The IRS Targets Conservatives

Strassel: The IRS Scandal Started at the Top
The bureaucrats at the Internal Revenue Service did exactly what the president said was the right and honorable thing to do.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

But that's not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. "He put a target on our backs, and he's now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?" asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a "wealthy individual" with a "less-than-reputable record." Other donors were described as having been "on the wrong side of the law."

This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot's divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.

The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn't account for what the president's vilification has done to his business and reputation.

The Obama call for scrutiny wasn't a mistake; it was the president's strategy—one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as "less than reputable" to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn't need a telephone; he had a megaphone.

The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, claiming that it "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests" (read conservative groups).

The president derided "tea baggers." Vice President Joe Biden compared them to "terrorists." In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. "Nobody knows who's paying for these ads," he warned. "We don't know where this money is coming from," he intoned.

In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: "All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."

Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having "failed to address" the "problem" of groups that were "improperly engaged" in campaigns. Because guess who controls that "independent" agency's budget?

The IRS is easy to demonize, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It got its heading from a president, and his party, who did in fact send it orders—openly, for the world to see. In his Tuesday press grilling, no question agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney more than the one that got to the heart of the matter: Given the president's "animosity" toward Citizens United, might he have "appreciated or wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those . . ." Mr. Carney cut off the reporter with "That's a preposterous assertion."

Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is "outraged" and "angry" that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, even lawbreaking. After all, he expects the IRS to "operate with absolute integrity." Even when he does not.

-----------------

Salinsky to the core.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>So Obama WH knew about IRS scandal in June of 2012, but allowed IRS to HOLD applications for Tea Party/Pro-Life groups until after election.</p>&mdash; NumbersMuncher (@NumbersMuncher) <a href="https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/335477862876459009">May 17, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

That's what the writer is inferring.

Good job using your context clues. Maybe next week you can practice on your capitalization.

 

Citizens United: The great red herring of the IRS scandal
Written by David Freddoso
Published on May 17, 2013


At this morning’s IRS targeting scandal hearings, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., questioned the ability of IRS officials to tell the truth. He forced Acting IRS Commissioner Stephen Miller to swear in — something that is not usually done for government officials — citing the fact that the IRS has misled the committee so much in the past. Noting the multiple scandals currently percolating in the news along with this one, Camp said in his opening statement that “it seems like the truth was hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election.”

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., identified what is perhaps the most obvious deception of all. Miller, who is obligated by law (with or without an oath) to give Congress the truth and the whole truth, had been specifically asked about targeting of conservative non-profit applicants — and it happened after he had been briefed on the targeting of groups with names that included “Tea Party,” “Patriot” and other words frequently used by conservative activists. Miller maintained throughout Round One that he “answered truthfully,” but his failure to mention this at the time suggests he may not have — at least not according to the standards expected in Congressional Testimony.

Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee focused like a laser on the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision as the true culprit for this targeting. But there are a few problems with this explanation.

First of all, this excuse blames the victims and turns the perpetrator — the IRS — into some kind of victim of their constitutional rights. It’s one thing if Democrats don’t like what the law or the Constitution or the Supreme Court has to say about free speech — they are welcome to attempt to change it. But that doesn’t justify the singling out of conservative groups, who were not given any special status above and beyond their liberal peers. At best, it’s a separate issue.

Second, the data show that there was no surge in 501c(4) applications by Spring 2010, around which time the IRS decided to target conservative applicants — in fact, the number of applications declined sharply between fiscal 2009 and 2010. So the idea that a sudden surge of Citizens United-inspired non-profit applications created the need for this extra scrutiny is a completely false one. (When this fact came up in the hearing, Miller played dumb and pretended he hadn’t read this part of the Inspector General’s report.)

Third, the groups that were targeted mostly do not even remotely fit the profile huge “dark money” actors that Democrats associate with Citizens United. The Associated Press studied tax returns for 93 of them only to find that they had little money and were genuinely grassroots groups — their median income (mostly from fundraising) was $16,700 per year, and their median expenses were just $12,770 — not even enough for a typical campaign ad buy.

Only a very small number of big players have used 501c(4) money for mass-scale electioneering, and none of them seem to have been targeted. Pro-Publica set up this graph in August 2012 to document the total dominance of just two such groups in this area at that point:



I’m compiling more complete numbers for another post, but just take this away: If Citizens United had ever been the problem, no one was solving it by targeting the mom-and-pop organizations who got the Spanish Inquisition from the IRS.

Finally, 501c(4) groups have always been allowed to engage in politics to some degree. Americans for Tax Reform — Grover Norquist’s group — is just one of the many well-known ones in Washington. If they don’t count as politically involved, I don’t know who does. But like other such groups, they pursue social goals — in their case, lower taxes.

501c(4) groups ran election ads routinely prior to McCain-Feingold (which passed in 2002) — but they were “issue ads” that did not expressly ask viewers to vote for or against candidates. The typical ad would say, “Call Congressman so-and-so and tell him his tax hike is unacceptable.” McCain-Feingold put new limits on these ads — forbidding them to mention or depict candidates shortly before elections — but those restrictions were mostly gutted by the Supreme Court in the 2007 Wisconsin Right to Life case.

The main difference the Citizens United decision made is that now these groups can explicitly endorse or (more often) oppose a candidate. But even that difference is not as big as you think. Look back to 2000, and the Brennan Center was complaining about how less than 1 percent of the $98 million in ads run by non-disclosing outside groups were genuine issue ads. When adjusted for the overall increase in political spending since 2000, that’s not nearly as far a cry from the roughly $305 million spent by such groups in 2012 (again, dominated by a few huge players) as some would have you think.

 

I was actually giving you a compliment.

Liberal #1 rule: Don't ever tell the truth... that way they never know when you are lying.

 

They didn't fire the guy they are accepting his retirement and he gets a fat govt pension. The lady in charge of the targeting got a promotion to enforce Obamacare.

 

I was following story on twitter and found two relevant stories.

Have a great weekend!

 

IRS sued for seizing 60 million medical records


By Cheryl K. Chumley-The Washington Times Friday, May 17, 2013

A healthcare provider has sued the Internal Revenue Service and 15 of its agents, charging they wrongfully seized 60 million medical records from 10 million Americans.

The name of the provider is not yet known, United Press International said. But Courthouse News Service said the suit claims the agency violated the Fourth Amendment in 2011, when agents executed a search warrant for financial data on one employee – and that led to the seizure of information on 10 million, including state judges.

The search warrant did not specify that the IRS could take medical information, UPI said. And information technology officials warned the IRS about the potential to violate medical privacy laws before agents executed the warrant, the complaint said, as reported by UPI.

“Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to ‘rip’ the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over,” the complaint states, UPI reported.

The suit also says IRS agents seized workers’ phones and telephone data – more violations of the warrant, UPI reported.

The complaint alleges the IRS was “invasive and unlawful” and stole access to intimate medical records that included patients’ treatment plans and therapies, UPI said.

The suit seeks $25,000 in compensatory damages, per violation. The records’ seizure could impact up to one in 25 Americans, UPI said.


Read more: http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2...ing-60-million-medical-records/#ixzz2Thy4xNY0

--------------------

More bad news for the IRS. If what they are claiming is true, this will only further damage the reputation of the IRS and make more in DC weary of their new role in Obamacare.