Posted on 10/31/2017 9:18:32 AM PDT by gattaca
Imagine that the Trump administration was singling out left-wing groups for discrimination, repression or punishment through both the revenue and justice system.
I think we can all guess what the reaction would be: foaming outrage across the media, furious editorials and op-eds, dissection of Trump’s vicious sectarian and vindictive personality and the charge that the US had turned into a fascist state.
Evidence has now surfaced confirming long-held claims that the Obama administration targeted conservative groups in just this way, and then tried to cover it up. Yet the media reaction has been muted, with coverage consisting mostly of brief news stories.
Of course: according to most of the media,Trump can do no right and the left can do no wrong. Well, now that story is beginning to turn on its head.
The Internal Revenue Service scandal erupted in 2013 with claims that the IRS was singling out Tea-Party and other conservative groups for discriminatory and punitive treatment as the result of the animus of the Obama administration against its political opponents.
Over the years, there have been numerous investigations and hearings and with the IRS official at the centre of the controversy, Lois Lerner, pleading the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying to a Congressional committee.
Now the Department of Justice has reached an undisclosed monetary settlement, reportedly consisting of millions of dollars, with more than 400 conservative groups which had their applications for tax exempt status delayed “based solely on their viewpoint or ideology”.
“The IRS admits that its treatment of plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determination process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding some plaintiffs’ information that TITA determined was unnecessary to the agency’s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong,” the IRS said in court documents. “For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.”
Strikingly, both the IRS and DoJ are now blaming Ms Lerner, the former IRS official who oversaw the division responsible for handling non-profit status applications.
Not only the Obama Justice Department but also the Trump Justice Department previously cleared Ms Lerner of wrongdoing. Last month, Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd said after re-reviewing the case the DoJ had concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to charge her – although if new information came to light the decision could be revisited.
Yet the settlement singles out Ms Lerner, the only IRS employee it mentions by name, saying:
“The then-Director of the [exempt organizations] Division, Lois Lerner, first became aware that the IRS received applications from Tea Party groups as early as April or May 2010. For the next two years, Lerner failed to adequately manage the EO Division employees who processed these applications.”
Why not? Ms Lerner has been described as personally apolitical and professionally scrupulous. We surely haven’t got to the bottom of this yet.
The settlement comes days after the House Judiciary Committee released internal Obama administration DoJ emails, some of which revealed the agency selectively funnelled big banks’ predatory lending settlement money to liberal non-profits to the exclusion of conservative organisations.
These email exchanges show DoJ officials hand-picking liberal advocacy groups to which to funnel around $1 billion of settlement funds to the explicit exclusion of conservative organisations. As House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte argued, the Obama DOJ practices amounted to the creation of a “slush fund” used to channel money to left-wing groups.
In the media and Democrat party narrative, Donald Trump is the proto-fascist and the left are the heroic defenders of democracy and law. But the reason so many people voted for Trump is what one of the IRS victims tearfully told the Congressional committee: that she feared her country was becoming unrecognisable as a nation of laws.
Trump was elected principally to restore respect for the American constitution and uphold the rule of law which had been so badly undermined by the Obama administration. It is that fact which the left is intent on denying. But as the evidence mounts, how long can it continue at all plausibly to do so?
Government, at all levels, controls about 45-50% of our GDP.
Americans trust in government came from a time when government was local, and Fed.gov was tiny. That was already a couple generations ago, and Americans’ cynicism about government is rising quickly.
Moreover, we now have a massive nanny state, not very different in size and scope from Russia or China’s.
As such, when such power and money is at stake, powerful organs like the IRS will automatically become corrupted. It is unavoidable.
Was there any appointee of the Obama administration who was not???
FU IRS!
Meaningless if Trump Admin will not prosecute. Should have started DAY ONE...period. no excuses.
Those who are charged to uphold law and order and the rule of law are a disgrace. The country could live quite well without the tyranny of the IRS and a more equitable and suitable tax system could easily take its place.
The IRS claims it is exempt from the Constitution. And we sit back an let ‘em.
Ms. Lerner is allegedly an attorney. Does anyone know which bar(s) she is admitted to, and thereby which ones we can lodge complaints with for her standing to be revoked?
The Progressive Income tax and the Federal Reserve System were implemented to harness the economy of the US and turn it into a money printing machine for “the right people”. It did this while turning free people into wage slaves
. These two events drove people off of their family farms and into the factories. Turning people into a driver of “others” wealth instead of their own.
My Grandfather had a homestead where he prospered until the collapse of the money supply, called popularly “The Great Depression”. He and many others ended up selling their land to pay taxes instituted and raised by politicians to give money to the poor.
My own Father ended up working for the CCC and supporting the family, but his dad couldn’t buy a job. He was not who they were looking to employ, my dad was 15 and malleable. He ended up a lifetime Democrat minion and fan of CNN/MSNBC. His Father, old and worn out at 40, was full of hate for the government. In just one government caused money scare, this nation went from freedom to slavery.
The power to tax, is the power to destroy.
Politicians will not give up that power without a fight.
Fixed it.
The IRS scandal was Obama's backdoor solution to the Citizen's United ruling, by stopping the citizens from uniting against Obama's reelection through denying their IRS exemptions.
-PJ
Bingo. A controlled and centrally planned money supply will ultimately benefit the controllers, planners, and their cronies. An uncontrolled money supply, such as gold, favors the common man, as it can only be taken from them by direct force. Jefferson called it the money of democracy. Our Federal Reserve debt-based system is designed to steal people's labor and savings, and turn it over to government and bankers. And people wonder why we have increasing wealth inequality....
bump
Yep. Not punishing the Obama, Hillary, and other senior officials who committed multitudes of high crimes and felonies against the United States will only open the floodgates to many more offenses when they once again are in power.
Article V.
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