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03/10/2014

THV11: Rhea Lana controversy continues

Read the full story: THV11

In August, the U.S. Dept. of Labor in August sent Riner a letter, saying Riner’s volunteers are subject to receive pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

 

The D.C. based “Cause of Action” organization filed a lawsuit against the Department Of Labor in January.

 

“We believe that our consignment volunteers should not be considered employees and so that’s the bottom line issue,” Riner said.

 

“I’m 100 percent happy with the way it is. I don’t need to be paid,” Cole said. “I feel like the opportunity to go and shop at the consignment sale is plenty of payment.”

 

Now all Riner can do is wait to hear back from the U.S. Department of Labor.

 

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02/24/2014

Daily Caller: COMPLAINT: IRS ‘improperly withheld’ documents on new nonprofit rules

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The group Cause of Action requested four sets of communications between the IRS and administration officials to ensure that political bias did not factor into the design of the new rules. But the IRS delayed the release of the documents until after the period to make public comments on the new rules closes Thursday, according to an amendment to Cause of Action’s existing lawsuit against the IRS.

 

“By letter dated January 30, 2014, the IRS informed Cause of Action that its FOIA request had been received… However, the IRS advised that it would be unable to complete the processing of the request even by February 13, 2014. Instead, the IRS estimated that its final response would not be forthcoming until May 16, 2014,” according to the complaint.

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02/20/2014

Reason: The Feds vs. Craig Zucker

Read the full story: Reason 

In November 2013, with the pro bono backing of the nonprofit government accountability group Cause of Action, Zucker sued the CPSC for what he calls its “unprecedented regulatory overreach.” The suit alleges that the CPSC’s actions are aimed at punishing him for speaking out against the agency. In an emailed statement, CPSC spokesperson Scott Wolfson says “CPSC staff filed this case in order to prevent young children, tweens, and teens from suffering serious injuries,” adding that the agency “is using enforcement, education, and rulemaking to address a serious and hidden hazard with an entire product line.”

 

Neither case will be resolved anytime soon. In the meantime, Zucker has launched a new line of larger, less ingestible magnets called Liberty Balls, which he is selling to help cover his personal legal fees.

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02/18/2014

Roll Call: FTC’s Data Security Grab Is Adjudication without Authority

Cause of Action’s Dan Epstein writes in Roll Call:

What happens when a government agency adjudicates without authority, assuming Congress will simply provide forgiveness, rather than ask for permission? That is the question that is being asked this week after the Federal Trade Commission petitioned Congress for powers it does not currently have regarding data breaches and cybersecurity while already exercising the very powers they seek.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on combatting cybercrime, the FTC asked for the authority to regulate data security. By stating, “Under current laws, the FTC only has the authority to seek civil penalties for data security violations involving companies that fail to protect children’s information provided online,” the FTC is admitting it does not currently have the authority to regulate data security.

This wasn’t the first time the FTC asked Congress for such authority. Since 2000, the FTC has sought authority from Congress to regulate data security, admitting it “lacks the authority to require firms to adopt information practice policies.” Despite the FTC’s repeated requests that Congress confer upon it the authority to regulate data security, Congress has refused to grant it.

The FTC is walking a fine, and troubling, line. While using big names like Target and Wyndham to pressure Congress to grant them greater power, the FTC has aggressively gone after small companies that have fallen victim to data thieves, all the while claiming it has such authority.

One such victim is a small medical laboratory in Georgia called LabMD that provides doctors with cancer-detection services. In 2008, a company backed by a federally funded researcher took a patient-information file without LabMD’s knowledge or consent. The company then contacted LabMD, advised the company that it had taken its property, and offered a contract for Internet security services. LabMD declined the services and the company turned the information over to the FTC. After a three-year-long invasive and expensive investigation, the FTC filed a complaint last year alleging that LabMD’s data-security practices violated rules it refused to specify.

Despite the fact that Congress specifically gave the Department of Health and Human Services the sole authority to regulate patient-information data security, which has never accused LabMD of any violation, the FTC has decided to step in and pretend it has the authority it told Congress this week it does not have.

The commission has attempted to get around its lack of authority by claiming in court filings that it has the authority to create “common law” which basically means it can make it up as it goes. However in its statements this week to Congress, it contradicts this very position.

Additionally, while waging aggressive efforts against LabMD, the FTC declined to look into the concerning and well-documented data breaches that have occurred related to Obamacare. In December, Cause of Action filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records about FTC investigations into consumer breaches by navigators and health exchanges.

Last week, the FTC informed us, by being unable to produce any relevant documents, that it did not investigate such data security issues including the recent breach by MNSure where the state’s Office of the Legislative Auditor said “slack internal procedures at the new health insurance exchange agency ‘contributed directly’ to the disclosure.”

The FTC is trying to have it both ways — on one hand using Target and Wyndham as opportunities to pressure Congress for authority while on the other hand going after small businesses without that authority because they have too few resources to fight back.

Operating outside the bounds of law should never be tolerated — whether it is snooping data thieves or large government agencies. Until the FTC backs away from its battle against LabMD or until Congress grants it the authority to launch such investigations, the truth is simple — it is operating outside the law.

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02/12/2014

CBS News: Republicans ratchet up scrutiny of the IRS

Read the full story: CBS News

While congressional Republicans pull out all the stops to oppose the rule changes, activist groups are weighing in as well. The conservative watchdog group Cause of Action filed a lawsuit to delay the rules.

 

The group’s executive director Dan Epstein called the proposed regulation “simply a back door attempt to stifle political opponents, to protect Administration policies, and to restrict and hamper grassroots education regarding the Constitution, limited-government, and economic freedom.”

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02/10/2014

Washington Post: Unions, trade associations worried about possible IRS rule changes

Read the full story: Washington Post

Several of the groups from across the political and ideological spectrum have also filed comments themselves. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union said that it agreed with the effort to define political activity more clearly but that it has “serious concerns . . . both from a First Amendment perspective and as a simple matter of workability.”

 

The Heritage Foundation, worried about the impact on its advocacy arm, Heritage Action for America, argued that the Treasury Department doesn’t have the authority to impose the rules. And on Wednesday, Cause of Action, a conservative watchdog group, filed suit to delay the rules, calling them “a back door attempt to stifle political opponents” and arguing that they would impose “voluminous recordkeeping requirements on small non-profits.”

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02/7/2014

The Hill: The politics of targeting

Cause of Action’s Dan Epstein writes in The Hill:

In the wake of the IRS political targeting scandal, Congress missed two opportunities for strategic investigating: First, Congress never “specially authorized” a committee with investigative authority over the IRS’s inappropriate treatment of certain groups seeking tax-exempt status; Second, Congress never appointed a special counsel to investigate the IRS, nor hired an outside counsel to advise it in its investigations.

But on January 8, 2014, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the Oversight subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending, chastised Attorney General Eric Holder for the appointment of Barbara Bosserman, a career attorney supposedly “leading the DOJ/FBI investigation” into the IRS.

The Oversight Committee didn’t disclose that Bosserman was employed at the Justice Department (DOJ) in 2004 and 2008 when she made her political contributions to the Democratic National Committee.  It is obvious Bosserman was not hired into the DOJ because of her support for the administration and has been a committed Democrat long before a potential conflict could arise between her activities and the work she is assigned.

If DOJ assigned a non-political appointee attorney on a matter because of her political contributions, then Chairmen Issa and Jordan should be raising Hatch Act concerns and potential questions concerning prohibited personnel practices.  Yet Issa and Jordan’s letter to DOJ Attorney General Holder was only carbon copied to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, not the Office of Special Counsel, who would be responsible for investigating prohibited personnel practices and Hatch Act concerns.

Furthermore, if it is true that Bosserman was assigned to the matter for political reasons, then the DOJ would be subjecting itself to enormous risk by admitting to having knowingly violated the law in publicly stating that “removing a career employee from an investigation or case due to political affiliation, as Chairmen Issa and Jordan have requested, could also violate the equal opportunity policy and the law.”

But that conclusion seems attenuated.  Moreover, neither Chairman Issa nor Subcommittee Chairman Jordan appear at all concerned that the DOJ assigned a Civil Rights Division attorney to investigate the IRS.  The Civil Rights Division mostly prosecutes hate crimes cases and conspiracies to violate civil rights. The Civil Rights Division has no jurisdiction to investigate criminal violations that result when an officer or employee of the United States who “with intent to defeat the application of any provision of [the Internal Revenue Code] fails to perform any of the duties of his office or employment” or when the President, the Vice President, or any of their employees (as well as cabinet secretaries) “directly or indirectly” requests that the IRS “conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer”.

Now the Oversight Committee wants Bosserman to testify before it this week in yet another hearing by a committee which has already spent months investigating the IRS’s political targeting.  As Principal Deputy Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik wrote to Subcommittee Chairman Jordan on Jan. 24, “Your decision to impugn the integrity of a career attorney raises serious concerns, . . . Targeting career attorneys in this manner could plainly have a chilling effect on the valid exercise by federal employees of their basic right to participate in the political process.”

Parsing through the Oversight Committee letter, it would seem that the only point Issa and Jordan are trying to make is that they don’t like that a federal employee has exercised her political speech.  That sounds like political targeting 101.

 

 

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