whembly wrote:

Arguably... but, this form's is legal here in the states.

 Jihadin wrote:
Wonder what the RS going to do to improve their image.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Arguably... but, this form's is legal here in the states.

And it is legal to target groups according to whether or not they are engaging political activity (as a 501(c)(3)), or primarily engaging in a political activity (as a 501(c)(4))*.

The majority of your objection has been predicated on moral outrage, so where is the moral outrage over legalized "money laundering"?

Asking for IRS heads to roll accomplishes nothing beyond the achievement of catharsis, as it does not alter the fundamental deficiencies within the body of law it enforces.

 Jihadin wrote:
Can't treat the IRS as the Bogeyman. IRS was self impose on us by the "Us"....off the top of my head...early 1900's?

 whembly wrote:

Explicitly tell me that you are DEFENDING the IRS. I want to see you type that.

 whembly wrote:

My outrage is this... the fething President, the fething Treasury Head, and the fething IRS Directors said what they did was wrong and partisan.

 whembly wrote:

The hell you say. I want fething consequences if they're found to break the law.

 whembly wrote:

So, are you going to tell me that if the next time this happens and it's during a REPUBLICAN President administration, are you going to defend the IRS actions with the same amount of gusto?

Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner will not testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unless she’s given immunity from prosecution, her lawyer told POLITICO Tuesday.

“They can obtain her testimony tomorrow by doing it the easy way … immunity,” William W. Taylor III said in a phone interview. “That’s the way to resolve all of this.”

The comments reflect the hard-line approach Lerner, the former head of the IRS division that scrutinized conservative groups, and her legal team are taking in defending her role in the agency’s scandal.

Taylor, a founding partner of Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, is even shrugging off the possibility that the full House might vote to hold Lerner in contempt.

“None of this matters,” he said. “I mean, nobody likes to be held in contempt of Congress, of course, but the real question is one that we’re fairly confident about, and I don’t think any district judge in the country would hold that she waived.”

The oversight panel voted along party lines last week that Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights at a May 22 hearing when she boldly declared her innocence in the IRS scandal and said she violated no laws — then invoked her constitutional protections to ward off self-incriminating questions from lawmakers.

Republicans immediately argued that Lerner forfeited her Fifth Amendment right by speaking and they should be allowed to question her opening statement.

Legal experts disagree about whether she actually did.

But in the eyes of the committee, Lerner — who was placed on administrative leave after refusing the new IRS leader’s request to resign — is obligated to now answer questions related to her earlier statement.

“The committee is entitled to Ms. Lerner’s full and truthful testimony without further conditions,” said panel spokesman Frederick Hill in a statement to POLITICO. “If, however, Ms. Lerner’s attorney is interested in discussing limited immunity, the committee will listen.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), a senior oversight Republican helping oversee the IRS investigation, said the panel is still hopeful she’ll come to the committee on her own free will, arguing that questions of immunity and contempt are “down the road.”

“We hope she comes in and gives us the truth and answers questions,” Jordan said in a brief phone interview Tuesday. “If that doesn’t happen, then you cross the next bridge. … If she says, ‘No, I’m going to come in and assert my Fifth Amendment rights again and not going to speak,’ then you think about what the other options are.”

Oversight Republicans have not yet decided when or how to recall Lerner, but if she refuses to answer questions on her proclamation of innocence, they say she could face contempt charges.

Taylor, however, said he is not afraid of that threat and is willing to take the issue to federal court if necessary.

If Lerner is held in contempt, Taylor notes that a federal judge will have the final say about whether she waived her constitutional protection. That’s because criminal contempt charges go to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for potential prosecution.

The Oversight committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), could initiate civil proceedings against Lerner on its own initiative.

But such an option would delay Lerner’s testimony for months, if not longer, lessening her value to the panel’s IRS probe.

Even if Lerner is found in the wrong, she’ll simply testify and it won’t be a huge deal, Taylor says.

“If the court finds that she didn’t waive, then it’s over, and if the court finds that she did and orders her to testify, then she goes to testify,” Taylor said, later, adding that there is “no danger under any circumstances of her going to jail.”

“In the House, it’s criminal contempt only,” he said.

So if the court agrees with the House’s contempt charge she could get “up to a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail,” he said.

Robert Walker, former chief counsel for both the House and Senate ethics committees, agreed with Taylor’s assertion that Lerner didn’t waive her rights.

“The question of whether in this setting, in a congressional hearing where the witness has been forced to testify, I think the weight of the authorities indicates there is some leeway for the witness to make some statement — some very general statement, provided it doesn’t get into specific facts — there is some leeway for a witness to do that before they can be said to have waived their Fifth Amendment privilege,” Walker said.

In a 1958 Supreme Court case on the Fifth Amendment, the high court noted that the defendant “relies on decisions holding that witnesses in civil proceedings and before congressional committees do not waive the [Fifth Amendment] privilege by denials and partial disclosures, but only by testimony that itself incriminates.”

And witnesses in previous hearings — for instance, in hearings on organized crime in the 1950s — have issued broad statements denying any wrongdoing, while then asserting their Fifth Amendment rights, a move later upheld by a federal court, according to legal records and press reports.
But Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor and defense attorney during O.J. Simpson’s criminal trial, says Lerner’s statement was not broad but specific and, if he were her lawyer, he “would never had allowed” her to say what she did.

He thinks she waived her right not to answer questions only related to her opening statement but contends that the panel has no legal standing whatsoever for saying she must answer questions on the entire IRS investigation as a whole.

Wolfensberger doesn’t think the matter will necessarily get to court. That’s because the Justice Department doesn’t have to take the matter there, he said.

“There’s nothing that obligates the executive branch to move forward and to take a [criminal contempt] case to court,” he said — adding that that’s exactly what happened when the House held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt last spring. The Justice Department and the oversight committee are now engaged in a legal battle in federal civil court.

The Bush administration also fought the House Judiciary Committee in federal court over the issue of whether senior presidential aides are covered by executive privilege and can be subpoenaed to testify. The two sides eventually reached a compromise agreement after the House held both in contempt.

The Justice Department would have another reason for passing on a criminal case against Lerner, Wolfensberger said: They’re doing their own investigation into the IRS scandal.

“The Justice Department would probably say, ‘We have a conflict here because this is under criminal investigation so this will be defeating our own purposes by trying to pursue this further.’”

Legal experts told POLITICO the more likely possibility is the panel and Taylor come to an agreement about immunity, which would need to be approved by the full Oversight committee.

Hill said the panel is open to pitches from Taylor about “limited” immunity that would allow her to testify without fear that her answers could be used against her.

“They can always reach out to the committee and basically begin the discussion about a limited immunity agreement,” Hill said.

But the oversight panel has not reached out to Taylor — and Taylor is not reaching out to them.

“If they had some interest in having her testify, they would certainly call me … because I don’t have anything to propose to them,” Taylor said.

 whembly wrote:

The hell you say. I want fething consequences if they're found to break the law.

Potentially explosive development in IRS scandals

One of the most important and so-far least noted threads in the IRS sandal cloth is the inexplicable remark made by Austan Goolsbee, at the time the Chairman of the White Council of Economic Advisors about the taxes paid by the Koch brothers - arch villains in the Manichean delusions of the American left - that would require his knowledge of their confidential tax returns. Did the White House senior staff illegally browse through the tax records of their political enemies? The Washington Free Beacon has been trying to find out, and uncovered an interesting response:

The Treasury Department on Wednesday refused to confirm or deny the existence of an inspector general report investigating whether or not former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee illegally accessed tax information on the Koch brothers.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington Free Beacon, declined to acknowledge the existence of the report.

"With regard to your request for documents pertaining to a third party, TIGTA can neither admit nor deny the existence of responsive records," said in its response. "Your request seeks access to the types of documents for which there is no public interest that outweighs the privacy interests established and protected by the FOIA (5 U.S.C. §§ 552(b)(7)(C) and (b)(6))."

Former White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman Austan Goolsbee sparked a mini-scandal in 2010 when he told reporters during a background press briefing that Koch Industries-the company of libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch-paid no income taxes.

The American public deserves answers on this potentially serious scandal. The Congressional committees investigating the IRS scandals must start pressing the question on Goolsbee, who has now returned to the University of Chicago. I rather doubt he would turn out to be a stand-up guy, should an indictment be looming over his head. He might even be a position to let the public know what the president knew, and when did he know it.

To be sure, "no comment" does not mean affirmation, but it obviously does not mean denial on an open question -- whether or not a direct advisor of the president illegally accessed tax files.

 whembly wrote:

Help me out here... why wouldn't you deny that happened?

 whembly wrote:
ruh-oh... things might just get kicked up to the next gear:

Potentially explosive development in IRS scandals

One of the most important and so-far least noted threads in the IRS sandal cloth is the inexplicable remark made by Austan Goolsbee, at the time the Chairman of the White Council of Economic Advisors about the taxes paid by the Koch brothers - arch villains in the Manichean delusions of the American left - that would require his knowledge of their confidential tax returns. Did the White House senior staff illegally browse through the tax records of their political enemies? The Washington Free Beacon has been trying to find out, and uncovered an interesting response:

The Treasury Department on Wednesday refused to confirm or deny the existence of an inspector general report investigating whether or not former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee illegally accessed tax information on the Koch brothers.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington Free Beacon, declined to acknowledge the existence of the report.

"With regard to your request for documents pertaining to a third party, TIGTA can neither admit nor deny the existence of responsive records," said in its response. "Your request seeks access to the types of documents for which there is no public interest that outweighs the privacy interests established and protected by the FOIA (5 U.S.C. §§ 552(b)(7)(C) and (b)(6))."

Former White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman Austan Goolsbee sparked a mini-scandal in 2010 when he told reporters during a background press briefing that Koch Industries-the company of libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch-paid no income taxes.

The American public deserves answers on this potentially serious scandal. The Congressional committees investigating the IRS scandals must start pressing the question on Goolsbee, who has now returned to the University of Chicago. I rather doubt he would turn out to be a stand-up guy, should an indictment be looming over his head. He might even be a position to let the public know what the president knew, and when did he know it.

To be sure, "no comment" does not mean affirmation, but it obviously does not mean denial on an open question -- whether or not a direct advisor of the president illegally accessed tax files.

Help me out here... why wouldn't you deny that happened?

Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations who is overseeing the investigation, says many schools are rethinking how and what they report to the government. Receiving a thick questionnaire from the IRS, she says, is a “behavior changer.”

Freedom Works had a timeline of the IRS scandal here, and it’s interesting to see how Lerner’s quote fits into the beginning of that timeline. The entry in bold is my personal addition to the timeline based on the quote above:

1 March, 2010 – IRS officials start targeting organizations with “tea party”, “patriot”, and “9-12″ in their names.

27 June, 2011 – Lois Lerner, Director of Exempt Operations, learns of the inappropriate targeting. She initiates an audit of the office involved, but the targeting continues.

17 November, 2011 – Lois Lerner, Director of Exempt Operations, tells Businessweek that receiving a thick questionnaire from the IRS is a “behavior changer.”

Staffers preparing for the return of Lois Lerner to the witness chair in Congress, please take note.

Harvard University owns a hotel that overlooks the Charles River and charges up to $300 a night for a room. The country’s richest higher-ed institution doesn’t pay a cent in taxes on revenue from the high-rise in Boston, Mass., and hasn’t for at least five years. Now, the Federal government wants to know: Are taxpayers getting shorted?

Not-for-profit universities are exempt from paying taxes on tuition or other money that relates directly to their educational mission. But the government has long required them to pay up on a class of revenue known as “unrelated business income.” That’s a broad category, encompassing college-owned bookstores, restaurants, sports arenas, and other venues that sell goods and services to the public. Although the regulation has been in place since 1950, the IRS has stepped up enforcement only recently. According to public tax filings and IRS correspondence obtained by Bloomberg News, more than 30 universities are coming under increased scrutiny. The IRS declined to disclose a complete list of the schools under review, but Notre Dame, Purdue, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, the University of North Carolina, the University of Georgia, Lamar University, the University of Central Florida, Yeshiva University, Suffolk University, and Harvard confirmed the IRS is eyeing them. The government is looking into whether schools improperly claimed tax-exempt status for taxable businesses.

John Walda, president and CEO of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, a trade group in Washington, says the schools have nothing to hide. “Our members are in compliance and doing their best to abide by the spirit and the letter of IRS regulations,” says Walda.

Others suggest some colleges may have gotten creative with their accounting, leaving plenty for the IRS to inspect. “The joke is they are the world’s worst businessmen because they are always ‘losing’ money,” says Paul Streckfus, a former IRS auditor who publishes EO Tax Journal, an electronic newsletter. “They are making money,” Streckfus contends, “or they wouldn’t be doing this.”

The inquiry began in October 2008, when the IRS sent a 33-page questionnaire to 400 schools asking for details about their noneducational business ventures. After checking the schools’ responses against their tax filings from previous years, IRS officials announced in a preliminary report last year that most of the colleges appeared to be collecting revenue that they considered exempt but which the agency said could be subject to taxes. The auditors are specifically investigating whether any of the schools improperly reported losses on the outside businesses, allowing them to avoid paying taxes.

Harvard reported to the IRS that its noneducational enterprises, including the hotel on the Charles River, lost $1.4 million from 2009 to 2010, according to the university’s tax filings. Because of the losses, Harvard paid no taxes on its outside businesses. That has been the case for at least five years, the school’s annual tax records show. Harvard spokesman John Longbrake declined to comment.

Another school under review, the University of Georgia, also runs a number of outside business ventures, including a 200-room hotel, a health-center, an eight-acre athletic complex with three pools, and an 18-hole golf course. In 2006 the school reported to the IRS that it operated just two for-profit business ventures. After the IRS started asking questions, Georgia bumped that number up to 15, according to the university’s tax records. Wendy Jones, a spokeswoman for the university, declined to comment.

Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations who is overseeing the investigation, says many schools are rethinking how and what they report to the government. Receiving a thick questionnaire from the IRS, she says, is a “behavior changer.”

 dogma wrote:
Of course it is a "behavior changer", why would any organization want to continually receive applications it would eventually deny in accordance with policy?

Also, I am wondering why Whembly didn't openly quote the Businessweek article*:

 Frazzled wrote:
Just make me happy. Its all about me!

 whembly wrote:

But, that's the crux here isn't it? They weren't denying it.

 whembly wrote:

Erm... you want me to post the article and not just link.

New testimony from IRS officials claims that Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS's Exempt Organizations division, instructed employees to send Tea Party group applications for tax-exempt status through a multi-layered review that included the IRS chief counsel's office, which is led by Obama appointee William Wilkins.

Lerner "sent me email saying ... when these cases need to go through multi-tier review and they will eventually have to [through her staff] and the chief counsel's office," said Michael Seto, the head of the IRS unit that was handling Tea Party applications.

This new testimony suggests that the decision to target Tea Party organizations came from Lerner herself, and that Wilkins' office was closely involved in some of the applications.

Tax law specialist Carter Hull, who works for Seto, testified that despite his 48 years of experience approving or denying tax-exempt status applications, he was told in the winter of 2010 that, at the direction of Lerner, the applications would need to be sent to the chief counsel's office for further review. Hull said never before in his nearly five-decade career had he been told to send applications up the pipeline.

ull testified that the IRS chief counsel's office told him that updated information was needed for the applications. Hull found this surprising because he had already provided updated information when he made his recommendations of whether to approve or deny the applications. It was suggested he use a template to develop Tea Party applications, which Hull found impractical because every application was different.

Hull's supervisor, Ronald Shoemaker, told the committees about the additional information requested by the chief counsel's office, which included the applicants' 2010 election activities. This additional information caused the entire approval process to slow down.

Several congressmen, including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., are requesting documents from the IRS relating to this new testimony. "As a part of this ongoing investigation, the Committees have learned that the IRS Chief Counsel's office in Washington, D.C. has been closely involved in some of the applications," Issa and others wrote in a letter to acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel. "Its involvement and demands for information about political activity during the 2010 election cycle appears to have caused systematic delays in the processing of Tea Party applications."

...
Ms. O'Donnell said she has reason to believe her political opponents were behind the scheme.

“An official with this investigation told me that there was evidence linking this inappropriate use of my tax records with the Delaware political leadership, Delaware political leaders on both sides of the aisle,” she said, though she declined to identify the official with whom she spoke.