The IRS Targets Conservatives

Bloomberg Poll: Americans Don’t Think Obama Is Being Honest About IRS Scandal By 47% To 40% Margin…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...americans-say-obama-untruthful-about-irs.html



Via TPM:

A pair of new polls indicated that Americans are questioning President Barack Obama’s honesty in the wake of the Internal Revenue Service targeting scandal.

The latest Bloomberg National Poll released Tuesday evening showed that 47 percent of Americans don’t believe Obama’s claim that he wasn’t aware the IRS was targeting conservative groups for additional scrutiny, while 40 percent believe he is telling the truth.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/polls-public-questions-obamas-honesty-on-irs-targeting

 

Confirmed: House Democrats Lied – IRS DID NOT Give Liberal Groups Same Scrutiny as Conservative Organizations

The IRS targeted hundreds of conservative groups since 2010. 500 conservative and Christian groups were illegally targeted by the Obama IRS starting in 2010. For twenty-seven months the Obama IRS refused to approve any Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status while at the same time the Obama IRS approved dozens of progressive applications.

Today at the Ways and Means Committee hearing Democrats insisted that liberal groups were also being targeted by the IRS. Emerge America, Progress Texas, and Clean Elections Texas were the three groups mentioned by Democrats today at the hearing as examples of liberal groups being targeted by the IRS.

Democrats did not offer any “abused” witnesses at the hearing on Tuesday.

There’s a reason for this.
As usual, Democrats were not being honest about the scrutiny these liberal groups received from the IRS.
Raw Story reported:

So again, Democrats weren’t being honest today. Liberal groups did not receive the same treatment and abuse from the IRS as conservative organizations.

 

The IRS scandal as an example of runaway organizational culture
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/340553.php

Organizations large and small develop unique cultures over time. You see this in companies like IBM, Apple, and GM. Employees who stay in these companies over the long term, those who move up the ladder into the executive suite, tend to personify these corporate cultures to a great degree. Employees marry each other, socialize with each other, attend the same events. In company towns, this corporate culture can characterize the entirety of the town itself.

Which is why the current IRS scandal has left me completely unsurprised.

What kind of person goes to work for the IRS? People who like numbers, sure. Accountants. Tax attorneys. Clerks. Secretaries. For a lot of people, a job at the IRS is just that...a job. It pays the bills. It's not a calling, it's a paycheck. But there are many careerists in the IRS for whom the job is an avenue to power over their fellow men -- the power to tax is the power to destroy, after all, and many people find this power intoxicating. Few other government institutions have such presence and power in an individual citizen's life.

It's also true that to move up at the IRS, you must embrace the corporate culture of the place. The culture has been formed in the byzantine twists and turns of the US tax code, in the landscape of rules that govern the IRS itself, and in the office environment common to so many public sector bureaucracies. To succeed in the IRS, an employee must do things the proper way. Entrepreneurs may be appreciated in the private sector, but they are specifically discouraged in the public sector. If you want to get along in government service, you go along. If you can convince yourself that going along is not only the smart thing to do but the right thing, so much the better.

The IRS is not supposed to be a partisan agency. The federal bureaucracy was explicitly designed to be non-partisan so that it would impartially enforce the tax laws and regulations passed by the Congress and approved by the Executive. But the IRS like many other federal bureaucracies tends to be staffed by people -- especially at the management level -- who believe in robust, activist government. In other words: it is staffed mainly by Democrats. And however nonpartisan the organization is supposed to be, it cannot help but reflect the culture of the people who comprise it. The IRS, being led by and staffed with activist-minded Democrats, cannot help but reflect that worldview. The culture reinforces itself because adherence to the culture is the only way to move up. Dissenters and contrarians do not last long in an organization like the IRS (any more than they do at the FBI or EPA or DoJ).

It's no surprise to hear that Lois Lerner's husband is a high-priced lawyer with an affinity for liberal activism. It's no surprise that Douglas Shulman's wife heads a liberal group dedicated to campaign finance reform. You'll find the same pattern repeated throughout the organization, no doubt. Like seeks out like. The culture reinforces itself. Everybody's kids go to the same schools, everybody knows everybody else's first name, and no one has to discuss politics because it's simply understood. The same thing happens at college campuses. Liberal politics, statism, the primacy of the regulatory state: it's just the water these people swim in.

This is the basic danger of a government that has grown too large. The federal machinery will trend Democrat no matter who happens to occupy the White House, Senate, or House of Representatives. And this is because the ideology that drives people to vote Democrat is also the ideology that makes them want to work for federal bureaucracies. The organizational culture in American federal service has become not just partisan but positively messianic during the age of Obama -- they're doing it for your own good, whether you know it or not! -- and the urge to suppress those with "wrong" opinions is becoming too strong to ignore. The tacit approval of Barack Obama and other powerful Democrat politicians removes any vestige of unease. It explains the near-complete lack of guilt or remorse shown so far by IRS management. In their minds, they are doing nothing wrong.

It's not a conspiracy because nothing actually has to be planned in secret. Nothing has to be commanded from on high. Nothing has to be written down, or even spoken in plain language. Lois Lerner and Douglas Schulman didn't need detailed marching orders. All the President had to do was muse sadly about how much he could accomplish if only these troublesome Tea Party types were out of the picture. Functionaries like Schulman and Lerner would immediately grasp the message and put it into action. (Even though no discussion along these lines was really necessary, Schulman and President Obama apparently did enjoy their little chats.)

Corporate culture in the private sector is moderated by two controlling forces: external competition, and the need to satisfy customers. A company must be aware of both, and be responsive, lest one go out of business. Ideology must take a back seat to survival. However, governmental organizations are bound by neither of these strictures and so the pathologies persist and harden into permanent features of the organizations. Instead of being a nonpartisan tax-collection and compliance agency, the IRS becomes an agent of Democrat Party ideology where tax compliance is the tool rather than the purpose of the agency.

This also illustrates why federal bureaucracies like the IRS will not reform from within. Employees of said agency will be asked to participate in their own extinction. Whatever else they may be, IRS employees do have this in common with everyone else: they have bills to pay. Mortgages, groceries, utilities, tuition, car payments. If the IRS is to be abolished or even significantly shrunk, that means the end of a lot of careers. It means the upheaval of a lot of lives. It means, for IRS employees above a certain GS rating, the loss of a significant amount of power -- both organizational and political. Most of all, it means forcing people deeply invested into an organizational culture to admit that this culture is fundamentally wrong.

The solution to this scandal is not to fire the likes of Lois Lerner (though that would be a good start). The answer is to abolish the agency entirely, and to make a concerted effort to shrink the size and reach of the entire federal government apparatus. For the federal government apparatus is not nonpartisan; it is and will continue to be predominately Democrat in culture. The federal government bureaucracy has been captured by Democrats in almost exactly the same way college campuses were captured.

A partisan government apparatus is a recipe for the abuse of power. To limit a government's power, we must limit its size. The IRS is an excellent place to begin because it presents the closest and greatest danger -- not just to conservatives, but to the very underpinnings of our system of government. An abuse of power this flagrant and egregious cannot be allowed to go unanswered.

 

White House Counsel Robert Bauer: Architect of IRS Abuse?

link

When the FBI finally fires up its criminal investigation of the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, there is one person the special agent in charge better be sure to interview — former White House Counsel Robert Bauer. The FBI may discover the whole IRS mess leads through the land of campaign finance “reform” and an obsession with speech regulation, an obsession shared by Bauer.

Any criminal investigation identifies for further scrutiny those with motive, opportunity, and means, and Bauer deserves no quarter from FBI investigators on those three counts.


Robert Bauer

The Crimes

Without any doubt, crimes were committed by IRS employees, not the least of which was the fact that IRS employees disclosed confidential information from IRS forms to the political enemies of the groups seeking tax-exempt status.

For example, Cindy Thomas, the Cincinnati unit manager for exempt organizations at the IRS, illegally released the tax applications of nine separate conservative organizations to the left-wing group ProPublica. The IRS claims that Thomas’ illegal release of private tax information was an “accident,” but the excuse is absurd.

Thomas wasn’t the only IRS employee leaking the tax information of conservative groups to their enemies. Pro-marriage groups found their confidential information in the hands of gay marriage advocacy organizations.

The FBI can start by finding out whether Thomas and her fellow IRS travelers in fact released the private information. If the FBI says Thomas cannot be prosecuted because she claims it was an accident, then Congress needs to step in and impose mandatory minimum prison sentences for any IRS employee that releases private information, accidental or not.

The bigger question the FBI must get to the bottom of is who hatched the policy of targeting Tea Party groups that led to these crimes? For that they should turn back to Robert Bauer.

The Motive

Robert Bauer had the motive to direct IRS policy against Tea Party groups. He is a longtime opponent of First Amendment freedoms and an advocate of government-speech regulation. He also can’t stand the work the Tea Party is conducting to monitor and eradicate voter fraud, work the Republican Party and national campaigns have utterly failed to perform.

During the 2008 election, while representing the Obama campaign, Bauer sent a threatening letter to the Justice Department demanding criminal investigations of people who had the audacity to speak about voter fraud. Bauer even singled out Sarah Palin in the letter. Anyone who “developed or disseminated” information about voter fraud, to Bauer, deserved the heavy boot of a criminal investigation. Read the letter; it reveals a nasty, thuggish, and lawless attitude toward political opposition.

To Bauer, those merely speaking about voter fraud were worthy of criminal investigation. Sound familiar?

Hindsight reveals why Bauer was so agitated. Two Obama campaign staffers, Amy Little and Yolanda Hippensteele, later pleaded guilty to voter fraud. We also know, courtesy of John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky, that a Minnesota election for U.S. Senate was decided by voter fraud in 2008. And who can forget Melowese Richardson, the Obama activist and poll official in Ohio who said on camera that she voted multiple times for President Obama in 2008? I could go on and on with multiple examples of voter fraud from 2008 where candidate Obama was the beneficiary.

No wonder Bauer was so anxious back in 2008 to shut everyone up.

Fast forward to 2012. Again, Mr. Bauer was up to his old tricks in his second stint as Obama campaign counsel, this time targeting Tea Party groups fighting for election integrity. Bauer and his campaign hench-lawyers called state election officials, seeking to unleash state criminal investigations of Tea Party groups working for election integrity. I have spoken with state election officials in at least three states which describe Obama campaign efforts to prompt state officials to target Tea Party groups.

I’m happy to share with the FBI special agents the names of those states if Mr. Bauer won’t.

Bauer even published this memo, specifically targeting True the Vote with outright lies so egregious he should be ashamed of himself.

After the Obama campaign voter fraud of 2008, in 2012 Bauer was anxious to remove election integrity groups from the polls as observers. If the IRS couldn’t slow the Tea Party watchdogs down, Bauer threatened them in other ways.

If the FBI special agents interview Mr. Bauer, it won’t be hard to conclude he had the motive to launch the Tea Party shakedown.

The Means

President Obama’s campaign counsel certainly had the motive to target the Tea Party, but did Bauer have the means as campaign counsel? Remember, Bauer served as White House counsel from November 2009 to June 2011, right during the time this IRS shakedown was hatched.

Anybody who has worked in the White House will tell you that the White House counsel enjoys a position of power like few others. They can make things happen with a phone call. One former West Wing staffer told me that “any department’s staff who received directions from Bauer would think they were getting directions from the president. The White House counsel has the power to make policy with a phone call.”

Something important happened two months after Bauer became White House counsel — the Supreme Court decided Citizens United vs. FEC, a decision that caused the left to go batty. They feared the decision might cost them the White House. President Obama boorishly (and inaccurately) addressed the decision in the 2010 State of the Union.

The FBI special agents should ask Bauer some simple questions: With whom did you speak at the IRS about conservative and Tea Party groups post-Citizens United? Did you direct anyone on your staff to do the same? Did you hear about anyone speaking with the IRS about Tea Party groups? Who hatched the IRS harassment, which started on your watch? Did you meet with Doug Shulman any of the 157 times he visited the White House, and did you discuss exempt status of conservative groups?

The Opportunity

The FBI agents might ask Bauer why a parade of Citizens United-obsessed speech-regulation zealots visited the West Wing just before the Tea Party shakedown went into effect.

Tova Wang, of the leftist Soros-funded group Demos, visited the White House and met with Bauer’s staff on June 2, 2010. In fact she hovered around the White House on multiple occasions during the critical time period the IRS policy was being crafted.

Perhaps she was there for the Easter Egg roll. Perhaps not. Either way, the FBI can ask.

Notorious speech-regulation advocate Richard Hasen also visited the White House and met with White House Counsel Robert Bauer on June 24, 2010. (See this absurd screed at Slate saying the post-Citizens United world is “worse than Watergate.” Freedom just rubs some people the wrong way.)

Perhaps Hasen was at the White House with Bauer to watch the longest match in Wimbledon history which occurred that day.

Perhaps not, especially since he previously met with Nicholas Colvin in the White House Counsel’s office on June 21 and 23. Again, the FBI can find out if they ask.

Bauer or his staff met with a number of other ivory tower academics and activists interested in controlling free political speech through the spring of 2010. These also include the noisy reformer Meredith McGehee.

We don’t yet know who engineered the illegal, criminal, and disgusting IRS shakedown of Tea Party and conservative groups. But one thing is certain: Robert Bauer had the motive, the opportunity, and the means to do it. The good folks at the FBI are now busy preparing names of people to interview. They better not leave Mr. Bauer off the list, or his stream of visitors.

The parties better not coordinate stories ahead of time. These days, I hear the Justice Department has adopted an aggressive approach to email and phone records, at least for Fox News.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350279/msnbcs-martin-bashir-says-irs-new-nr-charles-c-w-cooke


MSNBC’s Martin Bashir: ‘IRS’ Is the New ‘N****r’
By Charles C. W. Cooke

The GOP is using the term “IRS” in place of the term “n****r,” MSNBC host Martin Bashir claimed on his Wednesday show.

“Republicans are using [the IRS scandal] as their latest weapon in the war against the black man in the White House,” he suggested. ”IRS” is the new “N****r.” Bashir gave a nod to the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater, to whom he attributed the subtle strategy.

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

I didn't know you were on MSNBC mc mark.

 

CONFIRMED: IRS Scandal Tied Directly to Obama Campaign

Scandal: The president's deputy campaign manager attended the "nonpolitical" ObamaCare implementation meetings with the former IRS commissioner at the White House. She wasn't there to discuss the Easter Egg Roll.

A clue as to whether the targeting by the IRS of Tea Party and other conservative groups was discussed at the 157 meetings that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman had at the White House may be found in remarks by Stephanie Cutter, deputy manager for President Obama's 2012 reelection campaign, in a recent appearance on Jake Tapper's show "The Lead" on CNN.

As reported by Gateway Pundit, Cutter attempted to dismiss charges they were political meetings but admitted she had attended meetings with Shulman at the White House. "I was in them with him," Cutter said. "So there was nothing nefarious going on."

Well, if they were not political meetings, why was she there at all? Was she there to offer her health care or tax code expertise?

Cutter became Obama's deputy campaign manager in September 2011. Shulman, a Democratic donor, was IRS commissioner from March 24, 2008, to November 9, 2012. Cutter was an Obama attack dog during the 2012 campaign.

When she appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" to defend the president's new campaign slogan "Romnesia," she went on to say that Republican nominee Mitt Romney was "severely conservative" and had run as the "ideal" Tea Party candidate. She said this as she was sitting in meetings with the head of an IRS that was charged with implementation of ObamaCare as it was targeting groups that were created to oppose ObamaCare.

Though she denies it, Cutter was also deeply involved in the ads run by the pro-Obama super-PAC Priorities USA in which steelworker Joe Soptic recounted how his wife died of cancer after he lost his health insurance when his plant was shuttered after a takeover by Bain Capital and other companies working with Romney's private equity firm.

Cutter appeared on CNN in August 2012 to say, among other things, that "I don't know the facts" about the Soptic case, something she had to say since coordination between political campaigns and such issue-oriented groups is illegal. She lied.

In May 2012, Cutter herself hosted a conference call in which Soptic detailed his case to reporters.

During the call, as he did in the ad, Soptic explained how his wife fell ill after he lost his job, and how he lost his health insurance. The call took place as Soptic began appearing in Obama campaign ads and was profiled on the Obama campaign website.

Cutter was not only on the call, she also introduced Soptic and wrapped up his testimony. And as to any campaign coordination, Rush Limbaugh and others have noted that Soptic is apparently wearing the same shirt for campaign ads of both the Priorities USA and Obama For America, Obama's 2012 campaign organization, that were allegedly taped months apart.

Priorities USA is self-described as a social welfare 501(c)4 and is not required to disclose individuals, corporations or union organizations that have donated in an effort to affect the 2012 election.

It's no different from Crossroads GPS, the Karl Rove-affiliated group that Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin asked Shulman in a letter to investigate. Yet it escaped the "special scrutiny" the IRS reserved for targeted Tea Party groups.

Cutter should be called to testify under oath before the House Oversight Committee to explain why a key Obama campaign operative was in on meetings to discuss ObamaCare implementation with an IRS official whose agency was targeting groups opposed to it.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-edito...r-met-with-douglas-shulman-at-white-house.htm