What a complete abuse of power:
IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.
“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.”
So they had to promise not to exercise their right to protest?
Wow!
Doesn’t stop there…now if you’re a minority conservative group you will be targeted also:
A conservative Hispanic outreach group that educates Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Hispanic communities on the US Constitution was also targeted after applying for 501(c3) status, according to the group’s founder and president, Adryana Boyne.
Boyne’s organization, named Voces Action, also applied for 501(c4) status. Boyne said she abandoned her 501(c3) efforts due to the IRS’s treatment of her. “I spent thousands of dollars on attorneys and hundreds of hours dealing with the IRS on this. Our groups had separate boards and followed all of the laws,” said Boyne.
“We applied for nonprofit status in June of 2009 and we did not hear back from them until late 2010, even though we began calling them after six months had passed,” said Boyne. “We received the same kind of intrusive questions that Tea Party groups received. We are not a Tea Party group, but I have spoken at some Tea Parties.”
What kind questions?
The IRS sent us 27 pages of questions, they demanded recordings of every speech I’ve ever given and details about every person I know who is a politician in my life. They demanded to know how many times I had met with them and details of my personal relationships with them. Many of my closest friends are politicians and they wanted private information about my friendships.
And this rabbit hole seems to be getting bigger:
One of FOX19′s two sources went on say that these four IRS workers claim “they simply did what their bosses ordered.” FOX19 reported on Tuesday that the report by the Office of Inspector General states that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011.
In fact, according to that report, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax exempt organizations, was told on June 29, 2011 that groups with ‘Tea Party’, ‘Patriot’ or ’9/12 Project’ in their names were being flagged for additional, and often burdensome, scrutiny.
While the IRS is pointing at ‘two rogue employees,’ the number of organizations that were singled out has swelled to nearly 500, according to Rep. Congressmen Darryl Issa and Ohio’s Jim Jordan.
And their excuse that they ONLY started scrutinizing these groups when their was a huge uptick of applications?
Lies:
Both Steven Miller, the agency’s acting commissioner until he stepped down Wednesday, and Lois Lerner, director of the agency’s exempt-organization division, have said over the past week that IRS officials started the scrutiny after observing a surge in applications for status as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups. Both officials cited an increase from about 1,500 applications in 2010 and to nearly 3,500 in 2012. President Obama ask Mr. Miller to resign on Wednesday.
The scrutiny began, however, in March 2010, before an uptick could have been observed, according to data contained in the audit released Tuesday from the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration…
According to the audit, 1,735 groups applied for 501(c)(4) exemption for the federal fiscal year that ended September 30, 2010—six months after the IRS began its scrutiny. That was down slightly from 1,751 the prior year…
IRS officials did not return requests for comment about the discrepancy in how they accounted for their actions.
A former IRS employee interviewed by the Chronicle theorizes that it wasn’t the volume that gave the IRS headaches but the complexity involved in learning on the fly how to scrutinize a new grassroots network like the tea party for 501(c)(4) compliance. I can sort of buy that as an explanation for delays on the first few applications, but most of these groups look alike. The learning curve for IRS analysts should have been sudden and steep. Why did the delays and extra attention persist for years?
The learning curve required them to insist that groups don’t protest planned parenthood? To insist on lists of books read by members?
The learning curve required them to approve liberal 501(c)(4) groups in months while conservative groups were denied or took years?
Give me a friggin break.
But what do we get from progressives like Nancy Pelosi?
Pelosi: Benghazi, IRS scandals are “subterfuges” and “evasions” for GOP to ignore jobs and economy.
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) May 16, 2013
Sigh…..
Unbelievable.
I wonder what’s next?
Not far-fetched since it seems the only thing that works our media up is if they get snooped on themselves:
The reaction to the government seizure of the phone records is another reminder, if we needed one, that what the press cares about most is itself.
The New York Times sniffed at the Internal Revenue Service scandal. It didn’t even put the initial story on the front page. When it did eventually front it, the headline was about how Republicans were trying to make hay of the scandal. Editorially, it issued a relatively tepid tsk-tsk. But the AP subpoena earned the White House a firm rebuke in an editorial titled “Spying on the Associated Press”: The administration has “a chilling zeal for investigating leaks” and is trying “to frighten off whistleblowers.”
It sounds like the Times should go back and read President Barack Obama’s commencement address at Ohio State University the other day, where he lamented that the students have been “hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity” and “that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.”
Yes, why can’t all the journalists hyped up about the AP subpoena simply put more trust in the good intentions and the workings of their own government?
Yes…they are mighty worked up over this but as Madison Pierce notes, there is no right to traffic in classified information so their anger is baloney. Abuse of power in the IRS? Yawn…in fact they cheer it. A cover-up of a terrorist attack that kills our ambassador and 3 others? Yawn.
Snooping into their phone records?
OMG!!!!!!
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