Rule number 2: when you can't refute an assertion with facts and reason, resort to sarcasm and belittling those you are debating with.
^^^ Dude, don't know what your problem is but I think it is paramount that the IRS agency needs to be worked on as a whole. Whoever is responsible for the abundant targeting will be made clear as Congress investigates. I don't know if this case will stick, we will find out. I was just posting an interesting article I read from the Washington Times and bolded main parts and made the headline bigger. Didn't know doing that was somehow politicizing. Will remember for later.
Mark Steyn on the IRS targeting Obama's political opponents iwth audits, this is scary stuff: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348687/autocrat-accountants-mark-steyn people should go to prison for this, but no one will
Schumer, Franken urged IRS to target tea party in 2012 Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that. The IRS’s admission last Friday that it had singled out tea party and other groups for extra audits and delays has raised concerns that President Barack Obama’s administration quietly attempted to stymy opponents through intimidation. But many prominent Democrats — including Montana Sen. Max Baucus, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the New York Times editorial board — had been publicly calling for tighter restrictions on 501(c)(4) groups affiliated with the tea party and conservatives. Last year, Schumer, along with Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Jeanne Shaheen and Al Franken, penned a letter calling on the agency to cap the amount of the political spending by groups masquerading as “social welfare organizations.” A press release from Schumer’s office dated March 12, 2012 laid out the terms of the letter: The senators said the lack of clarity in the IRS rules has allowed political groups to improperly claim 501(c)4 status and may even be allowing donors to these groups to wrongly claim tax deductions for their contributions. The senators promised legislation if the IRS failed to act to fix these problems. “We urge the IRS to take these steps immediately to prevent abuse of the tax code by political groups focused on federal election activities. But if the IRS is unable to issue administrative guidance in this area then we plan to introduce legislation to accomplish these important changes,” the senators wrote. The letter cited a March 7, 2012 New York Times article by Jonathan Weisman that suggested donations to groups like American Crossroads and Priorities USA could be tax deductible, which was a primary concern of those senators at the time. A number of those senators participated in a press conference about their efforts on March 21, 2012, and Franken spoke out about what he called lack of oversight of 501(c)(4) status. “I think that there hasn’t been enforcement by the FEC and the IRS, and so there are entities that are taking a 501(c)4 status, and under that they’re supposed to have more than half of their activity be non-political,” Franken said. “That’s pretty hinky. I mean, they really aren’t doing that, and that I think there needs to be a look at that — that even under the laws that already exist, there are people who should be disclosing who aren’t. And I think that is where we’re seeing the effect of — lack of effective enforcement and just oversight.” http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/17/f...rged-irs-to-target-tea-party-in-2012/?print=1
Link Senior W.H. staff knew of IRS investigation, did not tell Obama By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 5/20/13 2:35 PM EDT Senior White House staff knew of the ongoing investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative groups ahead of the release of a report from a Treasury Department inspector general, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday, but held off on informing the president to wait for a final report. With the knowledge of an investigation, the White House held to a "cardinal rule" that it should not get involved in an external investigation, Carney said during his daily briefing. "No one in this building intervened in an ongoing independent investigation or did anything that could be seen as intervening," he said. "To the chagrin of some who would have liked us to get more in front of this, we appropriately waited," Carney later added. White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler was informed of the IG's audit on April 24, Carney said, and was told that the audit was nearing its conclusion and that a report would be forthcoming indicating that several IRS employees were involved in targeting groups with "tea party" and "patriot" in their names for additional scrutiny. Carney was more vague last week, telling reporters that Ruemmler's office was informed of the existence of an investigation during the week of April 22, but informed of little more. On Monday, he said that some staff in the counsel's office were told of the report -- and others nearing completion -- a week earlier, on April 16. Ruemmler did inform White House chief of staff Denis McDonough's office of the investigation, Carney said, and other senior staff were also told of the report. Carney wouldn't say who those other staffers were, but did say there were communications between White House staff and Treasury Department staff ahead of the first news reports of the IRS investigation, which emerged 10 days ago. Though senior staff knew of the probe, Carney said Ruemmler concluded that the investigation was "not a matter she should convey to the president" until the report was finalized.
Link WaPo vs WaPo (vs WaPo!) on IRS targeting of conservative groups POSTED AT 10:01 AM ON MAY 20, 2013 BY ED MORRISSEY If you feel like you may be getting whiplash from all of the spin on the IRS scandal, it just means you’re paying attention. Over the weekend, people had a tough time keeping the story straight — even within a single newspaper. On Friday, the Washington Post reported from their sources within the Cincinnati office of the IRS that the low-level employees just followed orders from their bosses, rather than going rogue as the administration suggests (via Sean Higgins, emphasis mine): As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy. “We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.” So it was the managers who put this extra scrutiny in place? Not so, said … the Washington Post yesterday. In an article headlined “How the IRS seeded the clouds in 2010 for a political deluge three years later,” the Post argues that the targeting was just an organic response to a stream of applications for tax-exempt status: In early 2010, an Internal Revenue Service team in Cincinnati began noticing a stream of applications from groups with *political-sounding names, setting in motion a dragnet aimed at *separating legitimate tax-exempt groups from those working to get candidates elected. The IRS officials decided to single out one type of political group for particular scrutiny. “These cases involve various local organizations in the Tea Party movement,” read one internal IRS e-mail sent at the time. … According to the inspector general’s report, as IRS officials in Cincinnati tried to decide what to do about the groups — political advocacy organizations seeking what is known as 501 (c)(4) status — they sent out intrusive questionnaires seeking donor lists, copies of meeting minutes and reams of other documents. Applications sat around for months, sometimes years; some organizations ended up folding while awaiting answers that never came. IRS officials in Cincinnati were ignorant of the law and did not recognize that they should not scrutinize groups solely based on terms such as “tea party,” “patriots” and other conservative-sounding descriptions in their names, the inspector general’s report said. On Friday, the low-level IRS officials insisted that they wouldn’t have applied any special scrutiny without a directive from management. On Sunday, they’re back to being rogue agents making their own decisions. I wonder if Washington Post reporters actually read the Washington Post. They certainly seem to have trouble doing any research outside of their own archives, because had they checked on the actual data for applications in FY2010, they would have discovered that the number of applications had dropped, not increased. Oh, if the Post only had a checker of fact to weigh in on this conundrum. Hey, wait a moment, it does! In fact, the paper’s Glenn Kessler gave Lois Lerner four Pinocchios today for making the same claim: At first glance, the Inspector General’s report appears to show that the number of 501(c)(4) applications actually went down that year, from 1,751 in 2009 to 1,735. But it turns out that these are federal fiscal-year figures, meaning “2010” is actually Oct. 1, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2010, so the “2010” year includes more than three months before the Supreme Court decision was announced. Astonishingly, despite Lerner’s public claim, an IRS spokeswoman was not able to provide the actual calendar year numbers. By allocating one-quarter of the fiscal year numbers to the prior year, we can get a very rough sense of the increase on a calendar-year basis.(Figures are rounded to avoid false precision; 2012 is not possible to calculate) 2009: 1745 2010: 1865 2011: 2540 In other words, while there was an increase in 2010, it was relatively small. The real jump did not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups had been implemented. Also, it appears Lerner significantly understated the number of applications in 2010 (“1500”) in order to make her claim of “more than doubled.” So much for the organic defense. The Post’s reporters make another odd and unsupported claim: Many liberal-leaning and nonpolitical groups were also caught up in the effort. Really? Like whom, exactly? An analysis by USA Today last week showed the exact opposite — that groups with liberal- or progressive-sounding names sailed through the approval process without any additional scrutiny. Zachary Goldfarb and Kimberly Kindy just throw that sentence into the article above the jump, and follow it up with no data or even anecdotal evidence that it’s at all accurate or even arguable. Next time the Post wants to offer a follow-up, maybe they’d like to have reporters do it, rather than stenographers for the IRS. Update: Guy Benson reminds me that Steve Miller specifically refuted the notion that progressive groups got the same targeting during his testimony on Friday:
this is fairly chilling: [rquoter]True Scandal A tea-party group targeted by Democrats gets attention from the IRS—and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF. By Jillian Kay Melchior Catherine Engelbrecht’s tale has all the markings of a classic conspiracy theory: She says she thinks that because of her peaceful political activity, she and her family was targeted for scrutiny by hostile federal agencies. Yet as news emerges that the Internal Revenue Service wielded its power to obstruct conservative groups, Catherine’s story becomes credible — and chilling. It also raises questions about whether other federal agencies have used their executive powers to target those deemed political enemies. Advertisement Before the Engelbrecht family’s three-year ordeal began, Catherine says, “I had no real expectation or preparation for the blood sport that American politics is.†Sounding weary on the phone, she continues: “It’s all been a through-the-looking-glass experience.†Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who specializes in representing conservative organizations, says that the Engelbrecht family’s experience is “just the tip of the iceberg. . . . I think there’s definitely a Chicago-politics-style enemies list in this administration, and I think it permeates this branch of the federal government.†* * * The Engelbrechts were not, until recently, particularly political. They had been busy running a tiny manufacturing plant in Rosenberg, Texas. After years of working for others, Bryan, a trained machinist, wanted to open his own shop, so he saved his earnings, bought a computerized numerical-control machine, which does precision metal-cutting, and began operating out of his garage. “That was about 20 years ago,†he says. “Now, we’re up to about 30 employees.†For two decades, Bryan and Catherine drove to work in their big truck. Engelbrecht Manufacturing Inc. now operates out of a 20,000-square-foot metal building on the prairie just outside of Houston, where a “semi-pet coyote lives in the field just behind us,†Bryan says. They went back to their country home each night. Stress was rare, and life was good. But the 2008 elections left Catherine feeling frustrated about the debates, which seemed to be a string of superficial talking points. So she began attending tea-party meetings, enjoying the political discussion. A spunky woman known for her drive, Catherine soon wanted to do more than just talk. She joined other tea partiers and decided to volunteer at the ballot box. Working as an alternate judge at the polls in 2009 in Fort Bend County, Texas, Catherine says, she was appalled and dismayed to witness everything from administrative snafus to outright voter fraud. These formative experiences prompted her to found two organizations: King Street Patriots, a local community group that hosts weekly discussions on personal and economic freedoms; and True the Vote, which seeks to prevent voter fraud and trains volunteers to work as election monitors. It also registers voters, attempts to validate voter-registration lists, and pursues fraud reports to push for prosecution if illegal activity has occurred. Bryan says that when his wife began focusing on politics, working less often at the manufacturing shop, “I told her, ‘You have my undying support.’†He pauses, then adds in his thick Texan drawl: “Little did I know she’d take it this far!†In July 2010, Catherine filed with the IRS seeking tax-exempt status for her organizations. Shortly after, the troubles began. That winter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation came knocking with questions about a person who had attended a King Street Patriots event once. Based on sign-in sheets, the organization discovered that the individual in question had attended an event, but “it was a come-and-go thing,†and they had no further information on hand about him. Nevertheless, the FBI also made inquiries about the person to the office manager, who was a volunteer. The King Street Patriots weren’t the only ones under scrutiny. On January 11, the IRS visited the Engelbrechts’ shop and conducted an on-site audit of both their business and their personal returns, Catherine says. “What struck us as odd about that,†she adds,“is the lengths to which the auditor went to try to — it seemed like — to try to find some error. . . . She wanted to go out and see [our] farm, she wanted to count the cattle, she wanted to look at the fence line. It was a very curious three days. She was as kind as she could be, and she was doing her job . . . [but] it was strange.†Bryan adds: “It was kind of funny to us. I mean, we weren’t laughing that much, but we knew we were squeaky clean. Our CPA’s a good guy. And who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor: I got a little bit of a refund.†Advertisement Two months later, the IRS initiated the first round of questions for True the Vote. Catherine painstakingly answered them, knowing that nonprofit status would help with the organization’s credibility, donors, and grant applications. In October, the IRS requested additional information. And whenever Catherine followed up with IRS agents about the status of True the Vote’s application, “there was always a delay that our application was going to be up next, and it was just around the corner,†she says, As this was occurring, the FBI continued to phone King Street Patriots. In May 2011, agents phoned wondering “how they were doing.†The FBI made further inquiries in June, November, and December asking whether there was anything to report. The situation escalated in 2012. That February, True the Vote received a third request for information from the IRS, which also sent its first questionnaire to King Street Patriots. Catherine says the IRS had “hundreds of questions — hundreds and hundreds of questions.†The IRS requested every Facebook post and Tweet she had ever written. She received questions about her family, whether she’d ever run for political office, and which organizations she had spoken to. “It’s no great secret that the IRS is considered to be one of the more serious [federal agencies],†Catherine says. “When you get a call from the IRS, you don’t take it lightly. So when you’re asked questions that seem to imply a sense of disapproval, it has a very chilling effect.†On the same day they received the questions from the IRS, Catherine says, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) launched an unscheduled audit of their machine shop, forcing the Engelbrechts to drop everything planned for that day. Though the Engelbrechts have a Class 7 license, which allows them to make component parts for guns, they do not manufacture firearms. Catherine said that while the ATF had a right to conduct the audit, “it was odd that they did it completely unannounced, and they took five, six hours. . . . It was so extensive. It just felt kind of weird.†That was in February. In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration paid a visit to Engelbrecht Manufacturing while Bryan, Catherine, and their children were out of town. The OSHA inspector talked with the managerial staff and employees, inspecting the premises minutely. But Bryan says the agent found only “little Mickey Mouse stuff, like, ‘You have safety glasses on, but not the right kind; the forklift has a seatbelt, but not the right kind.’†Yet Catherine and Bryan said the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it. Not long after, the tab arrived. OSHA was imposing $25,000 in fines on Engelbrecht Manufacturing. They eventually worked it down to $17,500, and Bryan says they may have tried to contest the fines to drive them even lower, but “we didn’t want to make any more waves, because we don’t know [how much further] OSHA could reach.†“Bottom line is, it hurt,†he says. Fifteen thousand dollars is “not an insignificant amount to this company. It might be to other companies, but we’re still considered small, and it came at a time when business was slow, so instead of giving an employee a raise or potentially hiring another employee, I’m writing a check to our government.†A few months later, True the Vote became the subject of congressional scrutiny. In September, Senator Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) wrote to Thomas Perez, then the assistant attorney general of the civil rights division at the Department of Justice (who has now been nominated for labor secretary). “As you know, an organization called ‘True the Vote,’ which is an offshoot of the Tea Party, is leading a voter suppression campaign in many states,†Boxer wrote, adding that “this type of intimidation must stop. I don’t believe this is ‘True the Vote.’ I believe it’s ‘Stop the Vote.’†And in October, Representative Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, attacked True the Vote in a letter. He wrote that “some have suggested that your true goal is not voter integrity, but voter suppression against thousands of legitimate voters who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates.†He added that: “If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated, and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.†He also decried True the Vote on MSNBC and CNN. Advertisement Catherine now says that she “absolutely†thinks that because she worked against voter fraud, the Left was irked and decided to target her. The next month, in November 2012, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency, showed up for an unscheduled audit at Engelbrecht Manufacturing. Catherine says the inspector told her the agency had received a complaint but couldn’t provide any more details. After the inspection, the agency notified the Engelbrechts that they needed to pay for an additional mechanical permit, which cost about $2,000 per year. Since then, the IRS has sent two further rounds of questions to Catherine for her organizations. And last month, the ATF conducted a second unscheduled audit at Engelbrecht Manufacturing. Catherine says she still hasn’t received IRS approval for her nonprofits, though she filed nearly three years ago. And “the way all of these personal instances interweave with what was going on on the nonprofit side . . . it amounts to something. You can’t help but think that statistically, this has to be coordinated on some level.†On behalf of the True the Vote and King Street Patriots, Representative Ted Poe (R., Texas) sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF, inquiring whether the organizations were under criminal investigation. A statement on Poe’s website states that “the reply from these agencies was that none of these individuals were under criminal investigation. Well, if they’re not, why are they being treated like criminals? Just because they question government.†Catherine says she knows of at least one other group that received government inquiries about its relationship with True the Vote, and she suspects more did, too. And other Tea Party groups decided not to form nonprofits at all after learning about her experience, she says. “They were scared,†she explains, “and you shouldn’t be scared of your government.†Meanwhile, Catherine says the harassment has forced her to seriously reconsider whether her political activity is worth the government harassment she’s faced. “I left a thriving family business with my husband that I loved, to do something I didn’t necessarily love, but [which] I thought had to be done,†she says. “But I really think if we don’t do this, if we don’t stand up and speak now, there might not [alws] be that chance.†Her husband offers an additional observation: “If you knew my wife, you’d know she doesn’t back down from anybody. They picked on the wrong person when they started picking on her.†— Jillian Kay Melchior is a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.[/rquoter] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348756/true-scandal-jillian-kay-melchior
^^^Do you preview your articles before you copy pasta and hit send? That sh-ts littered with f-cking hieroglyphs.
who gives a ****? I get that you liberals don't like that under your man's watch the IRS was used to harass political opponents, but complaining over characters?
Report: Head of IRS Employees Union Met With President Obama the Day Before Tea Party Targeting Began Robert Stacy McCain Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union which represents employees of the Internal Revenue Service, met at the White House with President Obama the day before two IRS officials created the “Sensitive Case Report” that targeted Tea Party groups for special scrutiny on their applications for non-profit status. White House visitors logs show that Kelley visited the White House on March 31, 2010, to meet with Obama, a day before an Inspector General’s report shows that the “Sensitive Case Report” was created, Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator reported: The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies. Kelley herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates. Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party and conservative groups around the country. The IRS scandal has spawned congressional hearings and investigations since an agency official admitted May 10 that IRS officials unfairly targeted Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations seeking 501(c) tax-exempt status. The inspector general’s report, “Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review,” was published May 14. Confidential information leaked by an IRS source was used to attack Republican Mitt Romney during last year’s presidential campaign. One Tea Party activist, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht, says she was targeted not only by the FBI, but also by other federal agencies. The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a May 31 hearing and requested detailed information from the IRS about the scandal. link
How about ppl who may find the article interesting until they come across this "family’s experience is “just the tip of the iceberg. . . . I think there’s." And pointing out hieroglyphs in submitted articles has nothing to do with politics and more with basic internet use and forum courtesy. You hypersensitive vagina.
A republican Haiku Republicans whine, Scandal, Scandal so they say! “Can’t Touch This” Bo says. Obama's popularity remains steady amid "scandals" Two recently released polls reveal that President Barack Obama's approval rating remains virtually unchanged despite bureaucratic scandals and a public grilling on Benghazi this month.
explosive: [rquoter]“For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal? Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun? The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts. March 31, 2010. According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st. The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way: Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30 In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.” The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way: April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed. In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.[/rquoter] http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking/print
"stunning", "scary", "chilling", "explosive"! Oh my! Are republicans pulling their hair out and losing their minds because they can't tie anything to Obama? Scandals Backfire on Republicans as Obama’s Approval Ratings Go Up
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>CIA source says Fox News scandal the "4th Shoe"; says it goes much deeper; says WH also sitting on "something" that has top aides terrified.</p>— Joseph Curl (@josephcurl) <a href="https://twitter.com/josephcurl/status/336567080830783488">May 20, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
