Indeed. One interesting thing is that extra scrutiny was given to organizations advocating for limiting government. Right-wing loonies, right?
But extra scrutiny was also given to organizations advocating for expanding government. Does that sound like any right-wing group to you? Or does that sound like something that liberals (coughObamacarecough) might call for?
It may be that they were looking for hot-button issues in an election year, figuring that some folks would try to avoid taxes on their political campaigns by hiding in a 501 status, and wanted to find those people. If that’s all they were doing, this hardly rises to high crimes and misdemeanors or whatever.
So I am sure you can backup the idea that they were going after liberal groups as well as conservative with a cite, right? Along with a list of liberal buzzwords they used to identify these liberal groups, right?
Extra scrutiny from the I.R.S due to ones political beliefs is worrying. I imagine that if the I.R.S. used terms like ‘Pro Choice’, ‘Marriage Equility’ or any other liberal buzzwords as a filter to target groups this board would be going apeshit. And rightfully so.
Yet since the targets were conservatives, and we all know that conservatives are either sheep or diabolical rich people bent on <insert liberal conspiracy theory here>, it is just fine.
Who has “expanding government” as a catch phrase or platform plank? “Small government” is pretty much exclusively rightish, yes? But I don’t know of an opposite equivalent on the left.
Which groups were investigated for wanting expanded government? I don’t think there were any and it was an ass covering exercise.
A quick timeline from the linked article:
Prior to June 29th, 2011 I.R.S pays ‘special attention’ to groups that ’ criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution.’
June 29th. A meeting was held with Lois G. Lerner about the ‘special attention’ these groups were getting. A week later new guidelines were released. No real info on what the new guidelines were.
Jan. 15, 2012, the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement”
May 17th, 2012. More neutral testing for social welfare groups is put in place at the I.R.S.
My read on this.
Some I.R.S. agents decided to go after conservative groups. Lerner found out about it and changed some things. And she informed her bosses. After six months her bosses freaked and added the new ‘political test’ with the limit/expand as a CYA. More freaking out and the I.R.S set new rules once again in May that are supposed to be more politically neutral.
Apologies about missing LHODs over the line remark. That is what I get when I post on my phone…
I don’t think it is a big deal. These are groups whose main statement rails against taxes and government. No surprise that if you simply looked at the names of who you want to audit, the ones who are anti-tax seem a logical choice. Besides, nothing was ever done to them, or they would be crying even harder about it now. A tax audit is a perfectly legitimate performance of government oversight duties. If they weren’t doing anything illegal, nothing would be found and they would not have been inconvenienced.
It reminds me of that kerfuffle a few years ago when the Obama administration put out a terror watch of right wing domestic groups and right wing extremist groups howled and whined. They deserved to be looked at closer than the rest of us, it was a perfectly legitimate use of government power
That’s not what happened. We’re not talking about audits, we’re talking about organizations that wanted tax exempt status being made to jump through extra hoops.
This comes uncomfortably close to ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.’ Anyway they were asked for a lot more information about their activities and donors, and that could certainly qualify as an inconvenience.
Not a bit of it, scrutinize away. Especially the rich donors who are supplying all the stage management, loudspeakers, trucks, logistics…oh, wait, they don’t have any of that, do they?
Personally, I think the story if true was a gross abuse of government power(though hardly outrageous enough to warrant comparisons to Nixon) and am a bit shocked at how many people are defending it, but if this article from The Atlantic is correct, unless I’m misreading it, the IRS was pressured by Congress to investigate those groups and the pressure was bi-partisan coming from both sides of the aisle(though more from the Democrats).