IRS Apologizes For Targeting Conservative Political Groups In 2012 Ele (2 Viewers)

[3C's]

Marco Rubio just called on President Obama to fire the Commissioner of the IRS. Small problem: the Commissioner in place when all this happened was Bush appointee Douglas H. Shulman. He left just after the November election and there’s an acting Commissioner currently in place.

That's amusing.

Holy crap! And they think he's "presidential"?

 

[pantagrapher]

Marco Rubio just called on President Obama to fire the Commissioner of the IRS. Small problem: the Commissioner in place when all this happened was Bush appointee Douglas H. Shulman. He left just after the November election and there’s an acting Commissioner currently in place.

That's amusing.

Holy crap! And they think he's "presidential"?

Thing is, the base won't care because they'll likely never know. This will be haphazardly molded into the scandal they want it to be. If they can get Hillary's name into it, even better.

 

[Don Quixote]

Marco Rubio just called on President Obama to fire the Commissioner of the IRS. Small problem: the Commissioner in place when all this happened was Bush appointee Douglas H. Shulman. He left just after the November election and there’s an acting Commissioner currently in place.

That's amusing.

He's defending it by saying that the current Acting Commissioner was the Deputy Commissioner then. I'm not sure where you stop if that is the logic.

...I picked a bad day to call the IRS tax-exempt hotline to check on status of an application. Should have gotten some lunch to eat while on hold.

 

[tommyboy]

Marco Rubio just called on President Obama to fire the Commissioner of the IRS. Small problem: the Commissioner in place when all this happened was Bush appointee Douglas H. Shulman. He left just after the November election and there’s an acting Commissioner currently in place.

That's amusing.

Holy crap! And they think he's "presidential"?

Thing is, the base won't care because they'll likely never know. This will be haphazardly molded into the scandal they want it to be. If they can get Hillary's name into it, even better.

oh its plenty scandalous regardless. You have the tax collectors of this country performing political action. Not good, especially if your argument is pro-government. Even hardened liberals recognize this as self-evidently a bad deal.

 

[5 digit know nothing]

Well, if a cop is only pulling over black people to give them speeding tickets, that's wrong, even if the people getting the tickets were actually speeding. This is along the same lines. I don't think it's a great argument to say that the parties getting scrutinized deserved to be scrutinized.

Were they only pulling over black people? Stats I read said there were 300 organizations flagged for scrutiny, and 75 were Tea Party related. Either way, as I've repeatedly said, yes - any disparate treatment is ridiculous. Every political organization should be given higher scrutiny for tax exempt status.

What evidence do you have of profiling for the other 225 organizations to support your "profiling equality proclamation"?

An IRS official admitted Friday that the agency made "mistakes" in the past few years with tax-exempt status applications, specifically those submitted by groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Multiple conservative groups have said their applications were delayed and returned with lengthy requests for supporting materials, sometimes including website printouts and lists of guest speakers.

 

[The Z Machine]

"hardened liberals"

 

[igbomb]

Going to get a lot worse.And libs, now you have concrete example of why conservatives and libertarians want less govt. The govt is not your " friend".

The problem remains that the corporations that would like to fill in the gaps created by down-sizing the government are even less our friend.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Can Obama get any more like Nixon?

We now have:

- National health care system proposal, first by Nixon but EO'd into law by Obama

- Realpolitik in foreign policy revived, Mrs. Clinton/Kissinger

- Election-wise potentially insignificant event turned into a lanscape-changing pre-election political cover up, Burglars/Benghazi Bunglers

- Targeting of enemies list via the IRS, Antiwar & Hippies/Tea Partiers

- Moribund economy, labor participation rates in the 60%'s.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

"hardened liberals"

Seriously. Everybody knows that liberals are mostly flaccid.

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

"hardened liberals"

Seriously. Everybody knows that liberals are mostly flaccid.

Except your wife.

ZING!

 

[Henry Ford]

Well, if a cop is only pulling over black people to give them speeding tickets, that's wrong, even if the people getting the tickets were actually speeding. This is along the same lines. I don't think it's a great argument to say that the parties getting scrutinized deserved to be scrutinized.

Were they only pulling over black people? Stats I read said there were 300 organizations flagged for scrutiny, and 75 were Tea Party related. Either way, as I've repeatedly said, yes - any disparate treatment is ridiculous. Every political organization should be given higher scrutiny for tax exempt status.

What evidence do you have of profiling for the other 225 organizations to support your "profiling equality proclamation"?

An IRS official admitted Friday that the agency made "mistakes" in the past few years with tax-exempt status applications, specifically those submitted by groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Multiple conservative groups have said their applications were delayed and returned with lengthy requests for supporting materials, sometimes including website printouts and lists of guest speakers.

What evidence do you have that I made a "profiling equality proclamation?"

 

[The Z Machine]

lanscape-changing

It is related to manscaping?

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

lanscape-changing

Ha, ok, maaaayyyybe an overreach there.

The election was no blowout though. Obama won with 51% and a pretty evenly divided national map, Nixon won 60+% of the vote and every single state but Massachusetts.

 

[5 digit know nothing]

Well, if a cop is only pulling over black people to give them speeding tickets, that's wrong, even if the people getting the tickets were actually speeding. This is along the same lines. I don't think it's a great argument to say that the parties getting scrutinized deserved to be scrutinized.

Were they only pulling over black people? Stats I read said there were 300 organizations flagged for scrutiny, and 75 were Tea Party related. Either way, as I've repeatedly said, yes - any disparate treatment is ridiculous. Every political organization should be given higher scrutiny for tax exempt status.

What evidence do you have of profiling for the other 225 organizations to support your "profiling equality proclamation"?

An IRS official admitted Friday that the agency made "mistakes" in the past few years with tax-exempt status applications, specifically those submitted by groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Multiple conservative groups have said their applications were delayed and returned with lengthy requests for supporting materials, sometimes including website printouts and lists of guest speakers.<

/span>

What evidence do you have that I made a "profiling equality proclamation?"

You were defending the actions of the IRS with this simple statement:

"Were they only pulling over black people?"

as if to assume profiling only occurs when it is the sole filter used in selecting candidates to enforce.

 

[Henry Ford]

Well, if a cop is only pulling over black people to give them speeding tickets, that's wrong, even if the people getting the tickets were actually speeding. This is along the same lines. I don't think it's a great argument to say that the parties getting scrutinized deserved to be scrutinized.

Were they only pulling over black people? Stats I read said there were 300 organizations flagged for scrutiny, and 75 were Tea Party related. Either way, as I've repeatedly said, yes - any disparate treatment is ridiculous. Every political organization should be given higher scrutiny for tax exempt status.

What evidence do you have of profiling for the other 225 organizations to support your "profiling equality proclamation"?

An IRS official admitted Friday that the agency made "mistakes" in the past few years with tax-exempt status applications, specifically those submitted by groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Multiple conservative groups have said their applications were delayed and returned with lengthy requests for supporting materials, sometimes including website printouts and lists of guest speakers.<

/span>

What evidence do you have that I made a "profiling equality proclamation?"

You were defending the actions of the IRS with this simple statement:

"Were they only pulling over black people?"

as if to assume profiling only occurs when it is the sole filter used in selecting candidates to enforce.

A question about the statement I was responding to isn't a declaration of the exact opposite. It's exactly that - a question.

 

[5 digit know nothing]

Well, if a cop is only pulling over black people to give them speeding tickets, that's wrong, even if the people getting the tickets were actually speeding. This is along the same lines. I don't think it's a great argument to say that the parties getting scrutinized deserved to be scrutinized.

Were they only pulling over black people? Stats I read said there were 300 organizations flagged for scrutiny, and 75 were Tea Party related. Either way, as I've repeatedly said, yes - any disparate treatment is ridiculous. Every political organization should be given higher scrutiny for tax exempt status.

What evidence do you have of profiling for the other 225 organizations to support your "profiling equality proclamation"?

An IRS official admitted Friday that the agency made "mistakes" in the past few years with tax-exempt status applications, specifically those submitted by groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Multiple conservative groups have said their applications were delayed and returned with lengthy requests for supporting materials, sometimes including website printouts and lists of guest speakers.<

/span>

What evidence do you have that I made a "profiling equality proclamation?"

You were defending the actions of the IRS with this simple statement:

"Were they only pulling over black people?"

as if to assume profiling only occurs when it is the sole filter used in selecting candidates to enforce.

A question about the statement I was responding to isn't a declaration of the exact opposite. It's exactly that - a question.

A declaration of the exact opposite would be they "profiled nobody."

When you ask the question:

Were they only pulling over black people?

You infer that they were also pulling over people for other profiled conditions, or that you see nothing wrong with profiling black people so long as it was not the majority of people that were pulled over perhaps to posit that there was no profiling occurring at all which has already been proven false. Take your pick of idiocy.

 

[GroveDiesel]

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

 

[SacramentoBob]

The plot thickens:

http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2153007

But of course we still need to give the government more ability to regulate interest groups. No way would that power ever get abused for partisan purposes.

The timeline shows that on June 29, 2011, Lerner received a briefing on how IRS officials in Cincinnati were dealing with applications for tax-exempt status for Tea Party groups. The briefing paper showed that the IRS was subjecting certain groups to further investigation based on politically loaded terms in the tax-exempt application file. Groups were singled out for enhanced scrutiny if:

• The words "tea party," "patriots," or "9/12 project" appeared anywhere in the group name or case file;

• The group's stated issues included government spending, government debt or taxes;

• The organization had a goal of educating of the public via advocacy or lobbying to "make America a better place to live;"

• Any statements in the case file critical of how the country is being run.

Under those criteria, 100 groups had their applications sent to a dedicated team of specialists for further investigation -- adding months to the approval process, according to the report.

Conservatives are big fans of "profiling" so I don't see why they'd be mad here.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

 

[17seconds]

Going to get a lot worse.And libs, now you have concrete example of why conservatives and libertarians want less govt. The govt is not your " friend".

I don't see this as any different from police patrolling a ghetto where there may be a high concentration of lawbreakers.

 

[Henry Ford]

Well, if a cop is only pulling over black people to give them speeding tickets, that's wrong, even if the people getting the tickets were actually speeding. This is along the same lines. I don't think it's a great argument to say that the parties getting scrutinized deserved to be scrutinized.

Were they only pulling over black people? Stats I read said there were 300 organizations flagged for scrutiny, and 75 were Tea Party related. Either way, as I've repeatedly said, yes - any disparate treatment is ridiculous. Every political organization should be given higher scrutiny for tax exempt status.

What evidence do you have of profiling for the other 225 organizations to support your "profiling equality proclamation"?An IRS official admitted Friday that the agency made "mistakes" in the past few years with tax-exempt status applications, specifically those submitted by groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Multiple conservative groups have said their applications were delayed and returned with lengthy requests for supporting materials, sometimes including website printouts and lists of guest speakers.</span>

What evidence do you have that I made a "profiling equality proclamation?"

You were defending the actions of the IRS with this simple statement:

"Were they only pulling over black people?"

as if to assume profiling only occurs when it is the sole filter used in selecting candidates to enforce.

A question about the statement I was responding to isn't a declaration of the exact opposite. It's exactly that - a question.

A declaration of the exact opposite would be they "profiled nobody."When you ask the question:

Were they only pulling over black people?

You infer that they were also pulling over people for other profiled conditions, or that you see nothing wrong with profiling black people so long as it was not the majority of people that were pulled over perhaps to posit that there was no profiling occurring at all which has already been proven false. Take your pick of idiocy.

you mean insinuate, not infer, and no I don't. I was asking an intelligent poster a question and hoping he knew whether these 300 were all conservative organizations. No one seems to know yet.

 

[GroveDiesel]

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

 

[Sand]

Going to get a lot worse.And libs, now you have concrete example of why conservatives and libertarians want less govt. The govt is not your " friend".

I don't see this as any different from police patrolling a ghetto where there may be a high concentration of lawbreakers.

Well, were there?

 

[Henry Ford]

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

I feel like progress and forward would be too general, but things like "legalization", "marriage equality" and "single payer" should probably be tagged the same way, yes.

 

[GroveDiesel]

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

I feel like progress and forward would be too general, but things like "legalization", "marriage equality" and "single payer" should probably be tagged the same way, yes.

This seems pretty general to me too:

According to the report, by June 2011 some IRS specialists were probing applications using the following criteria: "issues include government spending, government debt or taxes; education of the public by advocacy/lobbying to 'make America a better place to live'; statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run."

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 19:23, said:

Bottomfeeder Sports, on 13 May 2013 - 18:46, said:

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 18:14, said:

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

Who said anything about a "small office" or "a single employee"? The bigger the office, the more people involved the more difficult it should be to believe that there the was this political cohesion in this office to allow this to happen on purely partisan basis. There were zero conservatives among these IRS employees? No one willing to send an anonymous letter to the editor?

 

[otello]

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 19:23, said:

Bottomfeeder Sports, on 13 May 2013 - 18:46, said:

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 18:14, said:

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

Who said anything about a "small office" or "a single employee"? The bigger the office, the more people involved the more difficult it should be to believe that there the was this political cohesion in this office to allow this to happen on purely partisan basis. There were zero conservatives among these IRS employees? No one willing to send an anonymous letter to the editor?

I posted the IRS statement earlier, that this was a local office.

 

[MaxThreshold]

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 19:23, said:

Bottomfeeder Sports, on 13 May 2013 - 18:46, said:

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 18:14, said:

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

Who said anything about a "small office" or "a single employee"? The bigger the office, the more people involved the more difficult it should be to believe that there the was this political cohesion in this office to allow this to happen on purely partisan basis. There were zero conservatives among these IRS employees? No one willing to send an anonymous letter to the editor?

All it takes is for a couple of supervisors to make that decision and enter it into the software.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 19:23, said:

Bottomfeeder Sports, on 13 May 2013 - 18:46, said:

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 18:14, said:

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

Who said anything about a "small office" or "a single employee"? The bigger the office, the more people involved the more difficult it should be to believe that there the was this political cohesion in this office to allow this to happen on purely partisan basis. There were zero conservatives among these IRS employees? No one willing to send an anonymous letter to the editor?

I posted the IRS statement earlier, that this was a local office.

So?

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 19:23, said:

Bottomfeeder Sports, on 13 May 2013 - 18:46, said:

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 18:14, said:

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

Who said anything about a "small office" or "a single employee"? The bigger the office, the more people involved the more difficult it should be to believe that there the was this political cohesion in this office to allow this to happen on purely partisan basis. There were zero conservatives among these IRS employees? No one willing to send an anonymous letter to the editor?

All it takes is for a couple of supervisors to make that decision and enter it into the software.

Sure, but that doesn't support "an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated". It doesn't support that the IRS itself is systematically targeting political groups out of partisanship. It does support a lack of management and oversight.

 

[jonessed]

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

Miller was the one who took the lead in the Congressional investigation and denied that there was any targeting going on. He's on the hot seat because it turns out he did know.

 

[BigSteelThrill]

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

Miller was the one who took the lead in the Congressional investigation and denied that there was any targeting going on. He's on the hot seat because it turns out he did know.

At the hearing, Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas, told Miller that some politically active tax-exempt groups in his district had complained about being harassed. Marchant did not explicitly ask if tea party groups were being targeted. But he did ask how applications were handled.

Miller responded, "We did group those organizations together to ensure consistency, to ensure quality. We continue to work those cases," according to a transcript on the committee's website.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/207230311.html

*im not actually defending him, but when I was reading that stuff, it seemed like he did say that there was at least some targeting going on.

 

[Henry Ford]

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

I feel like progress and forward would be too general, but things like "legalization", "marriage equality" and "single payer" should probably be tagged the same way, yes.

This seems pretty general to me too:

According to the report, by June 2011 some IRS specialists were probing applications using the following criteria: "issues include government spending, government debt or taxes; education of the public by advocacy/lobbying to 'make America a better place to live'; statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run."

Yeah, I just mean progress will include construction companies and such.

 

[GroveDiesel]

And the intrigue grows:

http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-denounces-reported-irs-targeting-of-conservative-groups/2013/05/13/a0185644-bbdf-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_print.html

Now we find out that other offices also got involved including a special task force in Washington.

 

[Statorama]

Next year audit anyone who has a "Muslim" sounding name, and I'll call it even.

 

[MaxThreshold]

Next year audit anyone who has a "Muslim" sounding name, and I'll call it even.

Yeah, I like that. Since what they did to conservative groups is not a big deal I don't see this being a problem. In fact, let's include anyone who voted for Obama as well. Again, not a big deal.

 

[otello]

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 19:23, said:

Bottomfeeder Sports, on 13 May 2013 - 18:46, said:

GroveDiesel, on 13 May 2013 - 18:14, said:

Yeah, so the idea that this was just a "local office" was a total joke. In fact, this is the ONLY office that determines non-profit statuses for the entire US.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/10/Cincinnati-IRS-Office-Primarily-Responsible-for-Handling-Tax-Exempt-Determinations

So it was only one office.An office that was insufficiently supervised by the management headed by the Bush appointee and left to its own devices to figure out how to handle a doubling of its workload.

But of course this explanation is unimaginable so it must have been Obama hopping on the phone in early 2009 to some low level supervisor in this IRS office instructing him to have his staff harass the Tea Party and he'll use drones on any whistle blowers.

I don't think you get it still. It wasn't some small office or some low level employee. I'm not saying it was Obama behind it, but clearly there was a partisan bent in this as keywords like "progress", "forward", etc. weren't targeted. If an entire IRS department can be corrupted and politically motivated, who is to say that other ones can't? Remember, this is the arm of the government in charge of enforcing major provisions of Obamacare.

Who said anything about a "small office" or "a single employee"? The bigger the office, the more people involved the more difficult it should be to believe that there the was this political cohesion in this office to allow this to happen on purely partisan basis. There were zero conservatives among these IRS employees? No one willing to send an anonymous letter to the editor?

I posted the IRS statement earlier, that this was a local office.

So?

So? It's what the IRS said. Even if the employees were conservative, this is still unacceptable.

 

[soothsayer]

This thread was started on May 10th and is only at four pages? How is that even possible? I fully admit I'm part of the problem by not adding to the post count but how is this not a much bigger story? Is it that the FFA is so full of Chet's that they just don't care? Or is this a non-story to many simply because they haven't been directly impacted? :shuked:

 

[SacramentoBob]

This thread was started on May 10th and is only at four pages? How is that even possible? I fully admit I'm part of the problem by not adding to the post count but how is this not a much bigger story? Is it that the FFA is so full of Chet's liberals that they just don't care? Or is this a non-story to many simply because they haven't been directly impacted? :shuked:

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

So? It's what the IRS said. Even if the employees were conservative, this is still unacceptable.

Who said it was acceptable? Creating unauthorized short cuts is unacceptable in and of itself. And all of these "new revelations" are all things that you either posted Friday or, in the case of other offices sending out requests for information at the very least known locally here an hour from DC on Saturday.

I really need to disappear to work, but is this not what we know-

1) The Cincinnati office of the IRS is responsible to approve and/or disapprove these applications.

2) Because anyone can claim that their message is "educational" based on the vague treasury department definition all of these purely political groups can call themselves social welfare organizations under this definition.

3) In the aftermath of the financial meltdown and the specifically the bailout a flood of new groups were created that decided to take advantage of this status.

4) In addition in the aftermath of a certain famous supreme court case these organization became popular as a means of funneling large sums of cash into the campaign anonymously (a quarter billion in 2012)

5) Those two factors doubled the number of applications in 2010 (give or take)

6) In response to expanded workload the Cincinnati office created "red flags" to identify what applications to apply greater scrutiny.

7) These "red flags" (the keywords) in practice were biased against conservative organizations.

7a) We don't know if that was on purpose or not

7b) If it was on purpose we don't know if it was due to partisan politics, or simply the anti IRS nature of the groups, or both.

8) In June of 2011 (I think) the supervisor of this office learned of this practice and said "stop it"

9) Around the same time Congress was told that such practices didn't exists.

10) I think we need to wait until Friday to learn if the inappropriate practices to identify who is scrutinized stopped or continued at this point.

11) The scrutiny, however is known to have continued for years.

12) That scrutiny clearly involved other IRS offices which at the very least were used to gather information.

13) Some of the information that was being requested is clearly inappropriate - donor list, email communications, etc.

14) Congress continued to ask the IRS and the IRS continued to state that there was no such practice to target conservative groups.

14a) This may have been "technically true" but it should have been clear that conservative groups were targeted from 2011 on in practice.

15) Congress in their frustration with the IRS asked for a Treasury Department investigation.

16) That investigation's report is supposed to be released on Friday.

17) Last Friday in advanced of that report the IRS "came clean" to some minimal extent acknowledging what will be reported formally this Friday

18) None of the IRS employees, except for 2 positions - 1 currently unfilled can be fired by the executive branch (the president) simply as a reaction to this because they are protected as civil servants.

19) For heads to roll there will need to "be cause" which hopefully will be found in the Treasury Department's investigation.

20) On Friday I mistakenly posted that these organizations political spending was untaxed. I corrected that, but based on the letter (page 9) that is in the Washington Post article I believe that I was correct all along. None of these groups should be tax exempt. But I don't want that to be a function of IRS employees to decide based on vague criteria.

Did any news break while I was composing this? Did I miss anything above? Did I misrepresent anything above? Forgive me I won't see a reply until late this evening.

 

[5 digit know nothing]

Stewart absolutely nails it.

He didn't want to report on that, he looked genuinely defeated, good for him though.

 

[pantagrapher]

Stewart absolutely nails it.

He didn't want to report on that, he looked genuinely defeated, good for him though.

If you're a partisan Dem it's horrible news. Obama is feckless and weak even when he's holding all the cards. Now?

I doubt he'd have gotten anything useful out of this Congress anyway and he can still wield the veto pen which could come in pretty handy if Dems get shellacked in 2014. But in terms of doing anything productive with the rest of his Presidency he's sunk IMO.

I don't understand the defeatist attitude. If it wasn't this, there would have been something else. Obama had to know—hell, you had to know—he'd have to deal with these distractions in his second term.

 

[The Z Machine]

Stewart absolutely nails it.

Agreed. These two scandals really are shameful.

 

[dickey moe]

I'm confident the leftists will be marching in the streets in protest any day now...

 

[ichris]

This probably isn't the worst thing that's happened under Obama.

 

[Hang 10]

Stewart absolutely nails it.

He didn't want to report on that, he looked genuinely defeated, good for him though.

Does anyone really think Stewart is funny? Even when I agree with him, I find him obnoxious.

 

[Carolina Hustler]

I thought Conservatives were all about profiling?.....How am I supposed to get upset that a Federal Institution that handles taxation looks more closely at the applications of people who openly advocate their hatred of and their desire to get rid of said institution?

Good Posting

 

[Slapdash]

Stewart absolutely nails it.

He didn't want to report on that, he looked genuinely defeated, good for him though.

Does anyone really think Stewart funny? Even when I agree with him, I find him obnoxious.

I used to, but have really soured on him over the last couple of years. Saw him live during the DNC and it just made that feeling worse.

 

[SacramentoBob]

Stewart absolutely nails it.

He didn't want to report on that, he looked genuinely defeated, good for him though.

Does anyone really think Stewart funny? Even when I agree with him, I find him obnoxious.

I used to, but have really soured on him over the last couple of years. Saw him live during the DNC and it just made that feeling worse.

Colbert is way funnier.

 

[ericttspikes]

White guys outraged at being profiled and "targeted" for being hassled. That's rich.