Thread: IRS IG Report: Targeting Conservatives Began In 2010

IRS IG Report: Targeting Conservatives Began In 2010

May 13, 2013 9:49am

VIDEO AT LINK

The targeting of conservatives by the IRS started earlier and was more extensive thanthe IRS acknowledged last week, according to a draft IRS inspector general report obtained by ABC News.

As we reported on “Good Morning America” this morning, the IRS began targeting “Tea Party or similar organizations” in March 2010. That was when the Cincinnati-based IRS unit responsible for overseeing the applications for tax exempt status starting using the phrases “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12″ to search for applications warranting greater scrutiny.

During this first phase, 10 Tea Party cases were identified. By April of 2010, 18 Tea Party organizations were targeted, including three that had already been approved for tax-exempt status.

By June 2011, the unit had flagged over 100 Tea Party-related applications and the criteria used to scrutinize organizations had grown considerably, flagging not just “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in group names, but also groups that were working on issues like “government debt,” “taxes” and even organizations making statements that “criticize how the country is being run.”

The report, done by the Inspector General for the IRS, also shows that senior IRS officials in Washington was aware of what was going on as early as August 4, 2011 when, according to the report, the IRS chief counsel held a meeting with the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements unit “so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue.”

Must read timeline!!!!!
Click here to see the draft report.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...tives-in-2010/

Did David Plouffe Justify IRS Targeting Conservatives?

Obama adviser says he was addressing impact of 'dumb' actions, but tweet is likely to fan flames.

By Ron Fournier
Updated: May 13, 2013 | 9:18 a.m.
May 12, 2013 | 9:57 p.m.

(AP Photo/FOX, Freddie Lee)

Two days after the IRS apologized for targeting conservative groups for reviews of their tax-exempt status, a top adviser to President Obama said “GOP groups flourished” in the last two elections cycles “and they will use this to raise more money.”

The tweet by David Plouffe, who left the White House in January, could give GOP reason to accuse Obama's team of playing politics with the IRS controversy by defending or justifying the agency's actions.

But Plouffe said in a follow-up email to me that he was not absolving the Internal Revenue Service, whose actions he had called “dumb and wrong” in the original tweet.

Our exchange:

David Plouffe @davidplouffe
What IRS did dumb and wrong. Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $.


Ron Fournier @ron_fournier
.@davidplouffe serious questions: Why is that important to note? Is it justification for the action you called wrong? If not, why note?
7:27 PM - 12 May 2013



Several Twitter readers quickly offered their own interpretation, including conservative columnist James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. “Because it goes to the question of motive,” Taranto tweeted. I asked Plouffe to respond via Twitter, email or my cell phone. He responded within an hour. Here is his unedited email:

“In terms of impact. Reading much of the coverage layperson would get sense premeditated attempt to effectively silence political opponents. I do think not as a justification but as an evaluation of any impact it is important to note that it would not appear their aims or fundraising were affected. So indefensible behavior by IRS clearly the story. As people are doing analysis it's a secondary point.”

“So you were speaking to the impact, not justifying the actions or (providing) motive?” I asked via email.
“Exactly,” Plouffe replied.

The tweet came amid calls for Obama himself to issue an apology for the targeting, and as the administration struggled to get its story straight. The agency apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" flagging of conservative political groups during the 2012 election. IRS officials had previously denied the IRS was targeting conservative political groups.

The agency — led at the time by a Bush administration appointee — blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware. In an apparent contradiction, The Associated Press reported Saturday that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general's report.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/polit...tives-20130512

Just Apologize if You Don’t Pay Your Taxes to the IRS


Posted on May 11, 2013 by Gary DeMa






The next time you get a threatening letter from the Internal Revenue Service for some infraction, just apologize and move on.


If you underpay and are assessed a penalty, just quote back to the agency what senior IRS official Lois Lerner said when she was asked a question: “I’m not good at math.”
If it’s good enough for the IRS, then it should be good enough for us. Tax payers of America unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!


In 2012, the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative political groups to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The rules regarding non-profit organizations are very specific. The IRS was asking questions and searching for information that was not part of the requirements. It was obvious harassment.


Folks at the IRS are blaming “low-level” employees in its Cincinnati office. The problem with is lame excuse is that the Cincinnati office is THE office “where determinations on tax-exempt organizations’ eligibility are made and is the only physical office in the complex IRS bureaucracy dedicated to tax-exempt determinations.”


The IRS hierarchy demanded that groups reveal the internal workings of their organizations, a provision that is not required by the law. This included “the identification of members, how they are selected, who they associate with, and even what they discuss.


The tip off to the IRS was words like “tea party” or “patriot” on their exemption applications.


An Associated Press story made me laugh out loud:
“The agency — led at the time by a Bush administration appointee — blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware. But that wasn’t good enough for Republicans in Congress, who are conducting several investigations and asked for more.


It’s not the fault of liberals. It was George Bush’s fault . . . I’m not good at math . . . low level government employees. Everything but the fault of liberals.
Let’s get something straight. Administrators and appointees come and go, but bureaucrats go on forever. Most government employees are liberal. Talk by conservatives to shrink the size of government is a threat to government unions and their employees.


It’s time to abolish the IRS and implement a low-level consumption tax that includes a requirement to shrink government expenditures.



Read more: http://godfatherpolitics.com/10789/j...#ixzz2TCb9zof2

The IRS Targeted the President’s Enemies, Again, Duh

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Mark Horne Filed under Crime, Law Enforcement, Taxes

This story is so old it is amazing it needs to be reported as news. From the Washington Post:

“The Internal Revenue Service on Friday apologized for targeting groups with ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’ in their names, confirming long-standing accusations by some conservatives that their applications for tax-exempt status were being improperly delayed and scrutinized. Lois G. Lerner, the IRS official who oversees tax-exempt groups, said the ‘absolutely inappropriate’ actions by ‘front-line people’ were not driven by partisan motives. Rather, Lerner said, they were a misguided effort to come up with an efficient means of dealing with a flood of applications from organizations seeking tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012.”

The excuse offered by Lerner is such a palpable lie it really is the equivalent of saying “na na na na; I can do what I want and you can’t do a thing to me.” The IRS came up with a guide for choosing who to audit or delay by flagging those names. As the LA Times points out:

“Heaven knows no left-leaning organization would ever use the terms “tea party” or “patriot,” at least not without the prefix ‘non’ or ‘anti.’ So the net being cast by the IRS obviously would catch only one type of fish.”

Yes, obviously. But just as obviously, this is pretty much the IRS’s de facto historical mission, assuming the instructions aren’t actually in a classified document somewhere (in which case, it is their de jure mission). They are the people who hamper and oppress whoever the President doesn’t like, or at least anyone who opposed the establishment.

The LA Times presents a delicious comparison between this Administration and another one that also mis-used the IRS: “The revelation… is sure to draw an investigation in the House because it smacks of Nixonian intimidation tactics.” Indeed it does. But singling out Nixon to our ignorant populace is effectively an attempt to whitewash the IRS. Nixon, undeservedly, is treated as an especially reprehensible, corrupt, and/or power-hungry president. But his only real idiosyncrasy was that he got caught. Using the IRS is virtually a Presidential custom by now.

Consider this brief history in the New York Times, published in 1989.

“On many occasions, the pressure to use the agency as an instrument to curb dissent came from the White House. John F. Kennedy mobilized the I.R.S. against the right-wing, fundamentalist Christian ministers who had been so critical of his religion during his Presidential campaign and his first months in office.”

And when Nixon used the IRS against war protestors who opposed his drafting kids to go fight in Viet Nam, he was continuing policies of the Johnson Administration.
Of course, using the IRS as the President’s personal domestic assassination squad pre-dates the Cold War:

“[T]he records show that Franklin Delano Roosevelt may have set the stage for the use of the tax agency for political purposes by most subsequent Presidents. One of the most brazen instances of a political vendetta during a Presidency was the Roosevelt Administration’s attack on Andrew Mellon. No historian has been able to determine why Mellon so enraged F.D.R., but there is speculation that the New Deal President saw the millionaire who served as Republican Treasury Secretary from 1921 to 1932 – a time of Wall Street excesses followed by the Great Depression – as the symbolic enemy.”

The IRS is an ideal means of selective persecution. Over and over again its crimes are discovered and published. And yet, almost every time, the latest scandal is reported as an anomaly—as if the IRS has ever behaved in any other way. Even apart from the issue of whether or not income tax is a good thing, the IRS should be abolished as the means of collecting such taxes.

They are a basic human rights violator—an undercover means for targeting political enemies.


Read more: http://godfatherpolitics.com/10785/t...#ixzz2TCcoNHj2