Media coverage of yesterday’s latest development in the Lois Lerner saga focused on her colorful description of conservatives as “crazies” and “a–holes” in emails released by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich).
Few news outlets highlighted her earlier emails in the same November 2012 email chain in which she discussed a partial deferral of her retention bonus — and then proceeded to complain about the riffraff destroying a beautiful upper-class village she toured on her part-business, part-pleasure hop across the pond to Great Britain.
The subject of the email exchange, “Suspension of Retention,” pertained to an encrypted document Lerner received and then forwarded to a colleague whose name was redacted. Lerner explained the contents of the document to this person, as he or she was unable to decrypt it:
Consider the absurdity of Lerner receiving a retention bonus: taxpayers actually gave her more money than her original base salary — as much as 25 percent — for her noble, public service-oriented decision to remain in her position where she could continue to keep the “crazies” in check.
Government retention “incentives,” as the Office of Personnel Management labels them, are granted if an employee is viewed as indispensable and would leave without the bonus, or if an employee’s skills are needed during the time of an office relocation or closure and would also leave without the extra pay. Lerner presumably fell under the first category:
Lerner certainly filled a “special need” for the White House in the 2012 election cycle by suppressing 292 Tea Party groups. But one wonders if Lerner, who had worked in government for about 31 years at the time she wrote the email, was really going to leave if denied a bonus.
To add insult to injury to taxpayers, this high-ranking IRS official likely paid a smaller overall tax bill because the IRS spread out her bonus over two years. If only we all had the option to manipulate our taxable income from year to year to our advantage.
As the Washington Times points out in its editorial today:
Lerner’s email conversation continued the next morning, as her pen pal asked, “So what’s in store for the weekend?”
To which Lerner replied:
If a disgraced official under a Republican administration had written anything even remotely close to this level of smug elitism, it would have been front page news for days. The Associated Press made no mention of either this or the retention bonus revelation.
One assumes from her statement about working in the morning that Lerner’s cultural immersion was funded, at least partially, by taxpayers. And what a whirlwind sightseeing trip it was:
Alas, even with her generous salary, British prices were beyond Lerner’s means. She continued:
Perhaps she should have found out where the “hoi palloi” shop — or better yet, demanded the rest of her bonus via wire transfer right then and there.
