The Republican Thread

[StrangeSox]

IIRC the head of the Archives said they did not follow the law. also I thought I heard they, the IRS employees, were suppose to print out, hard copies of certain work related emails......

 

Yes, that was their policy, but it was poorly defined and left up to individual discretion. Lerner may not have been following it properly.

 

also A hard drive failing? Sure.....but a total of seven hard drives all relating to people who were involved in the 501C4 cases? Highly suspicious.... Usually if it smells like s***, it probably is s***.... And this whole subject does not pass the smell test...

 

Hard drive failure rates are anywhere from 3-25%. It depends on the brand, model, the manufacturing run, the conditions they're used in (e.g. constantly overheated), and where they're at in their lifecycle (high failure rates are right out of the box and after about 5 years with really low failure rates in between). It's not all that unlikely that, in an agency with 90,000 employees, seven of those employees would have hard drives that would fail within the span of several months to several years. I haven't seen an actual timeline of the drive failures other than an article that mentioned that at least two of them happened several months apart, again all going back about three years.

[Jenksismyhero]

Yes, that was their policy, but it was poorly defined and left up to individual discretion. Lerner may not have been following it properly.

 

 

 

Hard drive failure rates are anywhere from 3-25%. It depends on the brand, model, the manufacturing run, the conditions they're used in (e.g. constantly overheated), and where they're at in their lifecycle (high failure rates are right out of the box and after about 5 years with really low failure rates in between). It's not all that unlikely that, in an agency with 90,000 employees, seven of those employees would have hard drives that would fail within the span of several months to several years. I haven't seen an actual timeline of the drive failures other than an article that mentioned that at least two of them happened several months apart, again all going back about three years.

 

Pssh, it absolutely is. It's not seven people out of the 90,000, it's seven people who happen to be at or near the center of this probe (so tens or maybe hundreds max).

[StrangeSox]

Pssh, it absolutely is. It's not seven people out of the 90,000, it's seven people who happen to be at or near the center of this probe (so tens or maybe hundreds max).

 

Show your math. Also consider that if the people were using computers/drives of the same age and model, it's even more likely that they'd begin failing around the same time.

[Jenksismyhero]

Show your math. Also consider that if the people were using computers/drives of the same age and model, it's even more likely that they'd begin failing around the same time.

 

My assumption is these people worked in the same office or the same department at the IRS. It's not as if you have a secretary in New York and an investigator in Florida and 5 other random people at the IRS whose hard drives crashed. If that were the case I would agree with you that it's unlikely there was some shenanigans going on. But again, from my understanding these are all people who are implicated in the probe. So it's not 7 random hard drives out of 90,000. It's seven out of a relatively small sub-set of IRS employees.

 

[EvilMonkey]

Show your math. Also consider that if the people were using computers/drives of the same age and model, it's even more likely that they'd begin failing around the same time.

So just coincidence that the EPA is now using the same excuse to not turn over emails?

 

http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/issa...ersary-20140625

 

The hearing also included a bit of deja vu for the committee when members grilled McCarthy on lost emails from a hard-drive crash (the same issue that wiped out emails from IRS employee Lois Lerner). In this case, the emails in question were from retired EPA employee Philip North, who was involved in the agency's decision to begin the process of preemptively vetoing the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.

 

North, who declined an interview request by the committee, is retired, and committee staff say they have been unable to track him down. According to a committee aide, North's hard drive crashed in 2010—which was around the same time that the committee is investigating the agency's discussions of a potential veto—and the emails were not backed up.

 

Who would have ever guessed that the biggest cause of hard drive failure would be subpoenas.

[Balta1701]

I got a chuckle out of the notion that the government would hold Goldman Sachs's feet to the fire over something

You won.

[StrangeSox]

My assumption is these people worked in the same office or the same department at the IRS. It's not as if you have a secretary in New York and an investigator in Florida and 5 other random people at the IRS whose hard drives crashed. If that were the case I would agree with you that it's unlikely there was some shenanigans going on. But again, from my understanding these are all people who are implicated in the probe. So it's not 7 random hard drives out of 90,000. It's seven out of a relatively small sub-set of IRS employees.

 

Show your math. If anything, them all working out of the same office only increases the odds that they all had similar machines of similar vintage which would mean sequential failures would be more likely, not less.

 

I can't seem to find good details on who's computers crashed and when, but this NYT article offers some insight.

 

The most prominent of the seven employees who have lost emails, other than Ms. Lerner, is Nikole Flax, who served as the chief of staff to the I.R.S. deputy commissioner, Steven T. Miller. Mr. Miller, who became acting commissioner after the scandal broke, resigned in May 2013 as it developed.

 

It was a secretary of the deputy commissioner (Lerner's boss), which I believe is a Washington, DC based position. The other was the person who became acting IRS commissioner, which is definitely a DC-based positioned. I'm not sure where Lerner worked out of, but the office that handles the Tax Exempt stuff is out of Cincinnati.

 

The IRS is looking for the computers of anyone that Lerner emailed or who emailed Lerner during a time span of several years because those emails might still reside on those local machines. That will be, at a minimum, hundreds of employees' computers to check. The odds that six or seven drives out of hundreds will fail within the period of a year or more isn't that bad.

[StrangeSox]

So just coincidence that the EPA is now using the same excuse to not turn over emails?

 

http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/issa...ersary-20140625

 

 

 

Who would have ever guessed that the biggest cause of hard drive failure would be subpoenas.

 

Yes, it's just a coincidence. Are you guys really unaware that hard drives do, in fact, crash? And that when your sample size is hundreds or, if we're dragging every federal agency into it, hundreds of thousands over the period of multiple years, you will see many drive failures?

[Jenksismyhero]

OK man, you're right. When government scandals involving a small subset of people randomly have their records lost, blaming an IT failure that occurs a fraction of the time is a totally logical explanation. End of inquiry.

[StrangeSox]

There's nothing implausible about the explanation given by the IRS. It matches contemporaneous documentation of drive failures, recovery attempts and retention policies. When a faux-scandal involving every person that Lerner emailed or received email from over the period of several years has a few of those drives crash within the window, going with the simplest, documented explanation (drive failure, not cover up) is your best bet. The IRS should turn over any contemporaneous documentation it has of the other drive crashes.

[StrangeSox]

Hopefully what comes of this is that these and other federal agencies examine their retention/backup policies and adjust according so that they're in compliance with whatever the legal requirements are.

[Jake]

Can someone fill me in here - they have almost, but not all, of the emails? Or none? Why can't they get the emails from the recipients? How do they know which ones are missing? Can the NSA help?

[StrangeSox]

Can someone fill me in here - they have almost, but not all, of the emails? Or none? Why can't they get the emails from the recipients? How do they know which ones are missing? Can the NSA help?

They have tens of thousands, but they don't actually know how many hve been lost. It's over a time period from 2009 to 2011. Her drive failed in July 2011.

 

They have attempted to recover them by getting them off of other senders or recipients computers, but six (or seven?) of those also experience drive failures at some point, though I can't seem to find good information on when.

 

They know that a big chunk was missing from that time period, but they don't know of any specific emails that are missing.

 

One of the Republicans has asked for the NSA to get involved.

[southsider2k5]

I got a chuckle out of the notion that the government would hold Goldman Sachs's feet to the fire over something

 

Evidently you missed BNParibas.

[southsider2k5]

You're not actually explaining why the retention policies need to match here. You're just saying that they should. Maybe the retention policies of public agencies should be even longer, given FOIA. But you're not making that case.

 

I presume that there are reasons that the retention length regulations are what they are and that they didn't pick completely arbitrary numbers. You'd need to show what those reasons are and how they're equally applicable to the IRS (or every government agency? I'm not clear on what you're looking for here).

 

They shouldn't match. The government should be held to a much higher standard because their work is public record! The excuses being made for their lack of retention is negated by their own contradictory policies for private industry that isn't a matter of public knowledge.

[southsider2k5]

There's nothing implausible about the explanation given by the IRS. It matches contemporaneous documentation of drive failures, recovery attempts and retention policies. When a faux-scandal involving every person that Lerner emailed or received email from over the period of several years has a few of those drives crash within the window, going with the simplest, documented explanation (drive failure, not cover up) is your best bet. The IRS should turn over any contemporaneous documentation it has of the other drive crashes.

 

With the background I have in trading compliance, this honestly made me laugh. A private firm would be look at millions of dollars in fines for lapse record retention with an excuse like this.

[juddling]

Congrats to SCOTUS on their decision to (unanimously) strike down the President’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

[Cknolls]

Congrats to SCOTUS on their decision to (unanimously) strike down the President’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

 

 

12 th time in two years. All the NLRB decisions since should be toast, no?

[Jake]

Good lord is our political process f***ed up

[StrangeSox]

With the background I have in trading compliance, this honestly made me laugh. A private firm would be look at millions of dollars in fines for lapse record retention with an excuse like this.

You keep saying "excuse" but I'm not sure why. An explanation is not an excuse. But apparently the only thing you'll consider is deliberate deduction of evidence that obviously have confirmed everything issa has been saying.

 

Pointing out that there's a much more plausible and actually documented explanation of what happened than "conspiracy!" isn't saying that what happened is okay or acceptable.

[Jenksismyhero]

Jesus, what a waste of money:

 

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/golden-gate...de-barrier-vote

 

The Golden Gate Bridge moved a big step closer to getting a suicide barrier after bridge officials on Friday approved a $76 million funding package for a net system that would prevent people from jumping to their deaths.

 

The bridge district's board of directors voted unanimously in favor of the funding package, which includes $20 million in bridge toll revenue. Federal money will provide the bulk of the remaining funding, though the state is also pledging $7 million.

[farmteam]

I'll just leave it to the Rabbi who reacted to Gibson's first crazy anti-Jewish comments: “If it’s true what’s reported, frequently hatred, bigotry and prejudice, which is controlled, explodes at moments of stress and crisis. Liquor loosens the tongue of what’s in the mind and in the heart, and in his mind and in his heart is his conspiracy theory about Jews and hatred of Jews.”

This line of logic bothers me. I admit there's some truth to it, but I don't think it's correct to say that what a person says when he's drunk is what he truly believes, but just doesn't say when sober. A person can't help what thoughts run across their head. What a person chooses to say or not say is just as important as what he thinks, and that decision-making is obviously imperiled when drunk.

 

Where the "some" truth to it comes in is what SS alluded to -- when it happens 3 or 4 times, it's more likely to be what the person really does believe.

[EvilMonkey]

Jesus, what a waste of money:

 

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/golden-gate...de-barrier-vote

They could probably electrify the railing to shock people back before jumping for a lot less.

[juddling]

Former "Chocolate city" mayor Ray Nagin going to prison.....

 

couldn't have happened to a bigger douchebag......have fun in prison........

[EvilMonkey]

Former "Chocolate city" mayor Ray Nagin going to prison.....

 

couldn't have happened to a bigger douchebag......have fun in prison........

“I just let him know he has spiritual support, and this was like a new-day lynching,” said Mr. Smith, an elder of the civil rights movement in New Orleans.

 

So putting a corrupt government employee in prison is now lynching, because he is BLACK? Mr. Smith, save your lynching comments for real instances of racism. you cheapen it by your over the top accusations that are out of place and uncalled for.