IRS unfairly targeting Conservatives (Tea Party groups)

[American Patriot]

May 17, 2013, 7:21am EDT
IRS official said Ohio Tea Party groups had 'nothing to be suspicious of'

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Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, says Lois Lerner, IRS director of exempt organizations, responded to inquiries last year, claiming there was "nothing to be suspicious of" in the IRS' review of certain groups.

Evan Weese

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At the prompting of several Ohio conservative groups, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, requested an audit of the Internal Revenue Service, which was suspected of delaying certain applications for tax-exempt status, the Toledo Blade reports.
Jordan sent a letter on March 27, 2012, seeking response to the complaints and requested an IRS audit in June 2012. Jordan, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Lois Lerner, the IRS director of exempt organizations, "assured us there was nothing to be suspicious of," according to the Blade.
Of course, the IRS' admission this week that it targeted Tea Party-related groups led to the resignation of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller.

[American Patriot]

Wait a minute....


Flashback: Schumer, Franken urged IRS to target tea party in 2012

2:09 AM 05/17/2013

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Jeff Poor
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Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that.


The IRS’s admission last Friday that it had singled out tea party and other groups for extra audits and delays has raised concerns that President Barack Obama’s administration quietly attempted to stymy opponents through intimidation. But many prominent Democrats — including Montana Sen. Max Baucus, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the New York Times editorial board — had been publicly calling for tighter restrictions on 501(c)(4) groups affiliated with the tea party and conservatives.


Last year, Schumer, along with Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Jeanne Shaheen and Al Franken, penned a letter calling on the agency to cap the amount of the political spending by groups masquerading as “social welfare organizations.”


A press release from Schumer’s office dated March 12, 2012 laid out the terms of the letter:

The senators said the lack of clarity in the IRS rules has allowed political groups to improperly claim 501(c)4 status and may even be allowing donors to these groups to wrongly claim tax deductions for their contributions. The senators promised legislation if the IRS failed to act to fix these problems.
“We urge the IRS to take these steps immediately to prevent abuse of the tax code by political groups focused on federal election activities. But if the IRS is unable to issue administrative guidance in this area then we plan to introduce legislation to accomplish these important changes,” the senators wrote.

The letter cited a March 7, 2012 New York Times article by Jonathan Weisman that suggested donations to groups like American Crossroads and Priorities USA could be tax deductible, which was a primary concern of those senators at the time.


A number of those senators participated in a press conference about their efforts on March 21, 2012, and Franken spoke out about what he called lack of oversight of 501(c)(4) status.


“I think that there hasn’t been enforcement by the FEC and the IRS, and so there are entities that are taking a 501(c)4 status, and under that they’re supposed to have more than half of their activity be non-political,” Franken said. “That’s pretty hinky. I mean, they really aren’t doing that, and that I think there needs to be a look at that — that even under the laws that already exist, there are people who should be disclosing who aren’t. And I think that is where we’re seeing the effect of — lack of effective enforcement and just oversight.”


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/17/fl...#ixzz2TZBqCZqC

[American Patriot]

Denial Flows Like a River at the IRS

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 05.17.2013 - 11:55 AM


The testimony of Acting Internal Revenue Service Director Steven Miller before the House Ways and Means Committee didn’t provide much in the way of answers about the scandalous targeting of conservative groups by the agency. But it did give us a window into the mindset of the bureaucrats who supervised this outrage. Republican members tried to get Miller to respond to the key question hanging over this entire affair: Who gave the order to target groups with words like “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names and that criticized the way the country was being run? They got no answers, but they did get a refusal on his part to admit that he lied to Congress last year when he claimed no such targeting was going on. He also arrogantly claimed the abuses did not constitute targeting because he asserted that it was not politically motivated.


Miller’s claim that politics didn’t play a role in what was such an obvious case of bias directed solely at conservatives is without credibility. So too is his inability to admit that he didn’t tell the whole truth to Congress in the past about this or to remember who gave the order for the targeting. The same applies to his assertion that the person who supervised this disaster is a great public servant or that the targeting was not illegal.


Add this all together and what you get is a picture of an agency that has so thoroughly absorbed the views of its political masters that it doesn’t even recognize when it has crossed the line into illegal activity. It is also one in which that bias was considered a topic that they didn’t feel impelled to change or to reveal to Congress prior to the last election. Simply putting down this blatantly illegal activity to “foolish mistakes” by a few employees or considering it “horrible customer service,” as if they were discussing the delivery of fast food, shows a mindset that reeks of contempt for the Constitution and for democratic values. With the agency about to play a major role in implementing ObamaCare, the inability of its leader to give a straight answer to questions about any of this bodes ill for the country.


The issue of ObamaCare looms large in this controversy because the person who was in charge of the department agency that committed these abuses not only has not been punished but has also been promoted:

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Miller, who was scheduled to leave his post in a couple of weeks, was symbolically fired by President Obama in a meaningless gesture this week. His answers showed that he was clearly aware that he is vulnerable to charges of perjury or contempt of Congress for his past failures to honestly speak about the problems when questioned. But the problems went deeper than just a desire to avoid admitting that he and other IRS officials have deceived Congress and the country. His parsing of the word “targeting” showed that the head of the bureaucracy was still in denial about what has gone on there.


The singling out of conservative groups while liberals seeking nonprofit status were quickly approved speaks to a frame of reference about the issue that reeks of political bias. But Miller still seems to think such thinking was just a natural extension of normal procedure that might have gone a bit astray.


We need to know who gave the orders to target conservatives, and I suspect that after Congress and perhaps even Department of Justice investigators are through, we’ll learn the identity of that person or persons. We’ll also see just how far this cancer had spread throughout the culture of the organization, though we already know that the initial story that it was only the work of a few rogue employees in a Cincinnati office is also a lie.


But as the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel reminds us today, we know what inspired the whole problem irrespective of which bureaucrat gave the specific order. All the IRS was doing in the course of this scandal was listening to President Obama and his media cheerleaders who had been telling the country for years that the Tea Party and other conservatives were extremists whose illegitimate actions deserved to be placed beyond the pale. The harassment suffered by conservatives by the government’s most intrusive and powerful agency cannot be separated from the calls by the head of that government and his supporters for exactly this sort of prejudicial behavior.
Miller’s evasions and inability to face up to the enormity of this affair are bad enough. So too is the failure throughout the IRS to own up to the problem or to correct it long ago and to promote the person who appears to be among those responsible for the outrages. But the willingness of the IRS to conform its practices to the political opinions of the White House is the root cause of this scandal.

[American Patriot]

• Updated May 16, 2013, 8:41 p.m. ET

Strassel: The IRS Scandal Started at the Top

The bureaucrats at the Internal Revenue Service did exactly what the president said was the right and honorable thing to do.

• By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
  
  

Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.


President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.


But that's not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.


Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. "He put a target on our backs, and he's now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?" asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

At the White House, President Obama addresses the IRS scandal, May 15.



Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a "wealthy individual" with a "less-than-reputable record." Other donors were described as having been "on the wrong side of the law."


This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.


Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot's divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.


The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn't account for what the president's vilification has done to his business and reputation.


The Obama call for scrutiny wasn't a mistake; it was the president's strategy—one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as "less than reputable" to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn't need a telephone; he had a megaphone.


The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, claiming that it "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests" (read conservative groups).


The president derided "tea baggers." Vice President Joe Biden compared them to "terrorists." In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. "Nobody knows who's paying for these ads," he warned. "We don't know where this money is coming from," he intoned.


In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: "All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."


Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having "failed to address" the "problem" of groups that were "improperly engaged" in campaigns. Because guess who controls that "independent" agency's budget?
The IRS is easy to demonize, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It got its heading from a president, and his party, who did in fact send it orders—openly, for the world to see. In his Tuesday press grilling, no question agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney more than the one that got to the heart of the matter: Given the president's "animosity" toward Citizens United, might he have "appreciated or wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those . . ." Mr. Carney cut off the reporter with "That's a preposterous assertion."


Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is "outraged" and "angry" that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, even lawbreaking. After all, he expects the IRS to "operate with absolute integrity." Even when he does not.


Write to kim@wsj.com.

[American Patriot]

Just saw a clip of Charlie Rangle (may the walking undead rest in peace) and he was .... livid.

I don't think he's that good of an actor. lol

[American Patriot]

Watch this woman carefully. What happens next with her will make some determination about how high this REALLY goes....

Politics

Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner’s husband’s law firm has strong Obama connections

12:13 AM 05/16/2013












Patrick Howley
Investigative Reporter



The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official who apologized for targeting conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny is married to an attorney whose firm hosted a voter registration organizing event for the Obama presidential campaign, praised President Obama’s policy work, and had one of its partners appointed by Obama to a key ambassadorship.


IRS Exempt Organizations Division director Lois G. Lerner, who has been described as “apolitical” in mainstream press coverage of the IRS scandal, is married to tax attorney Michael R. Miles, a partner at the law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. The firm is based in Atlanta but has a number of offices including in Washington, D.C., where Miles works.


The 400-attorney firm hosted an organizing meeting at its Atlanta office for people interested in helping with voter registration for the Obama re-election campaign.
This is not the first of Lerner’s connections to the president to surface. Earlier this week The Daily Caller reported that Lerner personally signed the tax-exemption approval for a shady charity run by Obama’s half-brother, after an inexplicably brief one-month application process. (Related: Lois Lerner approved exemption for Obama brother’s ‘charity’)



“Come learn more about how you can create, organize, and host a voter registration event here in Atlanta in the coming weeks. We will be meeting at at 7:30pm at 999 Peachtree St. NE, in the law offices of Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan,” read an event posting on my.barackobama.com.


Longtime Sutherland partner David Adelman, the former Democratic minority whip of the Georgia state senate, serves as ambassador to the Republic of Singapore in the Obama administration.


“Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP announces that its partner and Georgia State Sen. David I. Adelman, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore. President Obama nominated Sen. Adelman on November 20, 2009,” according to a Sutherland press release dated March 19, 2010.


“Sutherland has a great tradition of excellence. It has been a privilege to be a part of such a fine firm,” Adelman said at the time of his confirmation, according to the Sutherland press release.


“I am humbled by the confidence President Obama and Secretary Clinton have in me, and I look forward to building on the strong U.S.-Singapore relationship,” said Adelman, who joined Sutherland in 1993 and spent his entire career in private practice with the firm.


Sutherland heaped praised on Obama’s work in the U.S. Senate on legal issues pertaining to employee misclassification, which Sutherland works intensely enough on to have launched the website workerclassification.com.


“The subject of worker classification is likely to take on increased importance in light of the recent election of Barack Obama as President. While in the Senate, President Obama showed an interest in strengthening workers’ rights, particularly with respect to whether they should be classified as employees,” according to a Sutherland press release dated April 28, 2009.


“Along with others, he introduced the Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007. This legislation sought to give regulatory authority to the IRS to establish standards for properly classifying workers and to repeal the Section 530 safe harbor provisions that currently allow employers to rely on industry practice or professional advice as a reasonable basis for classifying workers. Also as a senator, President Obama, along with others, introduced the Employee Misclassification Prevention Act on September 29, 2008, which sought ‘to provide a special penalty for employers who misclassify employees as nonemployees,” according to the Sutherland press release.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/16/em...#ixzz2TZUYEPCy

[American Patriot]

And this:

Lois Lerner, Key IRS Official In Tea Party Scandal, Hasn't Agreed To Testify Before Congress

The Huffington Post | By Jon Ward Posted: 05/16/2013 6:21 pm EDT | Updated: 05/16/2013 6:33 pm EDT








While former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, has agreed to testify before Congress next week, the senior manager who oversaw the division that targeted tea party groups has yet to commit to do so.


Lois G. Lerner, who managed the IRS exempt organizations unit that approved applications for nonprofit status, is in Montreal, according to her attorney, a congressional source said, and has not yet said if she will come to Washington for testimony next week. Lerner has hired William W. Taylor III, the lawyer who represented Dominique Strauss Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund head accused of sexual assault by a New York hotel housekeeper, the source said.


Shulman, who told a congressional committee in March 2012 that the IRS had conducted "absolutely no targeting" of conservative tea party groups, will appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee next Wednesday. Lerner's presence has been requested. Others who have agreed to appear include J. Russell George, the treasury inspector general for tax administration, and Neal S. Wolin, deputy treasury secretary.


On Friday morning, George, the inspector general, will testify before the House Ways and Means Committee, along with Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the IRS who is so far the only government official to lose his job in the scandal. President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that Miller had resigned.

[American Patriot]

IRS Scandal Strategy: The Democratic and Republican Playbooks

By Paul M. Barrett



May 17, 2013

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The House Ways and Means Committee has kicked off what will be a long season of recrimination over the Internal Revenue Service’s Tea Party profiling scandal.
Unfortunately, ping-pong questioning by Republicans on the attack and Democrats on the defensive—made murkier by the mumble-grumble of IRS officials who know they’re in trouble—may leave many observers wondering what the whole mess means. What strategies will the two political parties deploy as they sort out the damage?


Clearly stated, if not necessarily persuasive, outlines of those strategies are readily available. Check out the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, whose editors are wired into Washington’s partisan war rooms—the Times to the White House, of course, and the Journal to the Republicans on the Hill. In a house editorial entitled “Scandal Machine,” the Times dismisses the IRS debacle as the mundane product of bureaucratic confusion:

The Internal Revenue Service, according to an inspector general’s report, was not reacting to political pressure or ideology when it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny in evaluating requests for tax exemptions. It acted inappropriately because employees couldn’t understand inadequate guidelines.

President Obama may have fired the IRS commissioner and condemned the targeting of conservative political groups as “outrageous,” but the deeper Democratic strategy will be to turn the tables on congressional Republicans. In the fullness of time, the White House will accuse Republicans of pursuing a witch hunt in response to a back-office snafu. Don’t buy it. Given the enormous power the IRS possesses, and the clear evidence of overreaching already on the public record, it’s far too early to minimize this fiasco as a function of “inadequate guidelines.”


On the other side of the aisle, Republicans are hell-bent on proving that powerful Democrats—possibly the president himself—unleashed the IRS to afflict hapless activists who enjoy dressing up like Ben Franklin. Kimberly Strassel, the Journal’s “Potomac Watch” columnist, urges an instant verdict: “Was the White House involved in the IRS’s targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.” She elaborates:

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an “independent” agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies. But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

This version of “how Washington works” has the advantage of not requiring its proponent to prove actual White House involvement in IRS misdeeds. According to Strassel, merely by observing—accurately—that since 2010, Republicans have gained the upper hand in the campaign finance arms race, Obama and his Democratic colleagues were craftily instructing revenue agents to politically profile the Tea Partiers.


It may turn out that the White House ordered IRS-gate; let’s find out by collecting all the facts. But Democrats’ complaints about tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations that can conceal their donors while running political attack ads were legitimate. So were rejoinders from Republican operatives such as Karl Rove that Democrats’ hands were just as dirty in this regard.


Both parties have exploited our porous campaign finance regulations. In recent years, the Republicans have done so more energetically. What the IRS (and the Federal Election Commission) should have been doing all along was challenging the privileged status of the attack-ad factories, forcing them at a minimum to disclose their financial supporters.


A parting thought from a sharp nonpartisan observer: “The irony here is that the IRS is going to get punished, justifiably, for its heavy-handed tactics with the Tea Party committees,” says Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). “But the larger problem is that the IRS does nothing to enforce the law against the groups that are abusing a broken system on a much bigger scale.”

[American Patriot]

Jay Sekulow just said "Now you have the FBI investigating the IRS"....

Wow.

[Ryan Ruck]

Just saw a clip of Charlie Rangle (may the walking undead rest in peace) and he was .... livid.

I don't think he's that good of an actor. lol

Well of course Charlie Rangle was pissed at the IRS! They're always bustin' up his fun.

[American Patriot]

hahahahaha

[American Patriot]

I can't watch (or post probably) the video.


But you should hear it and see it.

Politics The Scathing Speech That Just Got a Standing Ovation During the IRS Hearing

May. 17, 2013 1:14pm Jonathon M. Seidl


Editor’s note — We’ll be discussing this story and all the day’s news during our live BlazeCast at 2 pm ET…including your questions, comments & live chat:


Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., questions ousted IRS Chief Steve Miller and J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, as they testify during a hearing at the House Ways and Means Committee on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) practice of targeting applicants for tax-exempt status based on political leanings on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Friday, May 17, 2013. Credit: AP



The gallery at the House Weighs and Means Committee Friday had to be called to order after it burst into applause and some gave a standing ovation following an impassioned diatribe against the IRS by Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Mike Kelly.


Kelly took his time during the hearing on the IRS’s targeting of conservatives to lambaste outgoing head Steven Miller, reminding Miller that while the IRS would like to chalk the organization’s recent actions up to a mistake, regular Americans do not get that luxury when dealing with the IRS.


“If you think it’s uncomfortable sitting over there you ought to be a private individual when the IRS is across from you asking you questions,” Kelly began, and that set the tone for the subsequent four minutes.


Some of the highlights:


• “I have a grandson who’s afraid to get out of bed at night because he thinks there’s someone under the bed that’s going to grab him. And I think most Americans feel that way about the IRS.”
• “This kind of reconfirms that, you know what, they [the IRS] can do almost anything they want to anybody they want, anytime they want. This is very chilling for the American people.”
• “This is a Pandora’s Box that has been opened and I don’t think we can get the lid back on it.”
• “I don’t believe the White House just found out about this in a news report.”
• “I got to tell you, where you’re sitting, you should be outraged — and you’re not. The American people should be outraged, and they are.”
• “This reconfirms everything the American public believes! This is a huge blow to the faith and trust the American people have in their government!”
• “Is there any limit to the scope of where you folks can go?”
• “It’s sure as hell intimidating. And I don’t’ know that I got any answers from you today.”
• “I am more concerned today than I was before. The fact that you all can do just about anything you want to anybody. You know, you can put anybody out of business that you want anytime you want.”
• “And when the IRS comes in, you’re not allowed to be shoddy, you’re not allowed to be run horribly, you’re not allowed to make mistakes, you’re not allowed to do one damn thing that doesn’t come in compliance. If you do, you’re held responsible right then.”
• “This is absolutely an overreach and this is an outrage for all America!”


You can watch the impassioned speech below and watch the gallery erupt:

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The Associated Press even captured pictures of the standing ovation:
Audience members applaud after Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., not pictured, questioned ousted IRS Chief Steve Miller as he testified on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Friday, May 17, 2013, before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) practice of targeting applicants for tax-exempt status based on political leanings. Credit: AP

Members of the audience stand and applaud after Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., criticized Steven Miller, the ousted chief of the Internal Revenue Service, as the House Ways and Means Committee focused on the extra scrutiny the IRS gave Tea Party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, May 17, 2013. Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin sits at front left. Credit: AP

The committee chairman eventually got the crowd to settle down.
–
Related:
• See Paul Ryan’s Tense Exchange with IRS Head on Why He Withheld Targeting Info in July Despite Knowing About It
• Do These Letters Show the IRS Lied About Upper Management Not Knowing About ‘Targeting?’
• Carney to Piers: The Three Government Scandals This Week ‘Don’t Exist’

[American Patriot]

Tables turn on IRS, lawmakers grill agency at heated hearing

Published May 17, 2013
FoxNews.com

• 
  
  
• 
  
  • 
    Republican lawmaker grills outgoing IRS...
    
    
  • 
    IRS scandal vindicates - and galvanizes - Tea Party?
    
    
  • 
    Connecting the dots in the IRS scandal
    
    
  
  

For the first time in years, the IRS was knocked down a peg or two.
In a hearing that escalated into a boisterous public shaming of one of the country's most-feared government agencies, lawmakers took turns Friday calling outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller on the carpet for his department's scandalous practice of targeting conservative groups.


And they vowed that the tense hearing would mark only the start of a series of investigations, in which criminal activity could be probed.


Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., seemed to capture the angst against the agency toward the end of the hours-long hearing, as he described the ways its agents are capable of ruining lives.


"You can put anybody out of business that you want. ... When the IRS comes in there, you're not allowed to be shoddy," he said, suggesting the agency's leadership was being held to a different standard now that it is coming under scrutiny.


"This is absolutely an overreach, and this is an outrage for all Americans," he said.


When he finished, the committee room erupted in cheers and applause that lasted several seconds.


The hearing, though, was more than just venting.


While Democrats voiced concern that the latest scandal would be used to score "political points," lawmakers on both sides of the aisle scolded the agency. And they made clear they'd be pressuring the IRS in the weeks to come on several points - namely, who was responsible and whether lawmakers were overtly lied to last year.


On the first question, they got few answers from Miller during Friday's testimony.


But they repeatedly confronted the acting commissioner -- who was ousted from him job earlier this week -- about his and other officials' failure to disclose the program last year despite being aware of it.


"In fact, we were repeatedly told no such targeting was happening. That isn't being misled, that's lying," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.


Miller seemed to frustrate lawmakers' attempts to dig deeper. He claimed, a week after the scandal broke and a year after he first learned of the practice, that he still did not know who was responsible.


"I don't have that name," he testified, after Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., asked who was behind the program.


Miller also claimed -- over and over -- he was being honest with Congress during a hearing last year.


"You did not share the information you knew," Reichert charged.


"I answered all questions truthfully," Miller replied.


This claim was met with deep skepticism Friday. Miller acknowledged he learned of the practice during a May 3, 2012, briefing. Yet when he was asked about it at a July 25 hearing that year, he said only that some applications fell into a particular category -- and that those organizations were grouped for "consistency" and "quality."


A letter he wrote to a Republican lawmaker the month before also gave a general description of the process without acknowledging that some groups were being singled out based on words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot."


"How can we not conclude that you misled this committee?" Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., former GOP vice presidential nominee, asked Miller.
Miller said he "did not mislead the committee" and stands by his answer.


Asked whether his answer was "incomplete," he said again he answered "truthfully."


Miller objected to the term "targeting," and claimed political motivations were not at play in the program, which began in 2010. But he apologized for the program and said "foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient."


"As acting commissioner, I want to apologize on the behalf of the Internal Revenue Service for the mistakes that we made and the poor service provided," Miller said. "The affected organizations and the American public deserve better."


The hearing is the first to examine the scandal, and will likely kick off a string of subsequent hearings and investigations. Republicans made clear that the two retirements or resignations to date would not satisfy their concerns.


Camp ripped the tax-collecting agency over the practice at the start of the hearing. "Now we know the truth -- or at least some of it," he said. "We also know that these revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. It would be a mistake to treat this as just one scandal."


He questioned how high the scandal went, and also suggested there was other targeting of conservatives that has not yet been acknowledged by the agency. He called it part of a "culture of cover-ups."


"This systemic abuse cannot be fixed with just one resignation, or two," he said. He said the problem is not just personnel, but the size and scope of the IRS.


The inspector general who released a scathing report on the agency also testified Friday. J. Russell George -- the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration -- said his findings raised "troubling questions" about the agency, while claiming some of the wrongdoing was apparently done with no-to-little supervision.


But he said all three allegations against the agency turned out to be true -- that it was using "inappropriate criteria" to screen conservative groups, it was delaying applications and it was asking unnecessary questions.


Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., the top Democrat on the committee, said the agency's management "completely failed the American people." At the same time, he urged Republicans not to use the hearing to "score political points."


Republicans, though, expressed more concern after they learned Thursday that the IRS official who led the tax-exempt organizations unit when the targeting took place -- Sarah Hall Ingram -- has since moved over to the IRS office responsible for ObamaCare.


Miller said Friday he was the one who promoted her and called her a "superb civil servant."


The acknowledgement comes after the administration announced that Ingram's successor Joseph Grant -- who had only been on the job a few days -- would be retiring.
President Obama, meanwhile, maintained Thursday that he didn't know about the investigation into the IRS program until it was made public. Obama also appointed a new acting commissioner -- White House budget officer Daniel Werfel -- after the prior IRS chief announced his resignation.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...#ixzz2TZhxxxOH

[American Patriot]

Who’s who in the IRS scandal: 7 to know

Aliyah Frumin1:07 PM on 05/17/2013



Outgoing acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller (R ) and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George are sworn-in during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 17, 2013. Miller resigned on Wednesday after the revelation the IRS hard targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny. REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES – Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS CRIME LAW)



After a tumultuous week for the Obama administration, the House on Friday began holding the first of several hearings on the Internal Revenue Service.


President Obama, who said he was not aware that the tax-collecting agency had wrongly targeted conservative groups 18 months before the 2012 election until media reports surfaced late last week, has expressed his outrage, leading to the resignation of two top IRS officials. Obama has also promised to hold other IRS officials accountable and work with Congress to make sure “this doesn’t happen again.”


The trouble began, according to the inspector general report, in March of 2010 when IRS agents began zeroing in on tax-exempt applications with keyword searches for words like “Tea Party” and “Patriots.” In June 2011, lawmakers began sending letters to the IRS asking they explain complaints that conservative groups were being given extra scrutiny. That’s snowballed to where are today: an IRS with a bruised and battered image, Tea Party outrage, and Republicans wanting to know just how much the Obama administration knew.


As the hearings continue, here’s a who is who in the unfolding controversy.


Lois Lerner: At the end of June 2011, Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups at the IRS, learned at a meeting that conservative groups were being targeted, according to the IG report. The division subsequently switched to more general search criteria. Six months later, she met with some members of Congress to discuss the issue, but didn’t bring up the targeting of conservative groups, according to the IG report.


Lerner, last Friday, was the first IRS official to publicly acknowledge that the agency had targeted the groups, calling it “absolutely inappropriate.” She argued, however, that the motive was not political and that it was merely an effort to handle the influx of applications of groups seeking tax-exempt status. Some are calling for her resignation, and Lerner –who started at the IRS in 2001, has reportedly lawyered up. It’s not clear if Lerner will testify in front of Congressional members next week.


Douglas Shulman: The former IRS commissioner was appointed by George W. Bush. In Oct. 2011, GOP Rep. Charles W. Boustany of Louisiana, sent a letter asking Shulman to outline the policies of the tax-exempt division. In March last year, he told Congress that there was “absolutely no targeting” of groups based on their politics. His tenure at the IRS ended in November.


Steven Miller: He’s been the acting IRS commissioner since November and was the first to announce his resignation at the behest of President Obama on Wednesday. He testified in front of members of the House Ways and Means committee on Friday, insisting the targeting of conservative groups was a “mistake, not an act of partisanship.” Miller is expected to stay in his post until June to help with the transition.


Joseph Grant: On Thursday, Grant–the commissioner of the IRS’ tax exempt and government entities division–became the second top official in the agency to step down. He joined the IRS in 2005, and became the deputy commissioner of the tax exempt division in 2007. He was only promoted to his current post last week.


Sarah Hall Ingram: The former head of the IRS’ tax exempt division is now in charge of the IRS office responsible for overseeing the new tax laws in Obamacare. (Grant took her job after she left.) Ingram was in charge while the unit inappropriately targeted conservative groups. Some are speculating that she could be the next person to be given the ax.


J. Russell George: The Treasury inspector general for the tax administration was the one who released the damaging report on the IRS. He testified in front of the House Ways and Means committee on Friday. George, who was appointed in 2004 by then-President George W. Bush, said his findings raised “troubling questions” but there was no evidence the targeting was done for political purposes.


Daniel Werfel: President Obama said Thursday that he would assign Werfel, who’s currently the controller of the White House Office of Management and Budget, as his new acting IRS Commissioner. He’ll be tasked with the duty of repairing the IRS’ image. Werfel has held a number of positions at the OMB, including policy analyst, chief of financial integrity, and deputy controller. Werfel served under former President George W. Bush on the Federal Accounting and Standards Advisory Board.

[American Patriot]

Some Tea Party groups probed by IRS had close GOP ties

Zachary Roth, @zackroth2:00 PM on 05/17/2013

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The Internal Revenue Service building at the end of the day in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, March 20, 2012. (Photo by Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images)

Tea Party groups have quickly lined up this week to tell reporters about receiving intrusive questions from the Internal Revenue Service after applying for tax-exempt status. But some of those same groups have close ties to Republican politics. That reality underlines what a growing number of good government advocates and other are saying: The problem isn’t too much scrutiny from the IRS, it’s too little.
Karen Kenney, the coordinator for the San Fernando Valley Patriots, told The Washington Post this week that after applying for nonprofit status, her group received “pretty much a proctology exam through your earlobe.”
But that (very) up-close look may have made sense: Kenney is active in Republican politics in southern California. She ran in 2010 for an internal GOP position, and has spoken at least twice since 2011 at the San Fernando Valley Republican club, in her capacity as a local Tea Party leader.
Kenney didn’t respond to a request for comment, but it’s not just her. The president of the Greater Phoenix Tea Party, Chris Rossiter, told Politico that after applying, his group received an inquiry from the IRS with 35 questions, and he described a phone conversation he said the group’s founder had with an IRS agent.
That founder was Kelly Townsend, who last year was elected as a Republican to the Arizona statehouse. A post on the Tea Party group’s website congratulated Townsend on her win.
Neither the Post nor Politico mentioned these ties to the GOP in their stories, which portrayed the IRS scrutiny as self-evidently burdensome.
Townsend told MSNBC she had no problem with being asked about the group’s political work, but objected to a drawn out process, saying the application is still pending more than three years after it was submitted.
“The biggest issue to me was not the questions,” she said. “It was the time frame. They cannot explain why it took two years to even initially contact us.”
Tea Party Demonstrators outside of the House Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday, March 20, 2010. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)



The involvement of Tea Party activists in Republican politics doesn’t necessarily mean their applications should have been rejected. What counts as political work, and just how much of it a group can do while still claiming tax-exempt status, is a contested issue—which is part of the problem. And most people agree that using keyword searches for terms like “Tea Party” and “patriot” was a bad way for IRS agents to approach their work.


But it does suggest it was reasonable for the IRS to take a close look. Indeed, many of those concerned about the influence of money in politics have long argued that rather than being too intrusive, the IRS is actually too ready to grant applications for tax-exempt status—known as “c4” status—even to organizations that do substantial political work.


“The IRS has not been enforcing the tax code,” Craig Holman, the lobbyist of good-government group Public Citizen told MSNBC. “They have been allowing groups to hide under the c4 tax status that are actually political front groups.”


There’s little agreement on just where the line between political and nonpolitical should be drawn. The tax code itself says that c4 groups must be exclusively committed to social welfare. In other words, they can’t do any political campaign work at all. But court decisions have established they can do an insubstantial amount of such work. And the IRS has said that applicants merely need to ensure that their “primary purpose” is social welfare, but has never developed a clear standard to define what that means.


Political group or nonprofit? Or both?


As a result, some big-money groups, like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads GPS or the liberal Priorities USA, have assumed that political work can amount to 49.9% of what they do. The IRS gave both groups c4 status—which allows them not just to avoid paying taxes but, more important, to keep their donors secret—though both clearly appear designed to sway the outcome of elections.


Public Citizen argues that the IRS should enforce the “insubstantial” standard, meaning that once a group gets to 25% or 30% political, they’re violating the law. And for several years, his group and others have been urging the IRS to take a second look at groups like Rove’s.


“What the IRS should have been doing, and they should have done this long ago…is start taking a look at groups that are in fact electioneering, even if they have c4 status, and determine whether or not their c4 status should be revoked,” Holman said.


Holman said he’s concerned that in the wake of the controversy, the IRS will be even more wary of scrutinizing applications for tax-exempt status.


“The IRS clearly never really wanted to enforce the tax law,” he said. “And this gives them every reason to stay away from doing so.”

Related: Two IRS scandals hit Washington: One you’ve heard of, one you haven’t

But Holman added that one silver lining could emerge for those worried about money in politics. The last week’s events have helped create a consensus that the IRS shouldn’t be in the business of subjectively interpreting what qualifies as non-political, Holman said, and that a “bright-line” standard should be created.


A bill that would require the IRS and the FEC to team up to create such a standard was introduced earlier this year by Democrat Sens. Ron Wyden and Barbara Mikulski.


The IRS controversy has “given a lot more attention to the problem with these groups that are politicking anonymously,” Ken Willis, a spokesman for Wyden, told MSNBC.


And Alan Viard, a tax expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, this week laid out a version of the idea in response to the Tea Party tempest.


“The danger of future abuse will persist,” Viard wrote, “if the standards remain vague and susceptible to political manipulation. So, Congress must spell out clear rules about what is and is not permitted for (c)(4)s,” adding: “[T]hey should be as clear and objective as possible, so that the IRS can’t be strict with some groups and permissive toward others.”


“With conservatives jumping on top of this, this is a perfect opportunity to try to set up a bright-line standard, so we clearly define what is electioneering and what isn’t,” Holman said. “This is the solution. Let’s get the IRS outta here.”

[American Patriot]

The IRS and its tea party tempest

By CALVIN WOODWARD

Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Friday, May 17, 2013, prior to testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the extra scrutiny the IRS gave Tea Party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The Internal Revenue Service is feeling the sort of heat that targeted taxpayers feel from the tax agency. It's the sense that a powerful someone is breathing down your neck.

Republicans in Congress are livid with the IRS over its systematic scrutiny of conservative groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections. Democrats agree that something must be done. President Barack Obama also isn't at all happy with the tax collectors.

That kind of commonality in Washington is about as rare as a budget surplus. So expect a bumpy ride for the IRS, unloved in the best of times, as a Justice Department criminal investigation and multiple congressional inquiries try to get to the bottom of it all.

A look at the matter:

IN BRIEF

The central issue is whether IRS agents who determine whether nonprofit organizations must pay federal income taxes played political favorites or even broke the law when they subjected tea party groups and other conservative organizations to special scrutiny.

Also foremost in the concerns of Congress: Why senior IRS officials, for many months, did not disclose what they had learned about the actions of lower-level employees despite persistent questions from Republican lawmakers and howls from aggrieved organizations.

WHY IT MATTERS

The IRS is expected to be pesky, even intimidating, to miscreants, but at all times politically neutral. Nonpartisanship is the coin of its realm, perhaps more so than in any other part of government.

"I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives," Obama said in ousting the agency's acting chief, Steven T. Miller.

On Thursday, on the eve of House hearings at which Miller has been called to testify, the president named Daniel Werfel, a senior White House budget official, to take charge of the agency temporarily.

IRS actions in the period covering the 2010 congressional elections and the early going of the 2012 presidential campaign have tattered the perception that the agency is clean of political leanings. Whether that was also the reality remains to be discovered.

A report by the Treasury Department's top investigator for tax matters found no evidence that sheer partisanship drove the targeting. But the watchdog disclosed Friday that he is still investigating. His report faulted lax management for not stopping it sooner.

It's a sensitive time for the agency's professionalism to be in doubt because the IRS soon will loom even larger in people's lives. It's to be the enforcer of the individual mandate to carry insurance under Obama's health care law, itself an object of suspicion for many conservatives. To the right, that's insult upon injury from the left.

WHAT WOULD MAKE IT MATTER EVEN MORE

Any effort from top levels of the administration or political operatives to manipulate the IRS for campaign purposes would put the scandal in the realm of Nixonian skullduggery.

The public record as it is known does not show interference.

No ties to anyone outside the IRS have been discovered. At the same time, early IRS assurances that high-level people inside the agency did not know what was going on have been contradicted by evidence that the head of the agency's tax-exemption operation and later its deputy commissioner were briefed about it, and did not tell Congress.

RED-FLAG WORDS

To qualify for exemption from federal income taxes, organizations must show they are not too political in nature to meet the standard. In the cases in question, applications that raised eyebrows were referred to a team of specialists who took a much closer look at a group's operations. That's normal.

But in early 2010, IRS agents in the Determinations Unit began paying special attention to tax-exempt applications from groups associated with the tea party or with certain words or phrases in their materials, according to the IRS inspector general's report. That's not normal.

The red-flag keywords came to include "Patriots," `'Take Back the Country" and "We the People."

That August, agents were given an explicit "be on the lookout" directive for "various local organizations in the Tea Party movement" that are seeking tax-exempt status. Such organizations saw their applications languish except when they were hit with lots of questions, some of which the IRS was not entitled to ask, such as the names of donors.

In June 2011, after the congressional elections, Lois G. Lerner, in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations, learned of the flagging and ordered the criteria to be changed right away, the inspector general said. The new guidance was more generic and stripped of any explicit partisan freight. But it did not last.

In January 2012, the screening was modified again, this time to watch for references to the Constitution or Bill of Rights, and for "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government."

The Constitution and Bill of Rights are touchstones for liberals, too. But in modern politics, they've been appropriated as rallying cries of conservatives and libertarians. Finally, that May, such flagging ended.

Altogether, specialists reviewed a variety of potentially too-political applications, presumably covering the liberal-conservative spectrum. But fully one-third of the cases were of the tea party-patriot variety. During the height of the flagging, the inspector general says, all applications fitting the conservative-focused criteria went to the specialists while others that should have stirred concern did not.

In short, if you were with the tea party, you were guaranteed a close second look and almost certainly months more of delay. If you were leading a liberal activist group, maybe yes, maybe no.

ON THE RECEIVING END

"Dealing with this was like dealing with tax day every day for 2 1/2 years," says Laurence Nordvig, executive director of the Richmond Tea Party in Virginia. "Like your worst audit nightmare."

His group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2009 and finally got it in July 2012.

Tom Zawistowski applied for the tax exemption for his group, the Ohio Liberty Coalition, in June 2010 when the flagging was gathering steam. He got it in December 2012, after the presidential election.

The IRS asked him for the identity of the group's members, times and location of group activities, printouts of its website and Facebook pages, contents of speeches and the names and credentials of speakers at forums. He said the IRS also audited his personal finances and his wife's.

"The intent of this was to hurt the ability of tea party groups to function in an election year," he said.

An Associated Press analysis of 93 "tea party" or "patriot" groups found that most were shoestring operations, with only two dozen raising more than $20,000 a year.

FIVE-OH WHAT?

If the IRS merely rolled over and played dead when it got an application for a tax exemption, the government would be even more broke than it is and big money would have an even more pernicious grip on campaigns.

The IRS knows better than most that politically driven organizations, out to elect and defeat candidates, can masquerade as "social welfare" or other charitable entities under the tax-exempting articles of Section 501 (c) of the tax code.

Or they can align themselves with one, allowing unlimited donations to be raised and the identities of the contributors to stay secret as long as the nonprofit entities don't go too far in overt politicking.

In recent years, advocacy groups have paired their nonprofit arms with "super" political action committees, moves that took hold after a series of court rulings _ including the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision _ loosened the rules on money in politics.

The rulings gave rise to such pairings as the American Crossroads super PAC with its Crossroads GPS nonprofit on behalf of Republicans in the 2012 campaign, and the Priorities USA Action super PAC with its own nonprofit arm, for Obama's benefit.

Section 501 (c) (3) can be the most lucrative financially for organizations because in addition to conferring tax-exempt status, it allows donations to qualifying groups to be tax deductible.

Section 501 (c) (4) doesn't permit tax-deductible donations but gives groups more latitude to lobby and to dabble more directly in political campaigns as long as "social welfare" remains their primary mission. They can also keep their donors secret, a big benefit over more blatantly political super PACs.

It's all complex, squishy and in some ways subjective, so it might not come as a shock that the IRS would look for shortcuts such as political buzzwords and slogans when deciding what a group is really up to. But the record as yet known does not show that the scrutiny cut both ways.

In congressional testimony about the discredited IRS actions, Attorney General Eric Holder said there is good reason to take a skeptical look at some Section 501 applications but "it has to be done in a way that does not depend on the political persuasion of the group."

BY THE NUMBERS

The inspector general's office reviewed 296 tax-exempt applications that had been flagged as potentially too political. Of them, 108 were ultimately approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been rejected and 160 were still open in December 2012, some languishing for more than three years.

STONEWALLING?

Hearing complaints of IRS harassment from constituents, lawmakers began asking a lot of questions of the agency starting in mid-2011. They got a lot of answers _ just not answers revealing what was going on.

In multiple letters, some as long as 45 pages, as well as in meetings and congressional hearings, senior IRS officials laid out in painstaking detail the process of checking tax-exempt applications but did not disclose what they had come to learn of the flagging.

Miller, for example, was told by staff in May 2012 about the inappropriate screening but did not pass that on in communications with inquiring members of Congress or in his appearance two months later with the House panel most concerned about the reports.

Lois G. Lerner, in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations at the IRS, was briefed about the screening a year earlier and ordered an end to explicit tea party-type flagging. But she did not tell lawmakers about that when asked about the constituent complaints.

ABOUT THAT SKULLDUGGERY

A number of presidents or their operatives have tried to twist the IRS against "dissidents" or political opponents. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy are among them.

President Richard Nixon, though, surely takes the cake here.

The Senate Judiciary Committee cited his IRS manipulations, including his pursuit of those on his "enemies list," in the articles of impeachment accusing the president of high crimes and misdemeanors in the Watergate scandal and of actions "subversive of constitutional government."

Article 2, Abuse of Power, said: "He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

Nixon resigned after it became clear that a Senate impeachment trial would drive him from office.

Associated Press writers Stephen Braun and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

[American Patriot]

The IRS scandal: ‘horrible customer service’ or political malfeasance?

By Sean Sullivan, Published: May 17, 2013 at 3:16 pmE-mail the writer

Did the Internal Revenue Service “target” conservative groups for extra scrutiny? Or was it more a case of “horrible customer service”?
Depends on who you ask.
Ousted IRS chief Steven T. Miller testifies. (J. Scott Applewhite/Ap)



Friday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing into the scandal that erupted into public view one week ago was something of a semantics battle, with outgoing IRS head Steven T. Miller objecting to the term “targeting,” a move Republican lawmakers weren’t buying.


Whether most Americans agree with Miller or the Republicans who grilled him will go a long way toward determining how bad the entire episode will be for the Obama administration in the long run.


“I can say generally, we provided horrible customer service here. I will admit that. We did horrible customer service,” Miller, who is resigning form his post at the demand of President Obama, told lawmakers.


He explained further: “I think that what happened here was that foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selections.”


At issue is the IRS’s revelation that conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status were singled out for extra scrutiny. An inspector general’s report released earlier this week described the use of “inappropriate criteria” to screen political advocacy groups with certain words in their names, like “tea party” or “patriot.”


Miller objected Friday to using the term “targeting” to describe the actions of agency personnel who gave the groups more attention. “When you talk about targeting, it’s a pejorative term,” he told Rep. Charles Boustany, a Louisiana Republican who asked why previous IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman had informed him in the past that there was no such “targeting.”


Of course, this is, at some level a dispute of semantics. While “targeting” can connote going after someone with intent, it can also be used to simply suggest that certain entities were singled out.


“I’m going to take exception to the concept of targeting, because it’s a loaded term,” Miller said later in the hearing.
Republicans didn’t agree.


“I know you’re disagreeing with the word ‘targeting,’ Mr. Miller,” said Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.). “I suggest the American people will make that determination. And I’ll give this whole situation a name; it’s the IRS Targeting-gate. I’ll put it right out there.”


“You say it was not targeting, by why was only one side of the political spectrum singled out in this?” Boustany asked.
Miller said it wasn’t only one side, that all groups with a political focus were scrutinized more.


“Look, they get 70,000 applications in there for 150 or 200 people to do,” Miller said. “They triage those. People look at them and they send them either through the system because they’re OK, into a mix of folks so that they can get technically fixed up and some go for substantive questions. Politics is an area where we always ask more questions. It is our obligation under law to do so.”


J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, also testified before the committee Friday. He used the word “targeted,” as did the inspector general’s report on the incident that was released Tuesday.


“Our report issued earlier this week addresses three allegations: first, that the IRS targeted specific groups applying for tax-exempt status; second, that they delayed the processing of these groups’ applications; and third, that the IRS requested unnecessary information from groups it subjected to special scrutiny. All three allegations were substantiated,” George said.


If Americans end up agreeing with Miller’s take — i.e. that this was a misguided effort to make things more efficient — the scandal could fizzle out fairly quickly.
If they decide that it was something more, it’s going to be a long next few months for the Obama administration.


The IRS scandal could hardly have come at a worse time for the Obama administration, with mounting questions about last year’s deadly attack in Benghazi and a Justice Department decision to obtain journalists’ phone records. Taken together, the incidents have raised questions about the administration’s conduct — questions Republicans have eagerly answered by claiming the developments are evidence the Obama administration acts without regard for rules and the law. If the public agrees, Obama’s legacy could be permanently tarnished.

[American Patriot]

Not sure who Miller looks more like....

or

[American Patriot]

The Know-Nothing Administration

Did the IRS's harassment of conservative groups stem from bad intent or bad management?


By Allysia Finley



Agence France-Presse/Getty Images


Foolish, obnoxious, insensitive. That much the IRS’s outgoing acting commissioner Steve Miller acknowledged Friday at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing. Just don’t accuse him, or any other government tax collector, of operating in bad faith.


Did the IRS’s systemic harassment of conservative groups stem from bad intent or bad management?

“From my understanding, it was bad management,” Mr. Miller asserted. There were a “lack of controls,” and “foolish mistakes” were made “by people who were trying to be more efficient in their workload selection.”


Thus, by Mr. Miller’s lights, IRS agents were merely trying to do their jobs better and got a little sloppy. Perhaps Mr. Miller expects taxpayers to be grateful that their well-intentioned public servants were so dogged and diligent. He did, however, apologize for the agency’s “horrible customer service,” as if the IRS’s targeting conservative groups is tantamount to a McDonald’s employee forgetting the pickles and tomatoes in a Big Mac.


He also accepted responsibility as chief of the mismanaged tax operation, though [t]his rang about as true as Hillary Clinton’s after the Benghazi terrorist attack. “I should be held accountable for what happens,” Mr. Miller said. “But whether I was personally involved or not, [is] a very different question.” In theory, that could explain why he so often answered “I don’t know” or “I don’t have that information” or “not that I’m aware of” to lawmakers’ questions.


In any event, Republicans weren’t buying Mr. Miller’s excuses, especially since Treasury inspector general for tax administration J. Russell George testified that officials in the Treasury Department were aware of his investigation into IRS’s abuses as far back as last June.

[American Patriot]

Today is the 40th anniversary of the First Watergate Hearing...

LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!


How appropriate?