” Where do food stamps come from?”
” They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually 80 percent food stamps and other government nutrition programs.
It has become the norm that Congress lumps billions—even trillions—of dollars in taxpayer-funded programs together into huge bills. This allows them to sneak in plenty of special-interest pork.”
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” The complete Benghazi timeline, now augmented with information from eyewitness testimony before Congress, various leaks from the warring Obama/Clinton camps, Stephen Hayes, Sharyl Attkisson, and the House Oversight Committee [PDF], leads me to four inescapable conclusions.
It is now clear to me that:
a) Hillary Clinton lied to Congress.
b) Barack Obama went to sleep knowing that a U.S. Ambassador and other Americans were under terrorist attack.
c) Barack Obama awoke refreshed the next day to begin fundraising.
d) The entire Executive Branch lied repeatedly to the American people to save Obama’s chances for reelection.Could someone drag John Boehner out of whatever bar he’s in, wake him up, and get him to name a Select Committee on Benghazi?”
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” Reading this timeline, I have come to three conclusions:
1. Steve Miller lied to Congress
2. Lois Lerner lied to Congress
3. Barack Obama lied to the American peopleThis scandal has the fingerprints of Axelrod, Jarrett and/or the Chicago Machine all over it.
This is fascism on the part of the IRS and the White House. It is fascism, straight up.
Or, as I call the IRS: Organizing for Revenue.”
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” Chilling effect. That’s the term lawyers and judges use to describe the result of government actions that deter people from exercising their right of free speech.
There have been plenty of examples in the past 10 days.
Anti-abortion groups were asked to pledge that they would never picket Planned Parenthood clinics. Organizers were asked numerous personal questions, including what they said in their prayers. If that’s not chilling, I don’t know what is.”
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” A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents.
The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters:
As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy.”
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” The USDA does confirm, however, that an average of 1.37 million people received food stamps in Puerto Rico each month in fiscal year 2012. The island, which is a U.S. territory, has a population of 3.7 million, which means that 37% of Puerto Ricans get food stamps from Uncle Sam. Though the figure of 47.7 million in the U.S. shatters records, it still marks only 15.2% of the nation’s population of 313 million.”
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Audit THIS! Tea Party Groups To Protest At IRS Offices Nationwide On Tuesday
” PROTEST THE CORRUPTION – PROTEST THE CRIMINAL OBAMA IRS
Thanks to Barack Obama the Tea Party is once again outraged and motivated.
The Tea Party Patriots on behalf of Tea Party, Patriot groups, 9/12, liberty activists, and the American people, we are calling for anyone and everyone to protest the IRS’ complete abuse of power on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at noon local time.”
Rep. Mike Kelly Receives Standing Ovation at Ways & Means Hearing on IRS Scandal
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Caption The Photo: Eagles OL Evan Mathis Peeing On IRS Building Sign
” I hope Mathis doesn’t owe any Taxes, because I am sure an audit is coming his way now. He is straight on Instagram flexing, Bleacher Report captured the photo before Chip Kelly makes him take it down and drink a protein shake (no more fast food at the Eagles camp).”
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” The IRS scandal of targeting tea party or conservative organizations grew deeper Wednesday with the revelation that the agency denied tax-exempt status to a pro-life organization because of its hypothetical opposition to Planned Parenthood. The Thomas Moore Society, a public interest law firm announced that one of their clients was told that their approval as a non-profit was conditioned on a commitment not to protest outside Planned Parenthood abortion clinics…
…The alleged actions against the pro-life organization, however, are an order of magnitude more serious. If the allegations are true, the IRS used a specific political litmus test to approve non-profit status. It also conditioned approval on actions related to a specific, political organization. It effectively allowed Planned Parenthood to silence political opposition.”
Bill Donohue: IRS Targeted Catholic League
Chilling: IRS reportedly demanded list of high school and college students from conservative group
Was the IRS used as a weapon against Glenn Beck?
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“ President Obama’s press conference in the rain was not a success, if by success, his supporters would mean an event which convinces anyone who doesn’t work for him that he’s getting ahead of the scandal deluge. The sight of a Marine holding an umbrella over his head only added to the weirdness of the event.
So what did we learn?
4. He wouldn’t say that the White House had no previous knowledge of IRS wrongdoing. Instead he said he didn’t have any knowledge of the Inspector General’s report before it was released.
5. He brought up funding for our embassies, referencing Benghazi, Libya. But of course we know that funding shortages had nothing to do with the fiasco that transpired. For claiming otherwise my colleague Glenn Kessler awarded Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) three Pinocchios.
10. Mainstream media reaction to the president’s handling of the scandals ranges from bad to terrible. Sure there are some very creative excuse-makers for the president, but they are now in the decided minority.”
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Share Your Stories With Us So We Can Help Get To The Bottom Of The IRS Scandal
” Senior IRS Officials did know about the targeting of tea party groups who were applying for a tax-exempt status. In our statement on Bretibart.com, you can read our comments to the press.
Right now we need your help to move the Congressional hearings along and to insure the IRS is held accountable for their actions, lies, and abuse of power.
We are asking all Patriots around the country to help us with two things:
- We must insure that the hearings in Congress are substantive and get to the bottom of this scandal to reveal how deep it runs, how many other lies the IRS has told related to the these tactics, and what will be done to insure no other group of citizens is so unfairly discriminated against solely because they are speaking out against rampant government. On Monday, call your Member of Congress and both of your Senators to let them know that we must get to the bottom of this scandal.
- We need to hear from you if you or your local group has felt intimidated by the IRS actions over the last 4 years. Are you part of a local group who applied for tax-exempt status? What is the status of that application? Did you set out to form a group but were so intimidated by the IRS tactics that you abandoned that goal and wound up participating only as individuals rather than incorporating and coordinating activity with other groups? Click through to share your story with us so we have the details needed as we proceed with our next steps. Together we can personalize the problem to show the public the actions by the IRS were against real citizens and remind them that no citizen should fear the IRS will be used as a political weapon.
Over the last four years, Tea Party Patriots have repeatedly stood up against the consolidation of power by the ruling elite in this country. We will not stand idly by while unelected bureaucrats and elected representatives disregard the fact they are supposed to be public servants and instead act as rulers to increase their own personal power and political position. We will fight this problem with the IRS and we will win because our freedom depends on our ability to exercise our Constitutional rights.”
Related posts:
- Southerland Gives ‘Fair Tax’ Mixed Review
- ACLU vs. IRS over your 4th Amendment rights
- IRS taking heat from both sides of America
- Watch News Conference on IRS Intimidation
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” Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harrassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.
More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency’s Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS’ regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.
Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year, for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.
Go here for a spreadsheet of the salary and bonus data for IRS employees getting bonuses between 2009 and 2012.”
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” Across this great land, patriotic Americans are behaving subversively.
We’re quoting from our pocket Constitutions, starting reading groups to discuss our founding documents, even gathering together to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Uncle Sam is not amused.
As leaders of tea party groups have been painfully aware for years, the Internal Revenue Service has given “special” attention to conservative groups.
Heritage sounded the alarm on the Obama Administration’s hit list nearly a year ago. Idaho businessman Frank VanderSloot was singled out by the IRS and the Labor Department after making a sizable donation to Mitt Romney. Who ordered his investigation?
The goal was clearly to reduce the amount of anti-government speech by making it more difficult for these groups to achieve tax-exempt status. And it worked. Just look at these examples from four different states:
- ABC News reports that Jennifer Stefano of Pennsylvania wanted to start a tea party group, but dealing with the IRS “was frightening and that’s why I shut it down. I shut my group down.”
- The IRS ordered an Ohio group to answer 35 detailed questions, including to “provide a listing of all your past activities. Indicate the percentage of your time spent conducting the activity (total of all activities should equal 100%) and the percentage of your funds spent conducting the activity (total of all activities should equal 100%).”
- In Tennessee, Kevin Kookogey was trying to start an educational group called Linchpins of Liberty to teach the economic principles of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. When he inquired with the IRS in 2011 about the delay in his tax-exempt status, he was told: “We have been waiting on guidance from our superiors as to your and similar organizations.” He is still waiting.
- In Virginia, it took Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig two and a half years to get tax-exempt status. He tells The Washington Post the wait had “a very chilling effect” on how much money his group could raise, and thus on how much speech it could generate. “
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Published on May 15, 2013
” The I.R.S. targeting of tea party groups in the United States is par for the course. It’s not the first time the agency has been used for partisan political ends. Whether or not the targeting was undertaken as a directive from the White House, the agency’s broad latitude in determining what constitutes partisan political activity is very problematic. The solutions offered by campaign finance reformers would unfortunately only give the agency more power.
Featuring: David Keating, President of the Center for Competitive Politics / Michael W. MacLeod-Ball, Chief Legislative and Policy Counsel, ACLU / John Samples, Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Representative Government / Gene Healy, Vice-President, Cato Institute
Related podcast/video with David Keating:http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-… /http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8V_9c…
Related podcast with Michael MacLeod-Ball:http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-…Video produced by Caleb O. Brown and Austin Bragg. Additional footage gathered by Lester Romero.”
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” The Internal Revenue Service has identified two “rogue” employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for “overly aggressive” handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, a congressional source told CNN.
In a meeting on Capitol Hill, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller described the employees as being “off the reservation,” according to the source. It was not clear precisely what the alleged behavior involved.
Miller said the staffers have already been disciplined, according to another source familiar with Miller’s discussions with congressional investigators. The second source said Miller emphasized that the problem with IRS handling of tax-exempt status for tea party groups was not limited to these two employees.
The comments came as all 45 Senate Republicans sent the White House a letter that called for the administration to “comply with all requests related to congressional inquiries without any delay” involving the controversy.
The letter called the scandal “yet another completely inexcusable attempt to chill the speech of political opponents and those who would question their government, consistent with a broader pattern of intimidation by arms of your administration to silence political dissent.” “
The Treasury’s Inspector General Just Released A Damning Report About the IRS Targeting Tea Party Groups
” On Friday of last week a representative of the IRS admitted that the agency had singled out conservative groups seeking nonprofit status for extra scrutiny. A new report released this afternoon by the Office of Inspector General of the Treasury–which you can read in full below–confirms that Tea Party groups were in fact being targeted for their politics. Here’s the summary of findings:
The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention. Ineffective management: 1) allowed inappropriate criteria to be developed and stay in place for more than 18 months, 2) resulted in substantial delays in processing certain applications, and 3) allowed unnecessary information requests to be issued.”
Here is the official report .
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Lawyers: Targeting Of Conservatives More Vast Than Just Cincinnati, Also Involved DC Office
” “We’ve dealt with two offices in California, the one in Cincinnati of course , and one in Washington, D.C. So when that story came out on Friday, we knew instantaneously it was false, because we had personal dealings with four different IRS offices from coast to coast and that was in connection with our representing 27 Tea Party groups and conservative groups in 19 states,“ French said, adding that the two California offices were located in Laguna Niguel and El Monte.
“We knew from the beginning that this was not just a low-level Cincinnati employee operation,” French said.
Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP who represents conservative groups, echoed French’s concerns and experience.
“That’s a cover-up,” she told TheDC of the IRS’ claim Friday that the practice was initiated by the Cincinnati unit of the IRS.”
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MCCONNELL: IRS REVELATIONS ‘JUST THE BEGINNING’
” The scandal, McConnell said, extends up the chain. “The Obama effort to shut up opponents isn’t limited to the IRS,” he stated. “It applies to the FCC [Federal Communications Commission], SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], FEC [Federal Elections Commission], HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] …. And you remember, the Obama campaign last year published a list of eight businessmen who it believed were enemies.”
He also added that the recent IRS revelations were “just the beginning of the story. This is no little thing. This is a big thing. The good news about it is they finally got caught. They finally messed with an agency everybody fully understands. When they try to quiet the critics through other agencies, it doesn’t get attention. This does. Everybody understands the IRS and how powerful they are. This is just one example of an administration-wide effort to silence critics.” “
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