Obama Scandal Number Three - Using and Abusing The IRS For Political Gain

This is the third in a series of introductory posts where we begin the long process of trying to get our arms around just three of the disgraceful political scandals that the Obama administration has recently brought down on itself and the American people:

1. The Benghazi consulate terrorist attack and cover up.
2. The unauthorized and secret confiscation of confidential telephone logs of Associated Press news reporters by the Obama Justice Department.
3. The use of the IRS to hamper, harass, and intimidate American citizens and organizations that held political opinions contrary to the Obama administration’s positions and opinions.

We have covered the first two scandals listed here in the past two days at a very high level of detail in order to get a basis established to jump forward from with more details in the near future. Today, we will look at the third, and probably most disgraceful scandal. It involved violating the freedom of speech rights of millions and millions of Americans, the use of the IRS to suppress political activity and speech for any group and any American who held and holds political opinions in opposition to Obama’s.

The basis of this first cut at this scandal comes from a May 15, 2013 Associated Press article entitled, “AP Exclusive: IRS Knew Tea Party Targeted in 2011.” Although this article’s information is almost a week hold as I write this and a ton of other revelations and law breaking have come to light since May 15, it is a good starting point, with the later breaking news to be filled in in a near future post.

Highlights from the AP story include the following details and atrocities:

• High level/executive officials knew their employees were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an IRS inspector general's report.
• These findings are likely in conflict with public statements previously made by the IRS that only lower level IRS agents were involved, statements made by the IRS commissioner.
• We know that much of this information must be true because the IRS actually publicly apologized for what it called "inappropriate" targeting of certain, and always conservative, political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
• Despite apologizing, the IRS press release did reaffirm its stance that no higher level IRS employees were involved in the targeting.
• But the inspector general’s report is going to claim that on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, the head the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, was told at a meeting that groups were being targeted.
• Specifically, at that meeting, she was told groups with "Tea Party," ''Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being singled out for additional and burdensome scrutiny, the inspector general report says.
• The 9/12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck. In a statement to the AP, Beck asserted that this news was not news to him and other conservatives.
• But apparently this news to Ms. Lerner did not deter the IRS probably illegal and at least disgraceful targeting since the report says that on Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to, "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement," many of the issues that Tea Party and other conservative groups are focused on.
• Simultaneously, committees in Congress were writing letters IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to express concern because Tea Party groups were complaining of IRS harassment. Thus, the head of the IRS was aware of these charges and claims over a year ago.
• In fact, Shulman was adamant in his denials testifying before Congress that, "There's absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people" who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman said at the House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing. Thus, Mr. Shulman is either being dishonest, under oath, in testimony to Congress or had no idea that this sort of illegal and despicable behavior was going on the very organization he was supposedly in charge of.
• The IRS has not said when Shulman found out that Tea Party groups were targeted.
• Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican. His 6-year term ended in November. President Barack Obama has yet to nominate a successor.
• The agency was being run by an acting commissioner, Steven Miller. but he just got relieved of duties by the President.
• The IRS said in another recent press release that the IRS believes the timeline in the inspector general’s report is correct, lending credibility to the conclusions and findings of the report.

That gives you an idea of the background. The IRS now acknowledges that Tea Party and Conservative political groups were singled out for burdensome harassment simply because of their free speech-guaranteed freedoms. However, the IRS would have you believe that their executive managers were so incompetent that they themselves should not be blamed or held accountable for these hideous actions because some very low level IRS agents did bad things.

Reactions to this disgrace were right on target for anyone who believes in a free country, the First Amendment, and the adult exchange of ideas and conflicting opinions:

• Congressman Charles Boustany, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's oversight subcommittee, said the inspector general’s report "raises serious questions as to who at IRS, Treasury and in the administration knew about this, why this practice was allowed to continue for as long as it did, and how widespread it was. This timeline reveals at least two extremely unethical actions by the IRS. One, as early as 2010, they targeted groups for political purposes. Two, they willfully and knowingly lied to Congress for years despite being aware that Congress was investigating this practice, This is an outrageous abuse of power. Going after organizations for referencing the Bill of Rights or expressing the intent to make this country a better place is repugnant. here is no excuse for this behavior."
• Congressman Dave Camp is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee:"The admission by the agency that it targeted American taxpayers based on politics is both shocking and disappointing. We will hold the IRS accountable for its actions."
• Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for the group Tea Party Patriots: "We must know how many more lies they have been telling and how high up the chain the cover-up goes. It appears the IRS committed crimes and violated our ability to exercise our First Amendment right to free speech. A simple apology is not sufficient reparation for violating the constitutional rights of United States citizens. Therefore, Tea Party Patriots rejects the apology from the Internal Revenue Service. We are, however, encouraged to hear that Congress plans to investigate. Those responsible must be held accountable and resign or be terminated for their actions."

The IRS has acknowledged that some of the harassment from IRS agents included the demand for information that the agents had no right to access in addition to information that was not related to the request for non-profit status:

• Lengthy, intrusive questionnaires and forms.
• The forms asked for information about group members' political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.
• The IRS also listed for lists of financial donors.

The number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400. To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati.

Lerner said on Friday this was done to develop expertise among staffers and consistency in their reviews. As part of the review, staffers look for signs that groups are participating in political activity. If so, IRS agents take a closer look to make sure that politics isn't the group's primary activity.

Even after the apology, the information coming out about Congressional testimony, and the inspector general’s report, Ms. Lerner was still sticking with quickly weakened excuse of why only Tea Party and conservative groups and individuals were harassed: "It's the line people that did it without talking to managers. They're IRS workers, they're revenue agents."

Bad things happened, rights were trampled on but it is not our fault. But we should not expect anything different from the Obama administration since nothing is ever their fault. It is always someone else’s fault or the fault of a natural disaster or the fault of the Republicans or the fault of fate of line agents...

But consider this Ms. Lerner: according to a recent USA Today article, for 27 consecutive months, beginning February, 2010, not a single tea party application was approved for non-profit status. So either for 27 months, IRS management was completely out of touch with what was going on within its organizations or we have a lot of people either lying or in denial when it comes to trampling the freedom od speech rights of millions of Americans. In either case, many IRS executives either need to be fired from their jobs and/or put in jail.

Okay, that sets up on these three scandals going forward. More to come, none of it any good, as we move forward on these three disgraces to liberty in the next week or so, after we finish up our monthly review of the unfolding Obama Care disaster and related scandals.

Which is not to be confused with the Fast and Furious disaster and scandal.

Which is not be confused with the poor Obama administration economic management disaster and scandal.

Which is not to be confused the Obama administration’s alternative energy crony capitalism scandal…..

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w