No, it’s just one of many things that have reduced Americans’ trust in government.
It looks as if other emails of IRS employees subject to this investigation have gone missing. The details of these latest missing emails sound more sketchy. Let’s see what turns up.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/irs-lost-emails-tea-party-gop-accuse-107950.html?hp=r5
Yes, exactly, the thread that had zero posts in it.
Yes, a non-existent thread that someone else brought up had zero posts in it. Yes, a non-existent thread that I hypothesized had zero actual posts in it. How you think this is meaningful is comical.
The point is, just to remind you and your buddy, that if the current IRS malfeasance and lies had been perpetrated under a republican administration, the Obama fanboys and apologists would be apoplectic and have this thread humming.
How I think the point in your first paragraph is meaningful, is that it directly refutes the claim in your second paragraph. It’s like saying “Yes, the sky is blue. How is that meaningful? The point is that the sky is orange”.
Ah, I see. You weren’t just suggesting that if something SIMILAR happened under a Republican administration we’d go apoplectic. Your outrage is limited only to what happens in the Bizarro universe where the IDENTICAL EVENT happened in another universe and we went apoplectic. The fact that something similar happened in this universe, and we didn’t freak out, is totally beside the point.
Gotcha.
I suggest you go back to me original post. Your tying yourself in knots trying to address my point and that misdirection that LHOD created.
Well, look at you and your cute little game. Take an event that has some similarities and then grant it the imprimatur of full-on similar and then create the impression that one is almost a 1 to 1 proxy for the other. Sorry, chum. Not gonna work. This malfeasance is orders of magnitude worse. But you don’t care about how egregious this is. Your game is to give this administration cover. Minimize, deflect, misdirect. And in the world where my hypothetical actually occurred, you’d be one of the most upset and vocal about just how unAmerican the initial IRS action was and how inexcusable their behavior has been since. But your guy’s in the White House. Circle the wagons!
For your accusation of hypocrisy to work, not only does this malfeasance have to be orders of magnitude worse, but it must appear to leftists orders of magnitude worse, and yet we still aren’t in the 10,000 range of posts about it.
This leftist, when he saw the “orders of magnitude worse” phrase, laughed out loud. That’s insane bullshit, dude. We’re talking about a major scandal in which the victims didn’t get hurt. Every single purported victim got their exempt status. That’s not remotely orders of magnitude worse than a scandal in which folks’ careers were ruined.
I don’t think I really care too much about what “my side” is hypothetically accused of, mostly because the only defence to that when no evidence is provided is “I disagree.” Not particularly helpful for anyone. The thing that interests me is… to what extent do these hypotheticals become part of the argument for the hypotheticals in general? I’m concerned that sometimes these things become something of a vicious cycle. I’ve certainly seen that happen before - someone knows that X group will act in a certain way because of how they’ve acted before, even if we have no way of knowing for truth how they’d act. But then the next time something like this comes up, that example of hypothetical behaviour becomes a part of the evidence for how they’d then act. The guess becomes fact and propagates new guesses.
Im not sure I agree with this. You say no one go hurt? Well, yes. But what did happen was that a suspposed impartial government body directly interfered with politics at the grassroots level. If a local Tea Party group was having to fight 6 months for tax exempt funding that is 6 months its organizing and lobbying abilities are curtailed.
When Tea partiers or others outside the mainstream are accused of being extremist then such actions by the IRS just add more fuel to the fire. Stories about the DA’s under Bush are worrying, and I admit to not knowing enough about that issue. However, we expect the White House to play rough party politics. It happens in every administration. It may be unsightly, it may be illegal, but it is the type of thing that happens in politics all the time. What we shouldnt expect is that an impartial government body should try to influence the outcome of the democratic process.
You seem to think it a mitigating factor that all these groups eventually recieved tax exempt status? Shouldn’t this instead increase the condemnation of this “scandal”. If all groups eventually got the go ahead it suggests there was little need to hold up their status in the first place
You’re tying yourself in knots. Stop it for your own good. The IRS was supposed to be a 100% non-partisan organization. We know now that it isn’t and wasn’t. The fact that you and those of your ilk think this is something small enough to sweep under the rug is unsurprising.
Complete Bullshit. They were hurt. They were unable to operate in a way that they should have been able to. They were barred from doing what they were legally able to do and their voice and efforts were squelched. That affects our system of democracy. But it skewed things in your favor—which was the very point of their malfeasance—so you think that’s just hunky-dory. Nice principled stance there, bubb.
No, the organizations seeking tax-exempt status are supposed to, by statute, be 100% engaged in the public welfare. The IRS incorrectly made a regulation in conflict with that statute, but looked at liberal groups just as (if not more so) strictly as conservative groups.
No, the Teabag groups were not hurt. They were able to operate in a way that they should not have been able to do, getting a tax break they were not entitled to by statute. Their voices were not squelched. Unlike liberal groups, they fucking whined about mistreatment that never took place and they got the tax breaks they don’t deserve.
When you say “liberal” groups were targetted I think it more accurate to say that groups outside the mainstream were primarily targetted. This may make the scandal even worse not better.
Political groups that are therefore within the political mainstream are given an easy ride. If you have good links to establishment political groups then you are given the green light to tax exempt status.
Admittedly from wiki:
"Over the two years between April 2010 and April 2012, the IRS essentially placed on hold the processing of applications for 501(c)(4) tax-exemption status received from organizations with “Tea Party”, “patriots”, or “9/12” in their names. While apparently none of these organizations’ applications were denied during this period,[Note 2] only 4 were approved.[52] During the same general period, the agency approved applications from several dozen presumably liberal-leaning organizations whose names included terms such as “progressive”, “progress”, “liberal”, or “equality”
So? Neither liberal nor conservative groups should have tax-exempt status. If I ran the IRS, they’d all be rejected on receipt. Eventually all the conservative groups had theirs approved while some liberal groups did not. The right wing gripes are about as substantial as cries of “He’s looking at me” coming from the back seat of the family car.
Your opinion on the exempt status of such groups is not the issue. The issue is how they are legally viewed by the IRS and courts.
This scandal is about right wing sour grapes and paranoia? Yes, that will be why Lois Lerner has continually taken the 5th; individuals at the IRS have been sacked, and at least 7 IRS individuals under investigation have “lost” their emails in a variety of computer crashes. Yes, nothing to see here folks. Move on…
Either the IRS is allowed to make its own rules on this issue, or they’re not. If they’re allowed to make their own rules, then there is no scandal, because they just did what they’re allowed to. If they’re not allowed to make their own rules, then they’re bound by the rules that Congress has set for them, and the scandal is that they allowed tax-exempt status for political organizations.
It seems rather likely that Lerner is attempting to illegally hide something. Just what she’s attempting to hide is unknown, since she hid it. Which is why hiding evidence of this sort is illegal to begin with. String her up for hiding evidence, and then if we manage to find evidence of other wrongdoing that she didn’t manage to hide, string her up for that too.
The rules weren’t changed. There’s a process for changing rules. Rather, Lerner apparently took it upon herself to unevenly enforce a tougher standard, rather than submitting a rule change for public comment as required by law.
Sure they were. The IRS in the Eisenhower years took it upon itself to change the statute that said “exclusively” and wrote a regulation that said “primarily”. They were not supposed to write rules that are contrary to statute, so the real solution is to either go back to the statute or rewrite it.