whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Not even a smidgen of corruption?

Not even a tinsy-binsy amount?

Why have you chosen to trust House Republicans? I mean, they didn't unveil the "...new information..." they uncovered.

I've also chosen to believe Lerner when she herself broke that the IRS made a boo-boo.

Give that the IRS typically audits 1.11% of individuals. This relevation that nearly one in 10 donors were subjected to audit is very Nixonian.

If true... this is a big bleeping deal.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Give that the IRS typically audits 1.11% of individuals. This relevation that nearly one in 10 donors were subjected to audit is very Nixonian.

And is not relevant to anything Lerner may, or may not, have done or said.

 whembly wrote:

Key word... some. Also they were publically disclosed.

Do you know which ones were lawfully collected? Do you care? I suspect neither is true.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Not even a smidgen of corruption?

Not even a tinsy-binsy amount?

Why have you chosen to trust House Republicans? I mean, they didn't unveil the "...new information..." they uncovered.

I've also chosen to believe Lerner when she herself broke that the IRS made a boo-boo.

Give that the IRS typically audits 1.11% of individuals. This relevation that nearly one in 10 donors were subjected to audit is very Nixonian.

If true... this is a big bleeping deal.

And? The fact that the "IRS typically audits 1.11% of individuals" does not really mean squat when we're talking about audits related to political contributions.

 whembly wrote:

Jeebus, you are being dense here dogma.

 whembly wrote:

Well... we don't know for sure... right?

 whembly wrote:

Wow... so you're okay with the fact that there's an increased risk for IRS audits if you donate to certain causes??

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Jeebus, you are being dense here dogma.

How so?

 whembly wrote:

Well... we don't know for sure... right?

So you don't know, and are proceeding on assumptions.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Wow... so you're okay with the fact that there's an increased risk for IRS audits if you donate to certain causes??

If they were donating to groups that were already under investigation, why should there not be a risk for an audit?

 whembly wrote:
Wow... so you're okay with the fact that there's an increased risk for IRS audits if you donate to certain causes??

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Wow... so you're okay with the fact that there's an increased risk for IRS audits if you donate to certain causes??

Sorry, my reading of the article you posted is that it was the actual groups that were targeted for audit, not individual donors. Did I misread that?

If not, comparing the average individual audit rate to a group audit rate would be meaningless. What's the average rate for, say corporate audit? That would be a more comparable stat.

 whembly wrote:

Why is it okay for the IRS to request the "lists of past and future donors"???

 whembly wrote:

The biggest problem with that is that all of the IRS questions and answers are supposed to be made publicly available once the organization is approved.
See here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6104

 whembly wrote:

The whole the frigging point of 501(c)(4)s is that they're supposed to allow donors to stay anonymous.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Why is it okay for the IRS to request the "lists of past and future donors"???

It isn't, but information which could be obtained via nominal means can be legitimately retained.

 whembly wrote:

The biggest problem with that is that all of the IRS questions and answers are supposed to be made publicly available once the organization is approved.
See here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6104

Any documents filed with the IRS, not any "...questions and answers..." An important distinction to make.

 whembly wrote:

The whole the frigging point of 501(c)(4)s is that they're supposed to allow donors to stay anonymous.

No, the point of 501(c)(4) is to enable groups primarily concerned with social welfare to engage in political activity. Pretty much says it on the tin, so to speak.

 whembly wrote:

Well... yeah. The question remains, was this normal?

 whembly wrote:

You're not implying that your tax information can be released to the public... are you?

 whembly wrote:

Uh... AND it allows a mechanism to shield donors from publicity dude.

 dogma wrote:


That's not its legislatively stated purpose. That is simply a thing which followed on from Citizens United.

We need to get to the bottom of it by giving Lois Lerner full immunity in exchange for her testimony.
The timeline of the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups reveals nothing less than a scandal. It is a scandal that blew into public view a year ago this week and about which the press has been far from curious.

In 2009, the president of the United States commented in a commencement address that the IRS would soon be auditing the president of the university and the Board of Regents for refusing to grant him an honorary degree. Supporters of the president dismissed critics who worried that the "joke" was a "dog whistle" intended to declare open season on the president's political opponents.

In January 2010, the president in his State of the Union Address publicly berated the six Supreme Court justices in attendance for their decision in Citizens United, which held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and labor unions.

In the wake of Citizens United, many political groups formed in opposition to the president applied to the IRS for tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, which does not require the disclosure of donors. Senators of the president's party called on the IRS to investigate these groups.

In March 2010, employees in the IRS branch office tasked with reviewing applications for tax-exempt status were instructed to give special scrutiny to certain applications for 501(c)(4) status, later memorialized in a "Be on the Look Out" (BOLO) list of targeted terms. Over the next two years, the IRS slow-walked the applications of many such groups, limiting their ability to participate in the 2010 and 2012 political campaigns.

In March 2012, the IRS commissioner testified before a House committee that there was "absolutely no targeting" by the IRS of political organizations opposed to the president. The subcommittee chairman requested the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) to investigate. The IRS commissioner resigned later that year.

On May 10, 2013, four days before the public release of the TIGTA report, the IRS director Exempt Organization Director (IRS director) apologized for the "absolutely inappropriate" actions of low-level IRS branch office employees and denied any involvement by high-level IRS officials in Washington, D.C.

On May 14, 2013, TIGTA publicly released its report detailing the IRS' inappropriate targeting of the president's political opponents. The president directed the secretary of the Treasury to hold accountable those IRS employees responsible for the targeting, and the attorney general announced that the Department of Justice would launch a criminal investigation. The following day, the acting IRS commissioner resigned.

On May 22, 2013, the IRS director asserted her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to testify before a House committee. She was placed on administrative leave. The following month, it was revealed that she received a $42,000 bonus. She retired in September.

On Jan. 9, 2014, it was revealed that the Department of Justice attorney leading the investigation was a donor to the president's campaigns. A week later, the Justice Department revealed it would not bring any criminal charges. Attorneys for many of the targeted political groups complained that they had never been contacted in the investigation.

On Feb. 2, 2014, the president stated in a televised interview before the Super Bowl that although there "were some bone-headed decisions out of a local (IRS) office ... (there was) not even a smidgen of corruption."

On May 7, 2014, the House voted 231-187 to hold the former IRS director in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate in its investigation (six members of the president's party voted with the majority). The House also voted 250-168 to request the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate (26 members of the president's party voted with the majority).

To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey in A Time to Kill: Now imagine the president is a Republican.

We've already seen that movie, and it was called Watergate.

In that scandal, aggressive reporting by the media and thorough investigations by the FBI, Justice Department and a Senate Select Committee painstakingly uncovered the facts of the illegal break-in at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters months before the 1972 presidential election. One of the three articles of impeachment charged that President Nixon had attempted to use the IRS against his political opponents.

Today's news media are largely ignoring the IRS scandal, and it is impossible to have confidence in the current investigations by the FBI, Justice Department, and House committee. I am not suggesting that the current scandal in the end will rise to the level of Watergate. But the allegations are serious, and fair-minded Americans of both parties should agree that a thorough investigation needs to be undertaken to either debunk them or confirm them.

Step one should be to give Lois Lerner full immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony. And then let the chips fall where they may.

 whembly wrote:

And that makes it illegitimate? Not sure what you're driving at here dogma...

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

And that makes it illegitimate? Not sure what you're driving at here dogma...

Yes. 501(c)(4) was never intended to shield donors giving for the purpose of supporting a political position, Citizens United fundamentally broke that classification.

Regardless, you're getting worked up over absolutely nothing. Any document filed with the IRS regarding 501(c)(4) donors is not public domain.

 whembly wrote:

Okay... so? They're not breaking any laws...right?

 whembly wrote:

You haven't addressed the larger issue.

It was evidently shown that the donors were more likely to be audited than normal.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Okay... so? They're not breaking any laws...right?

No, but that's not my point. My point is that 501(c)(4) either needs to be eliminated, or drastically altered because, as it stands, it is not working as intended.

Of course, this will never happen as any action by the IRS to change 501(c)(4) will face massive resistance from conservative groups claiming that they're being targeted, as evidenced by the response to the proposed rule changes.

 whembly wrote:

You haven't addressed the larger issue.

It was evidently shown that the donors were more likely to be audited than normal.

No, I didn't, because that isn't what we were discussing. What you just did is a very weak attempt at deflection.

Anyway, I've not seen evidence of what you describe, but I also haven't worked on this issue in a month.

 whembly wrote:

Well let's expand that further. Why is it such a bad idea to be an anonymous donor?

 whembly wrote:

And yeah, I'm really interested that evidence as well.

...
Levin, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ permanent subcommittee on investigations, wrote a March 30, 2012 letter to then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman discussing the “urgency” of the issue of possible political activity by nonprofit applicants. Levin asked if the IRS was sending out additional information requests to applicant groups and citing an IRS rejection letter to a conservative group as an example of how the IRS should be conducting its business.
A top IRS official replied that the agency could send out “individualized questions and requests.”

“Some entities claiming tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations under 26 U.S.C.&501(c)(4) appear to be engaged in political activities more appropriate for political organizations claiming tax-exempt status under 26 U.S.C.&527,” Sen. Levin wrote. “Because of the urgency of the issues involved in this matter, please provide the following information by April 20, 2012.”
...

The Internal Revenue Service managed a wide-ranging program that singled out tea party groups for special scrutiny from its headquarters in Washington, D.C., according to bombshell documents released Wednesday by a watchdog organization. Judicial Watch, a center-right group that specializes in Freedom Of Information Act document requests and lawsuits, said it received a cache of papers from the IRS showing the depth of the Obama administration's involvement in what officials have previously called the work of a few 'rogue agents' in Cincinnati, Ohio.
And letters from U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, show his involvement in pressing the IRS to target mostly conservative organizations with cumbersome questionnaires seemingly calculated to slow down their applications for tax-exempt status in the middle of an election year.

In one July 2010 email among IRS managers, a lawyer with the Exempt Organizations Technical unit in Washington wrote that his office was 'working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy.'

...
On July 6, 2012, former Director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements Division and current Manager of Exempt Organizations Guidance Holly Paz sent an email to IRS Attorney Steven Grodnitzky asking for an explanation of how tea party group applications were being handled. Grodnitzky responded by confirming the cases were being handled in Washington.
"EOT is working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy. We are developing a few applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent to use as examples in the development of their cases. Chip Hull [another lawyer in IRS headquarters] is working these cases in EOT and working with the agent in Cincy, so any communication should include him as well. Because the Tea party applications are the subject of an SCR [Sensitive Case Report], we cannot resolve any of the cases without coordinating with Rob," Grodnitzky wrote.
...

"Article 2:

Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.

This conduct has included one or more of the following:

He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

EOT is working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy. We are developing a few
applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent to use as
examples in the development of their cases. Chip Hull is working these cases in EOT and working with
the agent in Cincy, so any communication should include him as well. Because the Tea party applications
are the subject of an SCR, we cannot resolve any of the cases without coordinating with Rob.

 dogma wrote:
Here's the text:

EOT is working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy. We are developing a few
applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent to use as
examples in the development of their cases. Chip Hull is working these cases in EOT and working with
the agent in Cincy, so any communication should include him as well. Because the Tea party applications
are the subject of an SCR, we cannot resolve any of the cases without coordinating with Rob.

Not seeing any necessary indication of targeting there.

 whembly wrote:

I highlighted the pertinent part.

Besides... in these emails... they keep referencing these groups as "Tea Party applications"... as in... those guys™.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Wasn't the IRS targeting progressive groups too?

Also, technically they should have gone after the tea party groups, progressive groups, liberal groups, and conservative groups, because they are all political groups.

 streamdragon wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Wasn't the IRS targeting progressive groups too?

Also, technically they should have gone after the tea party groups, progressive groups, liberal groups, and conservative groups, because they are all political groups.

Shhhh... that won't fit the far-right persecution complex.

liberals, were targetedThe IRS inspector general said this week that while some liberal groups were given extra scrutiny by the tax agency, they were not subjected to the same invasive queries as tea party groups — a finding that seems to confirm a political bias was at play.
...

 whembly wrote:

Essentially the BOLO did exist for other groups... but, none faced the same sort of scrutiny as the conservative ones.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Wasn't the IRS targeting progressive groups too?

Also, technically they should have gone after the tea party groups, progressive groups, liberal groups, and conservative groups, because they are all political groups.

 dogma wrote:

So you're trusting the testimony of person who was under duress, over that of someone (also under duress) for what reason?

 whembly wrote:

Dude... the IRS inspector general was going to report this before anyone knew about it.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Dude... the IRS inspector general was going to report this before anyone knew about it.

The IRS doesn't have an Inspector General, so I have no idea what you're talking about.

Be precise.