Cornhusker Kickbacks Have Consequences

Nebraska health insurance costs to rise – via HotAir:

The Lincoln Journal Star added to the annals of ‘If you like your plan you can keep your plan (Midwestern edition)” yesterday with a new report on the impact of ObamaCare on health insurance premiums in Nebraska.  Thanks to the mandates in ObamaCare, most of the individual insurance plans offered in the past will no longer be available, whether consumers liked their plan or not.  The replacements will be much more expensive, with cost hikes ranging from 21% increases to as much as 143%

Remember, Ben Nelson was bought off with the Cornhusker Kickback:

In late 2009, the Senate’s 40 Republicans unanimously opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Senate’s version of health-care legislation. To end a Republican filibuster and pass the measure, the Democrats needed the votes of all 58 of their senators, plus those of two independents who caucused with their party. Nelson was the 60th and last senator to agree to vote for cloture.^[40]

According to Nelson, he wanted to ensure that the final version of the law prohibited the use of public funds to pay for abortions.^[41] His cloture vote came after the measure was amended to permit states to opt out of allowing insurance exchange plans to provide abortion coverage. Persons enrolling in plans that covered abortion costs would pay for that coverage separately from their payment for the rest of the plan.^[42] The bill also provided full and permanent federal reimbursement for the expenses that Nebraska would incur in its mandated expansion of Medicaid eligibility,^[40] an amount estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $100 million.^[43]

The health-care measure was controversial, and Nelson’s vote provoked a strong response. The Medicaid reimbursement scheme was derided by the measure’s opponents as the “Cornhusker Kickback”

Ultimately Nebraska didn’t even get what he sold his vote for, and now they get less as they’ll mostly be paying much more.

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Interestingly (or not interestingly, if you pay attention to google’s actions), it’s really hard to find info on the Cornhusker Kickback using google – results come back from leftist sites like Media Matters, Rachel Maddow, and FireDogLake.

Field Day: Lawyers, Guns, and Money

Starting with a former president/lawyer talking about guns, from Katie Pavlich writing at bearingarms.com:

During his speech at the 50th anniversary celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech in Washington D.C. Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton implied it was easier to buy an ‘assault weapon’ in the United States of America than it is to vote in elections.

“A great democracy does not make it harder to vote than it does to buy an assault weapon,” Clinton said.

Ms. Pavlich notes that yes, you do in fact have to show ID to buy a firearm and you don’t need to show ID to vote.  One is sovereign franchise over the execution of the nation’s government, the other is a piece of metal and plastic.  Yet you need to show ID for the metal and plastic, but you can vote multiple times with no ID to put someone in office who will be able to wield the power of the state against the populace.

Not letting citizens of MA, CA, DC, or NY vote at all probably isn’t what he means by that.

Although, on the other hand, a truly great democracy simply issues its citizens actual assault rifles to defend themselves.

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Lawyers in congress are going after guns by using the power to destroy – the power to tax (H/T Gateway Pundit):

There is a new anti-gun bill sitting on Capitol Hill, and it doesn’t deal with banning particular models of firearms or even universal background checks.

The Gun Violence Prevention and Safe Communities Act of 2013, was proposed by U.S. Reps. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., and Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. The bill seeks to raise the tax rate on gun sales from 10% to 20%.

This stuff does get pushed in every year and usually dies somewhere along the way, but the end result if it passes is actually class warfare by the Democrats against the poor.  If you’re poor and want to defend yourself because you live in a crappy neighborhood, that cheap Hi-Point 9mm pistol you could’ve bought for $150 just went up to $180.  That’s money out of your pocket, money that you need.

It targets the poor, who are disproportionately minorities or rural whites, and targets them for disarmament and makes them the victims of crime.  Of course the statist Democrats want there to be no self-defense, but those few who still might understand the basics of natural law would see they’re hurting people they’re trying to help… because criminals will always be violent, and will always have weapons.  The law-abiding good people will be hurt in their pocketbooks, and will be driven away from self defense due to increased costs.

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And finally, Democrat congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, representative from DC (and gun-hating tyrant) calling to leave a message on a lobbyist’s answering machine demanding a bribe, called out by self-described progressive liberals at The Young Turks, of all people:

Corruption at its finest.

The NSA, Congress, and Love-Int

It’s kind of a hassle to write about the NSA, because since Snowden started telling the world about the NSA’s “spy on everyone” PRISM program and other programs, there’s just so much to say.  It’s somewhat overwhelming to deal with the massive intrusion on American life and gross violations of the Fourth Amendment.

During the W. Bush tenure, Rumsfeld cited a series of terms to deal with levels of intelligence concerning Iraq.  There were known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.  Known knowns are things you know.  Known unknowns are things you know that you don’t know – you may have vague notions but no specifics, or you may be unsure, but you’re aware there’s something that you don’t have full info on.  Unknown unknowns are things you aren’t even aware that you don’t know.

Rep. Bob Corker (R, TN) expains that congress doesn’t know what it doesn’t know:

“Every day there are stories… that are leaked out. The American people want to know that those of us who are elected, Eliot and I, understand fully what’s happening here. I don’t think we do. I would imagine there are even members of the intelligence committee themselves that don’t fully understand the gambit of things that are taking place. It’s our responsibility to know those things, to ensure they’re in balance, and I hope as soon as we get back there’ll be a full briefing from top to bottom so that can happen.”

Except that Congress wrote laws to make the laws secret.  Many congressmen aren’t even allowed to know about the secret courts, and those that are are legally bound to secrecy by laws they wrote.  So we have secret courts, secret agencies, secrets within secrets, and layers and layers of abuses of citizens’ privacy and other rights that we don’t even know about, because they made it secret.

The NSA is full of known unknowns – we know they’re spying, and unknown unknowns – how are they spying, on whom are they spying, why are they spying, what are they doing with it, and what else are they doing?

The Founders did not intend for one secret court to make one secret ruling that would abrogate millions of citizens civil rights.

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The most recent revelations come from the UK Telegraph (because American media won’t report on things unfavorable to Dear Leader Obama):

Staff working at America’s National Security Agency – the eavesdropping unit that was revealed to have spied on millions of people – have used the technology to spy on their lovers.

The employees even had a code name for the practice – “Love-int” – meaning the gathering of intelligence on their partners.

Dianne Feinstein, a senator who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, said the NSA told her committee about a set of “isolated cases” that have occurred about once a year for the last 10 years. The spying was not within the US, and was carried out when one of the lovers was abroad.

One employee was disciplined for using the NSA’s resources to track a former spouse, the Associated Press said.

Last week it was disclosed that the NSA had broken privacy rules on nearly 3,000 occasions over a one-year period.

John DeLong, NSA chief compliance officer, said that those errors were mainly unintentional, but that there have been “a couple” of wilful violations in the past decade.

Feinstein is the Senate Intel committee chair, so either she’s lying and knew about it, or she’s ignorant of what the NSA is doing, in which case either she’s incompetent or the NSA is lying to her, or both.

This needs to end.

Law enforcement officials who do things like run the license plates of cars next door to their houses if they think their spouses are cheating get fired for abuse of authority.  The NSA used super-secret spy equipment to track their lovers’ every move and they get to tell their overseers that it’s none of their business.

Not only is this an indictment of the agency as an unconstitutional, tyrannical Orwellian nightmare, it’s also an indicator of what the character of these people are and the character of their organization.  They aren’t just run-of-the-mill facebook stalkers, they’re willing to use spy satellites and electronic surveillance to watch your every move at all times.

Troy Industries and Hiring JBTs

Stand by for some gun-industry-politics wonkiness.

Troy Industries is a manufacturer of ARs and AR parts, as well as other modern rifle accessories.  The last time they were in the news was when Dick’s Sporting Goods dropped their line of ARs for political reasons, screwing over Troy pretty badly (as well as Dick’s screwing themselves).

Now they’re in the news for hiring Jody Weis and Dale R. Munroe as instructors for their Troy Asymmetric training group.

Jody Weis is noteworthy for being an anti-gun Chicago cop who was hated by his own officers for being a miserable coward.

He even went out and wrote a SunTimes op-ed in favor of more gun control:

Efforts to enhance background checks and limit the availability of high capacity magazines for assault weapons are both prudent measures that will assist in keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals and reduce the lethality of these weapons.

Dale R. Monroe is famous for the shot his partner Lon Horiuchi took at Ruby Ridge, killing Vicky Weaver while she held her baby:

FBI snipers Thursday defended their actions at the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege where a white separatist’s wife was killed, contending that danger to an FBI observation helicopter from armed men outside the separatist’s cabin justified opening fire.

But skeptical senators questioned whether permissive shoot-to-kill orders and exaggerated information about the threat of Randy Weaver led to an overreaction.

Dale R. Monroe, the partner of FBI hostage rescue team leader Lon Horiuchi – who fired the fatal shot – said he was preparing to fire but didn’t only because Horiuchi fired first.

Horiuchi invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination Tuesday after the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism refused to give him limited immunity from prosecution.

The Senate panel is trying to determine what took place at Ruby Ridge on Aug. 21-22, 1992, when deputy U.S. marshals seeking to arrest Weaver led to a confrontation in which deputy marshal William E. Degan and Weaver’s 14-year-old son, Sammy, were killed. The FBI’s hostage rescue team then was called in, and Weaver’s wife, Vicki, standing behind a cabin door, was killed by a shot that Horiuchi has testified previously that he fired at one of the men running to the cabin.

So basically a gun company which found itself on the receiving end of anti-2A anti-gun politics when Dick’s Sporting Goods made the cowardly decision not to carry their rifles… has now decided to hire people who are anti-gun and pro-big government.  And pro-tyranny.

This is a step by a company that’s either woefully stupid or trying to cozy up to government agencies in order to make sales.  There’s another company that does that.  It’s run by a dick whose company without lawsuits and government contracts would be singing its swan song due to misanthropic business practices.  I’m not sure if Troy wants to be T.H.A.T. kind of arms company, but it looks like it.

GunsSaveLife reads that Weis was fired due to the backlash.  But what the Troy release says is:

In response to the reaction of our customer base, Jody Weis will not be joining the Troy Asymmetric cadre of instructors.

That doesn’t say he was fired.  He may still be hired on as a consultant, since he knows plenty of other JBTs to sell products to.  Crony capitalism at work in the firearms industry.

Even afterwards, they use very odd language.   They have also taken the Sgt. Schultz defense when it comes to Weis:

GunsSaveLife notes that Troy is still standing by Monroe, contesting minutae about what Monroe was quoted as saying, even though Monroe fully supported the fedgov’s actions at Ruby Ridge.

Troy as a business is cultivating relationships with the same authorities who threatened and still threaten liberty in their careers.  Troy is cozying up to really bad people.

A simple internet search would’ve revealed these backgrounds, so there’s no excuse for Troy to have missed it.  But somehow they ignored it one way or another, and Steve Troy says he didn’t do it himself.

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And if they want to cultivate government contracts or show themselves connected to bigger government activities as a way to hire instructors for their security courses without courting these two JBTs, there might be some other agencies they could’ve looked at first to provide some quality candidates.

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Hopefully Troy has a better explanation. In the short term, it still looks really, really bad.  It sure looks like they hired a pair of jack-booted thugs who could get them government contracts, because they were advertising the men as instructors on their website.  There’s little that looks accidental here.

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Update: Troy is keeping Monroe.

Problem is, that second thing is factually incorrect.  Horiuchi made a drawing of what he saw, and superlawyer Gerry Spence had to fight to get that from the FBI.  Vicki Weaver wasn’t out of sight.  The “rules of engagement” were to shoot any armed person on sight (later changed to any armed male).  That’s not a law enforcement action.  It’s worth reading Gerry Spence’s whole account of the event.  The Weavers certainly held some noxious opinions (reading Spence’s reason for defending Randy Weaver is very telling), but ultimately the actions of the government are actions as an institution against the people, not actions of individuals acting outside the bounds of society.

It is tyranny.

Troy is choosing to hire someone who participated in that institutional culture and who was an active participant in those events.

Their decision, but the market will ultimately decide.  Firearms enthusiasts tend not to forget.

Update 2: Just noticed that for some reason I had his name as “James” in there.  Corrected.

The IRS Scandal By The Numbers

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This is one of the letters they’re referencing:

Nudge Squad – Obama’s Coercive Paternalism

Via Jawa Report, from FOX:

The federal government is hiring what it calls a “Behavioral Insights Team” that will look for ways to subtly influence people’s behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.

To make society more efficient – because you don’t know how to make your own decisions, they will manipulate you into their chosen path.  They will adjust your choices, and create you into their image of the perfect efficient serf.

Milton Friedman famously said that we should be thankful for government inefficiency, because without it, we’d all be slaves.

Such policies — which encourage behavior subtly rather than outright require it — have come to be known as “nudges,” after an influential 2008 book titled “Nudge” by former Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein and Chicago Booth School of Business professor Richard Thaler popularized the term.

The term “nudge” has already been associated with the new program, as one professor who received Shankar’s email forwarded it to others with the note: “Anyone interested in working for the White House in a ‘nudge’ squad? The UK has one and it’s been extraordinarily successful.”

Cass Sunstein is one of the most vile men on the planet, who desires to corrupt institutions made to serve the people into institutions that control the people.  It’s for your own good, you stupid peasant.

Richard Thaler told FoxNews.com that the new program sounds good.

“I don’t know who those people are who would not want such a program, but they must either be misinformed or misguided,” he said.

“The goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government by using scientifically collected evidence to inform policy designs. What is the alternative? The only alternatives I know are hunches, tradition, and ideology (either left or right.)”

“Misguided” to this master of puppets is anyone who opposes him.  “MIsinformed” means you haven’t been properly indoctrinated to accept him as your master, as someone who knows better than him.

The goal is to control people, to force them to make decisions they otherwise wouldn’t, to use a government instituted by the people as a tool to preserve freedom as a tool to coerce behavior.  It is the antithesis of freedom, and it is the most insidious form of tyranny.

Thaler is a would-be master of men, and a liar of the first order.

The alternative is that individuals make decisions for themselves, because no luciferian social scientist knows better than any individual in their own life.  He doesn’t know what’s best for you.  You have your own individual life full of information that you’ve collected that makes a difference in your own life that should inform your own decisions.  The “ideology” tack at the end is just to make him seem so “moderate” and “reasonable” by saying he dismisses both sides with his third way… of government leading you, you stupid, contemptible peon.  He mocks any other ideas as hunches, too, as though people don’t make their own decisions.

His ridicule of tradition is easily shot down by a man much wiser – Thomas Sowell:

“For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.”

But they are your masters, and they will lead, and they will educate you into believing that following is your natural condition, your correct place in life, and ultimately that it’s for your own good that you’re a serf.

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Crime Pays Under Senate’s Amnesty Bill

Via Jawa Report, from FAIR:

Felony for thee, but not for those here illegally.

But it looks like this is one that was pushed through Friday night and will be force voted on today without anyone having read it.  Apparently it’s up to 1170 pages… at least.

Michelle Malkin flat out states the case – Mass Illegal Alien Amnesty Violates our Founding Principles.

I repeat: SchMcGRubio and Company want us to trust them with a thousand new pages of phony triggers, left-wing pork, and make-believe assimilation gestures. Trust them? Hell, no. There’s only one course for citizens who believe in upholding the Constitution and protecting the American dream: Stop them.

CALL NOW: (202) 224-3121.

For those who’ve never called it before, that’s the capitol switchboard number to reach your senators or representatives if you don’t feel like looking them up individually.

Remember, it was stopped in 2007, it can be stopped now.  Our government wants us to feel beaten down so they can do anything they like.  With enough calls, elected reps take notice and worry about their jobs.  Without enough calls, the fence-sitters simply go wherever they’re told by the rest of DC.  The situation on the ground may be different, but the situation inside in DC is all the Ruling Class will notice until they have to ask why the phones are ringing off the hook.

Bloomberg Using NYC Resources To Attack The Constitution

Ace Of Spades hit this the other night (and it’s been sitting in my browser since):

Is Michael Bloomberg Using City Resources For His “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” Group?

I really hate doing the question headline, but this definitely needs answering. I started poking around last night.

At first I pinged mayorsagainstillegalguns.org and found that it was resolving at a New York City government IP address.

He’s got some data in a screenshot that tech-savvy folks will be able to read more clearly, but basically, NYC runs MAIG.

It turns out I didn’t even have to look that closely, because the mayorsagainstillegalguns.org domain is registered to the city of New York. As you can see there, the registrant name is “NYC DoITT”, which is the New York City Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications.

Thing is, this is a tax exempt lobbying group that’s being run by the city, which means it’s quite contrary to the law.

The Weekly Standard picked it up – and it hit Drudge today.  They did find some new info that actually makes it seem worse.

In a phone call with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Mayor Bloomberg’s press secretary Marc La Vorgna confirmed the City of New York’s involvement with the domain’s purchase and hosting.

When asked whether the purchase and subsequent hosting of the domain by New York City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications was accidental or intentional, La Vorgna replied that the purchase had “definitely been vetted.”

La Vorgna continued, saying that Mayor Bloomberg’s push for changes to federal firearms law was part of the “federal agenda for New York City” and compared it to other efforts Bloomberg, as mayor, has undertaken—like the effort he and other mayors are involved in to limit the use of food stamps in purchasing sugary drinks.

There’s a lot of hemming and hawing afterwards, but basically, Bloomberg has merged his dictatorial interests with NYC, and the two are one and the same, regardless of legality, and no one will stop him if it’s illegal, everyone will make excuses, and his scheming and power plays will continue.

Bloomberg and NYC are the same, and the “federal agenda for NYC” is to functionally destroy the Second Amendment.  Well, all right then.  At least they’re getting more open about it.

Lack of Candor, Kalkines and the Lerner Rule

From HotAir:

Last month I seemed to anger some of my regular correspondents when I asked why IRS worker Lois Lerner was able to employ the 5th Amendment in the way she had. I was bothered by the way she seemed to be benefiting from the “best of both worlds” in terms of dancing around the law while apparently flaunting the national interests her job would require her to support. I suppose the lawyers in the crowd have made their case well enough for now, but rather than dragging her into court, how about if we just fire her? That could be the result if a new proposed rule is put in place.

Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks has sponsored legislation that would make refusing to testify in front of Congress a firable offense for federal workers, The Hill reported Thursday

The legislation is nicknamed the “Lerner” bill, after Director of IRS Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner, who plead the Fifth Amendment in front of a House committee on May 22 about her role in the IRS’s targeting of tax-exempt tea party groups.

A tool for termination already exists.  It’s called “lack of candor“.

The short version is that if you don’t answer questions about your own work duties and if you aren’t forthcoming about your own work, you get fired.  The government can’t afford to have someone who will withhold information and is untrustworthy.

Well, Obama’s IRS and EPA and DOJ and ATF can, but in most of the government, it’s still supposed to be treated as a bad thing.

A description and example from Tully Legal:

Appellate courts also take a hard-line stance with respect to lack of candor charges. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit explained in its 2001 ruling in Ludlum v. Dept. of Justice, lack of candor involves an employee’s “failure to disclose something that, in the circumstances, should have been disclosed in order to make the given statement accurate and complete.”

This charge should not be confused with falsification, which involves an “affirmative misrepresentation” and intent to deceive.

In Ludlum, the Federal Circuit affirmed an MSPB decision that upheld a lack of candor charge against an FBI special agent who was not completely forthcoming about how frequently he used his work vehicle to pick up his daughter from daycare. The case represents an all too common situation whereby federal employees engage in lack of candor when attempting to explain (or not explain) work-related situations tangential to their performance objectives in the workplace.

In the case of Lerner, she’s not answering a question directly related to her job from Congress.  If Joe the FBI Agent or Jose the USBP Agent or Jane the SSA Investigator did that, they’d have OIG on them in a heartbeat and be on their way out the door.  There’s no reason this law is necessary – the problem is the IRS again isn’t doing their job.  Whoever her superiors are should be crushing her right now, but they aren’t, because they’re just as corrupt and in agreement with targeting the Tea Party as a financial-warfare wing of the Democrat party.

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There’s also a special warning given for when federal employees are targeted and are obligated to speak due to their job, but still protected by the 5th Amendment.  It’s called Kalkines rights.

The Kalkines warning is an advisement of rights usually administered by United States federal government agents to federal employees and contractors in internal investigations. The Kalkines warning compels subjects to make statements or face disciplinary action up to and including dismissal, but also provides suspects with criminal immunity for their statements. It was promulgated by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Kalkines v. United States.^[1] In that case, a federal employee was fired for not cooperating with an internal investigation. The Court of Claims found that the employee had not been sufficiently advised of his immunity to criminal prosecution, nor sufficiently warned that he would be fired if he refused to cooperate.

As a federal employee, a worker can be threatened with termination and might worry more about their job than jail.  The fedgov can and will lean on someone’s job if they suspect them of criminal activity, but Kalkines lets them know they don’t have to give up their 5th Amendment rights even though their job is being threatened.

It’s an important distinction to note that one can be both administratively looked at and criminally looked at; and makes the point so the employee knows where they stand.  It’s a rock and a hard place, but something they have to balance out.

When Lerner took the Fifth, she announced she wasn’t going to answer what happened at work, and violated her job.  She demonstrated lack of candor.  She can be fired right there for not doing her job.  Then she can plead the Fifth as a private citizen all she likes to avoid criminal prosecution.

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It’s no different than if she worked at McDonalds and was asked to explain why she got caught pissing in the soft drink machine.  Her boss can fire her right there, and she can plead the Fifth to the health inspector and the police about her attempts to poison the public.  If she works at a big police station as a concessionaire and pisses in the cafeteria soft drink machine, she doesn’t get to plead the Fifth and just keep pissing in the Coke.

IRS Sent $46,378,040 in Refunds to 23,994 Illegal Aliens at One House

Your government at work.  Via CNS news:

(CNSNews.com) – The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically occupied by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to “unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta.

The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.

Yeah…

Since 1996, the IRS has issued what it calls Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to two classes of persons: 1) non-resident aliens who have a tax liability in the United States, and 2) aliens living in the United States who are “not authorized to work in the United States.”

The IRS has long known it was giving these numbers to illegal aliens, and thus facilitating their ability to work illegally in the United States. For example, the Treasury Inspector General’s Semiannual Report to Congress published on Oct. 29, 1999—nearly fourteen years ago—specifically drew attention to this problem.

“The IRS issues Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to undocumented aliens to improve nonresident alien compliance with tax laws. This IRS practice seems counter-productive to the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s (INS) mission to identify undocumented aliens and prevent unlawful alien entry,” TIGTA warned in that long-ago report.

The IRS isn’t there to help enforce federal law with their SWAT team!  They’re there to punish political enemies like the Tea Party.

Perhaps the most remarkable act of the IRS was this: It assigned 6,411 ITINs to unauthorized aliens presumably using a single address in Morganton, North Carolina. According to the 2010 Census, there were only 16,681 people in Morganton. So, for the IRS to have been correct in issuing 6,411 ITINS to unauthorized aliens at a single address Morganton it would have meant that 38 percent of the town’s total population were unauthorized alien workers using a single address.TIGTA said there were 154 addresses around the country that appeared on 1,000 or more ITIN applications made to the IRS.

From 8 USC 1324:

(A) Any person who—

(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;

(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or

(v)

I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or

II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts,

shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).

The malfeasance and nonfeasance of the IRS in aiding and abetting criminal activity which they know is criminal activity should result in charges and IRS agents being sent to jail.