The democrat IRS cancer grows

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Michele Bachmann addresses the crowd during a Tea Party rally to "Audit the IRS" in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington

Yesterday brought a bombshell finding in the IRS scandal. Of the groups targeted for inspection by the IRS, 83% were right-leaning. Of the groups selected for audit, 100% were conservative.

That’s right. 100%.

Less than two weeks after President Obama insisted that there wasn’t even a “smidgen of corruption” involved in the IRS targeting scandal, it appears that the scope of that scandal is widening.

Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, revealed yesterday that the committee’s investigation had found that it wasn’t only conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) status that came in for IRS targeting and harassment. Existing 501(c)(4)’s were targeted, as well. In fact, Camp stated,

At Washington, DC’s direction, dozens of groups operating as 501(c)(4)s were flagged for IRS surveillance, including monitoring of the groups’ activities, websites and any other publicly available information. Of these groups, 83% were right-leaning. And of the groups the IRS selected for audit, 100% were right-leaning.

That’s right — “somehow,” every single 501(c)(4) that the IRS selected to endure the time, expense, distraction and stress of an audit just happened to be conservative.

democrats have responded to the findings of abuse by doing a little targeting of their own. They are trying to pin the blame for the IRS being out of control on Treasury IG Russell George.

Democrats have for months said that George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, crafted a flawed, misleading report that helped fan the flames of the IRS targeting controversy.

Now Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) are sharply criticizing George for agreeing to brief GOP staff at a late January meeting on the Affordable Care Act without Democrats in attendance.

Aides say they now know of multiple meetings of George with the staff of Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) from which Democrats were excluded.

Two Democratic members of that panel – Reps. Matt Cartwright (Pa.) and Connolly – lodged a complaint on Wednesday about George’s original report on the IRS targeting last year, questioning his “independence, ethics, competence, and quality control” with an oversight board for inspectors general.

“If you want to connect the dots, a reasonable observer could be expected to conclude that he colluded with Issa’s staff to limit his report and the path of his investigation,” Connolly told The Hill concerning George.

“They have a tainted IG doing their bidding for them and making sure that the line of investigation is limited to what they want,” Connolly added.

With a November democrat disaster looming on the horizon, fair-minded democrats now want the IRS to ramp up the crushing persecution of conservatives:

Senate Democrats facing tough elections this year want the Internal Revenue Service to play a more aggressive role in regulating outside groups expected to spend millions of dollars on their races.

In the wake of the IRS targeting scandal, the Democrats are publicly prodding the agency instead of lobbying them directly. They are also careful to say the IRS should treat conservative and liberal groups equally, but they’re concerned about an impending tidal wave of attack ads funded by GOP-allied organizations. Much of the funding for those groups is secret, in contrast to the donations lawmakers collect, which must be reported publicly.

One of the most powerful groups is Americans for Prosperity, funded by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. It has already spent close to $30 million on ads attacking Democrats this election cycle.

“If they’re claiming the tax relief, the tax benefit to be a nonprofit for social relief or social justice, then that’s what they should be doing,” said Sen. Mark Begich (D), who faces a competitive race in Alaska. “If it’s to give them cover so they can do political activity, that’s abusing the tax code. And either side.”

Asked if the IRS should play a more active role policing political advocacy by groups that claim to be focused on social welfare, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) responded, “Absolutely.”

“Both on the left and the right,” she said. “As taxpayers, we should not be providing a write-off to groups to do political activity, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Shaheen is full of sh*t.

Media Matters, OFA and Think Progress would be exempted, of course. This is, pure and simple, fascism.

Fascism:

a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism.

Companies are now subject to thought crimes:

Consider what administration officials announcing the new exemption for medium-sized employers had to say about firms that might fire workers to get under the threshold and avoid hugely expensive new requirements of the law. Obama officials made clear in a press briefing that firms would not be allowed to lay off workers to get into the preferred class of those businesses with 50 to 99 employees. How will the feds know what employers were thinking when hiring and firing? Simple. Firms will be required to certify to the IRS – under penalty of perjury – that ObamaCare was not a motivating factor in their staffing decisions. To avoid ObamaCare costs you must swear that you are not trying to avoid ObamaCare costs. You can duck the law, but only if you promise not to say so.

Elijah Cummings and his band of Fascists have all but raped some conservative women:

Engelbrecht said shortly after founding and leading True to Vote and King Street Patriots, she was visited by law enforcement agencies and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), even though outside of filing their tax returns, she and her husband never dealt with any government agency in nearly two decades of running their small business.

“We had never been audited. We had never been investigated, but all that changed upon submitting applications for the non-profit statuses of True the Vote and King Street,” she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee.

“Since that filing in 2010, my private businesses, my nonprofit organizations, my family and I have been subjected to more than 15 instances of audit or inquiry by federal agencies,” she added.

Engelbrecht’s personal and business tax returns were audited in 2011 – “each audit going back for a number of years.” Her business was inspected by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 2012 when neither she nor her husband was present. She said she was later fined over $20,000 even though “the agency wrote that it found nothing serious or significant.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms audited her business in 2012 and 2013, and the FBI contacted her non-profit group six times since 2010 in an attempt to “cull through membership manifests in conjunction with domestic terrorism cases,” she claimed.

“They eventually dropped all matters and have now redacted nearly all my files,” Engelbrecht said.

“All of these incursions into my affairs began after filing applications for tax-exemption. There is no other remarkable event. There’s no other reason to explain how for decades I went unnoticed, but now find myself on the receiving end of interagency coordination into and against all facets of my life, both personal and private,” she said.

“Bear in mind, distinguished ladies and gentlemen of this subcommittee, these events were occurring while the IRS was subjecting me to multiple rounds of abusive inquiries with request to provide every Facebook and Twitter I’d ever posted, questions about my political aspirations and demands to know the names of groups that I had spoken with, the content of what I had send and everywhere I intended to speak in the coming year,” she added.

“This government attacked me because of my political beliefs, but I refuse to be cast as a victim,” she said. “I am not a victim, because a victim has no options. I do have options, and I intend to use them all to the fullest extent of my capabilities.”

“As an American citizen, I am part of a country that still believes in freedom of speech,” Engelbrecht said.

One can only imagine what’s next for conservatives.

Thankfully, the investigation isn’t over. Far from it. Dave Camp:

All of this provides context for today’s markup, which is legislation we are considering that would stop the ability of the IRS and Treasury to legalize the targeting of conservative groups. On Black Friday, Treasury released proposed rules regarding 501(c)(4)s that would essentially remove conservative groups from the public square. The rationale of the IRS and Treasury was that the rules, which have been in place for more than 50 years, created “confusion.”

However, we learned that Treasury and the IRS had been working on these guidelines behind closed doors for years. According to interviews with IRS employees, as early as 2011, work started on new 501(c)(4) regulations. A June 2012 email between Treasury officials and then-IRS Director of Tax Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner revealed that these potential regulations were being discussed “off-plan” – meaning that the plans for the regulations were not to be published on the public schedule. Treasury’s fabricated rationale for changing a 50-year old rule raises serious questions about the integrity of the rule-making process and counsels for putting a hold on the draft rules.

It is important to note that the Committee has made these discoveries without even having the full universe of documents requested from the IRS – including thousands of documents from Lois Lerner that have not yet been provided. Simply put, our investigation is not yet over, the document collection is not yet complete, and I don’t believe the IRS or the FBI has interviewed a single victim. The notion that the Administration would rush forward with rules intended to remove these groups from the public forum, is simply unacceptable.

Reminder: Obama joked about auditing his enemies.

Reminder: Obama wanted it fixed before the election.

Reminder: Lois Lerner took the Fifth.

Reminder: IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins suffered amnesia 80 times in House testimony about his visits to the White House.

Reminder: Obama audits cancer patients

Reminder: Obama: “I can do whatever I want”

The IRS has become a cancer in the democrat party and the cure for cancer is to excise it.

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DrJ, — “excise it” . . . you’re right, of course, however the IRS is a vast and powerful bureaucracy which cannot and will never be dismantled.

The vile ideological tool which it has become, along with so many other huge portions of government bureaucracy, cannot be purged of the groupthink and will continue to operate as political forces infecting society.

Jarrett made a threat she is now carrying out with full impetus and vigor. She has 3 more years to spread her disgusting and hateful cancer on the Nation . . . and there is NO ONE to stop her. Congress is asleep and the Supreme Court is now infected with dummies — and still, over a third of the Nation continues to support these hate mongers in the W.H.

Democrats are trying to pin the blame for the IRS being out of control on Treasury IG Russell George.
But notice how they do it.
By innuendo.
Nothing substantive whatsoever.
And, when Democrats could stay in a meeting and grill Mr. George, they walk out, leaving the entire Democrat side of the room empty.
I watched the C-SPAN coverage of Mr. George testifying under oath and saw all the Dems leave.
Either they have something on him or they don’t.
It’s pretty clear they don’t.
So, to them, he must be an ”Uncle Tom,” and all the other slander they heaped upon him.

I’ll say it again, institute a flat tax with NO deductions for anyone or any entity. That would reform and greatly downsize the IRS. Face it, the IRS is a tool for elected representatives to pick and choose winners and losers.

I would prefer to go with the Fair Tax and get rid of the IRS altogether.
As well as a bunch of other oppressive, uncontrollable alphabet soup agencies.

The situation will not change without the States getting together and doing some amending to the Constitution.
Time for the States to have the right to veto legislation. Time to go back to Senators being elected by state legislatures (please!). Time to end the usurpation of state’s rights by the Federal Government. Time to dismantle the Czars.
The Grand Utopian Socialist Scheme has proven to be what it has always been: a division of the society into the elites and everybody else, with the elites living like kings and everybody else in poverty.
This whole thing was foisted on us by the lame-stream media, aided and abetted by the Socialist Wonders in our Universities, and operated by a group of individuals who have never met a payroll.
We gotta make this stop, or the whole thing will sink!

David Camp, from the Ways and Means Committee website:

Over the past six months, this Committee has investigated the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups. Though our investigation is not complete, and the IRS still has many more documents to provide to the Committee, we have discovered a concerted effort by the IRS to limit the ability of those targeted conservative groups to operate and engage in constitutionally protected public debate.

Uh, no. What you have discovered is a concerted effort on the part of the IRS to deny 501(c)(4) tax exempt status to political organizations that are specifically ineligible for them. Administering tax law and regulation is what the IRS is supposed to do.

At Washington, DC’s direction, dozens of groups operating as 501(c)(4)s were flagged for IRS surveillance, including monitoring of the groups’ activities, websites and any other publicly available information. Of these groups, 83 percent were right-leaning. And of the groups the IRS selected for audit, 100 percent were right-leaning.

Monitoring? Of . . . of activities, websites, and any other . . . publicly available information? Oh, the horror!

This statement is almost comedy. Not quite, because many people apparently don’t realize how totally ridiculous it is. Basically, Camp is saying that the IRS selected 501(c)(4) applicants for review because there were initial indications that they might be political, and then looked at readily available public information to decide if it supported the suspicion that they probably were. If so, they’d move on to the next step. What else would Camp think they would do? Is there some more logical sequence that he has in mind?

All of this provides context for today’s markup, which is legislation we are considering that would stop the ability of the IRS and Treasury to legalize the targeting of conservative groups.

So, conservative political groups that may well be filing for tax exempt status that they aren’t lawfully entitled to will be getting special protective legislation that will prevent the IRS from investigating them? This is where the joke stops being funny. I’m a taxpayer. I’m aware of debt and deficits. I follow all the rules. Right wing political action groups must ALSO be required to play by the rules. The same is true of groups on the left. Does Mr. Camp intended to prevent the IRS from reviewing questionable tax exemptions for those groups, as well?

All of this provides context for today’s markup, which is legislation we are considering that would stop the ability of the IRS and Treasury to legalize the targeting of conservative groups.

Nobody is removed from the public square. The issue is whether you get tax exempt status for funding political activities when such a tax exemption is specifically precluded by law. Give money to whoever you want. But don’t expect the taxpayers to pick up the bill for your efforts to buy more political power.

It is important to note that the Committee has made these discoveries without even having the full universe of documents requested from the IRS – including thousands of documents from Lois Lerner that have not yet been provided.

Read that as, <We're drawing these conclusions without actually having evidence to support them. We imagine such evidence is there however. The fact that the IRS hasn’t turned it over proves they’re hiding it.

I don’t believe the IRS or the FBI has interviewed a single victim.

Victim? The only victims would be organizations that were denied 501(c)(4) tax exempt status when they were legally qualified to have them. Name the organizations that were denied this status that later came publicly forward with evidence to prove they were non-political. Presumably they would be strongly motivated to come forward and prove how they have been wronged. It wouldn’t be necessary for the IRS to compile a lengthy list. Where are they?

I have long made clear that this Committee will fight any and all efforts to restrict the rights of groups to organize, speak out and educate the public.

Fine. But that high-sounding statement isn’t actually pertinent. It’s a distraction. The central question is actually whether people should get tax breaks for their activities. If their primary purpose is to “educate” the public regarding the “evils” of their political opponents, what they’re engaging in is politics.

Opinions vary. Some people might think Engelbrecht’s own tactics could be described that way.

True the Vote filed for 501(c)(3) status. This is ridiculous. The entire purpose of the group is to further conservative political objectives.

If all 501(c)(4) groups that have a political agenda were targeted, then it would be fair. However, liberal political groups like Media Matters, Moveon.org, and thousands of others get a pass, while conservative groups are denied, delayed, and audited. These are indicative of the actions of a fascist totalitarian government.

H.R. 3865, “Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act of 2014”

You know what’s ironic?
All the time this IRS targeting was going on and TEA Party groups were being silenced, people here, on the liberal side were mocking the death of the TEA Party.
It wasn’t dead.
Look at San Diego where Obama threw everything he had to win a mayoral election only to lose by 9 points to a REPUBLICAN.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/why-the-san-diego-mayor-s-race-should-worry-democrats-20140212
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/370910/obama-turnout-machine-crashes-san-diego-loses-mayors-race-nine-points-john-fund
Obama carried San Diego by 63 percent to 37 percent only 15 months ago!

Is political speech allowed, or is political speech forbidden? If political speech is allowed, then all parties with a political opinion should be able to express those views. If political speech is prohibited, then no expression of those views should be allowed.
Labor Unions and Education Unions certainly have a political opinion, and their right to express those opinions has not been limited. Please explain why the Koch Brothers should have their rights removed.
My Union dues were used to support candidates and viewpoints with which I did not agree, and those dues were taken from me by law. How is this just?
What we find with the IRS is that some political speech was protected, while other political speech was prohibited. The scales of Justice are (in theory) blind and apply to all equally.
What those of us on the “right” object to is the unequal application of law.

I cannot understand how liberals can continue to defend the indefensible. Do they not understand that they too will become cannon fodder once their usefulness has been consumed by the very juggernaut they hold on high?

Sigh…… Life is so unfair to conservatives no wonder they are always complaining

@john:

Sigh…… Life is so unfair to conservatives no wonder they are always complaining

You mean like how the left wing green weenies now have a campaign to lay a guilt trip on anyone who sends their sweetheart a Valentine’s Day card because of the carbon foot print of that card?

Sorry, you have it backwards. Leftists are the miserable bunch and they want every one else to be miserable so they create these guilt-trip campaigns. If it were not for promoting misery, the left would be speechless.

Do you think that under Bush this ALSO may have happened with leftist groups targeted? Say for instance the NAACP after they refused to invite Bush?
And of course the head of the IRS was appointed by Bush as was Lois Lerner. Definitely this proves that liberals should be blamed

No John, because Pres. Bush never would have allowed it, much less encouraged it like your hero has. And I do know that the head of the IRS was appointed by Bush, and Lerner too; but they didn’t really begin to flex the power muscles until after he was well gone, they knew he wouldn’t tolerate that kind of action.

@mathman2: Labor Unions and Education Unions certainly have a political opinion, and their right to express those opinions has not been limited. Please explain why the Koch Brothers should have their rights removed.
My Union dues were used to support candidates and viewpoints with which I did not agree, and those dues were taken from me by law. How is this just?

Solution hinted at by unions seeking to add membership from among non-working people.
Simply call yourself a union!

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
is a web site that tracks donations to political parties by all of us.
Guess where the Koch Brothers are on their list of donors by dollar amount given?
Number 59 on the list.
$18 million between 1989 and 2014.

Who’s in the Top Ten?
Unions!
$278 million between 1989 and 2014.
AFSCME ($60.6 million),
NEA ($53.5 million),
IBEW ($44.4 million),
UAW ($41.6 million),
Carpenters & Joiners ($39.2 million)
SEIU ($38.3 million)

Then there’s Leftist Act Blue.
Between 2004 (its inception) and 2014 almost $100 million.

Rounding out the Top Ten are businesses:
AT&T ($56.4 million)
American Association of Realtors ($51.2 million)
Goldman Sachs ($44.8 million)

Liberals love to point at the Koch Brothers as if their donations are evil.
Well, one finger pointing at them leaves four others pointing back at yourself!
LOL!

Before February 2010, the IRS was processing and approving Tea Party cases within three months without Washington, DC intervention. Tea Party cases were flagged due to “media attention” in February 2010, not as a result of any confusion as to how to interpret 501(c)(4) law. Additionally, we now know that the IRS targeted not only right-leaning applicants, but also right-leaning groups that were already operating as 501(c)(4)s. At Washington, DC’s direction, dozens of groups operating as 501(c)(4)s were flagged for IRS surveillance, including monitoring of the groups’ activities, websites and any other publicly available information. Of these groups, 83 percent were right-leaning. And of the groups the IRS selected for audit, 100 percent were right-leaning.

Of the “flagged” groups that had already received 501(c)4 status, every single one that faced an audit was conservative. Every one. I would like to know the time frame and parameters for that determination (where did this pool of “flagged” groups come from, and how long did the scrutiny last?), but on its face, it looks terrible.

To libs there’s nothing to see here. Move along.

@DrJohn, #10:

Organizing for America was a 501(c)(4), not a 501(c)(3). The 501(c)(4) category doesn’t automatically exclude a qualifying organization from political activity. A discrete part of a 501(c)(4) organization can legally engage in political activity, so long as that is not the primary purpose of the entire organization. Any expenditures made for political activities may be subject to tax under section 527(f). In other words, funds aren’t tax exempt to the extent that they’re used for political activities rather than social welfare.

Social Welfare Organizations and 501(c)(4)

@Mully, #21:

Of these groups, 83 percent were right-leaning. And of the groups the IRS selected for audit, 100 percent were right-leaning.

That might demonstrate that a higher percentage of organizations seeking exempt status during the period in question were right-leaning as opposed to left-leaning to begin with; it might also demonstrate that right-leaning organizations took less care in getting accurate information concerning tax laws, which exemptions they should be applying for, and how organizations should be structured to qualify for such exemptions.

Republicans have repeatedly slashed the IRS’s enforcement budget, in spite of federal deficits, in spite of the fact that trillions in taxes lawfully due have gone unpaid, and in spite of the fact that every dollar spent to promote compliance with tax law unquestionably returns more to the Treasury than is spent. They effectively penalize honest tax payers to the benefit of tax dodgers. As a person who pays what is due and has done for over 40 years, I have very little sympathy for their attitudes.

Personally, I think every member of Congress should be audited, republican and democrat alike. The same should apply to anyone running for president. If you’re not playing by the rules, you’ve got no business making them.

@Greg:

Uh, no. What you have discovered is a concerted effort on the part of the IRS to deny 501(c)(4) tax exempt status to political organizations that are specifically ineligible for them.

While that may, strictly speaking, be correct, it still targeted ‘only’ Conservative organizations. Operating correctly, the target should have been 50-50. That’s the problem.

@Greg:

I think every member of Congress should be audited, republican and democrat alike. The same should apply to anyone running for president.

I can agree with that. Even better would be a change in tax laws so that people can’t circumvent them.

@Redteam:

I wonder if the Obama IRS audited MediaMatters, a 501(c)3 group or John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, a 501(c)4 group?

Nah…………………………………………….probably because those groups are not political, right?

@retire05: I’m gonna surprise you and go with…….nah……..

@Redteam:

There is also nothing stopping those who are in support of income redistribution from putting their money where their mouth is. I think we are justified in telling them “you first.”

@Ditto: Yep, I think if someone is a strong believer that everyone should pay more so that the non-workers can have more free benefits, then they should just go ahead and send their 50-75% to the government for them to buy votes with.

@Greg:
Yeah those republican budgets cuts. That’s the answer. How many straws do you have left to grasp at?

@Mully, #31:

Since police are often observed at crime scenes, it’s quite possible that crime could be reduced if we cut the police department’s operating budget.

Does that sound logical? I’m guessing that law breakers of every sort might approve of the idea.

@Greg: Since police are often observed at crime scenes, it’s quite possible that crime could be reduced if we cut the police department’s operating budget.

Does that sound logical? I’m guessing that law breakers of every sort might approve of the idea.

This is exactly Obama’s way of making unemployment figures go down…..get as many people as possible to quit looking and they are no longer counted!
In crime stats, a crime only becomes an official stat if and when police take a police report.
If we stop having police come to crime scenes and fill out official reports, our crime rate drops!
this is why we have ”official rape stats” as well as the guesstimate that researchers come up with based on their findings that only one out of four rapes is ever reported.