It did happen during the Bush Admin and liberals did not start create a media spectacle and carpet bomb the airwaves about it. http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/05/14/former_naacp_head_once_investigated_by_irs_basically_fine_with_irs_going.html That doesn't justify the action itself but it does show you that the level of virtriol directed at the screw up is overblown for purely partisan reasons. It's a shame too, because this could all be used as a teaching point on how the government likely shouldn't be giving ANY tax exempt status to 501(c)(4) organizations until we figure out what constitutes "primarily engaged in promoting the common good and general welfare of the people of the community" and how we will differentiate that from 50.1% directed toward partisan goals. Instead, our screwed up our system is being ignored while we relish in all the screaming and partisan posturing related to what would have been a minor scandal 8 years ago. You have got to look at who benefits from the scandal-mongering. It's not the average American and it's not even the average Republican - they would much rather have congress spend all this effort on pursuing policies that would address the problems of our time. The people benefitting are those people who are rent seeking abusing the windfall from Citizen's United and the 501(c)(4) structure to hide their donations and leverage massive amounts of tax exempt money in an attempt to influence the political process.
1. They were approved. Not one single application was denied. And they never even needed to apply or have approval. 2. Anyone who leaked those lists should be dismissed and whatever else can be done to them. But there is nothing to indicate any of this came from the White House's direction. 3. Certainly not appropriate, and certainly no evidence that it came from the direction of the white house.
thanks false, I thought I read something about that. And Blake, there were better things to go after Bush for. Things that were true.
The odd thing is not one single conservative group had their application denied, yet some of the liberal group applications were denied.
You are okay with unequal treatment under the law based on political beliefs? of course it is but having a federal job isn't............
What's unequal doc? The main inequality I see so far is that some liberal groups were denied the requested status, but zero conservative groups were.
Equality of process does not mean equality of outcome. It is uncontroverted even by ranking Dems that conservative groups were targeted and that such targeting is unacceptable. The process must be evenhanded regardless of the outcome of a specific group of applications.
exactly. Conservatives and pro-israel groups were targeted to have their applications stalled so they wouldn't be accepted. These groups were also required to disclose information not required of the process such as donor lists. One group claims to have given evidence to the justice department that shows the IRS leaked their donor list to a rival organization only to be ignored by the justice department. Another group claims they were told they could not get tax exempt status if they protested Planned Parenthood. The IRS has admitted this has taken place (except the last two individual claims). Democrats (including Obama) have declared this is wrong and unacceptable. IRS members are taking the 5th and refusing to cooperate with investigators to try to hide their guilt (nobody has confessed who created this list). Despite all of this, members on this board still insist no unfair treatment took place.
Whoops... _____ Republican Hearings Backfire As IRS Testifies That More Groups Need To Be Investigated The lesson Republicans should have taken from Monday’s IRS hearings is “be careful what you wish for.” One of the recommendations based on the audit is “to conduct a review to assess how the IRS monitors I.R.C. sections 501(c)(4)(6) organizations to ensure that political campaign intervention does not constitute their primary activity.” On top of that, the audit revealed that there were many groups whose political intervention in campaigns should have flagged them for a review. The Honorable J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, testified Monday in a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government hearing on the IRS “scandal”. George based his testimony on an audit in which they found a few things that don’t bode well for conservatives’ “social welfare groups”, since they outspent liberals 34-1 via nonprofits on political issues. Namely, the IRS needs to investigate more of these groups that are “intervening” in political campaigns, not less. The audit “determined that the majority of the 296 potential political cases we reviewed included indications of significant political campaign intervention.” This means that the majority reviewed were engaging in activities that warranted a review under the law. George explained that of the 296 cases singled out for review, the majority had indications of significant political campaign intervention. 91 cases did not (31%). Of those 91, only 17 involved Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 groups. The rest were “targeted” but were not Tea Party/Patriot/9/12 groups. “In addition, while we determined that the majority of the 296 potential political cases we reviewed included indications of significant political campaign intervention, 91 cases (31 percent) did not. Of the 91 cases, 17 involved Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 organizations. The IRS disagreed with this finding that the cases did not include indications of significant political campaign intervention.” The IRS did not document why they thought these 91 signaled political intervention, which is one thing the auditors recommend that they fix. But also, they found that more groups should have been investigated for their political intervention, “We determined that the Determinations Unit specialists did not identify all applications with indications of significant political campaign intervention. As a result, these cases were not referred to the team of specialists for further review.” They estimate that 175 were not sent for review but should have been, “We estimate that more than 175 organizations with indications of significant political campaign intervention were not referred to the team of specialists for further review.” Furthermore, nearly three-quarters of the groups “targeted” for inspection were not identified as opponents of the White House, so that blows the idea of being targeted for being a political enemy out of the water. It was also pointed out that 3,357 applications were made in 2012 compared with 1,735 in 2010, before Citizens United. ful article
That's exactly right. It's what I believed from the beginning. If the IRS targeted any group because of their political leanings it was wrong. However, there is no evidence of connection to the white house, and the result caused no harm (which doesn't excuse the process. I realize that). So it's a very miniscule "scandal". Nobody was denied their status, and they never even had to apply for it to begin with.
Been saying all along, overworked lowlifes just trying to figure out an impossible job. thanks Citizens United
Great source! Next time why not link an op ed by George Soros or something? When a govt agency takes over 400 days to even return contact with a group who is seeking exempt status you know someone up above is telling low level employees to stall.
IRS Can’t Locate Its Receipts The IRS spent over 4 million taxpayer dollars on a conference in 2010, CNN reported Tuesday evening. The actual amount wasted is unknown because the IRS was not required to keep its receipts, something that they require taxpayers to do. CNN correspondent Dana Bash discussed the excesses of the agency in a report on 360, including gifts, video spoofs and upscale hotel rooms for agency higher-ups, but the cost of those and the conference itself was unclear because the IRS had engaged in poor record-keeping: ANDERSON COOPER: I’ve got to go back to something you said. The IRS facing this audit actually said they couldn’t find some of their own receipts. Is that for real? DANA BASH: That is for real, Anderson. It really is hard to believe, but the IG report explicitly says, ‘IRS management could not provide any documentation detailing how this money was spent.’ At the time, three years ago, this is also hard to believe, keeping track of and reporting costs of conferences wasn’t required at the IRS. Shoddy record-keeping wasn’t limited to just these videos. The IG couldn’t even verify the overall cost of the conference. <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Lq4_grGZyWE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Not necessarily. It could be a mid level manager telling their subordinates to stall. I deal with the IRS all the time in bankruptcy cases. I will tell you that who the file is assigned to matters.
But according to the IRS once an application is not handled within something like 100 days it is immediately flagged and sent up the food chain. Even some of the letters that these groups received even had Lois Lerners signature on them.
First of all you dont know the text of the law apparently. The word treatment doesnt exist. It seems to be okay to receive unequal treatment under the law if you're gay or black or female or poor however. That's convenient. What lawful protection is being denied here? I find it honestly hilarious for you to try to gin this into an equal protection argument considering your staunch opposition to gay marriage which is a full and complete denial of privileges in violation of equal protection. Don't know that the federal government can fire someone for exercising a Constitutional right. I'm sure Bush would have tried. Oh wait, didn't Scooter Libby threaten his 5th amendment right so as not to testify and then had his criminal conviction commuted by Bush. Oh right, that did happen.
I didn't mention any law. Are you okay with the IRS targeting groups differently based on their political beliefs (for example requiring donor lists from some but not others or prolonging the tax-exempt process for some but not others)? Rly? You don't know? Obama is every IRS employee's boss. He can fire them for not cooperating with an investigation or pleading the 5th. I could fire my employees if they did the same thing. Also, Yes Bush would of done things differently.
Stephanie Cutter Attended WH Meetings with IRS Carol Platt Liebau | Jun 04, 2013 Recommend this article Comments 23 An interesting factoid emerges from a look at a transcript of last Friday's edition of "The Lead With Jake Tapper" -- Stephanie Cutter was in on the White House meetings that IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman attended. Cutter insists that Shulman was simply meeting about implementation of ObamaCare -- and in fairness, one of her responsibilities was managing communications strategy for the unpopular law. But as everyone knows, Stephanie Cutter's expertise is not primarily in the policy area; it is in the realm of politics: Political strategy and communications. She has been described by the Daily Beast as a partisan "pit bull." Her job isn't the nuts and bolts of governing. She is a political fixer. That's why she was a Deputy Campaign manager for the President's re-election. Given that's the case, it's far from clear why she would have been in meetings with Doug Shulman at all. The whole point of the IRS' supposed "independence" is to insulate the agency from the influence and machinations of people exactly like Stephanie Cutter. So whether or not the stated purpose of the meetings was about ObamaCare -- unless Shulman's politics are very different from the lefty leanings of his wife -- it isn't hard to imagine Shulman and Cutter exchanging some congruent views. That's particularly true given that foremost in political discussion at the time was the Citizens United case (holding it unconstitutional for the government to restrict speech by corporations, associations and unions), which had recently been handed down by the Supreme Court -- and which scared President Obama to death. Is it really a stretch to think that Cutter and Shulman might have commiserated, bemoaned the supposed threat to democracy, and wished that something could be done, oh so subtly? . . . Consider the following timeline: May 2009 - Cutter moves to White House from Treasury Department January 2010 - Citizens United is handed down; Democrats are hysterical March 2010 - IRS begins targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups April 2010 - Cutter assigned to sell health care reform; if meetings with Shulman didn't occur before, presumably they did so afterwards. Indeed, this time line and Cutter's presence in the IRS meetings makes it more likely than ever that subtle political influence was wielded. Did anyone explicitly order Shulman to target conservatives? Probably not . . . because given the extent and type of contact he had with White House politicos, no explicit directive was needed. It seems likely that everyone understood each other just fine, and the IRS operated accordingly. http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolp...cutter-attended-wh-meetings-with-irs-n1613179
