IRS Targeted Conservative Groups

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IRS official Lois Lerner takes the 5th at congressional hearing.


"After very careful consideration, I've decided to follow my counsel's advice and not testify or answer any of the questions today. Because I'm asserting my right not to testify, I know that some people will assume that I've done something wrong.

:wave:

One of the basic functions of the 5th amendment is to protect innocent individuals and that is the protection I'm invoking today."

One of the few rights in the Bill of Rights not under assult by this administration. :hmm:
 
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Just a guess but if this was a thread about the IRS under GWB targeting liberal groups with "green," "progressive," or any "phobia" you can think of; we would now be on page 80-something. We got at least 50 pages when a Republican used the word macaca.

Ignoring the Constitution
Abuse of Executive Powers
Cronyism, corruption
Lack of leadership on our most pressing problems
Misleading, misdirecting, misinforming, anything but presenting the truth... blah... FORWARD!!
 
What the IRS did was wrong. Once there is evidence presented that ties this back to the Obama Administration, then it will deserve the outrage that you're giving it.
 
Former IRS Chief Shulman Reportedly Visited White House at Least 157 Times

Former IRS Chief Shulman Reportedly Visited White House at Least 157 Times
Thursday, 30 May 2013 07:50 PM
By Todd Beamon

The former head of the embattled Internal Revenue Service visited the White House at least 157 times since President Barack Obama first took office in 2009 — more times than any other Cabinet member, an analysis of visitor logs shows.

The visits by former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman were more than double those of Attorney General Eric Holder, one of the president's closest allies and who remains under fire for several scandals involving the Justice Department, The Daily Caller reports.

Holder has visited the White House only 62 times since he became attorney general, according to the analysis.

Shulman's visits contrasted with his predecessor, Mark Everson, who visited the White House only once during the four years of the George W. Bush administration.

Shulman's visits raise questions about what was discussed with White House officials — even the president — particularly when the IRS was singling out tea party, conservative, and religious groups for extra scrutiny over their applications for tax-exempt status, the Daily Caller reports.

For instance, during a period in which the groups were targeted — through the 2012 election and as far back as 2010 — Shulman logged 118 trips to the White House.


Wrong Digitize, try illegal.

USA TODAY

The world is learning about the corruption of the IRS in targeting conservative groups, including various Tea Party organizations, for heightened scrutiny. But the corruption goes much deeper than harassing groups seeking first time non-profit designations, into actively sabotaging existing non-profit groups by releasing confidential information.

In March of 2012 the Human Rights Campaign published a confidential tax return of the National Organization for Marriage, which was immediately republished byThe Huffington Post and other liberal news media outlets. The HRC and NOM are the leading national groups on opposing sides of the fight over gay marriage. HRC wants to redefine marriage to make it genderless, while NOM wishes to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Our case was particularly egregious because the IRS leak of confidential information fed directly into an ongoing political battle. For months before March 2012, the pro-gay marriage HRC had been demanding that my group, NOM, publicly identify its major donors, something that NOM and many other non-profits refuse to do. The reason is simple. In the past, gay marriage advocates have used such information to launch campaigns of intimidation against traditional marriage supporters.

Just as gay marriage proponents were demanding the information, the IRS appears to have illegally given them exactly what they were looking for. The tax return released by the HRC contained the names and addresses of dozens of major donors to NOM. And there's little doubt where the documents came from. The tax returns contained internal coding added by the IRS after the returns were originally submitted.

For the IRS to leak any organization's tax return to its political opponents is an outrageous breach of ethics and, if proven, constitutes a felony. Every organization — liberal and conservative — should shudder at the idea of the IRS playing politics with its confidential tax return information. But the situation here is even more egregious because the head of the HRC was at the time serving as a national co-chair of President Obama's re-election campaign.

It is imperative that congressional investigators get to the bottom of the issue. If the IRS can get away with leaking NOM's confidential tax return to its chief political opponent, then no taxpayer is safe from political retribution by the federal government.


John Eastman, a constitutional law professor at Chapman University, is chairman of theNational Organization for Marriage.
 
There are still missing links here. "Obama meets with IRS head a lot" + "IRS agents to [illegal/wrong] stuff" =/= "Obama orders IRS agents to do [illegal/wrong] stuff".
 
For the record, however, I don't have an issue with Congress appointing a special prosecutor or whatever, as long as (s)he is not hopelessly biased and on a witch hunt.
 
Most, if not all, of those meetings with Shulman were also attended by policy wonks heavily involved in the health care act. Turns out that enacting the health care laws required lots of changes to taxation of health care, hence the need for IRS input. Plus, visits to the White House do not necessarily involve the President.

The only big revelation so far about these scandals is that there is no connection to Obama. Not that it's stopping you and lots of conservatives from desperately trying to pin it to him.
 
I don't have a problem with Congress abolishing the IRS and going to a flat/fair/sales tax approach but the Left will never give up the progessive tax code and the IRS.
 
Most, if not all, of those meetings with Shulman were also attended by policy wonks heavily involved in the health care act. Turns out that enacting the health care laws required lots of changes to taxation of health care, hence the need for IRS input. Plus, visits to the White House do not necessarily involve the President.

The only big revelation so far about these scandals is that there is no connection to Obama. Not that it's stopping you and lots of conservatives from desperately trying to pin it to him.

There has been some great colums on this from conservative writers.

IRS Follows Obama's Lead - Jonah Goldberg - Page 1

Of course the president deserves some of the blame.

Yes, it's extremely unlikely he ordered the IRS to discriminate against tea party, pro-life or Jewish groups opposed to his agenda (though why anyone should take his word for it is beyond me). And his outrage now -- however convenient -- is appreciated. But when people he views as his "enemies" complained about a politicized IRS, what did he do? Nothing.

Imagine for a moment if black civil rights organizations, gay groups or teachers unions loudly complained to members of Congress and the press that the IRS was discriminating against them. How long would it take for the White House to investigate? Answer honestly: Minutes? Hours? OK, maybe days if there was an attack on one of our embassies that the administration was busy ignoring.

Obviously, it would take longer for Obama to actually get to the bottom of the accusations and, if true, punish those responsible. But you can be sure that the moment he heard credible allegations of political persecution of liberal groups -- outfits with "progressive" or "civil rights" in their names -- he would have moved heaven and earth to make things right.

But when such allegations came from the right, the response from the president -- and from a press corps that until recently acted like a king's guard -- ranged from smirks and eye-rolling to flat-out lies or virtual applause.

For 27 months, groups with such terms as "tea party" or "patriot" in their names were singled out for deeply intrusive and expensive scrutiny, while groups flying the "progressive" banner sailed through. Drew Ryun gave up trying to get IRS approval for a free market organization after 17 months of bureaucratic stonewalling. But when he applied for approval of an organization called "Greenhouse Solutions" he got the go-ahead in three weeks.

When top Democratic senators pressured the IRS to single out conservative groups not just for special scrutiny but for "caps" on how much money they could spend, President Obama didn't tell Chuck Schumer, Carl Levin or Max Baucus to cool it.

But Obama's culpability in all of this isn't restricted merely to his sins of omission. Throughout his presidency, Obama has set a very clear tone.

He's made it clear that people who disagree with him are fevered, illegitimate, weird, creepy, dangerous, stupid, confused, ignorant or some other adjective you might assign to a revamped version of the seven dwarves.
He's explained that he doesn't mind "cleaning up after" after Republicans but he doesn't want to hear "a lot of talking" from them. The time for democratic debate is always behind us with an administration that began with the mission not to let a crisis go to waste, for as Obama said in his second inaugural address, "Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time."

Moreover, President Obama often insists we live in a country where the "government is us," where there's no need to fear tyranny "around the corner" because we could never be tyrannical against ourselves.

In his 2012 State of the Union address, Obama lamented that the American people couldn't function more like the military. Soldiers aren't "consumed with personal ambition. They don't obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach." Never mind that we have a military to keep us free, not to be a role model Translation: I wish Americans would fall in line and follow orders.

It's a funny thing. In his address to Congress right after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush said, "Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." For the better part of a decade, many liberals bizarrely insisted that this warning to terror-supporting states abroad was in fact a kind of fatwa encouraging persecution of Bush's political opponents at home.

And yet, nearly every day, President Obama divides the country between the forces of truth and reason and the forces of deceit and selfishness. He and his supporters are the "ones we've been waiting for," while his opponents, well, we don't need any more talk out of them.

So fine. Obama probably didn't order the IRS to keep his opponents from talking. But these bureaucrats certainly acted like ones he'd been waiting for.
This Is No Ordinary Scandal - WSJ.com
The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.

But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.

A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.

The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists.

In order to suppress conservative groups—at first those with words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their names, then including those that opposed ObamaCare or advanced the Second Amendment—the IRS demanded donor rolls, membership lists, data on all contributions, names of volunteers, the contents of all speeches made by members, Facebook posts, minutes of all meetings, and copies of all materials handed out at gatherings. Among its questions: What are you thinking about? Did you ever think of running for office? Do you ever contact political figures? What are you reading? One group sent what it was reading: the U.S. Constitution.

The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last June, for the first time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife and his business were also soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government's attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare."

And now we know a third part of the scandal, that tax info about conservative groups was given by the IRS to liberal groups.

Cues from Above: The White House and the IRS | National Review Online

‘Horrible customer service.” That’s what the newly fired IRS commissioner averred was the agency’s only sin in singling out conservative political groups for discriminatory treatment.

In such grim proceedings one should be grateful for unintended humor. Horrible customer service is when every patron in a restaurant finds a fly in his soup. But when the maitre d’ screens patrons for their politics and only conservatives find flies paddle-wheeling through their consommé, the problem is not poor service. It is harassment and invidious discrimination.

And yet both the acting and the previous IRS commissioners insisted that the singling out of groups according to their politics was in no way politically motivated. More hilarity. It’s definitional: If you discriminate according to politics, your discrimination is political. It’s a tautology, for God’s sake.

The IRS responds that this classification was for efficiency, to cut down on overwork. Ridiculous. How does demanding answers to endless intrusive and irrelevant questions, creating mountains of unnecessary paperwork for both applicant and the IRS, reduce the workload?

We are further asked to believe that a cadre of Cincinnati GS-11s is a hotbed of radical-left activism in America. Is anyone stupid enough to believe that?

That’s why the IRS scandal has legs. And because pulling the myriad loose ends of this improbable tale will be the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Democrat Max Baucus. So much for any reflexive administration charge of a partisan witch hunt.

On Wednesday, however, the issue was in the hands of the House Oversight Committee. It allowed Lois Lerner, the IRS official who had already apologized for targeting tea-party groups, to read an opening statement claiming total innocence: “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.” She then refused, on grounds of self-incrimination, to answer any questions.

Perhaps not wanting to appear overbearing, Chairman Darrell Issa gave her a pass, pending legal advice on whether she had forfeited her Fifth Amendment shield by making a statement. Then again, Lerner’s performance may not have endeared her to the average viewer. Her arrogance reminded anyone who needed reminding why the IRS is so unloved. Try saying what she said — I deny, I deny, I deny, and I refuse to answer any of your questions — when you’re next called in for an IRS audit.

Does the IRS scandal go all the way up to the top? As of now, it’s doubtful. It’s nearly inconceivable that anyone would be stupid enough to have given such a politically fatal directive from the White House (although admittedly the bar is rapidly falling).

But when some bureaucrat is looking for cues from above, it matters when the president of the United States denounces the Supreme Court decision that allowed the proliferation of 501(c)(4)s and specifically calls the resulting “special interest groups” running ads to help Republicans “not just a threat to Democrats” but “a threat to our democracy.” That’s especially telling when it comes amid letters from Democratic senators to the IRS urging aggressive scrutiny of 501(c)(4) applications.

A White House can powerfully shape other perceptions as well. For years the administration has conducted a concerted campaign to demonize Fox News, delegitimizing it as a news organization and even urging its ostracism. Then (surprise!) its own Justice Department takes the unprecedented step of naming a Fox reporter a co-conspirator in a leak case — when no reporter has ever been prosecuted for merely soliciting information — in order to invade his and Fox’s private and journalistic communications.

No one goes to jail for creating such climates of intolerance. Nor is it a crime to incessantly claim that those who offer this president opposition and push back – i.e., Republicans, tea partiers, Fox News, whoever dares resist the sycophantic thrill-up-my-leg media adulation — do so only for “politics,” power, and pure partisanship, while the Dear Leader devotes himself exclusively to the nation, the middle class, the good, and the just.

It’s not unlawful to run an ad hominem presidency. It’s merely shameful. The great rhetorical specialty of this president has been his unrelenting attribution of bad faith to those who disagree with him. He acts on principle; they from the basest of instincts.

Well then, why not harass them? Why not ask the content of their prayers? Why not read their e-mails? Why not give them especially horrible customer service?


Waiter! There’s a fly . . .
 
Just a guess but if this was a thread about the IRS under GWB targeting liberal groups with "green," "progressive," or any "phobia" you can think of; we would now be on page 80-something. We got at least 50 pages when a Republican used the word macaca.

Ignoring the Constitution
Abuse of Executive Powers
Cronyism, corruption
Lack of leadership on our most pressing problems
Misleading, misdirecting, misinforming, anything but presenting the truth... blah... FORWARD!!



And all of this is preferable to losing two wars, letting New Orleans sink, presiding over the worsr terrorist attack in US history, and the orgy of spending that combined with unfounded tax cuts exploded the deficit and caused the Great Recession.
 
A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.

Wow, what great insight. This is a revolutionary way at looking at politics and the presidency. Tell me more! :cute:
 
A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.

Just think of how much fun we can have with that theory :D

This whole idea of Obama being arrogant doesn't sit well with me. It almost comes off as 'uppity black man in the White House'. It's truly ironic when it comes from the mouth of someone like Rush :lmao:

I think any person who makes it to the highest office in the country may have some arrogance and will have some confidence that is perceived as arrogant. My biggest problem with these "conservative writers"(thanks INDY for that entertainment) and a lot of the criticism of Obama is when they criticize him for the things that ALL presidents do. Don't get me wrong, Obama has PLENTY to criticize him over, but let's stop criticizing him for his vacations, photo ops, teleprompter, or playing politics. Name me a president that hasn't done this?

Not that these things are beyond criticism, many of them might just be, but it's not the individual that deserves this blame. The system is broken, it's taken decades to slowly break and will take a long time to fix.
 
If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too.

If this is true it also applies to the leadership of the opposition. But as we all know to be true, republicans have been the very picture of humility, bipartisanship and respect for their opponents.
 
I don't have a problem with Congress abolishing the IRS and going to a flat/fair/sales tax approach but the Left will never give up the progessive tax code and the IRS.

Great idea. Everyone who makes more money than you can't wait for you to carry the load on their behalf!

Do you wonder at all why no reputable economist (including free market ones that would appeal to your particular ideology) is supportive of this? That the only way this could ever work is if alongside a flat/consumption tax you enacted a tax code AND an IRS-type body to administer deductions and rebates to low- and middle-income individuals?
 
News flash, everyone! Conservative writers think this is all Obama's fault!

1) He orchestrated it
2) He put people in place that understood Chicago thugpolitics
3) He's an incompetent, detached boob of an executive

Either way, yes, "this is all Obama's fault."

Don't you at least tire of the constantly changing stories, lack of accountability and hubris behind all these "scandals"?
 
Great idea. Everyone who makes more money than you can't wait for you to carry the load on their behalf!

Do you wonder at all why no reputable economist (including free market ones that would appeal to your particular ideology) is supportive of this? That the only way this could ever work is if alongside a flat/consumption tax you enacted a tax code AND an IRS-type body to administer deductions and rebates to low- and middle-income individuals?


So you defend a tax code so complex that Americans spend 6 billion hours/year and $265 billion/year to comply with?

You defend a tax code that has become the playground of politicians and social engineers to affect the behavior of Americans by subsidizing this, taxing that or allowing deductions for this?

You defend a tax code that swells Washington D.C with lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, crony capitalists and special interest groups?

You defend a tax code that allows demagogues to pit Americans against Americans in the name of "fairness" and "entitlement"?

Well I say it's crap not to mention inconsistent with our founding principles of limited government, private property rights and individual sovereignty. Oh yes, some of us still believe in those.

Ps You'd be surprised how many countries or states in the U.S. have flat tax rates.
 
Wow, what great insight. This is a revolutionary way at looking at politics and the presidency. Tell me more! :cute:

Wouldn't it be fun to go back and find all the posters here blaming GWB for the abuses at Abu Ghraib because of his "cowboy" mentality in running the war and the people he put in key positions.

You know, back when we thought "the fish rots from the head" and "dissent is patriotic."
 
The tax code (and not just the American version) is overly complicated, full of ridiculous loopholes and basically a goldmine for tax lawyers and nobody else. It needs major reform and simplification.

What you said, INDY, is to abolish the tax code and get rid of the administering authority. Which is preposterous for many reasons.

I am obviously aware that there are states with flat tax. Are you aware of the deductions and exemptions permitted under such a system and a need for a centralized tax authority to process these?

A flat tax is regressive without a very carefully crafted tax code to support it. You don't seem to mind the regressive nature of it; my point is that in supporting it, you are actually aiding every person out there who is wealthier than you. I'm sure they don't mind. :up:
 
my point is that in supporting it, you are actually aiding every person out there who is wealthier than you. I'm sure they don't mind. :up:



:up:

Not at all.

It will help is buy a child who we will subject to a motherless home and use to prove that children do best with two parents irregardless of gender. Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha
 
1) He orchestrated it
2) He put people in place that understood Chicago thugpolitics
3) He's an incompetent, detached boob of an executive

1. I thought this guy was incompetent and never ran a business, so how come all of a sudden he's smart enough to orchestrate such huge conspiracies?

2. So Obama was so brilliant that he somehow convinced Bush to assign the "thugs" to the IRS to do his bidding years later? I have to say you are wrong on this one. This isn't the talking heads slogan "Chicago thugpolitics" bullshit, this is New World Order shit, don't be so blind.

3. Now "incompetent", "detached", and "boob" are terms you should be very well acquainted with, should we start with how these terms equate with the GOP, or shall we go more micro and just discuss how they equate with you?
 
The tax code (and not just the American version) is overly complicated, full of ridiculous loopholes and basically a goldmine for tax lawyers and nobody else. It needs major reform and simplification.

What you said, INDY, is to abolish the tax code and get rid of the administering authority. Which is preposterous for many reasons.

No, establish a tax code minus almost all the loopholes, shelters, subsides, etc. And I wouldn't abolish the entire IRS, just the harassing, tyrannical 3/4ths or so of it.

A flat tax is regressive without a very carefully crafted tax code to support it. You don't seem to mind the regressive nature of it; my point is that in supporting it, you are actually aiding every person out there who is wealthier than you. I'm sure they don't mind. :up:

What is wrong with a system where a citizen that makes 10 X more or 10 X less than what I make pays 10 X more or 10 X less in total taxes? Other, that is, than it's fair in the true sense of the word rather than the class warfare sense of fair?
 
That is utter bullshit. The very poor, the middling poor, the plain old middle, spend a far greater proportion of their income on goods and services necessary to their day to day living. A cup of coffee, a bag of tomatoes, still costs about the same if the person buying it has $5 billion in the bank, as it does if they have $5 in the bank (albeit they might not be frequenting the same establishment).
 
That is utter bullshit. The very poor, the middling poor, the plain old middle, spend a far greater proportion of their income on goods and services necessary to their day to day living. A cup of coffee, a bag of tomatoes, still costs about the same if the person buying it has $5 billion in the bank, as it does if they have $5 in the bank (albeit they might not be frequenting the same establishment).


Maybe they should have thought about that before choosing to be poor.
 
Maybe I should have thought about ... something... before injecting this crack into my eyeball. Blue crack I mean. Whatevs.
 
That is utter bullshit. The very poor, the middling poor, the plain old middle, spend a far greater proportion of their income on goods and services necessary to their day to day living. A cup of coffee, a bag of tomatoes, still costs about the same if the person buying it has $5 billion in the bank, as it does if they have $5 in the bank (albeit they might not be frequenting the same establishment).

So you argue that the price of a Peppermint Mocha Vente should be progressive; subject to the status of automobile you pull up to the drive thru window in?
You recommend a form of commerce in which shoppers present their bank statement to the Kroger cashier prior to checking out so proper adjustments can be made to their cart of groceries and sundries?

In the name of fairness of course.
 
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