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IRS officials in Washington were involved in investigation of conservative [W:29]

babilfish said:
When I encounter something approaching a rational point, I'll be sure to do so.
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No, I don't think you would. Let's take a look at the post by you directly before this one shall we?

You said in response to a quip about the scrutiny being race based, rather than ideological.

"...Yes, if the IRS applied more scrutiny to applications for non-profit status on the basis of one's race, people would be pissed.

And rightfully so."

So, clearly you think one form of discrimination is wrong, but another is acceptable. I can't express how wrong, and dangerous that thinking is among todays radical liberals.
 
j-mac said:
So, clearly you think one form of discrimination is wrong, but another is acceptable. I can't express how wrong, and dangerous that thinking is among todays radical liberals.
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God, your being obtuse.

Of course, scrutinizing someone's application for non-profit status because they're black would be wrong in most any case. One's racial makeup has is no indication of whether or not they're trying to game the system and become a non-profit despite the primary motive of their organization being political in nature.

In the right circumstances, you could apply more scrutiny to left-leaning organizations provided certain evidence was presented that could justify such an approach. This isn't a right-versus-left deal, this is a "too stupid to understand why the IRS might apply more scrutiny to Tea Baggers during the last election cycle versus informed, non-hysterical lot who don't get panicky and weepy and actually look at things with some degree of rational thought".
 
obvious Child said:
Nothing that comes out of the two party system of
America has any truth to it.

Doesn't change the fact that PACs have been abusing the snot out of this. As Congress will not act to fix this, if it takes political abuse to stomp on it, so be it.

And this is no different from how the Bush Adminstration directed the IRS to audit the NAACP and Greenpeace for no good reason, except here, PACs have actually been abusing the tax code.
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Irrelevent.

IF PACs in general are the problem then PACs in general should have been investigated.

If you wan't to talk about the two party system I advise you to start your own thread. This one is about the IRS under the Democrats targeting people based on their political ideology, and then lying about it, or refusing to testify by taking the fifth.

Oh, you brought up 2 left wing orginizations that QUALIFIED FOR TAX EXEMPT STATUS.
 
babilfish said:
God, your being obtuse.


Of course, scrutinizing someone's application for non-profit status
because they're black would be wrong in most any case. One's racial makeup has is no indication of whether or not they're trying to game the system and become a non-profit despite the primary motive of their organization being political in nature.

In the right circumstances, you could apply more scrutiny to left-leaning organizations provided certain evidence was presented that could justify such an approach. This isn't a right-versus-left deal, this is a "too stupid to understand why the IRS might apply more scrutiny to Tea Baggers during the last election cycle versus informed, non-hysterical lot who don't get panicky and weepy and actually look at things with some degree of rational thought".
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If it's just a case of misunderstanding, if we're " too stupid to understand" why didn't Ms Lerner just explain it to us ?

You know, instead of refusing to testify ?
 
obvious Child said:
They didn't go far enough. Any 501(c)4 with anything even remotely political in their descriptions should have gotten a full force audit if they were over a threshold in assets. I don't give a **** who you are backing.

The past two elections have been abused up the *** by PACs. And so many 501(c)4s are functionally PACs. The Service needs to come down hard.

If you want to be all political, fine, just don't abuse the tax exemption to do it.
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Then they should come down on ALL non-profits, not just the ones they don't like. That's the real crime, here.
 
Deuce said:
Somebody is getting fired over this, but if you think it's Obama, you're delusional.

Although I tend to agree with Obvious Child. These tax-exempt organizations deserve broad and overwhelming scrutiny, they've been abused for too long.
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The longer The Messiah stays n office, the more crap that will float to the surface, so, I say let him serve out his term in shame.
 
babilfish said:
God, your being obtuse.

Of course, scrutinizing someone's application for non-profit status because they're black would be wrong in most any case. One's racial makeup has is no indication of whether or not they're trying to game the system and become a non-profit despite the primary motive of their organization being political in nature.

In the right circumstances, you could apply more scrutiny to left-leaning organizations provided certain evidence was presented that could justify such an approach. This isn't a right-versus-left deal, this is a "too stupid to understand why the IRS might apply more scrutiny to Tea Baggers during the last election cycle versus informed, non-hysterical lot who don't get panicky and weepy and actually look at things with some degree of rational thought".
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So, there aren't ANY Leftist NFP's out there, doing political work for the Dems? No unions, no one?

We don't seem to hear y'all crying about the unions. Why not?
 
trfjr said:
Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.


IRS officials in Washington were involved in targeting of conservative groups - The Washington Post

and up the ladder it goes all the way to the WH
pack your bags Obama
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How is this news? We knew this last week. It was in the IG report.



The applications went to Cincinnati. Cincinnati did the superficial investigation, approving all but 298 of 4510 applications in two years. This is were Tea Party, Patriot and 912 were used to identify political groups. Those 298 applications were investigated by a special committee in Washington et al. The committee sent out unnecessary requests to groups, less than half of which were Conservative.
 
Fenton said:
Irrelevent.
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Then you have no understanding of this topic. The entire point of why the IRS looked into 501(c)4s was to ensure they were not actually PACs. Saying PACs are irrelevant is saying the basis for the entire problem is irrelevant. Which makes you look extremely ignorant.

IF PACs in general are the problem then PACs in general should have been investigated.
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I get that you really have no idea what you are discussing. First, PACs are a different organization, with different tax law and different laws. You cannot operate a tax exempt, no donor list PAC. What several groups tried to do was get a tax exempt, no public donor list PAC. That is prohibited. Hence why the IRS went after these groups. PACs are free to operate as they want under the PAC rules.

You just demonstrated you have absolutely no understanding of this topic at all.

Oh, you brought up 2 left wing orginizations that QUALIFIED FOR TAX EXEMPT STATUS.
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A long time ago. I also brought them up as examples of where the Republicans had no reasonable basis for scrutiny. Yet where has anyone screaming scandal said anything about them? You won't ever criticize the Bush administration for going after groups for no reason other than their dislike of the groups.
 
apdst said:
Then they should come down on ALL non-profits, not just the ones they don't like. That's the real crime, here.
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If they had the time and resources, sure.

Except that they don't.

What the IRS did was essentially the same thing the Israelis do at their borders. They profile.

The 501(c)4 tax laws explicitly prohibit political activity as a primary function. So thus, groups that have overtly political names get extra scrutiny. I don't see single thing wrong on coming down on Conservative leaning 501(c)4s that are acting as PACs. What I didn't like was how the IRS didn't come down on Liberal groups, but that may be because Liberal groups weren't bat**** stupid to put an overly political title on their applications. When the status you are applying for directly bans you from being primarily political, you are a moron to have an overtly political name. If these groups weren't morons, they'd name it like "St Martin's Swim Club."
 
babilfish said:
It's kind of sad how clueless conservatives are.

I mean, I'm still not exactly sure what the scandal here is, that the IRS rightly applied more scrutiny to teabaggers last election season?
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You want to know what the real scandal is? Its the GOP witch hunt literally about nothing as all administrations have their scandals and cum stains on dresses. Nothing to see here, just a side show from the billionaire backed right wing that is trying to distract from real change in america. And all this talk about partisan conspiracies. For cryin out loud??? What administration created this hyper partisan atmosphere? The tea party no doubt as Obama was trying to reach the american people in a civil and informative forum, yet the tea party almost derailed the entire healthcare bill. What is obama to do? Just sit on his ass and be a typical liberal *****, or is he to do something about it. Glad we have that answer now and obama isn't taking it lying down. He's fighting for america, burning for america every night and if he needs to break laws...so be it. All administrations do it. Do you want hope and change??? Well you better start fighting for it as the right is going to take it away. All the things that obama has done, will be gone and that would be a tragedy...
 
Henrin said:
Actually presidents have been using the IRS to punish or eliminate certain groups political or otherwise since its founding. I don't see how anyone can justify criminal behavior by simply saying those bastards are abusing the tax code or that past presidents did it. Everyone should be aware past presidents have done it. How does that change anything?
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First, how is this criminal? Remember that the only organization that was denied was a Democrat organization that was primarily geared towards getting women elected. The IRS is such a meanie to the Republicans...but the only denial went to a Democrat leaning organization? Makes No Sense.

Second, how it is illegal when the IRS is directly in charge of ensuring that the 501(c)4 code is not abused by PACs? People would be calling for the IRS's head if the IRS just let them all through and many were found to be in violation later. In fact, given that all of the TP were approved, this is actually going to happen. Many will come back with audits showing they exist as a PAC in DIRECTLY VIOLATION of the law.

When Bush did this, the reason was that his backers and administration simply didn't like the organizations. What the IRS did in 2010 was done on the basis of the existing (and poorly written) law.

If you're going to be pissed off at the IRS, you have to start years ago when organizations got attacked purely for being disliked by the administration. The only informed reason to be angry at the IRS now is because they failed to go after liberal groups with the same scrutiny (which FYI, wasn't even that much, less than 1/3 of the groups selected for additional scrutiny were Tea Party). The IRS actually owes more apologies to non-political organizations it held up.
 
nota bene said:
You might want to save your pity for yourself if you genuinely don't understand what the scandal is here.
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Most people here don't. Fenton just made a dumb*** statement saying PACs are irrelevant when the primary reason why the IRS did the scrutiny was to prevent PACs from abusing the tax code. Very few people here actually understand the code, the abuse and why the IRS profiled.

Most of you shouldn't even be talking about this without significant research into the past 6 years of tax exempt code, PACs and Citizens' United.
 
They profile
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they sure do

McCaskill Calls For Firing Of All Involved In IRS Targeting Scandal « CBS St. Louis

"I’m mad. It is un-American, it is wrong, and we have to make sure that this gets fixed,” Missouri’s senior senator said. “There’s a reason Lady Justice wears a blindfold in America. That is because in America, we don’t apply the law based on who you are, who you know, or what you believe. We apply the law equally.”

McCaskill went on to say that the targeting of one group based on political beliefs “infuriates” her.

“We should not only fire the head of the IRS, which has occurred, but we’ve got to go down the line and find every single person who had anything to do with this and make sure that they are removed from the IRS and the word goes out that this is unacceptable,” she said. “It is un-American, it is wrong, and it cannot occur again.”

McCaskill concluded by saying many groups claim to be charities while doing political work and that it is a problem which needs to be fixed “but not in a way that highlights one belief over another.”
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obvious Child said:
If they had the time and resources, sure.

Except that they don't.

What the IRS did was essentially the same thing the Israelis do at their borders. They profile.

The 501(c)4 tax laws explicitly prohibit political activity as a primary function. So thus, groups that have overtly political names get extra scrutiny. I don't see single thing wrong on coming down on Conservative leaning 501(c)4s that are acting as PACs. What I didn't like was how the IRS didn't come down on Liberal groups, but that may be because Liberal groups weren't bat**** stupid to put an overly political title on their applications. When the status you are applying for directly bans you from being primarily political, you are a moron to have an overtly political name. If these groups weren't morons, they'd name it like "St Martin's Swim Club."
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I'm glad you agree that they broke the law.
 
obvious Child said:
Then you have no
understanding of this topic. The entire point of why the IRS looked into 501(c)4s was to ensure they were not actually PACs. Saying PACs are irrelevant is saying the basis for the entire problem is irrelevant. Which makes you look extremely ignorant.



I get that you really have no idea what you are discussing. First, PACs are a different organization, with different tax law and different laws. You cannot operate a tax exempt, no donor list PAC. What several groups tried to do was get a tax exempt, no public donor list PAC. That is prohibited. Hence why the IRS went after these groups. PACs are free to operate as they want under the PAC rules.

You just demonstrated you have absolutely no understanding of this topic at all.



A long time ago. I also brought them up as examples of where the Republicans had no reasonable basis for scrutiny. Yet where has anyone screaming scandal said anything about them? You won't ever criticize the Bush administration for going after groups for no reason other than their dislike of the groups.
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Careful who you call ignorant Obvious as you Cherry pick around this scandal to post content that no one finds the least bit relevent.

Mitigate the lies and behind the scene attempts of a politically motivated Govt agency all you want, of-course as you ignore their insincere apology that was basically just a string of lies fed to journalist and one of their top Witnesses who " did nothing wrong or criminal " but felt she needed to take the Fifth.

Great, so youv'e justified this down already, conviently decided to ignore the obvious perjury, and violation of civil liberties plus the Hatch Act.

Youv'e equated legallity with political convienence, but you feel you have the right to call people ignorant.

You apparently, ACTUALLY believe the former IRS Commisioner Doug Shulman, went to the WH 118 times over 2 years and never spoke with Obama about targeting Conservative groups.

When asked what he did at the White House 118 times Shulman answered " Easter Egg Roll ".

You thought that was a excellent, thoughtful and informative response. Yep nothing to see here.

Honestly, YOU are no position to critique ANYONE here for their alledged lack of comprehension, especially me.
 
The Prof said:
Elijah Cummings: Laws probably broken - POLITICO
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I don't think you want to start citing Democratic congressmen as an expert on laws governing IRS procedures.

The thing that struck me while watching the House IRS hearings is how monumentally incompetent, ill-informed, and unintelligent the House members were. They acted more like petulant children than serious leaders.
 
Mithros said:
I don't think you want to start citing Democratic congressmen as an expert
on laws governing IRS procedures.

The thing that struck me while watching the House IRS hearings is how monumentally incompetent, ill-informed, and unintelligent the House members were. They acted more like petulant children than serious leaders.
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Your'e unbelievable.

This House members struck you as incompetent ?

After Shulman when confronted with the question of what he did when he visited the WH 118 times answered " The easter egg roll".

After Lois Lerner gave a monologue stating her innocence but then immediately after pleaded the Fifth.

Why the pretense ? Why not just explain that your'e irreversibly biased.
 
laska said:
I've got a bridge to sell you if you are buying what the administration is selling on the two scandals.
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It sounds like you already have bought that bridge.
 
Fenton said:
Careful who you call ignorant Obvious as you Cherry pick around this scandal to post content that no one finds the least bit relevent.
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Least bit relevant? Wow. You really don't get this topic at all do you?

When you get off your "Impeach Obama" horse, we can actually talk about the subject.

You are purely here for bashing. The fact that you think PACs are irrelevant to this is really just amazingly ignorant.
 
apdst said:
I'm glad you agree that they broke the law.
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Damn straight. More than a few 501(c)4s have been acting as PACs in blatant violation of the law.

There's no law saying the IRS cannot profile. And the IRS profiles all the time. Having a home business gets you profiled. Having large foreign accounts get you profiled.
 
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