This is the kind of statement that empowered IRS agents and their leaders to target groups they don’t agree with. This is the kind of statement that begets tyranny:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/12RGIxYivi0[/youtube]It’s your fault. How dare you cause all this uproar if you would of just sat at the back of the damn bus and shut the f**k up.
Amazing.
It gets better.
McDermott: You wouldn’t want “an organization promoting taxpayer-funding of abortions” to get this tax break, would you?
Uh…..they already do.
Later Representative Earl Blumenauer argued that the conservative groups before them were all political so they shouldn’t be considered social-welfare organizations.
Dr. John Eastman of the National Organization for Marriage took him to task:
Rep. Aaron Schock later asks if a group with the sole mission of supporting Obama’s agenda, Organizing for Action, is a political group. Because if they are not then the groups before them sure the hell aren’t.
The basic–and deliberate–fault in McDermott’s attack is the idea that being denied tax-exempt status does not mean being denied freedom of speech and assembly. It certainly does in a context in which applications for tax-exempt status were followed by intrusive questions about speech (and prayer!), and also, in some cases, further investigation of donors and organizers by the IRS and other federal agencies, creating a chilling effect. And, of course, if the government is seen to favor some groups and not others, that effectively discourages certain kinds of speech and assembly. The issue at stake remains constitutional liberty, not tax exemption.
This is a sickening display of government tyranny. It really is. The IRS, a government entity, using the power of money to weaken one side over another.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/ni0Eyp5qdoM[/youtube]But hey, it was all done by a few low level at one little office right?
See author page
McDermott, Lewis and others need to retire. They have lost all sense of why they are there. It’s not Mt. Olympus, it is DC and they are not Gods, they are people elected to represent us.
Curt, I’m going to agree and disagree with your post.
It doesn’t matter what Jim McDermott – a Washington State career progressive – says or does. He’s an idiot. That’s to be expected from their side.
What does matter is something that has been bothering me about this IRS bit for some time.. and that’s been the long time silence by the GOP who knew about this last year, and didn’t make sure it had the press during a hot election. (See comments #19 and #23 with links on another thread.
McDermott is not indicative of the majority of the Dems, who also abhor this abuse of the IRS. However what most of we conservatives should be asking is why the GOP didn’t make this an issue when they knew of it in Mar of 2012, before the elections. In fact, considering that the scandal has centered around – but is not limited to – Tea Party organizations, where the heck was the Tea Party Caucus?
Rather nervy of them to get up there, after the fact, and demand disclosures and what not when they did nothing last year when it was already known. (See also here at the GOP site.)
And that most especially goes for Rand Paul, who had the absolute balls to stand next to Bachmann during this staged PR event, when he was one of 12 Congressional members who signed a letter to the IRS about this on March 14th, 2012.
But then, Rand Paul, despite being in office since Jan 2011 thanks largely to TP support, never chose to become a member of the TP caucus.
I don’t expect Dem Congressional members to have the backs of conservatives during wrong doing except when it’s either politically safe – or expedient – to do so. But where was Michelle “I’m the TP queen” Bachmann thru all this? Where was the Tea Party Caucus? And how about all those GOP members that knew this was going on, and could have hammered the point home as an issue in the headlines at a time when it would have made a difference in 2012? And that includes the ACLJ.. who talked about a lot in their press releases, *except* for their IRS-wronged clientele.
All I can say is that the Tea Party needs a new Caucus, because they sure can’t depend on the elected ones there to have their Constitutional backs. And next to an already.. and usual expected… IRS that is overly powerful, that’s the second most scary thing of all. The TP movement has no genuine friends in the beltway, or elsewhere.
McDermott is a posterboy for anti-American politicians. Can you imagne acongrrssional representative going to Nazi Germany on the eve of hostilities and engaging in anti-American propaganda? Because that is exactly what McDermott did with Iraq before we invaded and deposed Saddam.
@Pete: You beat me to it! Who would trust an avid supporter of Saddam Hussein and backstabber of the troops? Plenty on the left. There is a place in this world for Baghdad Jim. Not sure if they’ve dug it yet.
When obama’s half brother started the Barack H. Obama Foundation, it was granted tax exempt status RETROACTIVELY, WHICH IS ILLEGAL.
It does make a difference who you know in politics.
Mata,
They ‘did’ do something. They formally asked questions directly to those reported concerns to the IRS officials years ago…who “denied” any knowledge of it and LIED about it. What else could they do at that point but continue to keep it on the back burner till they had enough direct evidence to show they were lieing and open up further investigations to it? What do you think would have happened had they gone off half-cocked in an election cycle? The president managed to convince people he both said Bengahazi was an act of terror the day after it happened…and that he didn’t know it was until weeks later.
Most of the individuals out there we are talking about were grass roots, first timers…who had no idea what the experience was supposed to be like. In most of the cases I’ve been seeing…they were simply waiting for a response….which in some cases went on till “after” the elections. It was over time…more and more people started reporting what they thought were problems. And the problems/targeting became more obvious.
I recall seeing one of the major donors to Romney campaign that got audited shortly after his name was put out….saying he didn’t really know what happened or that one thing had something to do with the other…until ….he realized that “all” of them got audited, and found that unusual. Most of the people involved at the grass roots level figured it was all part of the process until they got the 80 point plus additional questions that were absurd…sometimes “years” after they applied.
I don’t disagree that the RNC has not helped itself in any number of regards. But, I’m not sure they actually sat on the ball on this one. They asked the questions. They were just lied to and stiff armed…and didn’t have enough proof to push it further at the time. How do you push to further an investigation when you call people in front of you, ask them the questions and they say it didn’t happen or they have no knowledge of anything ever happening?
Dc, that’s not how it came down. It was, in fact, Issa’s correspondence that triggered the internal audit and investigative report. Issa had originally written back in March 2012 (linked above). There was multiple correspondence between the IRS and Issa, as well as with Charles Boustany. The IRS responded to Issa’s June 28th letter, confirming that they had *already started on the report* by then, and would give him status updates, as well as a copy of the final report.
As Pat Dollard also notes, Issa got an email update on the status of the IG investigation in Dec 2012, telling him that “a detailed, substantive briefing” would be completed by April/May of this year… as it was.
Issa was behind the investigation being launched, so you can’t characterize them having “no knowledge of anything” or being “lied to and stiff armed”.
Issa, himself, uses the fact that the investigation wasn’t complete as a reason for him not making a larger issue of it in 2012. However, as I pointed out, Congressional members have a long history of announcing to the public they suspect wrong doing, and are launching investigations. Makes the news all the time. Generally conservative news and bloggers keep the scandal alive and well – most especially during an election year.
To the media coverage, other publications such as the Blaze, and the AP, picked up on the story back in Mar 2012… mostly all did a one time blurb and let it go.
So the question begs to be asked in all seriousness… where was the conservative media in picking up on this? Where was the Tea Party Caucus for the TP groups? Are we to assume none of them knew of this investigation or the accusations and legal beagles drawn in to the story? Rand Paul signed one of those letters to the IRS, and yet he didn’t make an issue of it either.
And since when has an ongoing investigation stopped media coverage of the issue until it’s completion? Has it stopped for Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the DOJ/AP etal, despite the final reports are not in? Of course not. But it seems that this particular scandal just slipped thru the media cracks… and at a very important time in an election season. Like I said, something is really wrong with that.
Mata, this appears to be a case, then, that disproves the oft repeated liberal mantra of the Republicans being conspiracy hunters. The thought of the IRS using its power to go after individual, law abiding persons and groups is pretty fantastic; only once it was a fact beyond reasonable doubt (to those with the intelligence to reason and doubt) did it become open accusations.
Like the 9/11 attacks, only in hindsight was the situation clear. Some cannot imagine the evil that lurks in the heart of man.
We know for a fact that Obama dragged up the 1913 Espionage Act in order to go after Fox News and AP.
Now, from behind a subscription wall at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324682204578517563566848922.html
is the fact that Obama also dragged up a law not used at all in the last 20+ years (because of a combination of unfavorable court ruling and changes in the law by Congress) in order to add a special GIFT TAX on Republican donors who supported a prominent conservative advocacy group for the SURGE in Iraq.
Freedom’s Watch, in 2011, had 5 major donors all audited by the IRS in search of GIFT TAXing their donations to Freedom’s Watch.
Oh, and there is a Lois Lerner tie-in!
She EARNED those bonuses!
A blogger has extensively quoted from the WSJ article here:
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/irs-hit-conservative-orgs-donors-with-gift-tax#.UbAB05zEmop
Sweetness and Light’s writer points out this little observation/rhetorical question:
They started asking questions and requesting information in March 2012 and haven’t stopped. The fact that they haven’t been able to get answers (even now)…isn’t because they aren’t or haven’t inquired or asked the questions or requested the documents.
I didn’t say Issa had no knowledge of anything. I said, the IRS wasn’t being forthcoming with the information and was denying it ever happened.
Again, that is not the way it has come down, Dc. The IG’s office, under J. Russell George, had started an investigation between Mar and July of 2012. Exact date unknown. That 54 pg report, released mid May, is the result of that investigation and found that “the IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions.”
Maybe you and I disagree on some specifics, but frankly, I consider that “answers, even now”
Here’s the SCRIBD of the IG report:
IRS IG report 5/15/2013 by Kc Wildmoon
What Schulman, himself, said was that their criteria wasn’t based on “politics”. The IG report states that the choice of names used as a reason for review wasn’t kosher… and shouldn’t be. That’s sort of a verbal sidle by Schulman – a parsing of words – considering their choice of names for review was more likely to weed out conservatives vs liberal groups.
No matter what Schulman said, there was no reason that Issa, Rand Paul, or the sundry other GOP leaders who knew about this, shouldn’t have started this debate last year simply because there was a serious enough concern that the IG’s office was tasked with an active investigation. So what difference does it make if Schulman was speaking in mumbo-jumbo half truths, or flat out lying? Did that stop news cycles on F&F or Benghazi? The targeting of Rosen? This spin on truth parsing by Schulman was no obstacle for an investigation to be launched, and that should have been 24/7 news headlines during an election cycle…. just as the others are prior to final findings.
Nor does this excuse the Tea Party, never saying a work until May of this year. I said it before (this or another thread)… the Tea Party Caucus did not have the backs of TPers last year. Either they too decided to ignore this news, or they were clueless. Either is unforgivable. *They* should have been all over this last year. Apparently they have no real friends in the beltway.
Ok…we’ll blame the victim then (sigh). The Tea Party should punish themselves for having been targeted and not being able to make this a story in the MSM sooner. And RNC and Tea Party leaders….should have forced MSM to run the stories, and forced the IRS to respond sooner.
You come to this bizarre conclusion of what I said… how?
I’m not “blaming” the Tea Party. Neither do I shift to the other extreme and join voices that claim they were neutered in power simply because they didn’t get their tax exempt status in a timely and justified manner. And most certainly I am not giving the IRS any pass.
What I am doing is blaming the Republicans for sitting on this during a vital election year. They did a disservice to conservatives everywhere. And the Tea Party Caucus did not go to bat for the TPers at all during this time, only coming in this May with staged huffing and puffing.
Moral of the story? Conservatives have no friends and competent representation in Washington DC. That is impossible to be construed as “blaming the victim.”