The IRS Targets Conservatives

I don't view it as discrimination at all.

 

Nice start. Now if they can go after Scientology, 90% of those ritzy charities in NYC, some of those faux celebrity charities like Wyclef Jean and Madonna, the Duggers, those pink ribbon breast cancer charity scams.

 

We only targeted groups with a specific political stance but we assure you it wasn't for political reasons. Trust us.

 

It makes complete sense that there would be more scrutiny of these groups in 2010 through 2011. You had hundreds of these new groups popping up seemingly overnight requesting tax exempt status. Of course the IRS is going to do checks to make sure they were legit.

 

But of course this story misses the real people the IRS should have been going after.

Political committees masquerading as 501(c)(4) groups to evade public disclosure laws.


for example

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, for example, told the IRS that any political ads run by the group would be “limited in amount” and “would not constitute the group’s primary purpose.” Campaign finance reform advocates have argued that, in light of more than $70 million in “independent expenditure” ad spending, the group’s primary purpose is clearly campaign activity. But rather than register with the Federal Election Commission as a political committee, Crossroads GPS continues to claim that it is not such a group and need not publicly identify its funders.

 

My gut would tell me that you are correct, but nothing in that post confirms that it is their primary activity. They spent $70 million in ads. How much have they spent on other things? What do most of their staffers do? I don't know the answer to that question and that post doesn't even ask them.

 

The IRS has admitted it was wrong, and according to reports I've seen the things they were asking for weren't legitimate requests. One report said a group was asked for a list of all elected officials who were associated with the group. Another was asked to provide copies of all facebook posts. I think the first article indicated they were asked to give lists of all donors.

Those requests weren't ethical.

 

Yes, it does seem that one or two staffers went too far and the IRS has apologized for that. But was is a systemic situation throughout the entire IRS? doubtful

 

Great; so just triple their budget and have them audit all of us. Much like drugs, I thought it was just black entertainers from the '70s who actually ever got burned.

 

A lot of new groups popping up at the same time, giving themselves salaries and asking for donations for the same thing and getting all kinds of crappy overpriced media and legal consulting, stopping goofballs like this is why the IRS is doing it.

 

first they came for the Tea Party; then they came for the Jews?

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/irs...ts-perhaps-also-pro-israel-groups/2013/05/11/

There is evidence the IRS also targeted pro-Israel groups whose positions were potentially inconsistent with the administration’s.

For example, in 2010, the passionately pro-Israel organization Z STREET filed a lawsuit against the IRS, claiming it had been told by an IRS agent that because the organization was “connected to Israel,” its application for tax-exempt status would receive additional scrutiny. This admission was made in response to a query about the lengthy reveiw of Z STREET’s tax exempt status application.

In addition, the IRS agent told a Z STREET representative that the applications of some of those Israel-related organizations have been assigned to “a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.”

Z STREET’s lawsuit claims the IRS activity constitutes viewpoint discrimination and a violation of its constitutionally protected right of free speech. The organization is seeking, among other things, complete disclosure to the public regarding the origin, development, approval, substance and application of the IRS policy to treat pro-Israel organizations differently than it does other organizations.

And at least one purely religious Jewish organization, one not focused on Israel, was the recipient of bizarre and highly inappropriate questions about Israel. Those questions also came from the same non-profit division of the IRS at issue for inappropriately targeting politically conservative groups. The IRS required that Jewish organization to state “whether [it] supports the existence of the land of Israel,” and also demanded the organization “[d]escribe [its] religious belief system toward the land of Israel.”
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I agree that it probably is not some epidemic that went on throughout the entire IRS.

 

Dennis Kucinich is outraged by this FWIW, and fully believes this is political targeting and that it came from the top.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>7days ago our president warned against those who believed ingovernment tyranny.Yesterday his IRS admitted "targeting" constitutionalists#912</p>&mdash; Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) <a href="https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/333459387773505536">May 12, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

The only people the IRS should be targeting are billionaires with offshore bank accounts. Strangely enough, those people seem to be relatively immune to this sort of thing.

 

Actually, no. There are certainly far more groups that have that stance than those that simply call themselves tea party whatever. However, when your political stance is we reject your authority to tax, want to disband the IRS, and generally are anti government then you should be targeted. It's like letting a guy through TSA that says he hates the federal government and makes a bunch of anti government statements. Yeah, we'd hate to target that guy.

 

Except that there are far fewer of them, and possibly thousands of others who still cheat on their taxes.

 

Does he have any proof of it? Anything?