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View Full Version : Tea Parties kinda bring this on themselves



red states rule
05-16-2013, 02:15 AM
No matter how bad this scandal will get - there will always be some on the left to defend the IRS and their actions





But, in fact, the IRS’s great conservative crackdown is even more innocent than that. It turns out that the applications the conservative groups submitted to the IRS—the ones the agency subsequently combed over, provoking nonstop howling—were unnecessary. The IRS doesn’t require so-called 501c4 organizations to apply for tax-exempt status. If anyone wants to start a social welfare group, they can just do it, then submit the corresponding tax return (form 990) at the end of the year. To be sure, the IRS certainly allows groups to apply for tax-exempt status if they want to make their status official. But the application is completely voluntary, making it a strange basis for an alleged witch hunt.


So why would so many Tea Party groups subject themselves to a lengthy and needless application process? Mostly it had to do with anxiety—the fear that they could run afoul of the law once they started raising and spending money. “Our business experience was that we had to pay taxes once there was money coming through here,” says Tom Zawistowski, the recent president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, which tangled with the IRS over its tax status. “We felt we were under a microscope. … We were on pins and needles at all times.” In other words, the groups submitted their applications because they perceived themselves to be persecuted, not because they actually were.

Fine—there’s no law against neurosis. But, to borrow a thought experiment (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113201/irs-scandal-targeting-tea-party-groups-overblown) from my colleague Alec MacGillis, consider all this from the perspective of the IRS’s Cincinnati office, which handles tax-exempt groups. You’re minding your own business in 2009 when you start to receive dozens of applications from right-leaning groups, applications you didn’t solicit and don’t require. You peruse a few of the applications and it looks like many of the groups, while claiming to be “social welfare” organizations, have an overtly political purpose, like backing candidates with specific ideological agendas. Suffice it to say, you don’t need an inquisitorial mind to decide the applications deserve careful vetting. One Tea Party activist from Waco, Texas, has complained (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/irs-targeted-groups-critical-of-government-documents-from-agency-probe-show/2013/05/12/bb38e5bc-bb24-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html) that an IRS official told her he was “sitting on a stack of tea party applications and they were awaiting word from higher-ups as to how to process them.” The quote is intended to sound nefarious—an outtake from some vast left-wing conspiracy—but it’s actually perfectly straight-forward: The IRS was unexpectedly flooded by dodgy 501c4 applications and was at a loss over how to manage them.2

(http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113217/irs-tea-party-scandal-conservative-political-correctness-action#footnote-2)

So the crime here had nothing to do with “targeting” conservatives. The targeting was effectively done by the conservative groups themselves, when they filed their gratuitous applications. The crime, such as it is, was twofold. First, in the course of legitimately vetting questionable applications, the IRS appears to have been more intrusive than justified, asking for information about donors whose privacy it should have respected. This is unfortunate and intolerable, but not quite a threat to democracy.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113217/irs-tea-party-scandal-conservative-political-correctness-action#

red states rule
05-17-2013, 02:49 AM
Now if Bush were still President Lawrence would have a different opinion




During Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's weeknight program “The Last Word,” host Lawrence O'Donnell responded to a statement (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/15/president-obama-discusses-internal-revenue-service) made earlier in the day by President Obama about the Internal Revenue Service's discrimination against conservative groups seeking non-profit status: “Across the board, everybody believes” what was revealed in the report (http://www.scribd.com/doc/141606149/Inspector-General-s-Report-on-IRS-Reviews-of-Tax-exempt-Applications) from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is “an outrage.”

“Everybody but me,” O'Donnell insisted. “I believe that the IRS agents in this case did nothing wrong.”

“Let me say it again; you won’t hear it anywhere else. The IRS agents did nothing wrong,” he stated. “They were simply trying to enforce the law as the IRS has understood it since 1959.”


The liberal host then referred to Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, which defines tax-exempt social welfare groups as:
Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.


“For 54 years, the IRS has gotten away with the crime of changing the word ‘exclusively’ to ‘primarily,'” O’Donnell said. “The IRS took a hard, clear word like ‘exclusively’ and changed it into a soft word, ’primarily,’ and then left it to the IRS agents to determine if your organization was primarily concerned with the promotion of social welfare.”

The host began that evening's program by stating:


With the political media dizzy from a very bad bout of scandal fever, the president decided today that the only thing that can get that fever to go down would be to show the political media that he is taking charge of scandal management in the White House, even though there are no real scandals in Washington involving the White House in any way.



No real scandals involving the Whie House? Has O'Donnell never heard of the phrase that "the buck stops here?"


Nevertheless, O'Donnell continued: “All of Washington, Democrats and Republicans, now believe they have a real scandal in what the Internal Revenue Service did, and today, the president tried to show that he was taking charge."


Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2013/05/16/msnbcs-lawrence-odonnell-makes-outrageous-claim-irs-did-nothing-wrong#ixzz2TXubJPVD

aboutime
05-17-2013, 02:56 PM
Which is why I would only watch that lousy channel if I was Constipated, and needed a remedy.

5011 the Monthly cure for all ANAL malfunctions.

BillyBob
05-19-2013, 11:36 PM
No matter how bad this scandal will get - there will always be some on the left to defend the IRS and their actions


There are plenty of folks right here who defend the IRS and their tyrannical tactics.

red states rule
05-20-2013, 02:59 AM
As usual, when the facts start harming Obama his supporters will blame Bush




Here's a classic from the Obama playbook: Whenever you're in trouble, find a way to blame George W. Bush for it.

That concept was in play on Thursday afternoon's edition of MSNBC's Martin Bashir program, when the liberal host and contributor Joy Reid were able to convince their guest, GOP strategist Ron Christie, to admit that Steven Miller, the former acting director of the Internal Revenue Service, was appointed by “the previous administration,” a phrase used to describe Bush.


Following the quick firing of Miller (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2013/05/16/msnbcs-lawrence-odonnell-makes-outrageous-claim-irs-did-nothing-wrong) on Wednesday and President Obama's promise to hold everyone involved accountable, Bashir asked Christie if the action by the Democratic occupant of the White House was sufficient.


“No, it's not,” the Republican stated (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSJ4l01mhc) before calling the IRS scandal “one of the most chilling cases involved with the coercive powers of government.”

Christie then said:
This scandal isn’t about President Obama, this is about a culture within the Internal Revenue Service that seemed to think it was okay, that singling out people due to their partisan affiliation would be somehow fine.


While Bashir asserted that the outrage at the political targeting by the IRS is warranted, he noted that the IRS wasn’t wrong for targeting political organizations, they were wrong for not targeting more political organizations.



Reid agreed that it's bad “if the IRS can chill speech by auditing someone, or the threat of an audit,” but she noted that “what we’re talking about here are groups going to the federal government and asking for a special dispensation from the tax code.”


“Whether it’s on the right or left, we’re not talking about the audit, or power to tax, as an issue,” Reid added. “Should anyone who comes to the IRS get that special dispensation? No. Should they investigate? Yes. The way they did it was a bureaucratic ineptitude.”


“Joy, this is not about bureaucratic ineptitude,” Christie disagreed, “this is about a culture within the Obama administration…”


“Wait a minute,” Reid said as she interrupted the guest. "The IRS is not the Obama administration!"


Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2013/05/17/msnbc-hosts-get-gop-guest-admit-bush-appointed-fired-irs-commissioner#ixzz2Tol24VyT