Well…sort of. That position is due to a recent supreme court decision, and changed how the IRS evaluates 501 organizations. Any time you have a major change in how a bureaucracy functions, there’s a risk of a screwup happening. The change from “exclusively nonpolitical” to “primarily nonpolitical” led to some screwups.
Exactly.
So far as I am aware, there is no evidence that supports the conclusion that the Obama administration initiated, encouraged, or was in any way involved.
Am I wrong? Show me, anyone.
Yes. The lack of simple definition (what exactly is “primarily” anyway?) is the reason for the complexity of the application review process. The means and methods provided and proscribed under an organization’s Bylaws can cover a huge range of potential actions in service of the applicant’s mission. Applicants try to wordsmith in all possible options, and the IRS has the unenviable task of trying to parse that into acceptable versus illegal piles. Then judge the two piles and decide which is “primary”. This system sucks. A more black / white or other bright line evaluation would benefit all.
Plus it is allowing more and more nominally 49.99999…% political entities to compete for the limited amount of charitable donations in the economic universe, to the detriment of fundraising at us “traditional” charities. But that’s a separate issue.
Is this a trap? Bricker, are you joining us liberals on this issue? Where is the liberal hypocrisy? ;)
(We’ve always said he’s smart, he’ll come around. Have I lived to see the day?)
Hey, give him some credit. One, he approaches things from a legal perspective, and that’s what he’s doing here. Two, this isn’t the first time he’s broken with partisanship, whatever his naysayers naysay; I definitely appreciate this about him. And three, he’ll be able to rub this in liberals’ faces for years :D.
Well, so far we have Obama saying he didn’t know anything about it until it became public. His staff knew about it in April. The IRS knew about it 2 years ago.
Summary so far: plausible deniability all tucked in to a comfortable bed of poor communication issues. It does have a certain smell to it and I’m thinking dead fish.
Oh, I give him tons of credit and always appreciate his legal analyses, here as well. We differ (sometimes vehemently) on certain matters, but I recognize that he has admitted to errors. That’s why I thought I could give him a gentle elbow in the ribs on this one.
Someone upthread offered an apt analogy that I’ll attempt to paraphrase (being too lazy to go look for it). If you buy a Subway sandwich and the bacon on it is cold, even raw, and a Google search reveals that other people have gotten raw bacon at Subways and complained about them, and no sandwich preparers seem to have been fired and the local franchises weren’t shut down – do you declare “Bacongate!” and conclude that the CEO of Subway International has it in for you but is hiding behind plausible deniability? Or is it more likely that some dumb schmucks in various places screwed up some sandwiches, and their bosses let them live?
And the conspiracy gets deeper and deeper. Turns out Darryl “Mr. Clean” Issa (R-Etard) was in on it!
When a paragon of ethical behavior and strict non-partisan truthiness like Issa gets sucked into the fetid maw of Obama corruption, what hope is there?
I thought the scandal was that conservative groups were being disproportionately targeted. What does “incorrectly targeted” mean, if it’s not that disproportionality? What made the targeting of the groups incorrect?
I don’t think Issa or many other establishment Repbublicans gave a shit about what the IRS was doing to Tea Party groups. Fact is, most of the establishment Republicans don’t much care for the Tea Party and probably would not have cared if the IRS silenced their groups. This story didn’t become a story until Landmark Legal Foundation and ACLJ contacted the IG of the Treasury department. Of course, now that it’s a scandal that has the opportunity to damage Obama, the Pubs are all over this. The leadership in the House did very little to investigate this before the IG report leaked.
Interestingly, there is a report (link) that the head of the unit responsible for this little todo is going to take the 5th at the congressional hearings.
That is a bit odd, it seems, as she supposedly also planted a question which led to the disclosure of wrong doing. Link.
I’m not up on my congressional hearing history. Is it normal for a department head to take the 5th when the investigation is about low level employees? This pings my ‘something ain’t right here’ bell pretty hard. But I don’t know enough to know if that bell should be ringing…
Slee
Here is another link about Lous Lerner intending to take the fifth: Lois Lerner: Top IRS official will invoke the Fifth Amendment in congressional hearing about tea party targeting program | Daily Mail Online
Let’s wait for the leftie chorus of “it’s nothing, just Republicans slinging mud”.
We could have the discourse on that level–or we could cite places other than the Daily Fail and actually discuss the issues instead of preemptively mocking one another. Make your choice!
Well, not that, but . . . I’m starting to think the IRS don’t get the kinda love it used to. 
Not sure the IRS did it’s due diligence when looking into this fine foundation. 
Wait a second–I just realized that this foundation has nothing to do with the president. It’s founded by his half-brother, and their website declares:
It’s insane to try to smear the president with this.
And if the IRS didn’t practice due diligence here, maybe the solution is to better fund that office and give them clearer guidelines, wouldn’t you agree?
Looking into it further, this charity stinks of a scam, possibly founded by some dude to make a quick buck off people confused about the name. The only work I’m finding that they’ve actually done is to build some latrines–and even then, the picture of the built latrines say “proposed” on them.
Yes, I think this organization should receive scrutiny. In order to do that, we need to have a robust agency capable of performing such scrutiny. Surely we can all agree on that, right?
Who’s trying to smear the president with this?
I don’t think increased funding would solve this problem. My guess is the half-brother is running this thing and the IRS was more than happy to give it a pass without even checking it out. Maybe they should spend more time trying to unearth these frauds (if that’s what this is) instead of trying to intimidate and silence legitimate organizations that have a different ideology than the current administration.
IRS Commissioner contradicts earlier testimony, says Tea Party-targeting was partisan.
“It absolutely was,” said Steven Miller, acting commissioner of the IRS, when asked by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) if the agency acted in a partisan manner.