Demand accountabilty!
Stop this slap in our face!
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Posted on 05/17/2013 2:04:21 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Via the Examiner and NRO, a few more credible, confidence-inspiring breadcrumbs from this morning’s Ways and Means hearing. It’s starting to make sense now why protesting Planned Parenthood might present a risk to your tax-exempt status, isn’t it?
The second clip is of Miller saying that he did indeed ask his underlings who was targeting conservative groups, and they told him, but now he can’t remember the answer. Really. The disdain this guy harbors for the proceedings is palpable, but that’s probably in his best interest: The more antagonistic he is, the more liberal support he’ll have when the administration inevitably tries to find a new job for him at the IRS after this blows over. In the meantime, Miller’s loss is Fred Armisen’s gain, assuming SNL even attempts to tackle O’s scandals this weekend. Given what the show’s come to, maybe it’s best that they didn’t.
By the way, did anyone ask Miller the threshold question of why the IRS chose to spend so much time on penny-ante tea-party groups instead of the gigantic conservative and liberals 501(c)(4) orgs that have real influence on elections? Here’s what the Cincinnati office considered a priority:
The AP reviewed 990 tax returns for nonprofit groups that were made publicly available and posted on both the Guidestar and the Foundation Center websites, searching between 2009 and 2011 under the terms “tea party,” ”patriot” and other terms frequently used by tea party groups. Several tea party groups also made their tax returns available to the AP. The returns detailed revenues and expenses for the groups, as well as other details. Donors’ identifies, however, are shielded from disclosure under federal tax code provisions.
Only 21 of the 93 groups reported annual gross receipts higher than $25,000 between 2009 and 2011, according to the AP review. The $25,000 figure is a threshold for the IRS because an organization’s financial strength and revenue sources are important factors in determining its tax-exempt status. Nonprofit groups reporting less than $25,000 a year are allowed to file a short-form, postcard tax return instead of a detailed filing — one indication of a low-budget operation.
The median income for all the groups was just $16,700 a year. That figure includes several tea party organizations that boasted million-dollar budgets and a cluster of others with more than $100,000 in annual revenues. The well-funded activist groups were led by the Georgia-based Tea Party Patriots Inc., the nation’s biggest tea party group, which started out with more than $700,000 in annual revenues in 2009 and grew to $20.2 million annually in 2012.
Radley Balko noted on Twitter this morning that the amounts being thrown around here tend to undercut the sacred liberal talking point that the tea-party movement is merely corporate astroturf bankrolled by the Koch brothers to advance plutocratic interests. Suggested new narrative: The “plutocratic astroturf” theory is true, it’s just that the Kochs are … really, really stingy towards their puppets.
The ACLU is MIA as usual. They are strictly antiChristian, not pro-Civil Liberties or Free Speech.
We are the IRS- We are rogue... ...and we also wear the Union label.
True... the UNIONS are rogue AND maleficent in every possible way..
Negative in every way, there are NO redeeming characteristics of UNIONS today..
Not only rogue but treasonous and seditious.. even performing espionage..
They should be outlawed.. and prosecuted.. raped and hung..
Not forgetting the vision that Union hierarchy IS PEOPLE...
They are PEOPLE doing all this.. malicious PEOPLE...
NOT some nebulous organization..... BUT PEOPLE... guilty ones..
Socialists... like the same ones that murdered some say @300,000,000 people last century...
Nasty murderous PEOPLE.. (running the unions)..
You may believe this is the best solution, but notice... Your mother makes $ 25,000 and spends $ 22,000 on medical expenses each year. You help out to keep her alive. You give her $ 10,000 of your $ 45,000 salary. Your great idea of a flat income tax (15%?, 10%?) leaves her with $ 0 after paying your $ 2,200 tax (living on your donation) and you with $ 30,500 (or less) to feed your family. How's that working for you?
The current tax system began with a a "flat tax". Over time, the needed exceptions folks noticed became "deductions" or "exclusions" or "credits". Now we are here. If we took your advice, we would dump this system and slowly return to it at a cost of billions to re-create the laws which are now in place.
The vast majority of the tax law is not about ordinary folks. That might occupy 100 pages. The books are filled with international taxation rules/regs to stop Toyota from taking all their profits to Japan. Or Steinbrenner from passing the Yankees free of tax (oops, that already happened).
Probably negative $ 4,000,000,000,000. How many of your friends would pay tax voluntarily with no possibilty of getting caught if they did not?
Yes, of course it is. In this package is $ 400 of clothing, not the $ 30,000 of parts I plan to sell on the black market. Wake up, my FRiend. A label? That is more naive than illegals voluntarily coming out of the "shadows" to pay tax.
This is the fundamental issue facing our nation: freedom of thought.
It strikes right at the heart of religious liberty, the Founding of America, the Constitution and specifically the 1st Amendment. If government can control thought then all is lost.
Keep striking this tone: freedom of thought - and you begin to break the government’s monopoly on ideas - government schools, regulations, restrictions and taxation.
What few realize is that taxation is a restriction on thought. It is used to reward and punish people who think differently. The goal is manipulation, and via that, control. What Obama’s done is par for the course across government. It isn’t an aberration, but the purpose of.
We’ve forgotten and haven’t taught in decades that governments are instituted for the preservation of rights and liberties, not the creation or reduction of.
Every liberal ideologue who claims persecution for some petty purpose - a cross at a graduation, the right to kill your baby, etc. - simply undermines the sharp distinction between public and private and makes a mockery of liberty. Roe v. Wade is an especially noxious curse in that it forced conservatives into the absurd position of stating that the Constitution doesn’t guarantee a right to privacy. Of course it does. Yet, no one has a right to a private murder.
Between the Scylla and Charybdis of liberal mockery and conservative abandonment we’ve arrived here. The entire US Constitution exists to tell government - leave me alone. What could be more inherent than a right to privacy, to ones private thoughts?
A couple years ago I went to a few Tea Party rallies in my area. I was looking forward to getting more involved and thought for sure it was gaining momentum. Then it was almost as if they “gave up.” I was wondering what happened, are people just that beaten down and don’t want to take a stand? Now I know just what the hell happened and to take a page from “Rev” Wright...God damn the government, Obama’s chickens are coming home to ROOST.
I think that’s a red herring. Right now, anything you purchase from abroad can be subject to tariff. Why would it be necessary to inspect packages—— if you are here and buy from abroad, you have to transfer money internationally. The Treasury could easily keep track of that, with a lot less regulations than the IRS employes now. If we had the Fair Tax, much of the incentive to buy foreign would actually be removed, because US goods would be much more competitive. A lot of the price of everything made here is comprised of added costs due to our tax system.
The Treasury could easily keep track of that, with a lot less regulations than the IRS employes now.
The politics continues no matter what the tax.
but; all those regs would be directed at people who are gaming the system and making an effort to avoid fair tax-—what we have now is a monolithic agency whose mission is to make miserable anyone who tries to make a living.
How about we just take a hatchet to the government, then we won’t need so many taxes to support it.
Aren't you guys the same ones claiming the corporations don't pay their fair share right now? Why would that change if the tax obligation became a consumer burden? And, no, not every purchase is traced. Try ordering something from Vancouver BC and see if it gets opened.
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