Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

“Icky” Conservative Groups

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…were targeted by the IRS.

But remember, it’s a “phony” scandal.

[Update a while later]

More from the Tax Prof:

Here are six major takeaways from the report:

  1. The IRS admitted that the front office was “spinning” about the targeting rumors as early as 2012, after IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman denied the tea party targeting to Congress. …
  2. Then-IRS commissioner Steven T. Miller almost broke down and told the truth about the tea party targeting at a July 2012 hearing, but Lerner’s sidekick Nikole Flax told him not to. …
  3. The IRS definitely treated tea party applications by a different standard than applications from other (c)(4) groups. …
  4. Lois Lerner expressed her frustration about having to potentially approve a lot of groups, and her colleagues in the agency assured her that she wouldn’t have to. …
  5. So the IRS reached out to outside advisers to help come up with ways to deny tax-exempt status to “icky” organizations. …
  6. A May 2011 email from a lawyer in the IRS chief counsel’s office made clear that the agency sought to use a new “gift tax” to target donors to nonprofit political groups.

Move along, nothing to see here.

[Afternoon update]

The IRS was “fundamentally transformed” and “totally politicized” by ObamaCare and IRS targeting of Tea Party:

The transformation has produced “an IRS responsive to the partisan policy objectives of the White House and an IRS leadership that coordinates with political appointees of the Obama Administration.”

The inability of tax agency officials “to keep politics out of objective decisions about interpretation of the tax code damaged its primary function: an apolitical tax collector that Americans can trust to treat them fairly.”

“Not only did IRS employees allow politics to seep into their work from February 2010 to May 2012, but even after agency officials learned of misconduct, the response from senior agency officials was to manage the fallout rather than quickly expose and correct the misconduct,” the House investigators said.

And it continues to this day.

17 thoughts on ““Icky” Conservative Groups”

  1. “icky” Liberal groups were also targets.

    “The Internal Revenue Service targeted liberal groups as well as conservatives seeking tax-exempt status, a Democratic congressman charged on Monday after the agency acknowledged the inappropriate practice continued until last month.

    Rep. Sander Levin said the term “progressives” was included on IRS screening lists of applicants for tax-exempt status made available to Congress on Monday.

    It was the first confirmation that the “Be on the Lookout” or BOLO lists used criteria targeting liberal groups after an inspector general’s report made public last month said the IRS had used words such as “tea party” to determine possible extra scrutiny”
    http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/24/politics/irs-targeting/index.html

      1. An IRS tax law specialist is quoted as saying that a specific 501c4, which appeared to be funneling contributions to other organizations for political purposes, “This org gives me an icky feeling.” Nobody in the linked article calls this group, or any other conservative group, or conservative groups in general, “icky”. The only places “icky” is used as a modifier to “conservative groups” are in the misleading headlines that you and the Daily Caller wrote for this story.

    2. But what happened to those Progressive groups after they popped up in a bolo search? They went into the stream of applications that received the normal assessment. They did not get sent to the same office in DC as non-Democrat groups and did not endure the same treatment.

      Also, isn’t it sketchy that the IRS commissioner lied to congress about what was going on in Obama’s IRS? When the head of the IRS lies to congress, doesn’t that show there is more than a smidgeon of corruption?

      Did any of these Democrat groups organizing these Ferguson protests get tax exempt status? Can we see their donor lists? Consider that many of these groups were recently formed and that if they are tax exempt, they didn’t have to wait half a decade like non-Democrat groups do under Obama.

  2. “The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” the Oversight report states. “Each of these leaders could have and should have done more to prevent the IRS’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.”

    So the “bombshell” isn’t that any senior leaders where involved in targeting, just that they “could have and should have done more to prevent” it. Nothing to indicate that the targeting was politically motivated, or originated at the top of the IRS, much less at the White House. And this is a partisan GOP report. The IRS scandal has dwindled to a mere shadow of its former self.

      2. I’m “cherry-picking” the conclusions of a House GOP committee that has been investigating this alleged scandal for nearly two years. That’s the best they’ve got, and it isn’t much.

    4. Nothing to indicate that the targeting was politically motivated

      Jim, how do you stay in contact with the mothership when you’re way out on planet la-la?

  3. You know, I’m not much into revenge, especially when the Constitution hangs in the balance. But if a Republican takes office in 2017, I’m sorely tempted to say “gloves off.”

  4. Given that only 1% of the requested documents have been turned over, and therefore less than 1% of the information needed to reach any conclusion is available, it’s silly and ridiculous for anyone to say anything has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

    But liberal apologistes, acolytes, and other blinded people will try to claim “The IRS scandal has dwindled to a mere shadow of its former self.”

    They need to get themselves a red-tipped cane.

    1. 99% of the requested documents could be turned over and yet you could still be missing 99% of the desired information.

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