…and we’re done. I could, of course, say the same thing about your partisan blinders and the need to make EVERYTHING an OMG TEH SUXXORZ scandal about Obama, but I thought we were discussing issues, not mocking one another. If that’s not what we’re doing, I don’t have an interest in it.
We were actually done the moment you decided to attempt to defend the IRS when they won’t even defend themselves. We were done when you attempted to use that lame definition of partisan targeting as a defense of the IRS procedures. My guess is that you and others on the left are terrified about how this will affect Obama and whether he actually knew about any of this or had a hand in it.
Maybe you should be concerned that Obama still has faith in Eric Holder after two simultaneous scandals in his department under his watch (not to mention Fast and Furious). Maybe you should be concerned that the Obama administration is claiming incompetence over corruption in the trio of scandals encompassing this administration. You should be concerned that Eric Holder is in charge of investigating himself in the press leak scandal.
You’re not really even attempting to defend the IRS. You are too busy trying to parse words in such a way to put a softer light on this issue. That, to me, smacks of partisan blinders. Maybe you really are just seeking the truth about this scandal but, honestly, that’s not what it sounds like to me. Your posts in this thread strike me a little more than damage control.
Can’t it be both?
In my imagination, this started as a data [del]filtering[/del] profiling idea with the TP wave that was hitting at the time, but then quickly progressed to partisan harassment. The profiling thing seems like a reasonable idea in a raw data way, until you consider how laughably stupid it is for this politically-natured work they were doing. That’s where I think it became more sinister. I expect the people who thought of it and applied it are probably not personal fans of the TP, seeing as the TPs primary goal is the destruction of their workplace. I think they knew it was wrong, but thought the profiling argument could be their excuse if they got caught. I expect a lot of them are Team IRS career-wise, and the tendency to resist TP bullshit (and rationalize it as “hey I’m just efficiently profiling data here”) was a defensive reflex.
If the groups in fact could continue to operate, that takes a lot of bite out of the scandal to me. But I could still see dipshits at IRS having fun asking them what they pray about, to waste their time and energy. People are people. I don’t think this goes to the highest levels, beyond the sense of nobody wanting to talk about it until they couldn’t avoid it. Because :smack:
This “harassment” of which you speak? What forms did it take? Were the Tea Parties infiltrated by spies? Were their rallies met with hostile police presence? Tear gas? Gotta say, this modern day oppression seems like rather weak tea. Kids these days…
At least you got this part right.
What did they do at there protests to merit a “hostile police presence”?
Did they not obtain legal permits for those rallies?
Did they declare they were going occupy public parks and stay there for weeks or months?
Did they enage in any sort of criminal behavior at those rallies?
Wasn’t making any direct reference to the OWS. But are you about to pretend that the reception offered the Tea Party was somehow equally hostile? Anti-war demonstrations? Yes, the Tea Party obtained the necessary permits, no doubt, was that a problem for them, you think?
Did you notice how well funded the Tea Party rallies were? Not the very, very earliest, true, but soon thereafter. Sound equipment, stage managing, printed placards and materials, all professional quality. Where’d all that money come from? You think more than one person in a hundred at those rallies knew a 501©4 from a hole in the ground?
I like grass roots movements, even those whose politics are retrograde to the point of retardation. I want our people to be citizens, I want participation. In that light, the initial Tea Party was kinda refreshing. Until the professional and political cynics smelled the opportunity. Then, suddenly, it was slick and professional, tour buses, sound engineers, lawyers to smooth over minor problems. Where’d the money come from, do you think?
All rather beside the point, I admit. Many self-pitying rightards wallow in their sense of oppression, it is one of their treasured myths to explain why they lose so often when everybody is on their side. Except, of course, the liberal media and the jack booted thugs from ACORN.
It is that myth that has exaggerated and inflated this stupid little incident into a Big Hairy Ass Deal. But when was the last time you heard about a Tea Party attendee being pepper sprayed by a cop because he didn’t like them?
Current stats:
The GOP controls the US House. They control 24 state governments in total (that is, governor and both state houses are GOP). The Democrats control only 12.
The GOP won more elections in 2012 than the Democrats did.
In light of that, I wonder what you mean by, “they lose so often.”
Republicans tend to lose the one national race lately: lost the popular vote in four out of the last five Presidential elections.
However, the Presidency is just one office and not even the most important, IMO. Controlling the states is much more important and all it takes is one chamber of Congress to keep the feds off the states’ backs.
No doubt, no doubt. The Republican Party is forging ahead into a bright future, under the leadership of such statesmen as Louis “Goober” Gohmert, Michelle “Batshit” Bachman and Rick “Frothy” Santorum. New and vigorous, as young people, Hispanics, blacks and women eagerly flock to their banner.
And I am the Queen of Romania.
Since political parties are tax exempt anyway, why would these groups want to register as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups? Obviously because then they would not be subject to election laws which limit contributions and require disclosure.
I am sorry, exactly how does his sending out those emails justify “languishing” his application for more than two years?
From the above citation, offered wtihout comment.
My outrage meter spiked to 0.3 out of 10 on this one. It’s difficult to be whipped into a froth-raged frenzy about political organizations who were unable to influence our democratic process with anonymous money. I mean, really, does anyone here have hot tears of sadness rolling down their cheeks because some oil baron in Houston or multinational corporation in China weren’t able to donate to the tea party anonymously?
- Honesty
Now, if nobody minds, a word of contempt and disdain for the wimp-ass, menshevik, centrist, “business friendly” leadership of the Democrat Party, and a sharp word for Barry, who really ought to know better!
You guys fucking panicked! Whatsamatta you? You were throwing people under the bus before the bus even got there. You had to tell them to lay still and wait, it was coming. At most, this is a kerfluffle wrapped in a fuck-up.
I’m all for an effort to curtail the power of Daddy Warbucks to influence politics more than he deserves, totally a cheerleader for that, over here, with the pom-poms, rah rah rah!
But you guys totally screwed the pooch, those aren’t laws, those are a latticework of loopholes. “Predominately” social welfare work? What does that mean to a normal person, and what can a lawyer claim it means? All you cost those guys was a few more billable hours.
Clintonistas. Feh!
I agree. It’s okay to subvert the established democratic process, so long as it only impacts people whose politics we disagree with. I especially like how you isolated the types of donors behind all this. Screw those guys, since they were the only ones involved, whose applications were delayed across an election cycle or two.
Your kerfluffle wrapped in a fuck-up appears to be more than that.
The I.R.S. originally claimed that this was a few low level folks in one office.
N.B.C News is now reporting that lawyers for some of the targeted groups dealt with the I.R.S in D.C. and have documents sent by the esteemed Ms Lerners office.
Link to letter.
Link to story.
Additionally, one of the founders of a group which recieved extra scrutiny from the I.R.S. is claiming that after filing for tax exempt status she was audited by the I.R.S. ( both business and personal) for the first time and had the ATF and OSHA show up at her business. It appears, after a quick google search, that she owns a machine shop.
Assuming that the documents can be produced proving that the scrutiny went beyond a couple folks in one office, well, I can see why Ms Lerner took the 5th.
I expect this to keep growing.
Slee
considering that this whole thing started as a planned leak I don’t see where you think anybody panicked. It was planned. The question you should be asking is WHY was it planned.
Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years….Those weren’t the only groups whose applications were selected for extra scrutiny on the reasoning that they might be devoted to more than “social welfare.” According to an IRS Inspector General report made public this week, they represented only about a third of the 298 applications selected. That was certainly too coarse a screen, and by January 2012 the IRS had scrapped those definitions. It had substituted a screen designed to capture “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, [and] social economic reform/movement.”
Conservatives contend that this is still an anti-conservative screen. It sounds perfectly neutral to me, unless someone knows of a conservative organization devoted to “expanding government,” or unless right-wing groups are supposed to have a monopoly on “social economic reform.” In any case, the inspector general found that most of the 298 selected applications indeed showed indications of “significant” political activity that might have made them ineligible for the tax exemption.
Well, the law could be changed to eliminate the social welfare loophole.