The IRS Targeted Conservatives Because It Could

Reason Magazine's Hit & Run ^ | May 20, 2013 | Peter Suderman

[2ndDivisionVet]

The opening day excuse for the IRS targeting conservative groups requesting tax exempt status was that the IRS was facing an unusual influx of applicants. But that turns out not to have been the case. Applications for tax exempt 501 groups didn’t surge in 2010. In fact, the number of applicants was down in every category from 2009. The new line on the scandal is that it was a product of poor management, incompetence, and a struggling, understaffed agency. Here, for example, is The New York Times, in a reported piece from yesterday: “Overseen by a revolving cast of midlevel managers, stalled by miscommunication with IRS lawyers and executives in Washington, and confused about the rules they were enforcing, the Cincinnati specialists flagged virtually every application with Tea Party in its name.”

The IRS doesn’t look particularly good in this version of events. But it’s useful to liberals who want to argue that the problems stem from lack of resources—not a government that is too big, but one that is too small....

[2ndDivisionVet]

Indeed.

[Westbrook]

Exactly!

I would be just as unhappy about them targeting ANYBODY!

The IRS is an enemy common to all Americans, regardless of ideology.

The IRS is an enemy of Liberty.

[SMARTY]

Well... with a public education system (and an MSM) that systematically demonizes, disparages and mocks exceptionalism, character and the concept of personal accountability... who do you actually THINK is going to occupy these positions in public office?

[ncfool]

WHAT DOES IT MATTER. they are anti-obummer... So they should have been targeted.

[rktman]

Ol’ steven miller (the one that got let go weeks before he was leaving anyway) says he don’t think it was illegal. “I’ll have to check my notes?” “Do you have notes or do you not have notes?” “Sir, really?” Typically arrogant stance from these self aggrandizing asshats. I’m important and you’re not.

[FreeAtlanta]

It amazes me how much damage Obama was able to do in 4 years. I think this was because 1). so many leftist were left in place by Bush, 2). Federal workers tend to be BIG government supporters because that is where their bread is buttered.

Somehow, we need to reduce the number of federal workers, and then either replace the remaining federal workers with Conservatives or educate and convert the remaining workers. Sadly, I don’t know how many would be willing to accept pay cuts to the point that they are making what they are worth and what they would be making in the private sector. How many would willingly give up the golden parachute retirement and benefits?

The Democrats have for years solidified their base of BIG Government supporters that take home a Federal paycheck. That is a big problem.

[yarddog]

I know exactly how it happened and I know nothing of the inner workings of the White House.

Obama told whoever was in charge of getting out political demands, to have the IRS go after Conservatives. It is that simple and no one except a handful will ever know for sure, tho in fact many will know.

[Frank_2001]

“Because it could”???? LMAO
More like:
BECAUSE IT WAS ORDERED TO.
;)

[Elle Bee]

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” -- Ayn Rand

.

[2ndDivisionVet]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[okie01]

Somehow, we need to reduce the number of federal workers, and then either replace the remaining federal workers with Conservatives or educate and convert the remaining workers.

Exactly where do you expect find conservatives who want to work for the government?

And exactly how many government workers do you suppose would be receptive to "re-education" about conservatism.

The problem we're confronting is that conservatives and liberals approach government in a diametrically opposed fashion. One tries to avoid it all cost, the other embraces it.

[relictele]

We didn't love freedom enough.

Freedom? He s*cks!

[tanknetter]

Yeah, we Conservatives need to jump all over this angle, even to the exclusion of tying this to Obama.

Big government doesn’t work. A government that can’t be trusted to apply tax statuses evenhandedly can’t be trusted to conduct background checks on firearms purchasers, or handle the influx of applicants that immigration reform will bring.

This is a once in a generation chance to change the narrative back to the value of smaller government. We can’t blow it.

[Elle Bee]

now they don't round you up ... the fence is their engineering of social policy

.

[GOPJ]

It appears they’re NOT a ‘common’ enemy to all Americans. It seems they offer favors to one group - and punishment to others. Like organized crime families do... gifts for their friends... destruction for their foes.

It’s old style thuggery...

[Westbrook]

> It appears they’re NOT a ‘common’ enemy to all Americans.
> It seems they offer favors to one group - and punishment to
> others. Like organized crime families do... gifts for their
> friends... destruction for their foes.

Well, yes, of course, and their loyalties are just as capricious. Right now, their overseers were appointed by Barry the Dour Won, so their loyalties, for the benefit of maintaining a paycheck, understandably favor Barry the Dour.

[GOPJ]

I suspect the majority of the people working for the IRS are liberals. It’s time to impose REAL diversity on these Washington Bureaucracies... Half the civil ‘servants’ should be conservative...

[lavaroise]

This is all McCain-Feingold Bush and Boehner dirty scummy job. Funny thing is blacks were persuaded whites are the stupid ones, but now Obama is using the Kerry “I have the right to be stupid” line.

God bless America...

[lavaroise]

Go walk in one of those Fed buildings in Detroit. You will understand why some of those cities were turned into socialist cesspools, so as to hire local civil servants of the Fed gov and so Fed gov would infestate such cities too, turning them into little DC sattelite hell holes. They are filled with ghetto welfare recipient looking workers.

[ncfool]

I can agree with you on that statement.