Posted on 05/12/2013 11:05:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
You don’t need an explanation. These aren’t the partisan political abuses you’re looking for. Move along.
It was all a big mistake. An unfortunate, accidental error. And “what difference does it make?” anyway, since according to the New York Times headline, the “I.R.S. Apologizes to Tea Party Groups Over Audits of Applications for Tax Exemption.”
Yes, indeed, the IRS says it is sorry.
But not actually to the Tea Party and Patriot organizations, whose equal rights under the law the agency so flagrantly violated. Instead, last week, Lois Lerner, the Director of Exempt Organizations for the Internal Revenue Service, admitted before an audience of lawyers at a conference in Washington, D.C. — after years of official agency denials — that the IRS had indeed singled out “names like Tea Party or Patriots” and subjected those groups’ applications for non-profit status to extra scrutiny.
Conservative groups seeking tax-exempt recognition were sent long, intrusive questionnaires, followed by demands to produce thousands of pages of documents, including lists of members and donors.
“It really was a nightmare,” complained Portage County Ohio Tea Partier Tom Zawistowski. “They came back with requests for: 'Give us a list of all your members. Tell us every politician that ever spoke to your group and what they spoke about. Give us a list of all the speakers you’ve ever had speak to your group. Give us a copy of every page of your webpage, in paper; print out every page of your Facebook page.’”
“That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate,” Lerner acknowledged, adding, “That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review.”
Of course, while saying “that’s not how” the IRS works, she was disclosing that is, indeed, how the IRS has been working. But she claims the IRS has quickly changed and is now ship-shape.
“So I guess my bottom line here,” concluded Lerner, “is that we at the IRS should apologize for that, it was not intentional, and as soon as we found out what was going on, we took steps to make it better and I don’t expect that to reoccur.”
Lerner was also adamant that there was no “political bias” involved. Even though it appears impossible to implement a policy specifically blocking certain groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their name from being permitted to establish non-profit organizations without a pretty obvious political bias.
Who are you going to believe: your common sense or the IRS?
“The Internal Revenue Service is caught in an election-year struggle,” the New York Times reported back in March of 2012, at the beginning of that crucial election year, “between Democratic lawmakers pressing for a crackdown on nonprofit political groups and conservative organizations accusing the tax agency of conducting a politically charged witch hunt.”
Why were Democratic lawmakers urging the IRS to squeeze conservative groups? The Times’s report noted that Tea Party and conservative non-profit groups were raising more money than the 501(c)4 groups more aligned with Democrats.
Strange, while the IRS discovered at some point last year that its people in Cincinnati were socking it to the very groups that for years had been claiming unfair treatment, the agency did not inform those harmed unfairly by their actions of this important discovery. In fact, Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty tweeted on Friday afternoon that the “IRS says no apology before today because no one ever asked.”
Is that how apologies work?
Furthermore, a spokesperson for the IRS initially said there had been no disciplinary action taken against any employee involved in the innocent and apolitical targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups, which has been ascribed to “low-level” workers at the Cincinnati, Ohio, office. But in the interest of full transparency and complete contrition, the IRS later “clarified” that the agency simply would not provide any response at all to that question.
The White House has quick to officially join the IRS in issuing a statement of “Oops!” and singing Kumbaya as well as dubbing this flagrant civil rights violation as wholly “inappropriate” . . . as if some agent had spoken out of turn or worn white after Labor Day.
What is implicated here is quite a bit more serious than that. The “insensitivity” of it pales in comparison to the potentially criminal violations of the civil rights of those Americans who just happen to be conservative or, heaven forbid, “patriots,” and active in promoting what they perceive to be the welfare of our society.
Illegally using government power to block the social, religious or political organizing and communications of one’s perceived “opponents” is destructive to popular government, to freedom, to the Constitution.
It is tragic to see it in places like Egypt and China and Syria and Cuba. It is something more painful still to see it plainly in the United States of America.
And it is something that some progressives like to say “only right-wingers do.” Obviously untrue. [further reading]
Not intentional but you discovered bias towards auditing conservative organizations and now you’re apologizing for it? That’s it? What you need to do is apologize for telling another lie and for thinking we’re stupid enough to believe it. We’re not idiot liberals that fall for the same pack of lies that ou tell them.
They’re sorry they got caught.
Send them to Iran for prosecution. Iran knows how to hang people.
Whoever in the IRS ordered the target audits and the employees that carry it out violated federal laws, and can be punished with fines/prison time plus civil suits. I recall these were post Watergate laws/regs. If GOP staffers are smart, get on the research so the GOP reps are well armed to proceed unless these orders came during the GWB era as GOP establishment/RINO’s are in on it to protect their interests against a popular GOP revolt. The ranking supervisor and employees are on the hook for this offence at minimum.
This has been going on for years. The Tea Party has been complaining about it for years. Now everyone acts like this is a brand new revelation? Really? The only real news here is that the MSM has, I’m sure begrudgingly, begun to notice. It will be quickly buried and branded as ‘old news’. Obama will never, IMHO, suffer any adverse consequences for pushing us toward totalitarianism. It may be too late now to reverse course.
Lois Lerner. Was she the character “Stephanie” from the Bob Newhart series who faked regret with a glib, “Sorry,sorry,sorry”?
Marxist Barack Obama is a fake Messiah. He cannot walk on water, and his boat is loaded to the gunnels with bodies and lies. Benghazi and the IRS may not sink it, but he has 31/2 years to go.
Only Obama and his idiot regime would think they could get away with something this blatant. This goes all the way to the top and it’s time to start the impeachment hearings. This and Benghazi will make a couple nice articles of impeachment.
Not intentional? All that harassment was just a silly little coincidence? The organizations were accidentally sent demands for donor and speaker lists? Good grief - being lied to is bad enough, but then they compound it by insulting our intelligence. Not intentional my aching ass.
Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty tweeted on Friday afternoon that the “IRS says no apology before today because no one ever asked.”
No apology before today because they thought they'd gotten away with it. And they still might.
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