About that IRS thing
The TEA Party is pretty wary of the federal government, its a well known fact that they think the Federal Government has become corrosive towards individual liberty. You could call the TEA Party a coalition of conservatives and libertarians. You could call them paranoid. You could call them funny. You could call them idealistic. You could call them wacky. All of these tittles do have some element of truth to them. It’s not like a guy walking around in a tri-corner hat with teabags hanging from it is necessarily hard to make fun of. But whatever else the TEA party is/was, it was and remains a legitimate political movement. Our laws are created to protect any group of people that are passionate about any issue, and there are groups from both sides of the isle that are exempt from taxes because they are legitimate political groups. Speech, it would seem is the one thing the Government isn’t trying to tax these days.
Only, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Apparently the IRS has been harassing groups with the words TEA party or Patriots in the title. What it all boils down to is after the Citizen United ruling in 2010, the number of groups seeking 501(c)(4) status increased in order of magnitude. Many of those groups were conservative, like the TEA party. What appears to have happened is that following this sudden outgrowth of the TEA party, and the Citizens United ruling, some low level bureaucrats in the IRS specifically targeted the conservative groups. They would target for auditing, demand donor information (which is illegal), name of who sat on the board (inappropriate), and in certain cases apparently asked question about the children of the leaders of these groups (HIGHLY inappropriate). Keep in mind all of this is in the space of 2010-2012. The run up to the 2012 election saw a lot of TEA party groups complaining about harassment, which most everyone dismissed as right wing wackos who were paranoid about the government. Turns out they were right.
Let’s step back for a second and look at that. The IRS was using it’s almost God-like powers of paper to cause these people no end of grief. If you haven’t been harassed by a government agency you have no idea what a nightmare it is. Think bumbling psycho stalker that happens to have all the keys. The term “harassment” doesn’t do it justice. But there’s something else that should send a cold chill of fear down your spine. a branch of the Federal Government used its power to assist a political ideology, or more accurately to punish an opposing political ideology that could have potentially, affected the election. That should stop everyone cold. That should cause congress, and the American people in all areas of the political spectrum break out in a cold sweat. The gears of government are choosing a winner.
I know that Romney probably would have lost anyway, I know that Obama was still riding the “historic” wave, and the TEA party were just dismissed as loonies, but history has shown time and again that suppression of a political ideology by gears of the governing body is a very bad thing. I’m not saying that the Sturmabteilung are going to be marching down the streets, or that the anarchists are going to finally “bring it all down.” What I’m saying is that like Rome we have reached the apex of our power. Our great philosopher leaders have come and gone. We’ve had our Ceasars, we’ve had our Marcus Aurelius, and now the Praetorian Guard is auctioning off the crown. This is a mark of corruption, perhaps of well meaning individuals, though that’s probably not the case. We have devolved to the point were we are willing to intimidate and bully the very people our Constitution was designed to protect.
It should not matter to you where you stand on the political spectrum. You may personally despise the TEA party. You may be diametrically opposed to everything they stand for, at the end of the day you should still defend them from government abuses, and protect their right to free speech. It should not matter how despicable you find them, the principle is the same, if it can be done to them, it can be done to you. If you are say a died in the wool Paulbot, or a die-hard Obamanut you should be on your phones to your senator or representative, calling them demanding an investigation. Your party affiliation should never matter when the feds are harassing someone about their political beliefs. What’s even worse is that this is being put out by pencil pushers. Its a tyranny of bureaucracy. There’s no congress critter to throw out of office. Much like a “fire and forget” javelin anti tank missile once the mountain of paper avalanches on someone, there’s no way to recall it. It should give you all a cold sweat that one stroke of a pen in the wrong place, one decimal point in the wrong spot, one “low level” clerk in an office in Ohio can make your life a living hell or send you to jail.
This is your government doing this. You, sitting there reading this, have a roughly 1/308,745,538 +/- ownership stake in the federal government. Every bit of good it does on your behalf, every piece of property it owns, and every misstep it takes belong in some portion to YOU. Abraham Lincoln called this a government “Of the People, By the People, and For the People.” If the Government is picking winners, if the People don’t give a damn. If the People are so apathetic that they do not act when their rights are clearly threatened, that they do not take ownership of their government, then this will no longer be the case. It will be a government “Of the Government, By the Government, and For the Government,” and the people can go screw themselves.
Category: Historical, Reality Check, Shitbags, Society
Amen Doc. But all too often, people on both sides of the aisle don’t question it because it’s “their” guys doing it. Either side doing it scares the living crap out of me.
Thing is, Doc, that it wasn’t some lower-level functionaries that were doing this. Like Benghazi, Fast & Furious, et al, the top folks had their hands all over this.
By top hands, I am referring to the head of the IRS, it’s chief counsel,and many high-level functionaries, and they knew about this a year before they claimed they did. It’s very likely that the WH gave the command to do this, as is apparent from the article below:
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/11/breaking-senior-irs-officials-knew-of-targeting-conservative-groups-in-2011/
Well, it was good while it lasted.
“One wonders how many more skeletons will come tumbling out of the closet…. ” Exactly.
The closer you get to it, the more it stinks, doesn’t it?
The Chickens of the radical 60’s movement are coming home to roost. The college educated liberals of that era are now in positions of power in the Government and Educational systems. The chances are the pieces of shit IRS agents that pulled this crap were spawned by or indoctrinated by the gray haired pony tailed socialists and sea-hags that want to destroy and rebuild this country as a socialist regime.
They did it “for our own good”.
I don’t care what an American’s political views are, this sort of thing should never happen in this country. When I first heard it on the radio driving home, I thought they were talking about Iran or Russia.
My only hope is, that they’ll have the ATF investigate the IRS, with help from ICE, DEA, the FBI and the Postal inspectors. Then they can take the little worms who did this and really fuck them up.
You’re dead on, Doc. I pray all the truth comes out, and that enough Americans are left who see the threat for what it is and do something about it.
Well a good thing is that it’s starting to come out in the open. Doesn’t make it any less dangerous, but it does make it easier to fight. Never give up and the best times for the country could well be ahead, at least they could if we tried. Fighting this and trying to keep this country is something we do owe all those who have participated in it’s founding and maintenance.
Spot on, Doc!
Another way to say it is that while I disagree more often than not with the ACLU, I am grateful to live in a country where the ACLU and groups that oppose them both flourish.
We who have served in the military understand, perhaps better than anyone, that freedom includes the right to disagree. We served to protect both those with whom we might agree and those with whom we disagree with equal vigor.
Folks need to do serious jail time on this one.
Well, since we’re all vulnerable to this kind of thing by a seemingly out-of-control government, we need to be more confrontational with its employees.
They are, after all, OUR employees because our tax money goes into their paychecks. They, in effect, work for US. We, on the other hand, do NOT work for them.
The fish is seriously rotting, isn’t it? Man, the fragrance from that compostig site out on the highway isn’t even close to this high!
Any of you who are in business for yourselves should enjoy reading this May 9, 2013, article about the new target of the revenoooers: small business.
http://news.yahoo.com/next-target-irs-robo-audits-205602213.html
Someone once labeled me the document queen. You should be, also.
The only way to put a stop to this kind of nonsense is to shrink the power and scope of the Federal government, and the only movement that is consistently serious about doing that are the Libertarians-who, 1) are nowhere near being in a position to enact their agenda and, 2) are a little nutty regarding a variety of other issues largely due to the fact that they will make no compromise between ideological consistency and reality. The Pubbies talked a good game about reducing government, but did little to actually do anything about it when they were in power (such as it was). Never mind that there seems to be little popular support for, or even understanding of, the principles of limited government put forth in the Constitution.
We are so boned.
@#2, exactly, Tim. Anyone who believes that the IRS didn’t undertake a political witch hunt against conservatives, without the knowledge/approval of those in the executive branch, haven’t been paying attention.
This isn’t an accidental lapse in ethics. This is government employees actively abandoning the law in order to support their political philosophy, which also guarantees tenure and regular pay raises. This is a non-trivial event.
“low-level bureaucrats” and “well-meaning individuals” is horseshit. The only plausible explanation would be use of Union lines of command in order to cut out IRS bosses, some of whom would have put a stop to this BS.
If it were truly a spontaneous movement at lower echelons, that would explain harrassment in one area, one city. But not nationally – that’s why I say look at the Union – AFGE and/or AFSCME.
Beside TEA Partiers and Patriots, the targets also included religious groups such as Jews. At the time Obama’s support for the existence of Israel was in question and major donors were threatening to walk – suppression of pro-Zionism groups was extremely important to Obama’s success.
The last time we saw the IRS and DOJ used for this purpose was 1993-2000 – but the religious component only had evangelical Christian groups then.
Hey DaveO, let’s not forget that Rush Limbaugh was audited during those years, and so was the Heritage Foundation, and that’s just a couple of examples! It sure looks to me like B. Hussein Øbama & Co. are using the IRS and others like Hitler used the SS & Gestapo, or how teh Soviet Politburo used the KGB!
I am shocked that this regime would use the legitimate tools of government to intimidate opponents. Really. Shocked. What’s next, lying to the American public about a terrorist attack? Using a criminal’s murderous rampage to shrink a constitutional right? Appointing a tax cheat as Treasury secretary? Losing weapons in a government-controlled strawman sale and have those weapons later be used to kill people? Pouring billions into destined-to-fail private companies that later go predictably bankrupt? Of course, I exaggerate. None of these things could really happen.
I wonder who else is on this Administration’s “Enemies List” that was provided to the IRS?
But, but, but, the UNIONS are there to HELP people! They wouldn’t do anything to bully people, and certainly not for a political purpose, would they??
Oh, and the IRS is most definitely IN the executive branch. What did the WH know and when did they know it? He employed how many thousands of extra union clowns who knew exactly what they needed to do on behalf of their messiah? No one had to order it specifically.
So, just put the ones who committed the acts in jail. Others will step up, but they might think twice abut it. If not, put them in jail as well. Jail all the thugs if need be – that is why we built the jails.
Just think…the IRS will be overseeing your medical insurance under Obamacare!
@20: That’s a scary thought. Here’s a scenario:
IRS Agent: “Well, sir, it says here that you contributed to the NRA AND the Tea Party. Now this form is a request for a cardiac surgery. Request denied, we don’t need your kind in our society.”
When a president uses the word ‘outrageous’ in a placid tone of voice, it means he just doesn’t give a crap.
Link to latest I could find about this, still with no clue as to whose idea it really was:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/13/18232170-5-unanswered-questions-about-the-irs-targeting-of-conservative-groups?lite>1=43001
Remember the video of the exploding manhole cover? It wobbled a lot before it exploded in a geyser of water under high pressure. Just waiting for the same thing to happen here.
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