold war.

Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine

"A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kwajalein infrastructure and RTS headquarters, click to enlarge.

An exoatmospheric kill vehicle (kinetic penetrator, mid-phase) is launched from Meck Island on 3 December 2001

The Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, commonly referred to as the Reagan Test Site (formerly Kwajalein Missile Range), is a missile test range in the Pacific Ocean. It covers about 750,000 square miles (1,900,000 km²) and includes rocket launch sites at the Kwajalein Atoll (on multiple islands), Wake Island, and Aur Atoll. It primarily functions as a test facility for U.S. missile defense and space research programs. The Reagan Test Site is under the command of the US Army Kwajalein Atoll, or USAKA (pronounced /uːˈsɑːkə/).
The mission control center, along with most of the personnel and infrastructure, is located at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.^[1] Eleven of the atoll's islands are operated by the U.S. military under a long term lease with the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Equipment installed at the test site includes various tracking radars, stationary and mobile telemetry, optical recording equipment and a secure fiberoptic data network via the HANTRU-1 undersea cable. The Reagan Test Site also serves as a tracking station for manned space flight and NASA research projects.
Launch activities at the test site include ballistic missile tests, ABM interception tests, meteorological sounding rockets and a commercial spaceport for SpaceX at Omelek Island.
Previous names for the installation:^[2]

• Naval Station Kwajalein (Post WWII–1959)
• Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kwajalein (1959–1964)
• Kwajalein Test Site (1964–1968)
• Kwajalein Missile Range (1968–1986)
• United States Army Kwajalein Atoll (1986–1991)
• Kwajalein Missile Range (1991–1999)
• Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site (1999–present)

Contents

• 1 See also
• 2 Notes
• 3 References
• 4 External links

See also

United States Air Force portal

• Nike Hydac
• Project Nike

Notes

1. Jump up ^ "Mission Control Center". Smdc.army.mil. Retrieved 2012-03-10.
2. Jump up ^ "U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll Reagan Test Site" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-10.

References

• Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site (RTS) Official Site
• U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA)

Meck Island

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the island. For the musician, see Meck (musician).

Aerial view of Meck Island

 

Meck Island (Marshallese: Meik, [mʲei͡ɯk]^[1]) is part of the Kwajalein Atoll in the Ralik Chain in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, 2,100 nautical miles (3,900 km) southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii.
Meck is part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, and a launch site for anti-ballistic missiles and launch vehicles is based there.

• 

  Launch from Meck Island
  

IRS' Lois Lerner gave confidential Tea Party tax info to FEC, violating law

By PAUL BEDARD | OCTOBER 31, 2013 AT 10:49 AM

Former IRS official Lois Lerner. AP Photo

The Internal Revenue Service shared highly confidential tax information of several Tea Party groups in the IRS scandal with the Federal Election Commission, a clear violation of federal law, according to newly obtained emails.
The public watchdog group Judicial Watch told Secrets Thursday that it was former scandal boss Lois Lerner who shared the information on groups including the American Future Fund and the American Issues Project.
The emails obtained by Judicial Watch show that the IRS, which was considering the tax status of the groups, gave the FEC the tax returns of the groups, including income, expenditures and staff pay. The emails also revealed the exact wording of the prying political questions the IRS wanted the groups to reveal, such as their goals and the requests for brochures and ads.

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The information, sent via email, to the FEC came in response to the organization’s questions about whether the IRS had granted tax-exempt status to the Tea Party groups. It is unclear how the information the IRS sent was going to help the FEC, since the IRS hadn’t determined the tax status of the groups yet.
The emails were produced to Judicial Watch last week by the FEC in response to an Aug. 9, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The email chain began Feb. 3, 2009, when the FEC made it’s request to Lerner.
She emailed back 10 minutes later, and said: “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”
According to Judicial Watch, the materials “from the IRS’ files sent from Lerner to the FEC containing detailed, confidential information about the organizations. These include annual tax returns (Forms 990) and request for exempt recognition forms (Form 1024), Articles of Organization and other corporate documents, and correspondence between the nonprofit organizations and the IRS. Under Section 6013 of the Internal Revenue Code, it is a felony for an IRS official to disclose either ‘return information or ‘taxpayer return information,’ even to another government agency.”
Lerner, who was head of the unit deciding tax exempt status, quit in the scandal.
“These extensive emails and other materials provide a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies: the IRS and FEC,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And there is the very real question as to whether these documents evidence a crime.”
Paul Bedard, The Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.

 http://washingtonexaminer.com/

Paul Moreno: How Public Unions Became So Powerful

By 1970, nearly 20% of American workers were employed by government.

By

Paul Moreno

Updated Sept. 11, 2012 7:55 p.m. ET

The Chicago teachers strike has put Democrats in a difficult position. Teacher unions are the most powerful constituency in the Democratic Party, but their interests are ever more clearly at odds with taxpayers and inner-city families. Chicago is reviving scenes from the last crisis of liberalism in the 1970s, when municipal unions drove many American cities to disorder and bankruptcy. Where did their power come from?

Best of the Web Today columnist James Taranto on union problems nationwide. Photo: Associated Press 

Before the 1950s, government-employee unions were almost inconceivable. When the Boston police unionized and went on strike in 1919, the ensuing chaos—rioting and looting—crippled the public-union idea. Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge became a national hero by breaking the strike, issuing the dictum: "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time." President Woodrow Wilson called the strike "an intolerable crime against civilization."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt also rejected government unionism. He told the head of the Federation of Federal Employees in 1937 that collective bargaining "cannot be transplanted into the public service. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer" because "the employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws."
FDR pointed out the obvious, that the government is sovereign. If an organization can compel the government to do something, then that organization will be the real sovereign. Thus the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935 gave private-sector unions the power to compel employers to bargain, but the act excluded government workers. It declared that federal and state and local governments were not "employers" under its terms.
Postwar prosperity and the great increase of public employment revived the public union idea. By 1970, nearly 20% of American workers worked for the government. (In 1900: 4%.) The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees led the effort to persuade a state to allow public-employee unionization, and Afscme prevailed in Wisconsin in 1958. New York City and other cities also permitted their workers to unionize.
President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order 50 years ago that broke the dam. The order did not permit federal employees to bargain over wages (these are still set by Congress), or to force workers to join a union or to strike (no state or city allowed that), but Kennedy's directive did lead to unionization of the federal workforce. And it gave great impetus to more liberal state and local laws. Government-union membership rose tenfold in the 1960s.
Things soon got ugly. The Wagner Act had fomented labor militancy, notably sit-down strikes in 1937 that disrupted manufacturing and retarded the economy. But in the late 1960s and 1970s, federal and state union-promoting laws produced unprecedented strikes by teachers, garbage collectors, postal workers and others, even though every state prohibited strikes by public employees.

Striking Chicago public-school teachers on Monday. Associated Press/Sitthixay Ditthavong

Afscme began to arouse resentment from other union federations—especially the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union. Afscme's abrasive president, Jerry Wurf, became an easy target for his opponents. He was said to have advised Baltimore firefighters to "let Baltimore burn" if union demands were not met; Wurf was subsequently regarded as generally having a let-it-burn attitude.
In 1976 the Supreme Court derailed a movement to enact the National Public Employment Relations Law ("a Wagner Act for public employees," as supporters described it) led by Rep. William Clay of Missouri. The court held that Congress could not apply federal labor laws to state employees. The justices stated the obvious, that "the States as states stand on a quite different footing from an individual or a corporation."
By the end of the 1970s, the budgetary burdens imposed by public unions had helped revive conservative movements, leading to the elections of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Ronald Reagan in 1980. Undeterred, William Clay told the Professional Air Traffic Controllers at Patco's 1980 convention to "revise your political thinking. It should start with the premise that you have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just permanent interests. It must be selfish and pragmatic." He told them to "learn the rules of the game," which were "that you don't put the interest of any other group ahead of your own. What's good for the federal employees must be interpreted as being good for the nation." The take-no-prisoners message helps explain why President Reagan fired and replaced the striking controllers, and why the public overwhelmingly supported him.
Historians tend to depict the Patco strike as a replay of the 1919 Boston police strike, with Reagan as the new Coolidge. But breaking the Patco strike had zero impact on public unionism. It may have cooled the willingness to strike, but unions continued to flourish. Public employment and government unionism have grown more than the population since 1980. The Patco replacements soon joined the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and carried on Patco's work.
Nor did the breaking of the strike "send a signal" to private employers to take a hard line against their unions, as some historians of the time have suggested. The factors responsible for private-union decline antedated the Patco strike and continued after it. Reagan ultimately may have even helped the public-employee union movement: By stoking the nation's economic revival in the 1980s, he made the costs of public unions begin to seem less onerous, and polls suggested that American worries about the matter declined.
Public unions do well in flush times like the 1950s and 1960s, but they suffer when taxpayers feel their true cost, as in the 1970s—and today.

Mr. Moreno, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, is the author of "The American State from the Civil War to the New Deal," forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

http://online.wsj.com/

Mark Levin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mark Levin
Levin at an Americans for Prosperity conference in 2011
Birth name	Mark Reed Levin
Born	September 21, 1957 (age 56) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Show	The Mark Levin Show
Station(s)	WABC
Network	Cumulus Media Networks
Time slot	6-9 p.m. EST
Style	Talk radio
Country	United States
Website	marklevinshow.com

Mark Reed Levin (born September 21, 1957) is an American lawyer, author, and the host of American syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show. Levin worked in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and was a chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese. He is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, has authored five books and contributes commentary to various media outlets such as National Review Online.^[1]

Contents

• 1 Biography
• 2 Radio broadcasting
• 3 Writer
  • 3.1 Men In Black: How The Supreme Court is Destroying America
  • 3.2 Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish
  • 3.3 Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
  • 3.4 Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America
  • 3.5 The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Biography

Mark Reed Levin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Erdenheim and Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. His father, Jack E. Levin, is the author of several books.^[2] He graduated from Cheltenham High School after three years in 1974.^[3][4] After high school, Levin enrolled at Temple University Ambler including summer classes and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political Science in 1977 at age 19, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.^[5] Levin won election to the Cheltenham school board in 1977 on a platform of reducing property taxes.^[4] In 1980, Levin earned a juris doctor from Temple University Beasley School of Law.^[6] Levin worked for Texas Instruments after law school.^[4]
Beginning in 1981, Levin served as advisor to several members of President Ronald Reagan's cabinet, eventually becoming Associate Director of Presidential Personnel and ultimately Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese; Levin also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
He practiced law in the private sector and is president of Landmark Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm founded in 1976 and based in Leesburg, Virginia.^[7][8]
Levin has participated in Freedom Concerts, an annual benefit concert to aid families of fallen soldiers, and he uses his radio program to promote aid to military families.^[9][10] Levin is also involved with Troopathon, a charity which sends care packages to soldiers serving overseas.^[11]
In 2001, the American Conservative Union awarded Levin its Ronald Reagan Award.^[12]

Radio broadcasting

Levin speaks at the 2011 Defending the American Dream Conference hosted by Americans for Prosperity.

See also: The Mark Levin Show

Levin began his broadcast career as a guest on conservative talk radio programs. For many years he was a frequent contributor of legal opinions to The Rush Limbaugh Show, where Limbaugh referred to him on-air as "F. Lee Levin," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. He was also a contributor to The Sean Hannity Show and eventually got a radio slot of his own on WABC, following Sean Hannity's program. Hannity has nicknamed Mark Levin "The Great One."^[13] Levin and Hannity remain frequent contributors to each other's programs. He is a leading conservative commentator, ranked 4-6 position nationally among talk radio programs, with a minimum of 7.75 million total weekly listenership according to talkers.com."^[14] Levin is ranked in the top ten among the most listened to radio programs in the US.

Writer

Men In Black: How The Supreme Court is Destroying America

Levin authored the 2005 book Men In Black: How The Supreme Court Is Destroying America, in which he advanced his thesis that activist judges on the Supreme Court (from all parts of the political spectrum) have "legislated from the bench." In her review of Men in Black, Slate magazine's legal correspondent and journalist Dahlia Lithwick wrote that "no serious scholar of the court or the Constitution, on the ideological left or right, is going to waste their time engaging Levin's arguments once they've read this book."^[15] In contrast, a review in the Defense Counsel Journal described Men in Black as "a forceful indictment of what Levin identifies as an increasingly 'activist' court for amending our national Constitution in the guise of construing it."^[16]

Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish

In 2007, Levin released a book about his dogs, Pepsi and Sprite. Specifically, the book was about Sprite, a Spaniel mix that his wife and son persuaded him to adopt from the local shelter in 2004. The book was titled Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish. Rescuing Sprite chronicles Sprite’s health deterioration in 2006 and how Levin and his family dealt with their loss.

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto was released on March 24, 2009, and became a #1 New York Times best seller for eleven of twelve weeks,^[17] as well as No. 1 on Nielsen's BookScan.^[18] It comes in at No. 2 on Amazon.com's list of bestselling books of 2009.^[19] The book includes discussion of a variety of issues that, according to Levin, need to be addressed in the United States. Liberty and Tyranny has sold over one million copies according to Threshold Editions, the book's publisher.^[20] Former federal prosecutor and fellow National Review Online author Andrew C. McCarthy wrote of Liberty and Tyranny in The New Criterion: "Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack" against "America's Leftist ascendancy".McCarthy, Andrew (May 2009). "The Work of Generations". New Criterion. Retrieved 2009-10-08.

Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America

Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America was released January 17, 2012. In Ameritopia, Levin discusses the origins and development of both the modern day conservative and liberal political philosophies through the works of some of the leading figures in American history. Levin uses the term "Ameritopia" to describe the United States as having become a "post-Constitutional" country.^[21] Included are commentaries on works by Plato, Sir Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, John Locke, Charles de Montesquieu and Alexis de Tocqueville.^[22] A review by Professor Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Education called the book "dis­as­trous­ly bad from be­gin­ning to end."^[23] Jeffrey Lord, writing in the conservative American Spectator, called it "...historical X-ray vision in book form."^[24]

The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic

The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic was released on August 13, 2013.^[25]

Tax Reform Act of 1986

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

President Ronald Reagan signs the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on the South Lawn

 .

The U.S. Congress passed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA) (Pub.L. 99–514, 100 Stat. 2085, enacted October 22, 1986) to simplify the income tax code, broaden the tax base and eliminate many tax shelters and other preferences. Referred to as the second of the two "Reagan tax cuts" (the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut of 1981 being the first), the bill was also officially sponsored by Democrats, Richard Gephardt of Missouri in the House of Representatives and Bill Bradley of New Jersey in the Senate.
The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was given impetus by a detailed tax-simplification proposal from President Reagan's Treasury Department, and was designed to be tax-revenue neutral because Reagan stated that he would veto any bill that was not. Revenue neutrality was targeted by decreasing individual tax rates, eliminating $30 billion annually in loopholes, and increasing corporate taxes.^[1] The bill reduced overall revenues by 8.9 billion dollars.^[2] As of 2012, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was the most recent major simplification of the tax code, drastically reducing the number of deductions and the number of tax brackets.

Contents

• 1 Income tax rates
• 2 Tax incentives
• 3 Fraudulent dependents
• 4 Changes to the AMT
• 5 Passive losses and tax shelters
• 6 Tax treatment of technical service firms employing certain professionals
• 7 Name of the Internal Revenue Code
• 8 Income inequality
• 9 See also
• 10 References
• 11 External links

Income tax rates

The top tax rate was lowered from 50% to 28% while the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15%. Many lower level tax brackets were consolidated, and the upper income level of the bottom rate (married filing jointly) was increased from $5,720/year to $29,750/year. This package ultimately consolidated tax brackets from fifteen levels of income to four levels of income.^[3] This would be the only time in the history of the U.S. income tax (which dates back to the passage of the Revenue Act of 1862) that the top rate was reduced and the bottom rate increased concomitantly. In addition, capital gains faced the same tax rate as ordinary income. Some sources claim the loopholes and tax expenditures returned after lobbying, but others argue the rise in corporate taxes offset any benefit.^[4][5]
The rate structure also maintained a novel "bubble rate." The rates were not 15%/28%, as widely reported. Rather, the rates were 15%/28%/33%/28%. As a result, for taxpayers after a certain income level, TRA86 provided a flat tax of 28%. This was jettisoned in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, otherwise known as the "Bush tax increase", which violated his Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

Tax incentives

The Act also increased incentives favoring investment in owner-occupied housing relative to rental housing by increasing the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction. The imputed income an owner receives from an investment in owner-occupied housing has always escaped taxation, much like the imputed (estimated) income someone receives from doing his own cooking instead of hiring a chef, but the Act changed the treatment of imputed rent, local property taxes, and mortgage interest payments to favor homeownership, while phasing out many investment incentives for rental housing. To the extent that low-income people may be more likely to live in rental housing than in owner-occupied housing, this provision of the Act could have had the tendency to decrease the new supply of housing accessible to low-income people. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit was added to the Act to provide some balance and encourage investment in multifamily housing for the poor.
Moreover, interest on consumer loans such as credit card debt was no longer deductible. An existing provision in the tax code, called Income Averaging, which reduced taxes for those only recently making a much higher salary than before, was eliminated (although later partially reinstated, for farmers in 1997 and for fishermen in 2004). The Act, however, increased the personal exemption and standard deduction.
The Individual Retirement Account (IRA) deduction was severely restricted. The IRA had been created as part of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, where employees not covered by a pension plan could contribute the lesser of $1500 or 15% of earned income. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA) removed the pension plan clause and raised the contribution limit to $2000 or 100% of earned income. The 1986 Tax Reform Act retained the $2000 contribution limit, but restricted the deductibility for households that have pension plan coverage and have moderate to high incomes. Non-deductible contributions were allowed.
Depreciation deductions were also curtailed. Prior to ERTA81, depreciation was based on "useful life" calculations provided by the Treasury Department. ERTA81 set up the "accelerated cost recovery system," or ACRS. This set up a series of useful lives based on 3 years for technical equipment, 5 years for non-technical office equipment, 10 years for industrial equipment, and 15 years for real property. TRA86 lengthened these lives, and lengthened them further for taxpayers covered by the alternative minimum tax (AMT). These latter, longer lives approximate "economic depreciation," a concept economists have used to determine the actual life of an asset relative to its economic value.
Defined contribution pension contributions were curtailed. The law prior to TRA86 was that DC pension limits were the lesser of 25% of compensation or $30,000. This could be accomplished by any combination of elective deferrals and profit sharing contributions. TRA86 introduced an elective deferral limit of $7000, indexed to inflation. Since the profit sharing percentage must be uniform for all employees, this had the intended result of making more equitable contributions to 401(k)'s and other types of DC pension plans.

Fraudulent dependents

The act required people claiming children as dependents on their tax returns to obtain and list a Social Security number for every claimed child, to verify the child's existence. Before this act, parents claiming tax deductions were on the honor system not to lie about the number of children they supported. The requirement was phased in, and initially Social Security numbers were required only for children over the age of 5. During the first year, this anti-fraud change resulted in seven million fewer dependents being claimed, nearly all of which are believed to have involved either children that never existed, or tax deductions improperly claimed by non-custodial parents.^[6]

Changes to the AMT

The original Alternative Minimum Tax targeted tax shelters used by a few wealthy households. However, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 greatly expanded the AMT to aim at a different set of deductions that most Americans receive. Things like the personal exemption, state and local taxes, the standard deduction, private activity bond interest, certain expenses like union dues and even some medical costs for the seriously ill could now trigger the AMT. In 2007, the New York Times reported, "A law for untaxed rich investors was refocused on families who own their homes in high tax states."^[7]

Passive losses and tax shelters

By enacting 26 U.S.C. § 469 (relating to limitations on deductions for passive activity losses and limitations on passive activity credits) to remove many tax shelters, especially for real estate investments, the Act significantly decreased the value of many such investments which had been held more for their tax-advantaged status than for their inherent profitability. This may have contributed to the end of the real estate boom of the early-to-mid 1980s as well as to the savings and loan crisis.
Prior to 1986, much real estate investment was done by passive investors. It was common for syndicates of investors to pool their resources in order to invest in property, commercial or residential. They would then hire management companies to run the operation. TRA 86 reduced the value of these investments by limiting the extent to which losses associated with them could be deducted from the investor's gross income. This, in turn, encouraged the holders of loss-generating properties to try and unload them, which contributed further to the problem of sinking real estate values. This turmoil and repositioning in real estate markets was caused not by changes in market conditions.
Mortgages and similar real property loans constituted a significant portion of S&Ls' asset portfolios. Significant declines in the market value of real properties resulted in the erosion of the value of these institutions' major assets.
Some economists consider the net long-term effect of eliminating tax shelters and other distortions to be positive for the economy, by redirecting money to the most inherently profitable investments.
To help less-affluent landlords, TRA86 gave a $25,000 net rental loss deduction provided that the home was not personally used for the greater of 14 days or 10% of rental days, and AGI is less than $100,000 (pro-rated phase-out through $150,000).

Tax treatment of technical service firms employing certain professionals

The Internal Revenue Code does not contain any definition or rules dealing with the issue of when a worker should be characterized for tax purposes as an employee, rather than as an independent contractor. The tax treatment depends on the application of (20) factors provided by common law, which varies by state.
Introduced by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Section 1706 added a subsection(d) to Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978, which removed "safe harbor" exception for independent contractor classification (which at the time avoided payroll taxes) for workers such as engineers, designers, drafters, computer professionals, and "similarly skilled" workers.
If the IRS determines that a third-party intermediary firm's worker previously treated as self-employed should have been classified as an employee, the IRS assesses substantial back taxes, penalties and interest on that third-party intermediary company, though not directly against the worker or the end client.^[8] It does not apply to individuals directly contracted to clients.^[9]
The change in the tax code was expected to offset tax revenue losses of other legislation Moynihan proposed that changed the law on foreign taxes of Americans working abroad.^[10] At least one firm simply adapted its business model to the new regulations.^[11] A 1991 Treasury Department study found that tax compliance for technology professionals was among the highest of all self-employed workers and that Section 1706 would raise no additional tax revenue and could possibly result in losses as self-employed workers did not receive as many tax-free benefits as employees.^[12]
In one report in 2010, Moynihan's initiative was labeled "a favor to IBM."^[13] A suicide note by software professional Joseph Stack, who flew his airplane into a building housing IRS offices in February 2010, blamed his problems on many factors, including the Section 1706 change in the Internal Revenue Code, though no intermediary firm is mentioned, and failure to file a return was admitted.^[14]

Name of the Internal Revenue Code

Section 2(a) of the Act also officially changed the name of the Internal Revenue Code from the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. Although the Act made numerous amendments to the Code, it was not a substantial re-codification or reorganization of the overall structure of the Code.

Income inequality

See also: Income inequality in the United States and Tax policy and economic inequality in the United States

In 1984, the top one percent of income earners received 8.4% of national income, while in 1989 it increased to 13.5%. The effect of the 1986 reform on this shift has been subjected to several economic studies.^[15]

See also

• Christmas tree bill