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Is the IRS scandal worse than Watergate?

Is the IRS scandal worse than Watergate?

  • Total voters
    44
Do you know what's worse than Watergate?

The fact that Nixon didn't get locked up for Watergate like some of the other crooks who were 'just following orders'. Orders from Nixon.
 
CaptinSarcastic said:
Actually, liberals were furious with Democrats for NOT doing these kinds of things to Bush.

Kucinich and Wexler were actively proposing impeachment on 35 charges against Bush, but Democrats were not interested in pursuing this course of action even though the liberal base was sure that Bush was a criminal.

These GOP witch hunts are not coming from the base, they are coming from GOP Congressmen.

You could find hundreds of thousands or articles arguing for investigations and/or impeachment of Bush from the left, but virtually zero support in the Democratically controlled Congress. Democrats would not allow themselves to be manipulated by the farthest left of their base. Republicans seem to represent ONLY the farthest right of their base.
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Correct.

We see this all of the time.

Ultimately, I don't believe that the GOP's activities will turn out well for the GOP.

There are some good people in the GOP, but unfortunately they are not in charge.




"Better days are coming." ~ But not for today's out of touch, running out of time, GOP.
 
grip said:
Similar in offense.

But the Benghazi screw up is much worse because people died as a result of a poor policy decision leaving them unprotected.
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So when is Bush going to jail for the 16 Americans that died in over 30 embassy and consular attacks under his watch? When are the investigations starting?
 
The IRS so called scandal is nothing like Watergate. What the IRS did, was basically doing their job. They are suppose to check and recheck people.. it is their job! Should they have done a few more "left wing" groups to even things out.. sure, but in the end, they were just doing their jobs. If they found one, just one attempt of fraud then it is all justified.
 
PeteEU said:
The IRS so called scandal is nothing like Watergate. What the IRS did, was basically doing their job. They are suppose to check and recheck people.. it is their job! Should they have done a few more "left wing" groups to even things out.. sure, but in the end, they were just doing their jobs. If they found one, just one attempt of fraud then it is all justified.
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I'm not a guy who loves the IRS, but you do have a valid point. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
 
SgtRock said:
let me get this right. The government going after it's own citizens based on political or religious ideology is not worse than politicians spying on each other and attempting to cover it up?
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It is a false equivalence, you should have compared Nixon using the IRS to go after political opponents/groups.

Watergate was just the tip of the corruption iceberg in the Nixon WH.
 
SgtRock said:
let me get this right. The government going after it's own citizens based on political or religious ideology is not worse than politicians spying on each other and attempting to cover it up?
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... let's start out with the fact that you got it wrong: there is no aspect about this story that has the "government going after its own citizens".... it has to do with the IRS using "tea party" as a selection tool to better scrutinize 501(c)(4) applications. The 504(c)(4) is a designation used for Civic Leagues, Social Welfare Organizations, and Local Associations of Employees, that allows them tax exempt status so long as the primary purpose is not political. The IRS determined that Tea Party organizations might actually be "primarily" political, and thus selected them for scrutiny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_organization

You have the default right to declare yourself as a 501(c)(4), pending IRS approval. The IRS denied no one this status, so therefore, in reality there was no harm and thus no foul.

This is yet one more example of Republicans making a ton of noise about nothing to obfuscate the reality that their core political political program is an empty suit; devoid of ideas.

Calling this on the level of Watergate shows ignorance of either this issue, Watergate (or both), or just a simple, unhealthy obsession with finding some dirt on Obama.
 
PeteEU said:
So when is Bush going to jail for the 16 Americans that died in over 30 embassy and consular attacks under his watch? When are the investigations starting?
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G.W. Bush (And Cheney.) got off easy, the Democrats had a lot of reasons to impeach Bush.

The one thing that stands out in my mind is the torture. That is a permanent stain on America's honor.






"Better days are coming." ~ But not for today's out of touch, running out of time, GOP.
 
SgtRock said:
Whether or not the president was involved or not has yet to be determined. He may not have been involved. He may have known about it and was compliant or not. We simply do not know at this time. Steve Miller, Sarah Hall Ingram, and Lois Lerner all need to be subpoenaed and testify under oath together at the same table.
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So if there has not been a connection between the Ohio IRS division that did this and a WH directive, then it seem that this is not equal to what Nixon directly did in either his IRS directives or his Watergate directives.

Just out of curiosity, were you alive during Nixon's terms?
 
SgtRock said:
Excuse me, did I say that? Do you have a reading comprehension issue?
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No.





"Better days are coming." ~ But not for today's out of touch, running out of time, GOP.
 
The question is whether or not there was a conspiracy. The answer is clearly no. This is limited to a few minor IRS employees. This doesn't approach Watergate, but then again, I don't think Watergate was that much of a scandal anyway.
 
Is it worse then Iran Contra?
 
upsideguy said:
... let's start out with the fact that you got it wrong: there is no aspect about this story that has the "government going after its own citizens".... it has to do with the IRS using "tea party" as a selection tool to better scrutinize 501(c)(4) applications. The 504(c)(4) is a designation used for Civic Leagues, Social Welfare Organizations, and Local Associations of Employees, that allows them tax exempt status so long as the primary purpose is not political. The IRS determined that Tea Party organizations might actually be "primarily" political, and thus selected them for scrutiny.

501(c) organization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have the default right to declare yourself as a 501(c)(4), pending IRS approval. The IRS denied no one this status, so therefore, in reality there was no harm and thus no foul.

This is yet one more example of Republicans making a ton of noise about nothing to obfuscate the reality that their core political political program is an empty suit; devoid of ideas.

Calling this on the level of Watergate shows ignorance of either this issue, Watergate (or both), or just a simple, unhealthy obsession with finding some dirt on Obama.
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This is just more of the GOP B.S. that's been going on since Obama was first elected President of the USA.

As long as he's in the White House we will continue to see this kind of B.S.

This is how a lot of people in the GOP deal with losing elections.




"Better days are coming." ~ But not for today's out of touch, running out of time, GOP.
 
PeteEU said:
So when is Bush going to jail for the 16 Americans that died in over 30 embassy and consular attacks under his watch? When are the investigations starting?
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Not comparable. Fail.
 
Graffias said:
The question is whether or not there was a conspiracy. The answer is clearly no. This is limited to a few minor IRS employees. This doesn't approach Watergate, but then again, I don't think Watergate was that much of a scandal anyway.
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No the question is "Is the IRS scandal worse than Watergate?" You say this is limited to a few minor IRS employees. That is a talking point used by people to try to diminish this scandal. At this point we do not know how high up the chain of command this will go. Because CNN says it's just a few rouge IRS employees in Cincinnati doesn't make it so.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
So if there has not been a connection between the Ohio IRS division that did this and a WH directive, then it seem that this is not equal to what Nixon directly did in either his IRS directives or his Watergate directives.

Just out of curiosity, were you alive during Nixon's terms?
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Yes I was alive. My mother was a Vietnam war protester marching on the Washington Mall. I was in grade school. Born in 1960. I remember she hated the war that LBJ got us into. I remember her hating our military and those who served. And yes I remember she hated Tricky Dick Nixon. For someone who claimed to be about peace and love she seemed to hate a lot. Nixon, the military, law enforcement, they were all known as pigs around my house.
 
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SgtRock said:
Yes I was alive. My mother was a Vietnam war protester marching on the Washington Mall. I was in grade school. Born in 1960.
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Then you should understand far better the depth of corruption in the Nixon WH, that Nixon DIRECTLY ordered the IRS to carry out far more extensive operations against political opponents than is even hinted at with this Ohio office activities.

You do know that this has been under internal review for over a year....yes?

And it is a shame you could not address the false equivalence point, but I understand, you went for the easy personal history response.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
Then you should understand far better the depth of corruption in the Nixon WH, that Nixon DIRECTLY ordered the IRS to carry out far more extensive operations against political opponents than is even hinted at with this Ohio office activities.

You do know that this has been under internal review for over a year....yes?

And it is a shame you could not address the false equivalence point, but I understand, you went for the easy personal history response.
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Do you know for a fact that the president was not involved? Do you know for a fact that David Axelrod, who was the senior strategist for the re-election campaign for Obama in 2012 was not involved? I suggest that you do not and that is why we are going to have hearings on this and when we find out the truth we will have trials and people will go to prison. Mark my word, people will go to prison over this.
 
SgtRock said:
That is a talking point used by people to try to diminish this scandal. At this point we do not know how high up the chain of command this will go.
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All we have at this point are talking points, you want to amplify it to a scandal to fit your agenda. We know what Watergate lead to, we shall see where this (I believe) trumped up set of talking points leads.

I just find it funny how cons still want their Watergate level scandal against a Dem. Such old scores, we didn't do it to Nixon, Nixon did it to himself.
 
I don't think it's worse because watergate effectively stole the election by using solen campaign strategy data to give Nixon an unfair advantage in a direct debate. The IRS stuff didnt have any net effect other than created red tape for tea party groups, which very well might have given them more resolve to work toward smaller, less breacratic government.

Secondly, I've been so burned out on the anti-Obama stuff, its hard for me to not separate this from all the other stuff and I really don't care. Apparently I'm not the only one. A CNN poll released this morning says Obama's approval rating has actually gone up, just 2 points and within the margin of error technically indicating no change at all. I wonder how this is effecting the electability of congressmen in 2014 if at all. For me I'm just too exhausted to care anymore about what critics of Obama have to say due to the onslaught of anti-obama stupidness since 2008.
 
SgtRock said:
Do you know for a fact that the president was not involved? Do you know for a fact that David Axelrod, who was the senior strategist for the re-election campaign for Obama in 2012 was not involved? I suggest that you do not and that is why we are going to have hearings on this and when we find out the truth we will have trials and people will go to prison. Mark my word, people will go to prison over this.
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You are not operating on facts, you are not even operating on historical equivalences. You can't even call something a WH scandal went there are of as yet any connections to the WH.

If you knew the long history of Nixon's dirty tricks, going back to his days in CA, his being the right hand man of Joe McCarthy, his dealings with the Vietnamese prior to the 68 elections....it just goes on and on....you would reach an understanding that there is no comparison to this President.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
You are not operating on facts, you are not even operating on historical equivalences. You can't even call something a WH scandal went there are of as yet any connections to the WH.

If you knew the long history of Nixon's dirty tricks, going back to his days in CA, his being the right hand man of Joe McCarthy, his dealings with the Vietnamese prior to the 68 elections....it just goes on and on....you would reach an understanding that there is no comparison to this President.
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The inspector general gave Republicans some fodder Friday when he divulged that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel he was auditing the I.R.S.’s screening of politically active groups seeking tax exemptions on June 4, 2012. He told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly after,” he said. That meant Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year. ~ NY Times
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The President claimed he found out about this from the media recently. That may be true but if it is his staff was keeping him in the dark. He has reason to be pissed because once again if this is true he is in fact a bystander and not a leader.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/u...ongressional-hearings.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0
 
Gimmesometruth said:
You are not operating on facts, you are not even operating on historical equivalences. You can't even call something a WH scandal went there are of as yet any connections to the WH.

If you knew the long history of Nixon's dirty tricks, going back to his days in CA, his being the right hand man of Joe McCarthy, his dealings with the Vietnamese prior to the 68 elections....it just goes on and on....you would reach an understanding that there is no comparison to this President.
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BTW In the OP I asked the Question "Is the IRS scandal worse than Watergate?" That is the question, not whether or not it was connected to the White House. I do believe however that we will find that the Obama campaign was involved. It has all the earmarks of dirty Chicago politics.
 
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