the question I ask right-wingers who claim this was all a conspiracy of the Obama Administration to “suppress the conservative vote” is:
How? Was the IRS sitting there in the voting booth? Were they preventing right-wing individuals and groups from spending money on campaigns? if so, they did a terrible job: Karl Rove alone spent $400 million, and he was hardly the only one.
This is not Conspiracy Theory gone wild. This is serial lying to make money off many people who lost their ability to think.
A few at the IRS made a mistake somewhat because of lack clarity of the rules.
Some call this a scandal simply because the IRS admitted their mistake and said it was wrong.
One of the victims of IRS Jackboot thuggery testifying today in the House is a Teaparty Group’ president who’s 14 year old daughter led a TParty Rally with this appeal:
Her mother probably listens to Glenn Beck because her social welfare group’s purpose is to inform the Obama enslaved masses about how to stop Glenn Beck’s agenda 21 and how to stop Sharia Law from taking over in America.
And she probably subscribes to this:
That $400 million had its civil rights respected, as God intended and the Constitution demands. But what about the other millions of dollars, oppressed under the jackboot Birkenstocks of the liberal Gestapo? When will those millions have their civil rights recognized? Money talks, and we are obliged to listen.
You’re correct, the First Amendment forbids the government from limiting people’s ability to agitate for or against political candidates.
Do you think we should repeal the First Amendment and prevent groups like the Sierra Club or individuals like George Soros to put ads on TV, the radio, or in the newspapers encouraging people to vote against candidates they don’t like?
Hey, fuck a bunch of eagles and redwoods!
Could I trouble you for a translation?
Perhaps it’s me, but that appeared to be pure gibberish.
I asked politely and see no reason why you can’t answer my simple question.
“Do you think we should repeal the First Amendment and prevent groups like the Sierra Club or individuals like George Soros to put ads on TV, the radio, or in the newspapers encouraging people to vote against candidates they don’t like?”
Thank you.
A whoosh. elucidator was making fun of extremist hypocrisy.
ETA: some people seriously do feel that the First Amendment needs to be revisited in terms of corporate political donations. The amount of money that goes into campaigning is alarming to many. Representatives devote far too much of their time to fund-raising, which makes them bound and beholden to the view of their largest donors.
While there are people like Dick Cheney who feel that we should ignore the Constitution when convenient, most of us don’t.
That being said, I get the impression that you do think the government should restrict the ability of the Sierra Club to encourage people to vote against anti-environmental candidates.
Am I correct, and if so, may I ask why?
Respectfully, this comment makes no sense since I and Elucid were clearly referring to Citizens United which says nothing about contributions to candidates.
In fact, Citizens United explicitly says that limits on donations to candidates is constitutional.
What it addresses is those who choose to agitate in favor or against political candidates.
The opponents of Citizens United argued that the government should have the right to restrict any and all “electoral communications” designed to convince people to vote for or against certain candidates.
The four justices who opposed the decision felt the government had the right to regulate even books and movies but thankfully the book-burners were soundly defeated.
Do you really think that those four justices were right and that books and movies who’s purpose was to get people to vote for or against political candidates should be subject to government regulation?
If you think they shouldn’t, then why don’t you think the decision, in which five brave justices stood up and gave the finger to the book-burners shouldn’t be celebrated as a great victory for free speech?
No matter how posters try to twist themselves into knots to minimize the scandal, the IRS did discriminate, and you’d have to be incredibly naive to think that the discrimination was an honest mistake.
One conservative group was even bright enough to change their name to Greenhouse Solutions when their application was getting delayed. With the name change, their application sailed through without a problem.
You are scandal mongering with the best of 'em.
As presented - this story escapes the bounds if truth quite a bit.
Seems to me to be a slice of snark loaf with some liberal hypocrisy sauce. “Repeal the First Amendment?” is a “simple question”? So, you’re just askin’ questions here.
I think the whole 501 (c) 4 thingy has become a farce, little more than a latticework of loopholes designed to assist wealthy and politically active people to shovel their money into politics while retaining their anonymity. So far as I know, there is no particular aspect of the First Amend.that ensures anonymous speech. Why would a man need to hide what he believes?
And further, it is a shuck and a jive. Its not so much that rich benefactors wish to remain anonymous as it is that they don’t want the general public to know how much money they are pouring into our electoral system to affect the results. They want to preserve the droll myth of the Tea Party groups as grass-roots, regular folks. And I note, and note well, that some are, indeed, just what they pretend to be. Other’s are not, as most spectacularly represented by Dick Armey’s Tea Party Express, which sordid history is available to all.
The Golden Rule is a long-standing tradition in American politics, the guy with the gold gets to make the rules. I want to see that changed, seeing as I am solidly committed to egalitarian democracy. I see campaign finance reform as a first step, perhaps more of a first stumble. And I see this whole kerfluffle as a result of an effort to undermine and neuter those efforts.
The Koch Brothers and Mr. Soros have more political power than I do, or you do. This is a direct result of their personal wealth. Duh. As wealth can be inherited, so can the power it generates. Which is entirely too similar to inherited nobility and its attendant power. Old and bad wine in a new! improved! bottle that wants to pretend it is democratic. Feh! as they say in Lubbock.
The Supremes have spoken, and now money has civil rights. I personally find that ruling inspirational, I am inspired to run behind a tree and puke my guts out. But if a man is going to bash my politics with his money, is it too much to ask that he admit it, that there is transparency in the public arena?
This isn’t about persecuting conservative politics, however dear that fantasy may be to you. Its about the truth. I would very much like to know how much of the money that fuels the Tea Party comes from a small coterie of wealthy men. Not surprisingly, they would prefer that I didn’t.
And you?
No, yes. Why?
Money doesn’t have civil rights, people with money have civil rights. CNN has more power than you. Does CNN have rights, or should their rights be limited because you don’t have as much pull as they do?
The real scandal isn’t the IRS investigation of Tea Party groups, which under US law must be taxed for engaging in political endeavors. The real problem is that the law wasn’t enforced for organizations that engaged in left-wing political endeavors.
The thread title is itself a misleading attack. No individual persons were “targeted” for anything. No organization even had its application for tax exempt status denied! All approved or still pending approval, every single one of them.
They got asked a few more questions than they would have preferred to have been asked.
“targeting of tea party members” baloney. Another tale of victimhood. Woe to be a White Christian American, such hardship!
I just heard about the cannabis overtaxing issue today. They have been doing that to tobacco and alcohol for years. Lets see if it goes to the flipping mainstream repetitive news feed. I still have hope, I don’t know why, but I still have hope.
The way the law is written it’s essentially self-negating. There isn’t actually any prohibition on tax exempt organizations engaging in political activity that’s enforceable.
They were delayed for years, they were asked questions that were not only intrusive but unconstitutional, many never got their applications approved because they wouldn’t answer all the questions. They weren’t denied, just never approved.
Speaking of White Christian Americans, Jews were also targeted, it turns out. Many Jewish organizations were asked about their positions on Israel, and of course the usual demands for their donor lists.
Then there’s the fact that people, individuals, say they were targeted for audits for writing unfavorable things about the President. That issue is not fully investigated yet, but if they are white and Christian I’m sure it’s okay.
The GOP lost seats in 2012 along almost every metric. The GOP is not indanger of exinction any time soon but until the whole gun debate, the trend seemed to be going heavily against them.
You are talking about the least populus states (for the most part).
Did you see the dates on those letters? They were sent after they discovered the problem and Lerner was exercising more oversight in the process.
So what? Being a conservative doesn’t make her immune from audits.
Look at the dates. Timing matters.
Of course we should prevent a tax exdempt organization from engaging in political activity, its the trade off you amke for tax exempt status. The Sierra Club’s political action committee on the other hand can engage in political activity.
And since when it the Sierra Club a person?
Actually, I don’t think they are forbidden from engaging in “political activity” just “partisan activity”, meaning supporting one political party or another.
Now the Sierra Club doesn’t have a political party they support, so they can engage in political campaigns and in fact have supported and opposed people from both political parties.
The same is true of the NRA, the AARP, AIPAC, and similar organizations.