The IRS Scandal -- a Basic Primer

American Thinker ^ | May 18, 2013 | Jonathon Moseley

[neverdem]

Confusion about the IRS scandal is distracting from its importance, so that thinking conservatives should be prepared to debate the issue. Some basics matter. Conservatives may need to share a summary such as this article to help convince moderate friends.

Callers to C-SPAN badly misunderstood these details when Jenny Beth Martin, Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, appeared on C-SPAN television last week. I interviewed Keli Carender of Tea Party Patriots on the radio on May15, who helped clarify some of the pushback and distractions from liberals.

First, don't let people forget: the IRS scandal is not about conservative accusations. The Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury issued a report finding that the Internal Revenue Service sharply discriminated against conservative organizations. This is confirmed by Treasury's Inspector General.

Second, a group's political beliefs and positions ought to be totally irrelevant. Tax exemption must be based on what an organization does, not what it believes or what positions it supports. Whether a group teaches the Constitution or teaches union tactics doesn't matter, it is educating either way. Therefore, the IRS should not have been looking at the name of the organization, whether...

--snip--

Third, many people don't realize that nearly all liberal political organizations are tax exempt...

--snip--

IRS official Lois Lerner fast-walked the tax-exempt application of Barack Obama's half-brother, the best man at President Obama's wedding. Abon'go "Roy' Malik Obama got tax-exempt status in a bureaucratic breakneck speed, in only 30 days, in May 2011, even though it is unclear what if anything the Barack H. Obama Foundation actually does or has done since being approved.

When a conservative organization Media Trackers couldn't get approved after 8 months, it changed its project to the liberal-sounding name "Greenhouse Solutions." With the new name, the exact same project was approved within 3 weeks...

[Sir_Humphrey]

This weeks talking point from the Dems and by extension the non-Fox, non-talk radio media will be “no harm, no foul”. They will point to the fact that no conservative organizations were denied their 501c-4 status.

[Travis McGee]

[MrB]

Even if they weren’t denied, the effect was the same - the IRS removed their ability to fund raise and compete on the same terms as the liberal orgs prior to the 2012 election.

The IRS rigged an election. And if heads don’t start rolling, shots will eventually be fired.