Introducing The Obama Scandal Bracket!
” With so many White House scandals—and new ones popping up every day—how are average citizens supposed to keep track? Wouldn’t it be nice if Obama went on ESPN and mapped them all on a bracket?”
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Tag Archive: IRS
CNN’s Morgan: Hey, Maybe Government Can Become Tyrannical After All
” In a conversation with Penn Jillette, CNN’s anti-gun zealot – who has spent the last six months deriding the suggestion that the American government can’t be trusted when it comes to gun control – has had a change of heart after watching the IRS and DOJ/AP scandals unfold.”
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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).”
PJTV: Obama IRS Scandal Uncovers the Ugly Side of Income Taxes
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Once Government Is Ensnared In Every Aspect Of Life, A Bureaucracy Grows Increasingly Capricious.
” Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.” Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.” Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers. Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up.”
As With All Things Steyn , Read Every Word
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THE LOSS OF TRUST
” Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” was a question: What agenda?
The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something his administration, and big government generally, undermines — trust.
Obama’s supposed “trifecta” of scandals — Benghazi, the IRS, and the seizure of Associated Press phone records — neglects some. A fourth scandal is power being wielded by executive branch officials (at the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) illegally installed in office by presidential recess appointments made when the Senate was not in recess.
A fifth might be Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius soliciting, from corporations in industries HHS regulates, funds to replace some that Congress refused to appropriate. The money is to be spent by nonprofit — which does not mean nonpolitical — entities. The funds are to educate Americans about, which might mean (consider the administration’s Benghazi and IRS behaviors) propagandize in favor of, Obamacare and to enroll people in its provisions. The experienced (former governor, former secretary of education, 10 years in the Senate) and temperate Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., compares this to the Iran-contra scandal, wherein the Reagan administration raised private funds to do what Congress had refused to do — finance the insurgency against Nicaragua’s government.
Obama’s incredibly shrinking presidency is a reminder that politics is a transactional business, trust is the currency of the transactions, and the currency has been debased. For example:”
Read The Whole Sordid Thing
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IRS Official In Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office
” The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.
Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.
Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.
As the House voted to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, House Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer.”
Related articles
- In Charge During ‘Tea Party’ Targeting, Now Runs Irs Obamacare Office (abcnews.go.com)
- IRS Official Who Managed Tea Party Targeting Now Running IRS Obamacare Office (nationalreview.com)
- New Irs Bombshell – Irs Boss Who Ran Division for Tax-exempt Applications Now Heads Up Obamacare Division of the Irs (libertynews.com)
- Sarah Hall Ingram ran IRS During Tea Party Targeting, Now Runs Affordable Care Act Office (riehlworldview.com)
- Incredible: Official in Charge of IRS Office Responsible for Conservative Targeting Now Heads Agency’s Obamacare Office (theblaze.com)
- TOTALITARIAN STATE: IRS Exec In Charge Of Blocking Tax-Exempt Status For Conservatives Now In Charge Of Entire IRS Health Care Division (patdollard.com)
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Mark Levin: “It’s Time To Kill The IRS”
” MARK LEVIN: “Yes, we’re going to cover the ins and outs of this — we’re going to come into the weeds, but folks, it’s time to kill the IRS. That’s the bottom line. This agency has been corrupt since its founding. And the bigger the government gets, the more corrupt it gets, the more ubiquitous it gets. And I don’t just mean political partisanship and cronyism, I mean its abuses. We must fight the expansion of the IRS under Obamacare. We must fight to kill the IRS or critically wound it — politically — with either a flat tax or a fair tax. Now is the time to advance a liberty agenda. Now is the time to advance a Constitutional agenda.” (Mark Levin Show, May 15, 2013)”
Video at the link
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IRS Rejected Group On Behalf Of Planned Parenthood
” 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.”
See Entire Post With A Roundup Of Links To Targeted Groups Here
Here Is A Sampling :
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?
Lots More At The Link
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When It Rains, It Pours: Ten Press Conference Take Aways
“ 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.”
Read It All
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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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IRS Tax Exemption/Obamacare Exec Got $103,390 In Bonuses
” 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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Related articles
- IRS Exec In Charge Of Unit Targeting Conservatives Received Over $42K In Bonuses Since ’09 (patdollard.com)
- IRS tax exemption exec Sarah Hall Ingram got $103,390 in bonuses (riehlworldview.com)
- IRS Official Who Managed Tea Party Targeting Now Running IRS Obamacare Office (nationalreview.com)
- IRS executive who targeted Tea Party got more than $100k in bonuses in last four years (utsandiego.com)
- New Irs Bombshell – Irs Boss Who Ran Division for Tax-exempt Applications Now Heads Up Obamacare Division of the Irs (libertynews.com)
- IRS Tax Exemption Exec Was Richly Rewarded For Her Efforts (breitbart.com)
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Obamite Thuggery Has Long History
” It was Michael Barone who first wrote that Barack Obama was a practitioner of “gangster government.” Barone was right. The plethora of scandals now engulfing the administration, combined with all sort of prior scandals that a lapdog media largely ignored, show that this regime is thuggish beyond repair.
As they say in the game of bridge, “let’s review the bidding.”
* One of the most outrageous early examples of the vilest sort of hardball came in the case that we at The Washington Times(when I was there) called “Walpin-Gate.” When Gerald Walpin, the well-respected Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service, dared to point an unwanted focus on a close personal ally of the Obamas, not only did the White House fire himwithout the necessary notice to Congress but also smeared Mr. Walpin with the clear insinuation that he was becoming senile.
The message was clear: “Mess with us and we’ll mess with you in a way you ain’t never been messed before – and it’s gonna hurt.”
* Obama himself had two well-publicized, airport-tarmac run-ins with Republicans governors. “Careful,” he warned Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal when visiting the Bayou State after the oil spill. “This is going to get bad for everyone.” He also publicly berated Supreme Court justices during his State of the Union speech.
* Again and again, top Obama officials in federal agencies issue threats – sometimes veiled, sometimes explicit – to private citizens and businesses to not even say anything displeasing to Obamites. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius does it. The EPA has tried it repeatedly. The Obamites do it to the oil companies and to so many others that columnist David Freddoso has written a whole book about it.”
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The IRS Wants To Know If You’re A “Patriot”
” 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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Obamacare Is About Power
” Members of the House of Representatives are scheduled to vote Thursday to repeal all of Obamacare. Given that the House voted to repeal the law last year, some commentators and observers have questioned the need for another repeal vote.
However, the scandals coming to light over the last week perfectly make the case for why Congress must eradicate the law from the statute books.
On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service finally disclosed that it had spent years targeting tea party and other conservative groups, delaying their applications for non-profit status and giving those applications additional scrutiny — solely because of those groups’ political beliefs.
Also on Friday, The Washington Post revealed that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius personally asked health industry groups to contribute to Enroll America, a pro-Obamacare front group working to “educate” the public about the law’s supposed benefits.
While we don’t yet know all the details about these scandals, we do know that the IRS grossly abused its power at a time when Obamacare grants it massive new authority. The Treasury Department’s Inspector General has said Obamacare represents “the largest set of tax law changes in 20 years,” with at least 42 provisions adding to or amending the tax code.”
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The I.R.S. Abusing Americans Is Nothing New
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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Soros Gave $6.1 Million To Groups Linked To Pressure On IRS To Target Conservative Nonprofits
” Several Soros-funded groups including the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, the Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones and Alternet have worked to pressure the IRS to target conservative nonprofit groups. The subsequent IRS investigation flagged more than 100 tea party-related applications for higher scrutiny, including applications that included the words “Tea Party” and “patriot.”
The IRS scandal can be traced back to a series of letters that the liberal groups Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Democracy 21 sent to the IRS back in 2010 and 2011. Both groups were funded by George’s Soros’s Open Society Foundations. The CLC received $677,000 and Democracy 21 got $365,000 from the Soros-backed foundation, according to the Foundation’s 990 tax forms.”
Related articles
- Soros-Funded Group Linked to IRS Abuses (pjmedia.com)
- Liberal Organization With Ties To George Soros Got Documents From IRS (freedomoutpost.com)
- IRS Gave Preferential Treatment to Liberal Nonprofits (dprogram.net)
- The Real IRS Scandal: A Blurry Line Between Social Advocacy and Politics (swampland.time.com)
- Communist Organization With Ties To George Soros Got Documents From IRS (itmakessenseblog.com)
- George Soros funded ProPublica ties to IRS attacks on tea party and patriot groups (theglobaldispatch.com)
- Soros Gave $6.1 Million to Groups Linked to Pressure on IRS to Target Conservative Nonprofits (patriotupdate.com)
- IRS Enforcement and the Misuse of Nonprofits to Hide Political Spending (commondreams.org)
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Two ‘Rogue’ Workers Principally Behind IRS Targeting Of Conservatives
” 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.” “
IRS Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Theft Of 60 Million Medical Records
” The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.
According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.
“This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents,” the complaint reads. “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records,” it continued.”
By all means let us trust these arrogant bureaucrats with our personal medical files . What could possibly go wrong ?
Related articles
- Lawsuit Alleges IRS Stole 60 Million Medical Records (freebeacon.com)
- IRS Faces Lawsuit After Stealing 60 Million Medical Records (thegatewaypundit.com)
- IRS scandal broadens as they targeted pro-Israel groups, Z Street even filed a lawsuit (theglobaldispatch.com)
- Report: IRS accessed health records of 10 million Americans without authorization… (bluegrasspundit.com)
- Irs Wants Your Health Insurance Records in January (ultimatefulfillment.org)
- Why the IRS Scandal Impacts Obamacare (shepherdspiehole.typepad.com)
- Obama’s “third rate burglary” (floppingaces.net)
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