There are certainly left leaning partisans on the SDMB.
I merely noted that if one defined the discussion solely in partisan terms, one would be in error.
It is pretty hard to discover right leaning dopers who were willing to call out GW Bush when his lies and errors were exposed, but there were some. It is always easier to excuse those who share more of one’s political beliefs, but if the discussion deteriorates into “We’re right and you all should be ashamed,” then the discussion has no point. You can go to any high school on any Friday night to find cheerleaders and crowds who can only yell about how great their team is. Dragging that sort of observation into a thread like this is pointless.
Uh, because there would not be a common denominator of opposition to the current administration, which is the entire point of the freakin’ scandal.
So, I’ll repeat the question. Or, rather, I’ll ask you to look at it again and give it an actual answer this time.
How about waiting until we have all the facts before condemning or excusing?
I think it’s safe to condemn at this point. The acting director fell on his sword; you don’t do that to appease people over a non-scandal. The waiting part is merely about whether this was politically motivated.
Are you concerned that Barack H. Obama Foundation not only received tax exempt status but that it was made retroactive to 2009?
Agreed and mea culpa. I’ve mentioned it in previous threads that the automatic “my party’s good and yours is bad” mentality makes it hard to have a rational discussion, especially when the majority of the board members identify as liberal and see a liberal slant. Conservative members tend to be a little skittish and defensive so see the posts that support their preconceptions of liberals ahead of other posts. I try to avoid that mindset but I’m only human.
I’m not. Do you think I should be? Is this sort of behavior unusual?
Edit: the president’s group was to give humanitarian aid to Kenya. The Tea Party groups were to advocate for changes to public policy. These two are not comparable–I thought you were going to be linking to a group that advocated for the president’s health care policies or something.
I’ll repeat the answer for clarity, what difference does it make who is inappropriately targeted by the IRS? You seem to be concerned that it’s ONLY a scandal if it appears to be one sided.
Not to worry, Rand Paul has got this! By way of our good friends at Talking Points Memo…
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/rand-paul-claims-damning-irs-memo-exists?ref=fpa
Indeed, yes. We do need to see that policy statement, especially if it actually exists.
The retroactivity also means that the decision had been held back for that long. Which is even worse for such a blatantly non-partisan group. So the fact that mostly-political groups had their applications held, yet finally approved, looks much better in comparison to the non political groups that had the same thing happen.
No, that’s not what it means. If you read the article it stated that the foundation got their approval FASTER than normal and they made it retroactive to when the group was first formed.
Which is entirely appropriate, yes? Which is precisely what should have happened, yes? Because the organization is what it claims to be, a “social welfare” organization.
Of course, it could just be a conduit for payoffs to Kenya, for keeping quiet about Obama’s real birth certificate.
The problem with your theory is that the only reason the scrutiny is claimed to be inappropriate is because of claims of one-sidedness. It’s thoroughly and completely and totally appropriate for the IRS to scrutinize applications made to exempt organizations from paying taxes; indeed, it’s their job to do so.
The scandal has several end-possibilities, as I see it:
- It turns out that scrutiny was applied roughly equally, but one of the key words used to raise concerns was “Tea Party.” That seems foolish, but at best should only require enhanced training.
- It turns out that the scrutiny was applied in disproportionate levels to right-wing groups, but it was a result of incompetence, not malfeasance. That’s what it looks like to me: it looks like they took an idea that’s superficially smart (all these tea-party groups are applying at once, let’s see if there’s something going on here) and didn’t think through the implications (if we focus all our attentions on tea party folks, we’re politically profiling). I could see having some folks lose their jobs over this, although it’d be over incompetence.
- It turns out that there was a dastardly conspiracy to deny tea party folks a full political voice by delaying their tax-exempt applications. That one would require prosecutions to the fullest extent of the law of anyone involved. I really don’t see evidence that that’s happened.
So far, #2 looks likeliest to me. The fact that some left-ish groups faced similar scrutiny supports this conclusion.
It’s not a theory if the claim is made by the IRS.
Why in the world am I expected to believe that the Tea Party is a “social welfare” organization rather than a political one? Because they display a transparent veil across their efforts by saying they are “educating people about the Constitution”?
If they weren’t, in fact, a political organization, we wouldn’t be having the conversation at all! The crux of the biscuit has to do with purported political bias. If there were no politics involved, there would be no place for any bias to point to!
Does anyone here really believe that Tea Party groups are not political? Anybody who is smart enough to be trusted to tie their own shoes?
First, “theory” doesn’t mean “wild-ass guess,” and I did not intend it to have such a meaning. It means an explanation for the facts at hand.
Second, the IRS statements I’ve seen have hinged the claims of inappropriateness on the one-sidedness of the scrutiny. Are you looking at different IRS claims?
The premise that it’s one sided is based on what the IRS claimed. Whether it’s not one sided doesn’t detract from the activity.
Now if there’s another shoe yet to fall which ties it politically to someone then that is another layer of the activity.
What? First, of course that’s what the premise is based on, everyone agrees on that. That’s what I said.
Second, are you suggesting that scrutinizing applications is inherently problematic? If not, what are you suggesting? You seem to be saying that it’s not the one-sidedness that creates the problem, but if that’s not what the problem is, what is?
As I said upthread, I’ve been the applicant in a couple of these. Provided you make proper application, IRS allows you to act as if you are approved while your application is under consideration, although you are required to plainly state the fact to any potential donors that your application is in process and could be rejected. You must agree to pay any taxes, or refund any monies, or do whatever is necessary to un-do your actions should IRS eventually deny your application. Then, once approved, the approval becomes retroactive to cover that time period – otherwise gifts made in the interim could have tax liability, gifts afterward not. That would be confusing, and idiotic bookkeeping. So nothing unusual here.
I also stated earlier that taking a good hard look at organizations that seem to be connected to avowedly political entities doesn’t offend me. I would expect applicants to be so scrutinized regardless of which way the political winds were blowing that year. And at the time in question the political winds were pretty strong from the Tea direction, and so I wouldn’t be terribly offended by scrutiny of what seem on a superficial level (name equivalence) to be possible Tea socks. If that makes me an apologist, so be it.
I do think that it would be reprehensible to hinder applicants merely because of their political philosophy. However, “targeted because of a political philosophy that I find objectionable, with a desire to hinder that organization” is not the same as “heavily scrutinized because the rules do not give special tax status to actual PACs and IRS needs to find out exactly what this applicant really is”. I’ve seen no evidence that the Administration ordered, or even suggested or hinted at, the former. All evidence so far suggests that some mid-level functionaries chose to do the later.
What takes this to another level is that those functionaries, and their bosses, were so politically stupid, so blind to the appearances, that they would actually use a word association test to identify organizations to be specially scrutinized. That is an industrial level, even a weapons grade level of political obtuseness (unsurprising perhaps for an IRS functionary). It is so mindlessly harmful to the entire process as to require the uppermost management of IRS to fall on their swords. I support those “consequences”.
But still nothing suggests any improprieties on the part of the White House.
Why exactly is it a scandal if it’s not one sided? Are you saying the IRS shouldn’t be investigating any of these applications at all?
501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to lobby for particular issues, or advocate certain positions. Those things are political in nature and perfectly legitimate activities of a 501(c)(4) org. What they can not do is campaign for specific candidates. Your objection is moot.
Did he really fall on his sword? I heard he was scheduled to retire in June, and basically his leaving the agency is going to happen in June. It’s not like he gave up his pension or anything.