Thread: IRS revokes conservative group’s tax-exempt status over anti-Clinton statements

IRS revokes conservative group’s tax-exempt status over anti-Clinton statements


By Jessica Chasmar
-
The Washington Times
Monday, April 21, 2014

The Internal Revenue Servicehas revoked the tax-exempt status of a conservative charity for making statements critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry, according to a USA Today report.

The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, based in Manassas, Va., “has shown a pattern of deliberate and consistent intervention in political campaigns” and made “repeated statements supporting or opposing various candidates by expressing its opinion of the respective candidate’s character and qualifications,” according to a written determination released Friday by the IRS.

The IRS said the center acted as an “action organization” by publishing alerts on its website for columns written by its president, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The IRS pointed out a column that appeared to be published by Townhall on April 2, 2004, in which Mr. Aldrich wrote, “if John Kerry promises otherwise ill-informed swing-voters lower gas prices at the pump, more than a few greedy, registered ignoramuses will follow him anywhere,” the Free Beacon reported.

Another article cited by the IRS was a 2005 piece titled “Stop Hillary Now!,” which rallied “Clinton haters” to inform voters of Hillary Clinton’s “atrocious conduct,” USA Today reported.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in an interview with The Washington Post last week that the IRS and Treasury Department are likely to rewrite controversial draft guidelines to better define “candidate-related political activities.”
“My bottom line is that it’s in everyone’s interest to have clarification,” he said. “My position since I started more than four months ago is that we ought to have clarity, and that any rule that comes out ought to be fair and easy to administer.”
Conservatives have argued that the proposals are just another way for the Obama administration to target right-leaning groups.
A Fox News poll published last week revealed that 49 percent of American voters believe the IRS intentionally targeted conservative organizations.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...#ixzz2zZPK2TAX

WND EXCLUSIVE

IRS gives free pass to famous Obama leftist group

But strips tax-exempt status from small conservative nonprofit

Published: 18 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A stunning example of IRS political activity and liberal bias is sitting in plain view for all the world to see, following an investigation by WND.
The IRS has just stripped a small, obscure, conservative nonprofit of its tax-exempt status for two alleged rule violations a decade ago, while taking a hands-off approach to a famous leftist website that’s well-financed by billionaire George Soros and other liberals and has engaged in more egregious practices for years, and on a much vaster scale.
George Soros

On Monday, USA Today published an IRS document confirming that in February the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status for the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a small, conservative group founded in 1997 and based in Manassas, Va. The group had operated for years as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. The center advertises itself as “committed to fostering, promoting, and advocating the restoration of Liberty as the primary object of American society.”
To make its case against Patrick Henry, the IRS had to go as far back as 10 years ago to find a pair of items it considered unacceptable political activity by the nonprofit.
The IRS cited a 2004 column by the group’s president, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, that was critical of John Kerry and a 2005 fundraising letter that criticized Hillary Clinton.
The liberal behemoth Media Matters is also a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. It claims on its website to be a “progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”
Media Matters operates freely as a tax-exempt organization without any apparent interference from the IRS, while its website has literally thousands of highly partisan political articles on public display, virtually all of them advocating extremely liberal positions.
The IRS said it revoked Patrick Henry’s tax-exempt status because it “has shown a pattern of deliberate and consistent intervention in political campaigns” and made “repeated statements supporting or opposing various candidates by expressing its opinion of the respective candidate’s character and qualifications.”
However, even a cursory review reveals that Media Matters has for years published countless articles that blatantly attempt “intervention in political campaigns” and support or oppose candidates.
WND was able to quickly and easily demonstrate the organization’s political advocacy by merely searching the Media Matters website for the word “Romney” from Oct. 6, 2012, to Nov. 6, 2012, a period comprising just the one month before the 2012 presidential election.
WND found Media Matters had published 238 articles containing the word “Romney” in just that month, virtually all of them either supporting the incumbent, President Obama, or opposing the challenger, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
The 238 articles included such hyper-partisan headlines as:

• “Wall Street Journal Pretends Romney’s Tax Plan Adds Up”

• “NY Times Helps Romney Soft-Pedal His Stance On Abortion”

• “The Obama of Conservative Fantasy”

• “Will the Media Help Romney Surrogate Catapult Bogus Libya Hearings Into Big News?”

• “NY Times’ Brooks Acts As (Inaccurate) Mouthpiece for Romney-Ryan Medicare Plan”

• “Fox’s Doocy Pushes ‘Apology Tour’ Myth, Claiming Obama Apologized for ‘The Murder of Four of Our Americans’ In Libya”

• “NBC’s David Gregory Uncritically Airs Romney Unemployment Falsehood”

• “Fox’s Bolling Falsely Claims Romney Never Said ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt’”

• “Fox Airs Misleading Fact Check of Romney Jeep Ad”

• “Hyping Benghazi Madness, Right-Wing Projects Its Darkest Obama Fantasies”

• “Fox Pushes Jobs Trutherism in Anticipation of October Jobs Report”

• “NY Times Gives ‘Moderate’ Romney A Pass on Abortion”

• “Will Right-Wing Media’s Hatred of Auto Bailout Cost GOP the Election?”

• “Right-Wing Media Defend Romney’s False Claim That Chrysler is Sending Jobs to China”

• “WSJ Op-Ed Pushes Falsehoods About Obama’s Navy Policies”

• “George Will Dismisses Romney’s Anti-Women’s Rights Stances”

• “Brit Hume Credits Fox’s Falsehood-Laden Libya Coverage for Getting Out the Facts About Benghazi”

• “Fox’s Hemmer Parrots Romney’s ’12 Million Jobs’ Lie”

• “Fair And Balanced? Fox News’ Hour-Long Attack on Obama’s ‘Green Agenda’”

• “Fox’s Kelly Excuses Actual Lie While Attacking Obama Campaign for Highlighting Romney Untruths”

• “Conservative Media Attack Obama Campaign, Media for Pointing Out Romney Debate Falsehoods”

• “Fox Echoes Falsehood That Obama is ‘Leading From Behind’ on Foreign Policy”

• “MSNBC’s Scarborough Revives ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Myth to Attack Obama”

• “CBS News Covers for Romney Campaign’s Tax Doublespeak”

• “Media Cite True Obama Statements to Claim ‘Both Candidates’ Lied During Debate”

• “Krugman: Media Commentators Have a Responsibility to Point Out and Debunk Romney’s ‘Flat-Out Untruths’”

Media Matters might claim to be following the IRS rules against engaging in partisan politics because it states it is criticizing the messenger, not the message, in its self-described mission of “correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”
But a headline such as “Fox’s Hemmer Parrots Romney’s ’12 Million Jobs’ Lie” presupposes that Romney was lying. It is a tactic Media Matters uses routinely.
And it is not just during the run-up to an election that Media Matters publishes virulent attacks on conservatives.
Just Wednesday, Media Matters’ website featured these hyper-partisan headlines:

• “Celebrating Affirmative Action Ban Decision, Right-Wing Media Ride the Reverse Racism Unicorn”

• “Meet the Conspiracy Theorists Behind the New Benghazi Report Hyped By Fox”

• “Newest Birther Conspiracy Involves the CIA, a Secret DNA Test, Edward Snowden, and a Missing Nuclear Weapon”

• “How Conservatives Helped Dinesh D’Souza ‘Get His Story Out There’”

• “Health Care Experts Rip Ben Carson’s ‘Near Worthless’ Health Care Plan”

• “Right-Wing Media Continue Their Misinformation on Schuette, the Supreme Court’s Latest Awful Affirmative Action Decision”

• “Fox’s Tantaros: Supreme Court Rolling Back Civil Rights Laws is What ‘Martin Luther King Wished For’”

• “Fox Pushes False Claim That Obama’s Clemency Program is Unconstitutional and Unprecedented”

• “Fox’s O’Reilly: If ‘You Oppose Gay Marriage, You Could Get Hurt’”

• “All-White Fox Business Panel Agrees: Obama Administration Trying to Make America Look Racist”

• “Hannity: ‘I Don’t Apologize’ for Touting Cliven Bundy’s Standoff With Federal Agents”

• “REPORT: Eighty-Five Percent of Climate Change Guests Are Men”

• “Fox’s Varney: Economists Are ‘Flat Out Wrong’ About The Math Of Repealing Obamacare”

• “The Hypocrisy Of Peggy Noonan’s ‘Modest’ Attack On Hillary Clinton”

• “6 Things You Should Know About Conservative Media Darling Dr. Ben Carson”

• “Fox Interview of GOP Senate Candidate Features Campaign Ad & Obamacare Lies”

Media Matters’ blatant support of liberals and attacks on conservatives are not limited to the headlines. They are evidenced in the articles themselves.
A piece Wednesday titled “Fox Interview of GOP Senate Candidate Features Campaign Ad & Obamacare Lies” contained the following statements:
“Fox News gave Republican Senate candidate Rep. Tom Cotton (AK) the royal treatment, giving airtime to his latest campaign ad and inviting him on for a softball interview with host Eric Bolling, who failed to challenge Cotton on his faulty assertions that the Affordable Care Act is ‘failing’ for the people of Arkansas.
“The Fox host aired the entirety of the Senate candidate’s latest campaign ad, then proceeded to ask a series of open-ended questions, many loaded with an anti-Democratic premise.
“The GOP has already committed to a strategy of trying to win the Senate by demonizing Obamacare, and Fox News appears more than willing to aid and abet them with the smears and myths necessary to accomplish that feat in the face of the law’s success.
“Republican attack ads frequently find unpaid airtime in Fox broadcasts, and Fox has already kicked into high gear to help other Republican Senate candidates running in 2014.”
The IRS has come under intense scrutiny for inappropriately targeting conservative organizations, ever since former tax-exempt division chief Lois Lerner admitted the practice in May 2012.
But they agency has not been placed under any apparent restraints, with President Obama even insisting that there is not a “smidgeon” of corruption.

In fact, as WND has documented, the IRS is now trying to change the rules governing tax-exempt organizations so that controversial actions once considered against policy now become standard practice.
As WND also reported, the nation’s largest grassroots group, Tea Party Patriots, announced earlier this month it is suing the Obama administration to stop what it considers the use of the IRS as a political tool to discriminate against conservatives.
As for the latest revelation of IRS action against a conservative group, Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty President Gary Aldrich told USA Today he had no comment on the IRS decision to revoke his group’s tax-exempt status. He told WND he was remaining silent on the advice of his attorney.
The disparity in the IRS treatment between Aldrich’s group and Media Matters becomes even more pronounced once the size and strength of the liberal powerhouse is considered.
An investigation into tax returns and websites of foundations by the Daily Caller in February 2012 revealed the vast extent of wealthy liberals’ support for Media Matters.
The group had collected almost $29 million since 2003 from rich and powerful liberals, representing 54 percent of the money raised in its history.
The Daily Caller said: “The list of Media Matters’ foundation funders, 120 in all, reads like a Who’s Who of the American progressive movement, including the far-left Tides Foundation ($4,384,702), George Soros’ Open Society Institutes ($1,075,000), the Ford Foundation ($966,466), the Sandler Foundation ($400,000) — endowed by subprime mortgage lenders Herb and Marion Sandler, who once bankrolled the embattled ACORN organization — and the Schumann Fund for Media and Democracy ($600,000), managed by longtime PBS host Bill Moyers and his son.
“They also include the anti-George W. Bush organization MoveOn.org ($50,000), the Barbra Streisand Foundation ($85,000), the kids’ shoes-powered Stride Rite Charitable Foundation ($25,000), the Lear Family Foundation ($55,000) — endowed by the TV producer and People for the American Way founder Norman Lear — and the Joyce Foundation ($400,000), whose board of directors included Barack Obama from 1994 to 2002.”
The Daily Caller published a full list of donors to Media Matters.
WND discovered Media Matters apparently in bed with the Obama administration in its efforts to deceive Americans about Obamacare. In November 2013, Media Matters funded the group that reportedly crafted President Obama’s false claim that Americans can maintain their “choice” of doctors and insurance plans. The little-known Herndon Alliance has been behind the marketing of Obamacare since the inception of the legislation.
WND even discovered a personal connection between President Obama and Media Matters, reporting in February 2012 that President Obama served eight years on the board of a charity that is a top donor to Media Matters for America progressive activist organization.
Obama is also tied to numerous other top Media Matters donors and fundraisers, including a foundation run by the finance chairman of his 2008 presidential campaign, Penny Pritzker.
Hillary Clinton has claimed an even closer relationship to Media Matters.
In a video of her appearance at Yearly Kos in August 2007, she took pride in “institutions that I helped start and support, like Media Matters.”
Media Matters may now find it difficult to skirt one IRS rule.
Gateway Pundit reports Media Matters Chairman David Brock identifies himself on his Twitter profile as a “Democratic political activist.”
The publications asks whether the IRS will now strip Media Matters of its tax-exempt statues for being a Democratic Party front group.
Follow Garth Kant on Twitter @DCgarth

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/irs-gives...QHO0bOsLKmz.99

IRS Gives Bonuses to 1,100 Employees Who Owe Back Taxes

Posted by Michael Becker on Apr 23, 2014

The Internal Revenue Service has paid more than $2.8 million in bonuses to employees with recent disciplinary problems, including $1 million to workers who owed back taxes, a government investigator said Tuesday.

Enter to win the Family Gun Package Giveaway!

More than 2,800 workers got bonuses despite facing a disciplinary action in the previous year, including 1,150 who owed back taxes, said a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The bonuses were awarded from October 2010 through December 2012.

George’s report said the bonus program doesn’t violate federal regulations, but it’s inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws.

“These awards are designed to recognize and reward IRS employees for a job well done, and that is appropriate, because the IRS should encourage good performance,” George said. “However, while not prohibited, providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration.”

Other examples of misconduct by workers getting bonuses included misusing government credit cards for travel, drug use, violent threats and fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits.

The IRS said it has developed a new policy linking conduct and performance bonuses for executives and senior level employees.

“Even without a formal policy in place over the past four years, the IRS has not issued awards to any executives that were subject to a disciplinary action,” the IRS said in a statement. “We are also considering a similar policy for the entire IRS workforce, which would be subject to negotiations with the National Treasury Employees Union.”

The IRS had about 100,000 workers during the period under review.

In the 2011 budget year, more than 70,000 IRS workers got cash bonuses totaling $92 million, the report said. In the 2012 budget year, nearly 68,000 workers got cash bonuses totaling $86 million.

The report said the IRS considers prior conduct before awarding permanent pay increases. “However, IRS officials stated that the IRS generally does not consider conduct issues when administering other types of awards,” the report said.

more here


Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/04/irs...4jYEQFQmCLm.99

Crooked government stealing tax payers money, more 3 letter agency's working against Americans

Thursday, 24 April 2014 09:38 IRS Claims Need to Track Taxpayer License Plates

Written by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.







Tired of the National Security Agency (NSA) listening to and recording your phone calls? Tired of them monitoring your social media posts? Tired of the Department of Homeland Security paying local police to install surveillance cameras capable of making citizens into suspects? Sadly, there’s no time to rest, as several other federal agencies are jumping on the surveillance bandwagon.

Bloomberg reports that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Forest Service (among others) have awarded nearly half a million dollars to Vigilant Solutions, a California-based company that provides tools for tracking license plates and for accessing license plate databases.
Why would the IRS and the Forest Service need the technology to track the license plates of Americans? Bloomberg explains:


“The IRS uses a variety of investigative tools similar to other law-enforcement agencies to assist with criminal cases,” Eric Smith, an agency spokesman, said in an e-mail. He declined to say how the IRS used the records in its investigations.
The Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, awarded Vigilant a contract valued at as much as $47,019 for its “CarDetector” system in August 2009, records show. The product scans and captures license plate numbers, compares the data to law enforcement lists of wanted vehicles and sends alerts when such vehicles are detected, according to the company’s website.
“License plate readers are helpful to our law enforcement officers with illegal activities on national forest system lands in California,” Tiffany Holloway, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an e-mail. She declined to comment about what types of crimes the tools are used to investigate or provide examples of how the technology has helped law enforcement.
Of course, there is a quid pro quo in the IRS’s purchase of license plate tracking technology.
Owe money to the IRS? Having trouble making your mortgage payments? Ever been sued or been arrested?
Soon, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will know the answers to these questions before you pass through security, and they might affect whether you are cleared for travel.
In an article from October 2013, the New York Times reported, "The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records like car registrations and employment information."
The complete list of sources of personal data reviewed by the TSA also includes:
▪ private employment information
▪ vehicle registrations
▪ travel history
▪ property ownership records
▪ physical characteristics
▪ tax identification numbers
▪ past travel itineraries
▪ law enforcement information
▪ “intelligence” information
▪ passport numbers
▪ frequent flier information
▪ other “identifiers” linked to DHS databases
What does all of this have to do with “national security?” The New York Times writes that “the agency says that the goal is to streamline the security procedures for millions of passengers who pose no risk.”
The TSA released the documents detailing the depth of this screening, but has refused to comment publicly.
Speaking under condition of anonymity, a TSA official told the New York Times that “the main goal of the program was to identify low-risk travelers for lighter screening at airport security checkpoints, adapting methods similar to those used to flag suspicious people entering the United States.”
If the traveler is a member of an airline’s frequent flier program, the airline will be required to share the person’s travel history with the TSA.
Benjamin Newell, a spokesman for the Air Combat Command — another federal agency that has contracted with Vigilant to provide license plate tracking tools — told Bloomberg that all the secret surveillance will make America safer. “The more aware we are of who is entering a military facility, the better we are able to protect the lives and equipment on that base,” Newell said in a phone interview, as reported by Bloomberg.
Not everyone is falling for the liberty for safety bait and switch, however. According to the Bloomberg story, “NetChoice, a Washington-based trade association that represents e-commerce businesses, is concerned that groups opposing the tools offer ‘no recognition at all of the benefits of license plate recognition in stopping crime or saving lives,’ said Steve DelBianco, its executive director."
The justification, however, is the mantra of the local and federal agencies speedily erecting the watchtowers of the surveillance state. As reported by The New American in January of this year:
Local leaders in Houston, like those in so many other cities across the country, have approved the installation of new surveillance cameras. These 180 new cameras bring to nearly 1,000 the number of known surveillance cameras in the country’s fourth largest city.
The eye of the government will reportedly cover the city’s “public areas around downtown, stadiums and the theater district.”
Local CBS affiliate KHOU reports on its website that Houston police chief Charles McClelland believes the city needs the nearly 1,000 cameras to “provide necessary police coverage.”
And just where did Houston get the money to buy these new cameras? There’s no provision for the expense in the mayor’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget, so the city’s not paying for these “critical” services so necessary for the “safety” of its citizens.
Department of Homeland Security to the rescue!
In the article announcing the deployment of the new devices, KHOU reports, “The city has spent more than $18 million in federal money to build its camera system and has another $5 million in reserve.”
Perhaps citizens should overlook their elected leaders’ acceptance of such federal largesse, given that the 900 or so surveillance cameras already in place have had such a favorable effect on crime rates in the city.
Not so much.
Again, from KHOU: “Officials say data is not kept to determine if the cameras are driving down crime.”
If this surveillance isn’t reducing crime, what’s the true purpose behind the purchase by the IRS, Homeland Security, the Forest Service, the TSA of software and hardware that can keep anyone under surveillance at any time?
“Ultimately, you’re creating a national database of location information,” Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Jennifer Lynch told the Washington Post in February. “When all that data is compiled and aggregated, you can track somebody as they’re going through their life.”
After learning of the IRS’s obtaining of the license plate tracking technology, Lynch updated her criticism. “Especially with the IRS, I don’t know why these agencies are getting access to this kind of information,” she reportedly said. “These systems treat every single person in an area as if they’re under investigation for a crime — that is not the way our criminal justice system was set up or the way things work in a democratic society.”
Lynch is right. Any deprivation of liberty without conforming to the requirements set out in the Fourth Amendment is one too many. If we are a Republic of laws, then the supreme constitutional law of the land must be adhered to every time the government wants to search and seize anything from Americans.
The standard is not whether or not the IRS or the Forest Service claims that investigations create exigent need to violate the Constitution. The standard is the Constitution — for every issue, on every occasion, with no exceptions. Anything less than that is a step toward tyranny.
Taken together, the scope of the snooping carried on by the federal government places every American under the threat of constant surveillance. The courts, Congress, and the president have formed an unholy alliance bent on obliterating the Constitution and establishing a country where every citizen is a suspect and is perpetually under the never-blinking eye of the government.
The establishment will likely continue construction of the surveillance until the entire country is being watched around the clock and every monitored activity is recorded and made retrievable by agents who will have a dossier on every American.

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment, the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com.


http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews...2618-287785873


Another 3 letter agency!!!! Control of you and yours from the cradle to the grave, there all coming out of the woodwork right about now....