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 Mannahnin wrote:
They may have used a flawed method for flagging the groups,


Hey look, it's the thing I'm annoyed at them about, still intact and not changed at all.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/07/22 16:25:43


 
   
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whembly wrote:How 'bout... improper?

So your argument has now changed from a massive illegal conspiracy, to a moral argument of "it's not fair", then?
   
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 azazel the cat wrote:
whembly wrote:How 'bout... improper?

So your argument has now changed from a massive illegal conspiracy, to a moral argument of "it's not fair", then?

Naw... while I think what they did remains legal in a technical sense (unless, it somehow falls under the Hatch Act or Equal Protection clause).

I think it certainly warrants accountability politically. That is, folks get removed / voted out for perpetuating this.

I really don't believe anything criminal will come out of this.

IF this current scandal get Congress / Executive branch off their tush and change the laws governing these tax laws, then I'd be happy. Simply put, giving the IRS this sort of discetionary power/review... you're opening yourself to these sorts of activities.

For what it's worth, if this was a Republican administration doing the same sort of things for groups like Progressive for America (and quickly approving Tea parties). I'd be barking just as loud as I am now.

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They did the same thing to liberal groups.

It was a conservative initiated investigation that was ordered to only look for targeting of conservative groups. Instead of an IRS witchhunt of conservative groups it turns out that it was a political crisis that was orchestrated by conservatives so that they could play the victim.

How dare the IRS investigate political groups on both sides of the political spectrum to make sure that they complied with the laws covering the status that they applied for.
   
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Isn't... isn't that what they're supposed to be doing.

Like, groups apply for a particular status, and someone checks to see if they should get it?

The fact someone was trying to streamline the system with keyword searches may not be great optics, but haven't applications since Citizens United jumped some massive amount?

I'm with d-usa; a non or minor issue but suddenly someone saw the word Tea Party and OMG PERSECUTION!
   
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You guys ain't paying attention... it goes further than that BOLO.

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 whembly wrote:

Naw... while I think what they did remains legal in a technical sense (unless, it somehow falls under the Hatch Act or Equal Protection clause).


The Hatch Act would be a stretch as it would have be shown that a particular federal employee deliberately acted to interfere with an election or otherwise engaged in political activity while acting as a member of the IRS. The exception to this would be if someone from the Office of Criminal Investigation was involved, which seems highly unlikely.

The Equal Protection clause isn't relevant at all.

 whembly wrote:

I think it certainly warrants accountability politically. That is, folks get removed / voted out for perpetuating this.


I think that's a waste of time, and the sort of distraction that will prevent this...

 whembly wrote:

IF this current scandal get Congress / Executive branch off their tush and change the laws governing these tax laws, then I'd be happy. Simply put, giving the IRS this sort of discetionary power/review... you're opening yourself to these sorts of activities.


...from happening. Which is, of course, what Congress wants because any legislative action to alter the NPO segment of the tax code will get absolutely nowhere. Moreover, the Citizen's United ruling essentially guarantees that the law regarding the political activity of 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s will eventually come before the Supreme Court, and be subsequently declared Unconstitutional.

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 dogma wrote:
 whembly wrote:

Naw... while I think what they did remains legal in a technical sense (unless, it somehow falls under the Hatch Act or Equal Protection clause).


The Hatch Act would be a stretch as it would have be shown that a particular federal employee deliberately acted to interfere with an election or otherwise engaged in political activity while acting as a member of the IRS. The exception to this would be if someone from the Office of Criminal Investigation was involved, which seems highly unlikely.

"engaged in political activity"... keep that in mind.
The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.

On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report.

Between 2010 and 2012, the IRS sent letters demanding groups’ training materials, personal information on groups’ donors and college interns, and even the content of a religious group’s prayers.

Wilkins’ meeting with Obama on April 23 was attended by 13 people.

Wilkins, who is one of only two Obama appointees at the IRS, is a former lobbyist with the firm WilmerHale, where he spent his time “counseling nonprofit organizations, business entities, and investment funds on tax compliance, business transactions, and government investigations.” At the firm, Wilkins defended Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Chicago-based United Church of Christ from a 2008 investigation into whether Wright violated his church’s nonprofit status by speaking in favor of Obama. Wilkins successfully defended Wright’s church pro bono.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

Now we don't know exactly what was discussed on those days (notice the date in orange). But, two things:
1) Why is a Counsel for the IRS meeting with the President? Shouldn't he be reporting to his direct superiors? It's just odd... maybe nothing there.
2) The timing is what gets me... this is during the re-election season.

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Things that makes you go hmmm...eh?

Attorney in Federal Agency General Counsel's Office: There Is 'No Innocent Explanation' for IRS Chief Counsel's Meeting With Obama:
I am reprinting (with permission) an email I received today from an attorney in the general counsel's office of a federal agency (not the IRS) concerning reports of IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins' meeting with President Obama in the White House two days before providing guidance to IRS personnel on handling tax-exempt applications from Tea Party and other conservative groups:
As someone who works as an attorney at an agency general counsel's office, I think people are missing the significance of Obama meeting with the IRS chief counsel in the White House. Understand, agency general counsels are not authorized to give legal advice to the President. They advise their agency heads. Only the AG and by delegation the Office of Legal Counsel to the President is authorized to give legal advice to the President. In my seven years of working at a General Counsel's office, I have never once heard of our general counsel meeting with the President. OLC would go crazy if he did. I have worked on a couple of legal opinions that did go to the White House. And each time they were staffed through OLC. Nothing went to the President that wasn't signed off on by OLC and delivered to him by OLC.

So I can't for the life of me come up with any kind of innocent explanation for why Obama would have met with the Chief Counsel of the IRS. That meeting shouldn't ever happen, and especially not without the Commissioner of the IRS being there. Presidents just don't go to agency chief counsels with legal questions. Presidents don't go to anyone with legal questions. Their staff does. The idea that the President would sit down with some random agency chief counsel and discuss some pressing legal issue is just bizarre to anyone who has worked in the legal field at that level. I am not sure the reporters covering this story understand how legal advice is actually delivered to the President and just how out of the ordinary that meeting was.

Yeah... that's definitely a red-flag there.

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You remember back when this broke, I was actually defending the administration against the suggestion that this guy must have taken orders straight from Obama because why would some random counsel meet with Obama, right?
   
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 Rented Tritium wrote:
You remember back when this broke, I was actually defending the administration against the suggestion that this guy must have taken orders straight from Obama because why would some random counsel meet with Obama, right?

Right... and?


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 whembly wrote:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
You remember back when this broke, I was actually defending the administration against the suggestion that this guy must have taken orders straight from Obama because why would some random counsel meet with Obama, right?

Right... and?



It's just interesting. It was reasonable before to say "this argument that there's some vast conspiracy isn't meaningful because it's not like a random counsel would ever meet with the president", but then it turns out that he did, unexpectedly, outside of all expectation and reason. Wut?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/07/24 19:22:18


 
   
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 whembly wrote:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
You remember back when this broke, I was actually defending the administration against the suggestion that this guy must have taken orders straight from Obama because why would some random counsel meet with Obama, right?

Right... and?



I think he's conceding his argument?

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 Rented Tritium wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
You remember back when this broke, I was actually defending the administration against the suggestion that this guy must have taken orders straight from Obama because why would some random counsel meet with Obama, right?

Right... and?



It's just interesting. It was reasonable before to say "this argument that there's some vast conspiracy isn't meaningful because it's not like a random counsel would ever meet with the president", but then it turns out that he did, unexpectedly, outside of all expectation and reason. Wut?

It's just curious... that's all. I don't believe it's as damning evidence as others surmises.

Having said that... the argument here is this: Has there been any IRS officials and/or executive offices engage in partisan political activity? It seems that every layers we peel back, more questions arises than answers.

Now, I'll be honest... at the end of the day, I don't think anything would come out of this investigation. I just really hope that the pressure of this investigation gives Congress the urgency to change the laws that empowers the IRS to do this.

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Well I'm not conceding that random counsels don't just meet with the president. That's obviously unusual. But I will concede that this one totally did.

Bizarre.
   
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 Rented Tritium wrote:
Well I'm not conceding that random counsels don't just meet with the president. That's obviously unusual. But I will concede that this one totally did.

Bizarre.

Yeah... one thing I couldn't find is that was any of the OLC in that meeting? Not sure if that makes a difference... *shrugs*


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 whembly wrote:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
Well I'm not conceding that random counsels don't just meet with the president. That's obviously unusual. But I will concede that this one totally did.

Bizarre.

Yeah... one thing I couldn't find is that was any of the OLC in that meeting? Not sure if that makes a difference... *shrugs*


Depends on what they were talking about. The OLC needed to be there if it was about legal matters. To be fair, people meet the president for all kinds of random reasons. As unlikely as it is, there exists the possibility that they knew each other and he got worked in for a personal visit, or he was getting congratulated for some award or recommendation or something? There are legitimate explanations, we just don't know if any of them applied, or even if it is related to this scandal at all.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/07/24 19:44:59


 
   
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Now it's getting stranger and stranger...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/24/white-house-wont-confirm-visit-by-irs-counsel-at-s/
The Obama administration is refusing to say whether a top Internal Revenue Service official visited the White House just before he weighed in on the guidelines used to determine whether a group qualifies for tax-exempt status — raising questions about the role his office played in the agency’s targeting of conservatives.

The White House visitor logs shows that a “William Wilkins” visited the White House on April 23, 2012, but the administration has not said whether this is the same person that President Obama had nominated to become chief counsel for the IRS in 2009.
Mr. Wilkins is one of only two political appointees on the entire IRS staff.

The White House did not respond Wednesday to questions from The Washington Times about the “William Wilkins” visit.

The possibility of a 2012 White House visit has piqued some interest because — according to the May audit that uncovered the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups — Mr. Wilkins’ office “provided additional comments on the draft guidance developed for the Determinations Unit” on April 25, 2012, which would have been two days after the White House visit.

The IRS came under fire in May after the Treasury Department’s auditor released a report that found the IRS used inappropriate criteria when reviewing applications for tax-exempt status from tea party and conservative groups.

The wrongdoing was initially pinned on a few employees from the Cincinnati office of the IRS.

But Carter Hull, a former IRS employee, recently testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the Washington office of the IRS was also involved and that the issue reached the office of Mr. Wilkins.

Still, it is unclear how deeply Mr. Wilkins was involved in the scandal.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Republicans are trying to make something out of nothing, and that the president has made it clear that he will not tolerate the kind of inappropriate activity that has occurred at the IRS.

“I greatly appreciate that that is the line that is being pushed by Republicans, who want Washington to be focused on scandals instead of the economy,” Mr. Carney said, foreshadowing a line about “phony scandals” that Mr. Obama himself used later in the day in a speech in Illinois.

“What we said all along was based on the IG’s report, which said that the activity was in Cincinnati,” Mr. Carney said. “The IG report and every bit of evidence that has come out since then makes clear that no one at the White House was involved at all or even knew about what was happening. And that has not changed.”


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Sorry, can we recap the evidence that conservative groups were actually targeted in a way different from the way progressive groups were targeted? We know that Tea Party and Occupy were both on the BOLO list, right? Which kind of scrutiny/delay did TP orgs get that Occupy orgs didn't?

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 Mannahnin wrote:
Sorry, can we recap the evidence that conservative groups were actually targeted in a way different from the way progressive groups were targeted? We know that Tea Party and Occupy were both on the BOLO list, right? Which kind of scrutiny/delay did TP orgs get that Occupy orgs didn't?

Here's a roundup of the IRS scandal... information galore. Sit down, relax and have your favorite brewski while reading of this.

Here's a good start on the BOLO list:
Yesterday's IRS news bulletin was a bit perplexing. It was no real surprise that the agency had used inappropriate 'BOLO' lists more widely and for longer than we'd previously known. Sweeping malfeasance and subsequent dishonesty is par for the course with them at this point. What was intriguing, though, was the apparent revelation that the IRS had also used key words like "progressive" and "occupy" during their screening process. This begged the question, why didn't these facts come to light much earlier? Liberals and the IRS have been eager to tamp down the festering controversy for weeks, all while insisting that the abuse wasn't politically motivated -- a tale few Americans believe. If the wrongful targeting affected both sides of the spectrum, that would have represented solid evidence for the 'innocent incompetence' defense. As I've written previously, pleading ineptitude boosts conservatives' case that the federal government has become too sprawling and unaccountable, but it's still less damaging than leaving a general impression of deliberate partisan malice. Are we to believe that as the latter assumption calcified in the public's imagination, the IRS and its defenders chose not to disclose the other side of the story? Remember, lefty groups had already stated that they weren't targeted, evidence abounds that left-leaning applications sailed through while righty applications languished, the Inspector General's report clearly showed a distinct ideological imbalance, and Stephen Miller conceded under oath that right-leaning groups were exclusively victimized by the practice. The IRS admitted and apologized for their disparate treatment of conservatives, for crying out loud. So why, after all of that, are we finally being informed that liberal groups were ensnared in the scandal, too? National Review's Eliana Johnson cuts through the fog and makes some important distinctions that help illuminate the truth:
A November 2010 version of the list obtained by National Review Online, however, suggests that while the list did contain the word “progressive,” screeners were in fact instructed to treat “progressive” groups differently from “tea party” groups. Whereas screeners were merely alerted that a designation of 501(c)(3) status “may not be appropriate” for applications containing the word ”progressive” – 501(c)(3) organizations are prohibited from conducting any political activities – they were told to send those of tea-party groups off IRS higher-ups for further scrutiny. That means the applications of progressive groups could be approved on the spot by line agents, while those of tea-party groups could not. Furthermore, the November 2010 list noted that tea-party cases were “currently being coordinated with EOT,” which stands for Exempt Organizations Technical, a group of tax lawyers in Washington, D.C. Those of progressive groups were not.

So the terms employed during initial screening processes did include words like "progressive" (although from what we know about the original 'BOLO' lists, they were overwhelmingly skewed toward conservative descriptors), but only conservative applications were marked for additional scrutiny -- including micromanagement from Washington. This abuse led to plainly uneven outcomes along ideological lines, as reported by USA Today:
In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked. That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months. In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows. As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like "Progress" or "Progressive," the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.

Zero Tea Party conservative groups' applications were approved for more than two years, as dozens of lefty groups were rubber-stamped. Yes, it seems as though the word "progressive" appeared on some of those 'BOLO' lists (see update below), but the screening and approval process went on as usual for those groups. Not so for the other side, against whom Beltway managers directed added scrutiny, onerous follow-up questionnaires, and interminable delays. Also bear in mind two other elements of the IRS scandal: The targeting of conservative donors, and the wildly improper (and illegal) leaking of conservative groups' confidential donor lists to their political adversaries. When liberals can provide evidence that the IRS shipped, say, a private roster of Planned Parenthood's donors to the Susan B. Anthony List, then we'll talk. [whembly: snicker..lol] That's a hypothetical. In reality, the IRS was actually instructing pro-life groups not to picket Planned Parenthood clinics under penalty of law, and inquiring as to the contents of their prayers. Some on the Left are seizing on yesterday's developments as "proof" that conservative "conspiracy theories" have at last been debunked, or whatever. Nice try. Johnson's piece, plus reams of additional evidence, belie that spin. I repeat: The IRS apologized for its wrongful actions against conservative groups. It's not a conspiracy theory if the harmed party elicits an apology from the culprit, based on the culprit's own internal review.

UPDATE - The DC's Patrick Howley points out another significant difference:
The term “progressive” appeared on a heavily redacted November 2010 ”Be On the Lookout” (BOLO) list released this week by Ways and Means Democrats. The term was used to help the IRS identify political activity that “may not be appropriate” among 501(c)(3) charities eligible for tax-deductible contributions. However, the targeting of conservative groups largely focused on applicants for 501(c)(4) “social welfare organization” status, which shields groups from having to disclose their donors. The scrutinized “progressive” applications were not required to be sent to a special IRS unit for additional review — but tea party and conservative applications were subjected to extra scrutiny by 12 different working groups within the IRS. Tea Party groups were also marked for extra scrutiny in the same document...Ways and Means Democrats did not call any progressive victims of IRS targeting at the committee’s hearing on IRS victims. “I do want to note that the minority was given the opportunity to call a witness, but did not present a witness that had been affected by taxpayer activity — by IRS activity. So, that’s why there is no minority witness at the table today,” Camp said at the June 4 Ways and Means hearing, in response to Democratic Rep. Ron Kind’s complaint that no progressive victims were present at the hearing. Camp later said at the hearing that he welcomed potential progressive victims to come forward, but that no progressive groups had done so by June 4.

Committee Democrats now claim the targeting was bipartisan, so there's no "scandal" to see here. If liberal organizations were equally -- or somewhat equally -- swamped with inappropriate questions, hyper scrutiny from IRS headquarters, and massive delays, why couldn't Cummings' brigade produce a single witness to testify to those facts? And were any IRS working groups formed to review liberal organizations' applications? The agency mobilized twelve such units for scrutinizing conservatives.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/07/25 22:40:02


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Again, from the liberal perspective, it doesn't even matter if the treatment was different or the same. Using names as a criteria is not ok, and being told to use names as a criteria with political motive outside of the usual procedure is double not ok.

And the fact that they didn't even FIND anything when they did this should mean you can't argue "they're just stopping fraud and abuse" because they demonstrably didn't.
   
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 Frazzled wrote:
Lots of pretty colors!

Hey... trying to help a fellow dakkanaut in his path of enlightenment with all those links.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
Again, from the liberal perspective, it doesn't even matter if the treatment was different or the same. Using names as a criteria is not ok, and being told to use names as a criteria with political motive outside of the usual procedure is double not ok.

And the fact that they didn't even FIND anything when they did this should mean you can't argue "they're just stopping fraud and abuse" because they demonstrably didn't.

^ what he said.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's a little update... Is the IRS Obstructing justice?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/07/26 15:11:32


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65 million? Wow.

Now, the duplicate thing is normal. I collect backup docs for projects and I almost always end up filing a ton of duplicate pages because some stuff invariably gets attached every time they submit things to me and I just print it all out and stick it together, so reporting a number that turns out to include duplicates just kind of goes with the territory.

But the gulf between 13k and 65 million is kind of huge.
   
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 Rented Tritium wrote:
65 million? Wow.

Now, the duplicate thing is normal. I collect backup docs for projects and I almost always end up filing a ton of duplicate pages because some stuff invariably gets attached every time they submit things to me and I just print it all out and stick it together, so reporting a number that turns out to include duplicates just kind of goes with the territory.

But the gulf between 13k and 65 million is kind of huge.

Well... it looks bad. But, my gut feeling is 65 million seems a tad be excessive. How would anyone know that there's '65 million' documents to begin with? o.O

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 whembly wrote:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
65 million? Wow.

Now, the duplicate thing is normal. I collect backup docs for projects and I almost always end up filing a ton of duplicate pages because some stuff invariably gets attached every time they submit things to me and I just print it all out and stick it together, so reporting a number that turns out to include duplicates just kind of goes with the territory.

But the gulf between 13k and 65 million is kind of huge.

Well... it looks bad. But, my gut feeling is 65 million seems a tad be excessive. How would anyone know that there's '65 million' documents to begin with? o.O

Yeah, my entire unit probably only produces a couple million pages per year.
   
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 Rented Tritium wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
65 million? Wow.

Now, the duplicate thing is normal. I collect backup docs for projects and I almost always end up filing a ton of duplicate pages because some stuff invariably gets attached every time they submit things to me and I just print it all out and stick it together, so reporting a number that turns out to include duplicates just kind of goes with the territory.

But the gulf between 13k and 65 million is kind of huge.

Well... it looks bad. But, my gut feeling is 65 million seems a tad be excessive. How would anyone know that there's '65 million' documents to begin with? o.O

Yeah, my entire unit probably only produces a couple million pages per year.

O.o

Wow... that's... a lot. Okay then... that graphs seems accurate.

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 whembly wrote:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Rented Tritium wrote:
65 million? Wow.

Now, the duplicate thing is normal. I collect backup docs for projects and I almost always end up filing a ton of duplicate pages because some stuff invariably gets attached every time they submit things to me and I just print it all out and stick it together, so reporting a number that turns out to include duplicates just kind of goes with the territory.

But the gulf between 13k and 65 million is kind of huge.

Well... it looks bad. But, my gut feeling is 65 million seems a tad be excessive. How would anyone know that there's '65 million' documents to begin with? o.O

Yeah, my entire unit probably only produces a couple million pages per year.

O.o

Wow... that's... a lot. Okay then... that graphs seems accurate.


A few things.

1. I'm only estimating.
2. We handle 9 digits.
3. Most of it is electronic, I'm including what it would be if someone asked us to print everything out and deliver it. We're not actually killing that many trees.
   
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 whembly wrote:

Here's a little update... Is the IRS Obstructing justice?


That graph is misleading. Werfel stated that the IRS collected 646 gigabytes of data (~65 million pages) that needed to be examined for material pertinent to the Camp/Levin request, not that it collected 65 million pages of data relating to the targeting of conservative groups.

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Curb stomping in the Eye of Terror!

Dogma... not sure if I disagree with you there as I questioned that 65 million number of pages. However, the committee still feels that the administration is stonewalling this. *shrugs*

Update:
I really, really, REALLY hope that Issa is overstepping here... because this is dire news if true. Keep in mind that this part of the investigation has just started:
The IRS subjected conservative groups already granted tax-exempt status to additional scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged on Monday.

Issa called on a Treasury watchdog already looking into the IRS to investigate the matter, and signaled he would expand his committee’s probe into improper targeting of political groups given the new revelations.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member on Issa’s panel, accused the chairman of pushing a “political narrative” by picking choice quotes and disregarding contrary evidence.

“It is unfortunate that you persist in this pattern of selectively releasing quotes instead of conducting a responsible investigation focused on implementing real reforms. I urge you to focus on obtaining the full set of facts rather than making unsubstantiated allegations,” he said in a letter sent to Issa Monday.

He said the Virginia-based Leadership Institute was audited in 2011 and 2012 for activities it engaged in during the 2008 election year, even though it had functioned as a tax-exempt organization since 1979.

It faced “invasive questions” — including about its interns and where they went on to work — and ended up turning over to the IRS more than 23,000 pages of documents at a cost of roughly $50,000 to comply with the inquiry, Issa said.

“It has come to the attention of the committee that in addition to inappropriate treatment given to some applicants for tax-exempt status, existing organizations already recognized as tax-exempt by the IRS, appear to have faced questionable treatment by the IRS,” Issa wrote Monday in a letter to the Treasury inspector general (IG) for tax administration.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), an Oversight subcommittee chairman, also signed on to the request that the Treasury watchdog do a second investigation.

Issa said the Institute was told by the IRS office conducting the audit that there would be follow-up document requests and questions. About two months later, in July 2012, the IRS concluded the audit, which is roughly the same time the Treasury IG determined the IRS changed its process for scrutinizing potential political groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Issa specifically questioned whether the IRS had a “systematic” plan in place to automatically review conservative groups several years after granting an exemption. He said that interviews with 18 IRS employees indicated that at least some Tea Party groups were referred to the unit that conducted follow-up scrutiny.

Cummings took issue with this claim, saying that the head of the IRS exempt organizations unit in Cincinnati told congressional investigators that groups were referred to this unit on a case-by-case basis. He added that a separate IRS employee told investigators that a referral to this unit did not automatically mean an audit would occur, and that referrals to this group were actually meant to facilitate an approval, not burden the organization with added inquiries.
The administration has acknowledged problems at the IRS, but it has joined Democratic lawmakers in arguing that liberal groups also came under scrutiny.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told “Fox News Sunday” that an investigation into the IRS practice revealed problems at the agency, but also that progressive groups were improperly targeted alongside conservative ones. He also added that there was no evidence of political pressure.

Joseph Metzger, the vice president of finance at the Institute, told The Hill that the group had previously been audited twice before, once under President Reagan and again under President Clinton.

While the most recent audit was painful, Metzger said the audit under Clinton was “particularly savage” and spanned three years and five different agents. He said the one in the 1980s was more “routine in nature.”

The Leadership Institute states on its website that its mission is to “increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders in the public policy process.”

It also includes a disclaimer at the bottom of its website stating that it is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, and does not endorse or oppose candidates or legislation.

The head of another conservative group, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, claimed they faced “harassment” from the IRS, as they worked to comply with an audit that took most of a year and cost “tens of thousands of dollars.” The group was founded in 1993.

On its website, the group describes its mission as “preparing and promoting conservative women leaders.” The existing probe into the IRS has so far failed to tie any of the IRS targeting to White House or high-ranking Treasury officials.

President Obama chastised Washington last Wednesday for pursuing “phony scandals” instead of policies to grow the economy.


What I would like to know, is this:
A) What is a typical audit of an existing 501(c)(3) organisation? How often does this normally occur?
B) I'd be curious how many conservative 501(c)(3) organisations were under audit just prior to the IG report.
C) Obama's "phony scandals" is just a poor choice of words...

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