RUTHFULLY YOURS

Another day, another judicial rebuke to President Obama’s contempt for the rule of law. On Wednesday a federal judge struck down an oil and gas drilling rule imposed with no statutory authority.

In 2015 the Bureau of Land Management published new regulations about well construction and water management for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that takes place on federal and Indian lands. The BLM asserted “broad authority” to control oil and gas operations on the basis of laws that were passed in 1920, 1930, 1938, 1976 and 1982 and were allegedly ambiguous. Thus the agency said it deserved the benefit of the interpretive doubt that the courts call Chevron deference.

Abusing Chevron is an Obama specialty. But BLM’s overreach was notably egregious because Congress passed an energy law in 2005 that stripped the executive branch of fracking jurisdiction and gave that power to the states.

The BLM argued that Congress’s choice didn’t matter because the bureau wasn’t mentioned by name in the 2005 law. That claim inspired Judge Scott Skavdahl of Wyoming—an Obama appointee—to conduct a remedial seminar in the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Under the BLM argument, Judge Skavdahl writes, “there would be no limit to the scope or extent of congressionally delegated authority BLM has. . . . Having explicitly removed the only source of specific federal agency authority over fracking, it defies common sense for the BLM to argue that Congress intended to allow it to regulate the same activity under a general statute that says nothing about hydraulic fracturing.”

The Obama administration’s relentless campaign against for-profit colleges is succeeding: More than 180 have closed in the past two years. The Education Department projects that 1,400 vocational programs educating 840,000 students won’t survive its gainful-employment rule, which ties federal student aid to debt and earnings.

But the administration isn’t content with shutting down for-profits: Now regulators and prosecutors are even going after a businessman who waved the white flag and converted his vocational schools into nonprofits. With this administration, it’s a sin if you ever tried to make a buck.

In 2012 Carl Barney merged the CollegeAmerica, Stevens-Henager College, Independence University and California College San Diego with the nonprofit Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), which promotes reforms in college philanthropy. The 75-year-old British immigrant, who had been the for-profit colleges’ sole proprietor, tells me that he wanted to reduce his day-to-day responsibilities and channel more resources into education rather than paying taxes. “I didn’t want to be as involved,” he says. “I wanted to put more money back into the colleges.” He became the chairman of the new group of nonprofit colleges.

As the merger was being completed in 2012, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, a Republican, began an investigation. In November 2014, the AG sued CEHE. According to the complaint, the colleges duped students into enrolling with deceptive ads such as one promising to help them “make more money and have a real career.”

Federal agents have arrested roughly 300 suspects in what officials call their largest crackdown on Medicare fraud, with charges ranging from taking illegal payments for marketing medications to false physical-therapy claims.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the crackdown Wednesday, citing cases around the country where prosecutors say they found a wide variety of health-care fraud that totaled about $900 million in losses.

In California, officials have charged a man with receiving illegal payments for marketing compound medications, the costs of which were paid by Tricare, a program for members of the military, veterans and their families.

Previously, authorities have said compound-prescription sales involving Tricare were generating hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent transactions. The medications are specially mixed by pharmacists, often to treat pain, and often sell for thousands of dollars per prescription.

Other suspects charged in the crackdown include the managers of physical-therapy clinics in New York City that allegedly laundered money, paid kickbacks and billed Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary treatments for patients.

In the aftermath of the Orlando terrorist attack, many Washington politicians tried to shift the conversation to the Second Amendment and called for an assault weapons bans. But former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, our Honorary Chairman, had another idea. In this interview on CNBC, Coburn said we should improve our system of background checks, but said it was IRS officials and non-military federal personnel who should be subject to an assault weapons ban, not the general public.

This week, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com released our findings in an editorial at The Wall Street Journal that quantified the growing federal arsenal. The number of non-military federal officers with arrest and firearm authority (200,000+) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). Spending on guns, ammo and military-style equipment at 67 federal agencies – including 53 regulatory, administrative agencies amounted to $1.48 billion between 2006-2014.

The IRS gun-locker is an example of this growing federal firepower. Nearly $11 million was spent on guns, ammo, and military-style equipment for 2,316 ‘special agents’ during this period. The IRS stockpile includes pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns with buckshot and slugs; and semi-automatic AR-15 rifles (S&W M&P 15) and military-style H&K 416 rifles. Source: OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Militarization of America

The recent growth of the federal arsenal begs the questions: Just who are the feds planning to battle?

In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Statistics officially counted 74,500 federal officers who had arrest and firearm authority. By 2008, the Bureau quantified over 120,000 such officers. Newly updated counts were supposed to publish by this July but the Bureau now admits that over 80-percent of federal agencies ignored or stonewalled responses to their latest survey. What are they trying to hide?

Some Iranian-Americans argued that NIAC’s policies did not seem to be aimed at improving the lives of Iranian-Americans, but were political and partisan policies more likely aimed at making more money, getting more fame, media publicity and self-promotion, satisfying those who provide funding to them, or going towards where the money is.

“I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic.” — Mohsen Makhmalbaf to the Washington Times.

“It appears that this may be lobbying on behalf of Iranian government interests. Were I running the counterintelligence program at the bureau now, I would have cause to look into this further.” — Kenneth Piernick, FBI special agent in counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

I have often been asked why someone with my credentials joined the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) — a political institution, not “nonpartisan” as it sometimes suggests — and advanced the interests of Iran’s ruling clerics, who now lead the world in human rights violations, with a regime that ranks number one in executions per capita.

They also ask why one would work with an organization that is run by a director who is not even Iranian-American; not an American citizen, but holds Iranian and Swedish passports?

Before coming to the United States, I did not know about NIAC and no one I knew in Iran was aware of it either.

Although I wanted to contribute socially in helping Iranian-American communities in the U.S., I also did not want to join a partisan political organization that pretended to help the communities but instead was partisan and sought money, fame, and media attention.

At first, NIAC seemed fine: its mission statement says, “The National Iranian American Council is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the voice of Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between the American and Iranian people.”

But soon after joining, I discovered several issues.

First, after joining NIAC in a voluntary and unpaid capacity, I felt as if I were back in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I began receiving calls and emails from NIAC indicating that some media outlets were introducing me as “ambassador” for NIAC. Well, one does not always get to choose what title the TV media outlets or magazine use to introduce one. Further, in many instances, journalists would Google my name and find it listed as ambassador for NIAC on its website.

I was still wondering why NIAC would be opposed to the idea that media introduces me as their ambassador. Later on, I encountered an article which said:

“NIAC’s inner contradictions never cease to surprise me, but then I guess that is the nature of Politics. Trita Parsi who staunchly opposed Western intervention in Libya virtually blaming it on Sarkozy’s warmongering and conforted [sic] in his views by the ever clueless moralist Hamid Dabashi accusing the hidden agenda’s of Western ‘Imperialism’ with his Broken record rants on European ‘Neo Colonialism’ while people were being mercilessly slaughtered by Libya’s Caligula has now added to it’s [sic] new list of Ambassador’s [sic] for 2012 an Iranian academic of Syrian heritage. But One who for a change seems to speak some sense in regard to a country he seems to understand far more deeply than NIAC understands Iran…”

It seemed most likely their opposition to me being introduced as their ambassador had to do with my personal views, which differed from those of NIAC. I criticized Iran’s political establishments, strongly condemned human right violations, criticized the Syrian regime for the bloodshed, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for assisting the Syrian regime.

It soon felt as if my freedom of expression were being taken away. I started to worry that a journalist somewhere might quote an interview or text and use the title “Ambassador to the National Iranian American Council,” if he might have found my name on its website. I would then have to track down the journalist, find his or her contacts, and plead with him or her to remove the title. I was also worried that I might say something on television or write something that NIAC might not like. These fears of expressing myself freely were similar to those that I grew up with having lived and worked in Iran and Syria.

I was also wondering why, if NIAC had issues with my personal views, it kept me for some months more. Perhaps, I wondered, it might have had to do with what I had mentioned to them earlier: that I knew some philanthropists who might donate money to the institution.