IRS unfairly targeting Conservatives (Tea Party groups)

[American Patriot]

Who knew what when?

The WH knew about the IRS in April.... at LEAST.

Reports: W.H. told of IRS targeting probe in April

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The White House and IRS building are shown in a composite. | AP Photos

A White House official wouldn’t say if the counsel told other staffers of the findings. | AP Photos
By KEVIN ROBILLARD | 5/20/13 6:18 AM EDT

The White House counsel learned the preliminary results of a probe into the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups in late April.

A senior White House official confirmed to POLITICO that Treasury Department staffers told White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler the inspector general report was nearing completion during the week of April 22.

PHOTOS: 10 slams on the IRS
Ron Paul is pictured. | AP Photo Play Slideshow

“Staff of the [White House counsel’s office] were informed that the Inspector General for Tax Administration was completing a report finding that line IRS employees had improperly scrutinized certain 501(c)(4) organizations by using words like ‘tea party’ and ‘patriot,’” the official said. “Staff were further informed that the report had not been finalized, and the publication date of the report was uncertain but likely soon.”

(Also on POLITICO: 5 fixes for the IRS)

Ruemmler’s early knowledge of the investigation’s findings was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

The White House official didn’t say whether Ruemmler told other staffers of the findings before last Friday, when the agency admitted that it singled out conservative groups’ applications for nonprofit status. President Barack Obama said he found out about the inspector general’s report from news stories that day.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney originally acknowledged that the counsel’s office had been told of the investigation during a press briefing last Monday. But Carney didn’t explicitly say Ruemmler had learned that conservative groups were targeted and how they were singled out.

Past White House counsels — essentially, the president’s top lawyer — told the Journal that Ruemmler would’ve been right to avoid telling the president. Had she told Obama, she risked interfering in the inspector general’s work, a potentially bigger scandal.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/0...#ixzz2TpxO4ANi

[American Patriot]

Here's the next problem in the WH.

[American Patriot]

Poll: Sen. John Cornyn says it's "past time" for Attorney General Eric H. Holder to step down. Do you agree?

• Yes 65(98%)
• No 2(3%)
• Undecided 0(0%)
• Other 0(0%)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/polls...enera/results/

[American Patriot]

CBS' Bob Schieffer unleashes on White House official: 'Why are you here today?'

By Ben Wolfgang - The Washington Times

May 19, 2013, 11:10AM

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  Bob Schieffer (AP Photo/Evan Agostini) more >

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• White House aide: 'Nothing that suggests' IRS official at center of scandal 'did anything wrong'

Veteran CBS newsman Bob Schieffer on Sunday morning unloaded on a top White House official, comparing the Obama administration’s handling of the ongoing Internal Revenue Service scandal to former President Richard Nixon’s initial strategy for dealing with Watergate.


The assertion came after White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said the president will continue with his objectives and will not become bogged down by the IRS debacle, the Benghazi affair or other missteps.

“I don’t want to compare this in any way to Watergate … but I have to tell you, that is exactly the approach the Nixon administration took. You’re taking exactly the same line,” Mr. Schieffer said.


He then castigated the White House for taking credit when the federal government does something right, but passing the buck when problems arise. Republicans and other critics have made similar claims that Mr. Obama seems to have little knowledge of what’s happening in his own federal government.


“When the executive branch does things right, there doesn’t seem to be any hesitancy for the White House to take credit for that,” Mr. Schieffer said, citing the killing of Osama bin Laden as an example. “When these [scandals] happen, you seem to send out officials many times who don’t even seem to know what’s happened.”


He even demanded to know why Mr. Pfeiffer was making the rounds on Sunday talk shows, rather than a higher-ranking official.
“Why are you here today? Why isn’t the chief of staff here today?” Mr. Schieffer asked.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/...#ixzz2Tq44Azj8
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

[Malsua]

[QUOTE=Rick Donaldson;108587]

[American Patriot]

White House aide: ‘Nothing that suggests’ IRS official at center of scandal ‘did anything wrong’

By Ben Wolfgang
-
The Washington Times
Sunday, May 19, 2013

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  Dan Pfeiffer (Associated Press) more >

A besieged White House dug in its heels Sunday and defended figures at the center of the unfolding Internal Revenue Service scandal while reiterating that President Obama knew nothing of the misdeeds inside the agency.





White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, appearing on four Sunday morning political talk shows, offered strong support for Sarah Hall Ingram, who led the agency’s tax-exempt division as it admittedly targeted conservative groups. She recently was promoted to chief of the health care reform office, tasked with implementing “Obamacare.”

Critics of the administration expect many more heads to roll as the true scope and intent of the IRS actions come to light, but Mr. Pfeiffer on Sunday strongly defended Ms. Ingram.

“No one has suggested that she did anything wrong yet,” Mr. Pfeiffer said on “Fox News Sunday.”


“Before everyone in this town convicts this person in the court of public opinion with no evidence, let’s actually get the facts and make decisions after that. There’s nothing that suggests she did anything wrong,” he said.


Mr. Pfeiffer added that a top-down investigation of the IRS will examine Ms. Ingram’s 2009 to 2012 tenure as head of the tax-exempt division.


Other IRS authorities have paid the price for what officials on both sides of the aisle, along with a host of others, have described as outrageous behavior. Steven Miller, former acting IRS commissioner questioned by Congress last week, was pushed out by the president.


Ms. Ingram’s replacement, Joseph Grant, has announced his retirement despite taking the job only a few weeks ago.

By keeping Ms. Ingram in place — and giving her the controls of something as complex and controversial as Obamacare — the administration is adding fuel to an already raging fire.

Republicans and many others were skeptical of the federal government and its competence to implement health care reform, and Ms. Ingram’s involvement only generates more questions.


Many Republicans also say that when the smoke clears, the American public will learn that it was not merely rogue IRS employees who targeted tea party and other conservative groups. Rather, they argue, there was a policy directive to silence critics of the president, and some higher-level figure, whether it was Ms. Ingram or someone else, had to have been involved.


“I think we’re going to find that there’s a written policy that says we were targeting people who were opposed to the president. I can’t believe that one rogue agent started this. It seems to be too widespread,” said Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate.


His Republican colleague Sen. John Cornyn of Texas agreed that there must be more to the story.


“Bureaucrats don’t take risks unless they have a signal, either explicit or implicit, from their higher-ups that what you’re doing is exactly what we expect you to do,” he said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I have a very hard time believing that this was something cooked up in Cincinnati by midlevel employees.”


Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, called the situation “rotten to the core” and said the IRS ordeal gives the American people a chance to truly see “big government in practice.”


Many of the president’s fellow Democrats are fighting back on a different front. There is no defending the targeting of Americans based on political belief, but lawmakers increasingly are raising the broader issue of whether so many groups should be granted tax-exempt status.


“There’s a second scandal here, and that is that hundreds of millions have been used [by tax-exempt groups] that are supposed to be used as nonprofit social welfare entities for political purposes” said Sen. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, speaking on ABC’s “This Week.”


Rep. Charles B. Rangel, New York Democrat, argued that IRS employees couldn’t have understood the complex laws governing which groups can be considered tax-exempt or how politically active they can be before they cross the line.


“This law lends itself to abuse,” he said, also appearing on ABC. “I don’t think that gang in Cincinnati had the slightest clue as to find out whether or not people making contributions were involved in politics or whether they were involved in social welfare.”


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...#ixzz2Tq4IqZNC
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

[American Patriot]

[QUOTE=Malsua;108590]

AH! NOW I see the connection, LMAO!

[Malsua]

LOL. BY DEFINITION YOU FUCKWIT, IT'S WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!

Go hang yourself if you're that fucking stupid!

[American Patriot]

So... what we have here is a failure to communicate.

In that the Left and this Administration wants to simply demonize the Right on anything the Left does wrong. Thus all definitions are subject to change.


After all - isn't that one of Alinsky's tactics? Redefine the enemy? In effect that's what these two rules do.

* RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

* RULE 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

[American Patriot]

Wait... DUH!

Is The White House Obscuring the Truth?

White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer offers more confusion than clarity in defending the White House response to Benghazi, IRS scandal.

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By Josh Kraushaar
Updated: May 20, 2013 | 9:29 a.m.
May 20, 2013 | 8:50 a.m.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer looks on as President Obama talks with Chief of Staff for Policy Mona Sutphen. (White house/Flickr)




What did the president know and when did he know it?


Those simple questions are at the heart of the scandals buffeting the White House, and they were only obscured by White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, appearing on the Sunday talk shows to represent the administration. Asked by Fox News' Chris Wallace where the president was in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks, Pfeiffer dodged, only saying he was "kept up to date throughout the day." When pressed if he was being briefed in the Situation Room, Pfeiffer responded that it was an "irrelevant fact"—a formulation he used on several other shows to deflect scrutiny. On all the Sunday shows, Pfeiffer's party line on the IRS scandal is that it would be more problematic if the president knew about the agency's problems and interfered, raising the perception of meddling.


That argument is starting to fray, as well. The Wall Street Journal reported today that White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was aware of the IRS wrongdoing on the week of April 22—nearly three weeks before the agency acknowledged its mistakes. It's hard to believe Obama's chief counsel was aware of what happened without informing at least the president's senior staff. Adding to the confusion, the White House hasn't allowed Ruemmler to be interviewed to add clarity to the timeline.


At last Thursday's press conference, Obama chose his words about the IRS scandal very carefully. "I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press." Even though he was asked about the overall malfeasance, he specifically said he didn't know about the report. That parsing alone raises questions about the level of candor coming from the White House.

[American Patriot]

George F. Will: Under Obama, trust is devalued currency


Posted: Monday, May 20, 2013 8:21 am




Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week was amusing.


There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government's large capacity for misbehavior. Entertainingly, the answer to the question "Will Barack Obama's scandals derail his second-term agenda?" was a question: What agenda?





The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something his administration, and big government generally, undermines trust. Liberalism's agenda has been constant since long before liberals, having given their name a bad name, stopped calling themselves liberals and resumed calling themselves progressives, which they will call themselves until they finish giving that name a bad name.


The agenda always is: Concentrate more power in Washington, more Washington power in the executive branch and more executive power in agencies run by experts. Then trust the experts to be disinterested and prudent with their myriad intrusions into, and minute regulations of, Americans' lives. Obama's presidency may yet be, on balance, a net plus for the public good if it shatters American's trust in the regulatory state's motives.


Now, regarding Obama's second-term agenda. His re-election theme — re-elect me because I am not Mitt Romney — yielded a meager mandate, and he used tactics that are now draining the legitimacy an election is supposed to confer. One tactic was to misrepresent the Benghazi attack lest it undermine his narrative about taming terrorism. Does anyone think the administration's purpose in manufacturing 12 iterations of the talking points was to make them more accurate?


Another tactic was using the "federal machinery to screw our political enemies." The words are from a 1971 memo by the then-White House counsel, John Dean, whose spirit still resides where he worked prior to prison. Congress may contain some Democrats who owed their 2012 election to the IRS' suppression of conservative political advocacy.


Obama's supposed "trifecta" of scandals — Benghazi, the IRS and the seizure of Associated Press phone records — neglects some. A fourth scandal is power being wielded by executive branch officials (at the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) illegally installed in office by presidential recess appointments made when the Senate was not in recess.


A fifth might be Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius soliciting, from corporations in industries HHS regulates, funds to replace some that Congress refused to appropriate. The money is to be spent by nonprofit — which does not mean nonpolitical — entities. The funds are to educate Americans about, which might mean (consider the administration's Benghazi and IRS behaviors) propagandize in favor of, Obamacare and to enroll people in its provisions.


The experienced (former governor, former secretary of education, 10 years in the Senate) and temperate Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., compares this to the Iran-contra scandal, wherein the Reagan administration raised private funds to do what Congress had refused to do — finance the insurgency against Nicaragua's government.


Obama's incredibly shrinking presidency is a reminder that politics is a transactional business, trust is the currency of the transactions, and the currency has been debased.

For example: Obama says: Trust me, I do not advocate universal preschool simply to swell the ranks of unionized, dues-paying, Democrat-funding teachers. Trust me, I know something not known by the social scientists who say the benefits of such preschool are small and evanescent.


Obama says: Trust me, the science of global warming is settled. And trust me that, although my plans to combat global warming, whenever the inexplicable 16-year pause of it ends, would vastly expand government's regulatory powers, as chief executive I guarantee that these powers will be used justly.


Obama says: Trust me, although I am head of the executive branch, I am not responsible for the IRS portion of this branch.


Obama says: Trust me, my desire to overturn a Supreme Court opinion (Citizens United) that expanded First Amendment protection of political speech, and my desire to "seriously consider" amending the First Amendment to expand the government's power to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political advocacy, should be untainted by what the IRS did to suppress advocacy by my opponents.


Because Obama's entire agenda involves enlarging government's role in allocating wealth and opportunity, the agenda now depends on convincing Americans to trust him, not their lying eyes. In the fourth month of his second term, it is already too late for that.

[American Patriot]

Top Obama adviser stakes out defiant defense on IRS, Benghazi, AP scandals

Published May 19, 2013

FoxNews.com


(RD:The face of a liar)

WASHINGTON – A top White House adviser staked out a defiant defense Sunday on a series of scandals that have hit the Obama administration, going so far as to say it was an “irrelevant fact” where the president was the night of the Benghazi terror attacks and saying the Obama administration wouldn’t cooperate in “partisan fishing expeditions” over IRS officials targeting Tea Party groups.

Dan Pfeiffer went on five Sunday talk shows where he tried to reverse the damage done to the Obama administration this week by a series of scandals. On “Fox News Sunday” he tried to hammer home that the president only heard that the IRS unfairly targeted Tea Party groups “when it came out in the news.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who appeared on CNN's State of the Union, suggested there was a written policy to target political groups opposing the president but when pressed for proof, he was unable to provide details.

On ABC, Pfeiffer said the law governing the targeting of conservative groups was “irrelevant."

“You don’t really mean the law is irrelevant do you?” host George Stephanopoulos asked.

Pfeiffer clarified his statement, “What I mean is that whether it's legal, or illegal is -- is not important to the fact that it -- that, the conduct as a matter. The Department of Justice said they're looking into the legality of this. The president is not going to wait for that. We have to make sure it doesn't happen again regardless of how that turns out.”

Earlier this week, a Treasury Department inspector general report revealed that Tea Party and other groups that had been critical of Obama received extra scrutiny when applying for a tax-exempt status from the government. According to the report, IRS agents had not flagged similar liberal or progressive groups.

The incident was traced back to an Ohio IRS office that had singled out conservative groups and held up their applications or demanded information from them like donor information, which is illegal. Many groups would not or could not provide the confidential information and as a result had to suspend their applications.

Pfeiffer also took the bold step of demanding Republicans owe Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, an apology for alleging she played a part in formulating the White House’s response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, last year that killed four Americans.

Pfeiffer said that the release of more than 100 pages of Benghazi emails and notes show “beyond a shadow of the doubt” that accusations she tried to change the narrative of what happened in the attacks were false.

"And, frankly, I think that many of the Republicans who have been talking about this, now that they have seen the emails, owe Ambassador Rice an apology for the things they said about her in the wake of the attack,” he said.

He claimed on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the issue of who changed the initial talking points on the attack is "largely irrelevant." The Benghazi emails though did show top State Department officials involved in trying to water down the administration's initial storyline to remove references to prior security incidents and warnings.

Another scandal hitting the White House this week involved the seizure of two months worth of telephone records of journalists at four Associated Press bureaus including Washington and New York.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt criticized the move Sunday, saying the Justice Department’s secret subpoenas sent a strong and negative message to sources and made them less willing to talk to AP journalists.

Pruitt said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” it was not only unconstitutional but also damaging to the ideal of a free press in the country.

“It will hurt,” he said. “We’re already seeing some impact. Officials are saying they’re reluctant to talk.”

The Justice Department disclosed the seizure of two months of phone records in a letter the AP received May 10. The letter didn’t say why the organization was targeted. Last week, Pruitt had said in a statement on the AP website that it was difficult to defend its actions since it was not told by the government what it did or what prompted the subpoenas.

Prosecutors later said they were looking into government leaks on a foiled Al Qaeda plot in Yemen before it was made public last year. Justice officials also alleged the AP’s story would have put Americans at risk, a claim the AP strongly refuted.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...#ixzz2TqCShIrp

[American Patriot]

We can NOT let this die...

IRS scandal appears to be far from over

By Jessica Janner
CREATED 6:20 AM

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• Update on IRS scandal and other recent scandals in Washington, DC Video by ktnv.com
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(KTNV) -- The White House is in full damage control mode because of three scandals dominating headlines.


Some in Washington say the congressional hearings aren't enough, especially when it comes to the IRS scandal.


Many think a special counsel will be needed to put agents under oath to get to the bottom of why conservatives were targeted for scrutiny by the IRS for almost two years.


According to new reports, some Republicans on Capitol Hill have known about the investigation for months.


The information was revealed after the Inspector General's report was completed.


The White House is still insisting that this is a big distraction and much ado about nothing.


They went around defending their actions this Sunday on all the morning talk shows. White House advisor Dan Pfieffer called criticisms of the president offensive.


He went on to warn against "trumped-up hearings and false allegations."


He also said the White House never ordered the IRS to go after conservative groups.


Critics are calling it one of the worst abuses of government power in recent history and are vowing to continue the hearings.


Several federal lawsuits are also expected from the conservative groups that were targeted.

[American Patriot]

Obama didn't know... he didn't know he knew weeks ago... liar.

• Updated May 19, 2013, 7:54 p.m. ET

Obama's Counsel Was Told of IRS Audit Findings Weeks Ago

By PETER NICHOLAS The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday.


That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time.


In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that "a small number of line IRS employees had improperly scrutinized certain…organizations by using words like 'tea party' and 'patriot,' " the official said.


President Barack Obama said last week he learned about the controversy at the same time as the public, on May 10, when an IRS official revealed it to a conference of lawyers. The president's statement drew criticism, focusing attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently informed about the agencies under his authority.
Related Video

• IRS Was Told in 2011: Don't Target Tea Party
• So What's It Like to Work for the IRS?
• Treasury Knew of IRS Targeting Last June

Others, including veterans of previous scandals, said the counsel—whose role is to advise the president on all legal matters concerning his job and the White House—was right to avoid telling Mr. Obama about the audit's early findings. Doing so could have caused a new storm by creating the appearance of meddling in an independent investigation that hadn't yet concluded, former officials said.


The White House, which declined to make Ms. Ruemmler available for comment Sunday, wouldn't say whether she shared the information with anyone else in the senior administration staff.


The new detail doesn't help answer some fundamental questions about the IRS scandal, including how it began and who, if anyone, in the administration was aware of the severity of the inspector general's probe before last November's presidential election.


Instead, it focuses attention on the White House's handling of the matter, which has blown up into the kind of crisis that could persist.


When findings are so potentially damaging, the president should immediately be informed, said Lanny Davis, who served as a special counsel to President Bill Clinton.







Associated Press White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer speaking on CBS's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday.





Of the controversies dogging Mr. Obama, including the terrorist assault in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department's seizure of phone records of Associated Press journalists, the IRS case "is the most nuclear issue of all," Mr. Davis said. It involves the "misuse of the IRS" and "anyone who knew about this a few weeks ago and didn't tell the president shouldn't be in the White House," Mr. Davis said.


On the Sunday political talk shows, the White House rejected suggestions that the president should have taken action before the inspector general's office released its report May 14, a few days after the probe's findings were disclosed in news accounts.


Dan Pfeiffer, a White House senior adviser, said on NBC that the matter "was handled in the exact appropriate way. As I said, we do not ever do anything to give the appearance of interference in an investigation. What would be an actual scandal would be if we somehow were involved" in such interference.


Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was notified in a March 2013 meeting with the Treasury inspector general for the IRS that an audit was "forthcoming," according to the Treasury Department. But at that meeting, the inspector general didn't provide details of his findings, the Treasury said.


Jack Quinn, who served as White House counsel under former President Bill Clinton, said Ms. Ruemmler's office acted correctly in not sharing the information directly with the president.


If she had instead gotten "involved and called people over to the White House for a full briefing to know all the details, you know what we'd be talking about now? We'd be talking about whether she had tried to interfere with the IG's investigation," Mr. Quinn said.


John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff under Mr. Clinton, said: "The worst thing is if you do anything that is perceived to be interfering with an independent investigation" especially if it isn't fully complete. "That gets you in such trouble your head spins."


Republicans are expected to zero in on the question of who in the Obama administration's senior ranks knew about the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, especially before the November election last year.


Republican lawmakers on House oversight committees are pressing the investigation, with more hearings set for this week.


"Exactly who in the administration knew what about the IRS targeting is one of the key outstanding questions," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of a House oversight committee that plans to hold a hearing Wednesday on the matter, in an emailed statement.


"In waiting so long to address wrongdoing and inform the public, President Obama and his administration seem more preoccupied with having deniability than quickly addressing serious wrongdoing," Mr. Issa added.


In his comments Sunday, Mr. Pfeiffer suggested that more personnel changes could come at the IRS, after last week's ouster of acting commissioner Steven Miller by the president. Mr. Pfeiffer also went on the offensive, saying that White House cooperation with GOP investigators has its limits and that Mr. Obama won't take part in "partisan fishing expeditions."


—John D. McKinnon contributed to this article.

[American Patriot]

May 20, 2013 Confirmed: White House counsel knew of tea party targeting weeks ago

Rick Moran

We knew from Jay Carney that the White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, was told by Treasury Department attorneys on April 22 that an inspector general was working on a report on IRS abuses in the tax exempt shop.



What we didn't know was what exactly the IRS told Ruemmler about the report. A White House official has confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that the counsel was informed of many of the specifics that would be contained in the report, including the targeting of conservative groups.



The president keeps claiming that he didn't know anything about the targeting until the day that Lois Lerner answered the planted question about the matter at a meeting of the American Bankers Association on Friday, May 10. But if his counsel knew of the program a month ago, why wasn't he told?

President Barack Obama said last week he learned about the controversy at the same time as the public, on May 10, when an IRS official revealed it to a conference of lawyers. The president's statement drew criticism, focusing attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently informed about the agencies under his authority.President Barack Obama said last week he learned about the controversy at the same time as the public, on May 10, when an IRS official revealed it to a conference of lawyers. The president's statement drew criticism, focusing attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently informed about the agencies under his authority


Others, including veterans of previous scandals, said the counsel-whose role is to advise the president on all legal matters concerning his job and the White House-was right to avoid telling Mr. Obama about the audit's early findings. Doing so could have caused a new storm by creating the appearance of meddling in an independent investigation that hadn't yet concluded, former officials said.


The White House, which declined to make Ms. Ruemmler available for comment Sunday, wouldn't say whether she shared the information with anyone else in the senior administration staff.


The new detail doesn't help answer some fundamental questions about the IRS scandal, including how it began and who, if anyone, in the administration was aware of the severity of the inspector general's probe before last November's presidential election.


Instead, it focuses attention on the White House's handling of the matter, which has blown up into the kind of crisis that could persist.


When findings are so potentially damaging, the president should immediately be informed, said Lanny Davis, who served as a special counsel to President Bill Clinton.


Of the controversies dogging Mr. Obama, including the terrorist assault in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department's seizure of phone records of Associated Press journalists, the IRS case "is the most nuclear issue of all," Mr. Davis said. It involves the "misuse of the IRS" and "anyone who knew about this a few weeks ago and didn't tell the president shouldn't be in the White House," Mr. Davis said.

Incompetent or a liar? Which is it, Mr. President? If that timeline continues to slip and it comes out that the White House - or the Obama campaign - knew of the investigation by the IG of targeting conservative groups before the election, the president is going to be in even bigger trouble.



Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...#ixzz2TqDsCk00

[American Patriot]

How the IRS seeded the clouds in 2010 for a political deluge three years later

Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post - The Internal Revenue Service, on May, 19, 2013 in Washington, D.C.

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By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Kimberly Kindy, Published: May 19 E-mail the writers

In early 2010, an Internal Revenue Service team in Cincinnati began noticing a stream of applications from groups with *political-sounding names, setting in motion a dragnet aimed at *separating legitimate tax-exempt groups from those working to get candidates elected.
The IRS officials decided to single out one type of political group for particular scrutiny. “These cases involve various local organizations in the Tea Party movement,” read one internal IRS e-mail sent at the time.

Video

Former acting IRS comissioner Steven Miller said that he believes the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups was “absolutely not illegal” but he did acknowledge that it was inappropriate.

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Can the White House hold the line on IRS, Benghazi and AP controversies?

Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan 4:32 AM ET
THE FIX | The White House isn't backing down on the IRS or Benghazi. At least not yet.


A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner

Glenn Kessler 4:00 AM ET
FACT CHECKER | As more information is disclosed, the factual gaps in Lois Lerner’s statements become clearer.


What is Congress doing this week?

Ed O'Keefe 7:31 AM ET
Can Congress productively legislate and conduct oversight investigations of a sitting president at the same time? This week will be the test.

Read more

A few hours north in Fremont, Ohio, the owners of a drainage supply shop, Tom and Marion Bower, were wondering why it was taking so long to get a tax exemption for their new tea party group.
“I didn’t think any of us thought we’d be targeted,” said Marion Bower, of American Patriots Against Government Excess. “We started the group because we wanted to learn about our country and educate people. Now I’m becoming a little paranoid. If they can do this, what else can they do?”
Groups such as the Bowers’ were among more than a hundred conservative organizations singled out for extra screening by the IRS, part of an attempt to identify politically active groups not eligible for tax exemptions. The revelations, described in detail last week by the IRS watchdog, have caused a political earthquake — prompting the resignations of two top IRS officials, a criminal investigation and multiple congressional probes, including hearings scheduled for this week.
The story of the IRS’s policy of targeting right-leaning groups, which played out over several years in Cincinnati, Washington, and dozens of other cities and towns, was one of a bureaucracy caught in a morass of uncertainty and outside pressure. The actions also confirmed the suspicions of many conservatives after they had complained for years of harassment by the tax agency.
According to the inspector general’s report, as IRS officials in Cincinnati tried to decide what to do about the groups — political advocacy organizations seeking what is known as 501 (c)(4) status — they sent out intrusive questionnaires seeking donor lists, copies of meeting minutes and reams of other documents. Applications sat around for months, sometimes years; some organizations ended up folding while awaiting answers that never came.
IRS officials in Cincinnati were ignorant of the law and did not recognize that they should not scrutinize groups solely based on terms such as “tea party,” “patriots” and other conservative-sounding descriptions in their names, the inspector general’s report said. Many liberal-leaning and nonpolitical groups were also caught up in the effort.
At the same time, the IRS faced growing criticism from the outside that it was not doing enough to examine an increasing number of politically active groups seeking tax-exempt status.
“You had a lot of pressure on the IRS to figure out who and what should be a (c)(4) and complaints being filed by groups saying they had erred in granting (c)(4) status,” said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and a former Federal Elections Commission chairman. “You had (c)(4)s on both the Democratic and Republican side spending a lot on politics. That’s the background of how we got here.”

[American Patriot]

Taxes

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5/19/2013 @ 6:22PM |2,546 views

6 Questions Everyone Should Ask The IRS

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Outgoing acting Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Steve Miller testifies before a full House Ways and Means committee hearing on 'Internal Revenue Service Targeting Conservative Groups' on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 17, 2013. US President Barack Obama sacked the acting head of the US Internal Revenue Service on May 15 over a scandal sparked when officials unfairly targeted conservative groups. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

The lackluster IRS testimony so far suggests we may never know what happened, who did what, who knew, when they knew and worse. Confusion and Staff Troubles Rife at I.R.S. Office in Ohio. For both sides of the political spectrum that is sad, suggesting a cancer that may be hard to cut out. Steven Miller was in an uncomfortable position, and perhaps little is even his fault. But his testimony did the IRS and its thousands of employees no favors.


Rogue agents, grassroots workload techniques in Cincinnati, no one meant harm, few knew. Besides, the law isn’t clear. Such dissembling suggests the issues may be worse than anyone thought, though debate whether “rotten to the core” is a fair epithet (it isn’t) isn’t productive.

Those who don’t like the Tea Party should be as upset as those who do. The IRS singled out political views and asked inappropriate questions, no one was in charge and reports of bad conduct were not acted on, perhaps even buried. But most of us will get lost in the endless spin from all sides. Amid all the noise, many Americans should ask simpler questions.
1. Why is the tax law so horribly complex? This isn’t the IRS’ fault. The IRS makes it worse, but Congress passes tax laws and fundamental reform must start with them. It is long overdue. Even if it isn’t fair, a flat tax would be much, much more fair than what we have.


2. Can I feel secure that I will be dealt with fairly by the IRS? Mostly. The tax system is full of special rules. No one can master them all. Thus, one taxpayer may be treated very differently from another who is seemingly in the same position. That isn’t fair.


Don’t confuse this with fundamental procedural fairness and non-discrimination. On the whole, the IRS does an incredible job administering our horribly unwieldy tax laws. If you are not being dealt with fairly and respectfully, complain, ask for a manager or go to the IRS Taxpayer Advocate’s Office. Speaking of the latter, I support Nina Olson for IRS Commissioner.



3. Doesn’t the IRS police its employees? Yes, and does a better job than recent stories suggest. Some are even fired. See IRS Non-Retaliation Policy. That’s one reason much of the recent back story at the top is hard to believe. Unreasonable or abusive requests may happen, and you need to speak up.


4. Why does it seem that there’s always someone getting away with something in the tax world? Because there is. Wealthy people may manipulate the rules and pay less than you think they should. At the other end of the spectrum, scams may hand out earned income tax credits and bogus refunds. The fact that someone is playing the game better than you are can grate but it doesn’t mean the whole system is rigged. Reform is needed.


5. Can I feel secure that my private taxpayer information will remain private? This may be the biggest challenge today not only for the IRS but for many in government and non-government alike. With technology and e-filing, it is a huge danger. Leaks should be dealt with severely.


6. Why is staying off the IRS radar so important? In any terribly complex system, this is important by itself. Shhh, Home Office And Other IRS Audit Trigger Secrets. It is why you should pay rather than contest small bills. It is why any even a joking suggestion of “we’ll audit you” is so sensitive. Be careful out there.

[American Patriot]

AmSpec Scoop: Obama 'Met With Anti-Tea Party IRS Union Chief the Day Before Agency Targeted Tea Party'

By Tom Blumer | May 20, 2013 | 11:20

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has reviewed the White House logs looking for a relationship between meetings listed there and the timeline found in the Inspector General's report on the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups issued last Tuesday. Lord's work represents yet another example of alternative media scooping a lazy or negligent establishment press.


What Lord has found (single-page print version) is that President Barack Obama met with the President of the National Treasury Employees Union Colleen Kelley, on March 31, 2010. The NTEU is "the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies." The Inspector General's report, blandly titled "Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review," indicates that the IRS, in Lord's words, "set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America" the very next day. Lord's work is a mandatory read-the-whole-thing item. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine):

Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun? President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.


... According to the White House Visitors Log ... the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.


... The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:


April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.


In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.”


... The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White House.


... (the) 12:30 Wednesday, March 31, 2010 meeting between President Obama and the IRS union’s Kelley was not unusual.


On yet another occasion, Kelley’s presence at the White House was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive Order 13522. A presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party NTEU — the IRS union — a greater role in the day-to-day operation of the IRS than it had already — which was considerable.


... Six days following Kelley’s attendance at the White House Christmas party with labor activists like herself, the President issued Executive Order 13522 (text found here, with an explanation here). The Executive Order, titled: “Creating Labor-Management Forums To Improve Delivery of Government Services” applied across the federal government and included the IRS. The directive was designed to:


Allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters….


However else this December 2009 Executive Order can be described, the directive was a serious grant of authority within the IRS to the powerful anti-Tea Party union.

Lord raises compelling "What did the President know and when did he know it?" questions. Read the whole thing for the matters he raises.

I'd like to add one.


Much has been made of Barack Obama's "joking" about tax audits in mid-May of 2009. A Wall Street Journal editorial rebuked Obama over it:

At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."


... This is why the IRS is so strict with its own employees. Paul Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who writes the TaxProf blog, noted in response to Mr. Obama's remarks that the law calls for the termination of IRS employees who make audit threats for illegitimate reasons. He suggested that Mr. Obama's "joke" might be grounds for firing if he were an IRS employee.


He's not, of course, but as the president his words carry much more weight and he should be much more careful.

In light of the news of the past two weeks, it is reasonable to question the motivation behind Obama's admonition to graduates at Ohio State on May 5 that they should "reject these voices" who "warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner." I contended last week that he might instead have been "preparing the nation for the recent series of scandals" which "he and his cohorts already saw coming" in the hope that the American people might discount their authoritarian aspects and implications.


Similarly, what if Obama's 2009 "joke," in addition to being a clumsy at humor, inadvertently betrayed his full knowledge of the fury he had already unleashed against those who might oppose him?


Curious establishment press reporters could have accessed the White House logs at any time and found what Lord has discovered. US News has even gone to the trouble of making them searchable. But either they didn't, which would be bad enough, or much worse, they saw what Lord saw and ignored it. Under even remotely similar circumstances, or even artificial ones (e.g., the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame nothingburger known as Nadagate), their zeal to get to the bottom of things would know no bounds if a Republican or conservative was in the White House.


Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.org.



Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blu...#ixzz2TqkfHPSv

[American Patriot]

Yeah, right, check the DATE on this article..... May 2009;

• May 18, 2009

Tax Audits Are No Laughing Matter

A president shouldn't even joke about abusing IRS power.


By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS

Barack Obama owes his presidency in no small part to the power of rhetoric. It's too bad he doesn't appreciate the damage that loose talk can do to America's tax system, even as exploding federal deficits make revenues more important than ever.

At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."


Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it's hard to see the humor. Surely he's aware that other presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, have abused the power of the Internal Revenue Service to harass their political opponents. But that abuse generated a powerful backlash and with good reason. Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system.


Our income-tax system is based on voluntary compliance and honest reporting by citizens. It couldn't possibly function if most people decided to cheat. Sure, the system is backed up by the dreaded IRS audit. But the threat is, while not exactly hollow, limited: The IRS can't audit more than a tiny fraction of taxpayers. If Americans started acting like Italians, who famously see tax evasion as a national pastime, the system would collapse.


One reason why Americans don't act like Italians is that they see the income-tax system as basically fair in execution. A tax audit or a tax-fraud prosecution is still seen, usually, as evidence that someone has done something wrong. If it comes instead to be seen as "just politics" then the moral component of the system will be gone. For the system to work, people have to believe that it is fundamentally fair.


This is why the IRS is so strict with its own employees. Paul Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who writes the TaxProf blog, noted in response to Mr. Obama's remarks that the law calls for the termination of IRS employees who make audit threats for illegitimate reasons. He suggested that Mr. Obama's "joke" might be grounds for firing if he were an IRS employee.


He's not, of course, but as the president his words carry much more weight and he should be much more careful. That's particularly true given that people still haven't forgotten about the Obama administration's other tax issues -- the appointment of Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary despite an inexcusable failure to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes while working for the International Monetary Fund, and the scandals involving Tom Daschle and others whose appointments failed. (When the Geithner issue came up, news reports indicated that IRS employees were very upset. They can be fired over a simple late filing or a failure to report a mere $500 in income, making Mr. Geithner's "pass" on much more serious questions quite demoralizing.)


The notion that people who are audited are probably just "enemies of the regime," coupled with the idea that big shots get a pass -- that, as Leona Helmsley is reputed to have said, "taxes are for the little people" -- is a recipe for widespread tax evasion. That's how things work in Italy, and in many other countries around the world. But do we want things to work that way here?


Mr. Obama has been accused of not appreciating the importance of financial capital to the proper functioning of the economy. But ill-chosen remarks like his ASU audit threat suggest that he also doesn't appreciate the role of moral capital. That, too, is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. As he looks for ways to pay for the spending campaign he's already embarked upon, he'd be well-advised to avoid comments that undercut the very tax system he'll be depending on.


Mr. Reynolds, professor of law at the University of Tennessee, covers politics for PJTV.com.

[American Patriot]

IRS Scandal: The 8 Names to Know This Week

By Shane Goldmacher

Updated: May 20, 2013 | 10:20 p.m.
May 20, 2013 | 2:36 p.m.

Steven Miller, right, is the ousted chief of the Internal Revenue Service. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)


The controversy surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of tea-party groups will consume Capitol Hill for a second straight week. These are the key names to know to keep up with the fast-moving scandal, with hearings set Tuesday in the Senate and Wednesday in the House:
Lois Lerner

Lerner heads the exempt organizations division for the IRS. She’s the most embattled figure in the IRS scandal who is still clinging to a job.
Lerner is the one who first disclosed the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups on May 10 at what appeared, at first, to be an impromptu question-and-answer session at a conference. Nope: It turns out she had had the question planted. What has really galled Congress is that Lerner appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee just two days earlier and failed to mention anything, even though she had been questioned about the tax authorities’ handling of 501(c)(4) applications.
Her critics are on both sides of the aisle. “This is wholly unacceptable, and one of the reasons we believe Ms. Lerner should be relieved of her duties,” Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on Ways and Means, said on Friday.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote in a letter to Lerner last week, “It appears that you provided false or misleading information on four separate occasions last year.” And Issa suggested she may have more to worry about than her job, noting that misleading Congress “is a serious matter, with potential criminal liability.” (On Monday, The Washington Post awarded Lerner a “bushel of Pinocchios” for her misstatements.)
Issa will helm the gavel as Lerner makes her post-scandal debut at his committee Wednesday.
Neal Wolin

Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Republicans have pledged to uncover who knew what and when in the IRS case—and Wolin, deputy secretary of Treasury, is one of the first bread crumbs they’ve found that leads beyond the quasi-independent IRS and deeper into the Obama administration. At Friday’s IRS hearing, the Treasury inspector general said that he had briefed Wolin in June 2012 about his then-ongoing audit. Republicans want to see if that information migrated higher up the food chain. (Democrats point out that Issa himself was also informed, in a July 2012 letter, that the inspector general had begun a probe into “a potential lack of balance” in reviewing tax-exempt applicants.)
The White House has said the information didn’t spread past Wolin. “The deputy secretary of the Treasury was made aware of just the fact that the investigation was beginning last year," senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said on Sunday. "But no one in the White House was aware." Asked specifically if Wolin didn’t tell then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (his boss) and if, in turn, Geithner didn’t tell the White House, Pfeiffer replied, “That is correct.”
It’s a question Issa and Co. will ask again when Wolin appears before the oversight committee Wednesday.
Doug Shulman

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The former IRS commissioner is pulling double duty: testifying both before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday and the House Oversight panel on Wednesday. Expect two thorough grillings.
His term ended late in 2012, but that left Shulman at the helm of the tax agency when it gave extra scrutiny to conservatives. Incredulous lawmakers plan to ask how Shulman could tell a House committee in May 2012 that, “There is absolutely no targeting” when he was specifically asked about reports of picking on tea-party groups. The inspector general’s report shows that there had been targeting for many months by then. Yet Shulman said, “What has been happening has been the normal back and forth that happens with the IRS.”
In an effort to ensure blame is bipartisan, Democrats will point out, again and again, that Shulman was an appointee of President George W. Bush, not Obama.
Sarah Hall Ingram

Sarah Hall Ingram isn’t scheduled to testify on the Hill this week. She wasn’t named in the inspector general’s report. But expect to hear her name plenty anyway.
Republicans have seized on the fact that Hall Ingram, who previously oversaw the tax-exempt division where all the tea-party targeting took place, is currently in charge of the IRS office overseeing the revving up of the Affordable Care Act. It’s a perfect bite-sized talking point for Republicans who want to wrap the IRS scandal up in their ongoing attempts to roll back “Obamacare.”
“Stunning, just stunning,” Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said, after her two roles were reported last week.
The IRS has said she wasn’t actually in charge of the exempt division during the time of the scandal—and that the man who was, Joseph Grant, announced last week he will retire in June. The White House is defending her—for now. “Before everyone in this town convicts this person in a court of public opinion with no evidence, let's actually get the facts and make decisions after that,” Pfeiffer said.
Steven Miller

Steven Miller, right, the ousted chief of the Internal Revenue Service (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The outgoing acting IRS commissioner was fired last week—OK, requested to resign—but he’s still getting raked over the congressional coals. He was the key witness during Friday’s hearing and lawmakers were none too pleased with his general nonresponsiveness. “I did not mislead Congress, nor the American people,” he declared. Lawmakers get two more cracks at him in Senate Finance on Tuesday and House Oversight on Wednesday.

J. Russell George

J. Russell George. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

George is the Treasury inspector general for tax administration whose report has set off the scandal. Like Miller, George is pulling off a trifecta: testifying at Ways and Means, Finance, and Oversight all in a week’s time. Most of what George knows, presumably, he included in his report. But he’ll still be there taking lawmakers’ questions when they tire of browbeating IRS officials.


Kathryn Ruemmler

Federal prosecutor Kathryn Ruemmler. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

She’s the White House’s top lawyer and she knew about the IRS scandal—as did the president’s chief of staff, among other aides—the week of April 22, 2013. But Obama himself was kept in the dark. He has said he didn’t know about the IG report until news broke publicly, weeks later. This part of the story is less about the targeting scandal itself and more about Obama’s leadership style. Why wouldn’t his own counsel notify him? The White House says the president must steer clear of meddling in independent investigations and spokesman Jay Carney said she “appropriately” didn’t tell Obama. But some see the details as evidence of an absentee executive.

Celia Roady

Roady is the tax attorney who asked the question, on May 10, to Lois Lerner that exploded the targeting of tea-party groups into the public view. Roady is a bit player, but her name will likely come up as Republicans grill Lerner about her decision to plant a question and not to share with Congress first. In a statement provided to National Journal, Roady said Lerner called her the day before and asked her to pose the question. “We had no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question, nor had we spoken about any of this before I received her call,” Roady said. “She did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this story, the name of former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman was misspelled.