Amid all of the sound and fury bubbling up from the IRS examination of the various conservative organizations there’s hope among the Tea Party faithful that this controversy will somehow breathe new life into their movement. But will it be enough to reinvigorate a movement considered to be in disarray, if not politically stalled? Yes the vast majority of Americans holds the IRS in low esteem and is troubled by the revelations that the agency has, if nothing else, tangled rightwing organizations in excessive red tape, even if it hasn’t moved to cripple them altogether. However, as Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times pointed out, this isn’t the first time that an administration has used the IRS against the opposition, even though, to date, there’s no evidence that President Obama ordered any such action.
While the wild eyed voices on Capitol Hill have been bellowing for the impeachment of the president, the more level headed among them, and among conservative political pundits, have counseled caution least the Tea Party claque in Congress overplay its hand with negative consequences for 2014. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a meticulously detailed piece outlines the vast differences between Watergate and the current IRS controversy. It is an analysis that undermines the very argument being made by the far right for the impeachment of President Obama: “Those who bother to read these historical snippets will find many important departures and only tenuous parallels between the Obama Administration’s IRS affair and Richard Nixon’s Watergate-era IRS scandal. A principal distinction is the ingredient of direct presidential involvement. President Nixon was the fulcrum, the visionary and the principal conspirator in his various capers to use the IRS as a political weapon. Nixon personally directed and persistently harangued his staff to audit, investigate and gather dirt on his enemies for personal purposes. Nixon went to reckless extremes even punishing IRS agents who refused to participate in his vendetta. A mean-spirited viciousness and his contagious enthusiasm for law breaking were also distinctive Nixon bailiwicks. In contrast, there is no evidence that Obama even knew of the IRS investigations which were presided over by Donald Shulman, a Bush appointee. The most recent evidence indicate that the Tea Party audits resulted not from intentional political targeting of conservatives from the sheer preponderous of Tea Party applications among the hundreds of 501(c)(4) tax exemption requests that deluged a tiny understaffed IRS field office.”
But while it’s important to note the fact that, to date, the current scandal doesn’t even come close to approximating the severity of Watergate as an assault on the Constitution, there is evidence that Tea Party organizations have pushed the limits of what was politically legitimate. That in turn has increased the attention given these groups by the IRS, which isn’t necessarily unwarranted or beyond the pale of legitimate agency operations. In the article “Groups Targeted by I.R.S. Tested Rules on Politics”, referenced below, two political reporters, Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo, detail the many activities undertaken by conservative organizations over the past few years that have given rise to legitimate questions on the part of IRS agents who have conducted these examinations. Have those agents been overzealous, perhaps, but at the same time those agents wouldn’t be looking into these groups if they didn’t have a reason to believe that somehow these organizations hadn’t run afoul of the law. The IRS simply doesn’t have the luxury of excess manpower with which to carry out such a political wild goose chase no matter who might have requested such a thing. Likewise the claim by conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, a tireless critic of Barack Obama, that conservatives generally have been singled out for IRS harassment has been debunked prima facie as well by Nate Silver, as referenced below.
With all of the above being understood, what affect, if any, has the IRS scandal had, to date, on the public perception of the Tea Party movement as a whole? Is there any reason thus far to believe that this controversy is breathing new life into the Tea Party? Presently the answer is emphatically no. Jon Cohen and Dan Balz of the Washington Post, analyzing the results of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll concluded the following: “The IRS scandal has brought the tea party back into the spotlight, but it has done little to change the public’s impressions of the political movement. In the poll, 40 percent of all Americans say they support the tea party movement and 43 percent oppose it, numbers stable back to last year. A record high of 17 percent express no opinion on the question. About 73 percent of conservative Republicans say they support the movement, but that’s the lowest percentage to say so in polls going back more than two years.” Moreover, when you go inside the results of this poll 74 percent of the respondents saw the IRS actions as inappropriate and 56 percent of respondents see this activity as deliberate harassment; 54 percent see the Federal Government as threatening the individual rights of the average citizen.
One would think that for all of the public discomfort being generated by the actions of the IRS that the American people would see anew some value in the Tea Party and its ideas. Ironically that has proven not to be the case. Likewise you would think that these same Americans would now be looking to throw Obama, the far right’s new Nixon, under the bus but that hasn’t happened either. Obama’s poll numbers have actually edged up since this controversy began. In fact if you examine the bulk of the data compiled by PollingReport.com, referenced below, the Tea Party movement has seen, in net terms, its popularity and acceptance decline overall since 2010 and it is, thus far, in no way positively affected by the current spate of scandal and revelation.
One would ask why, with all the unpopularity surrounding the IRS and big government generally and with all of the sensational media coverage and the mainstream media’s new found interest in challenging the Obama administration, why is it that the Tea Party seems to be getting little if any traction from all of this? I think that to for many informed observers the answers are self-evident if not outright obvious. For one thing, even though Americans are wary of “too much government” they have little stomach for deliberate government gridlock and when it comes to gridlock they see the Tea Party movement is the chief culprit in affecting the dysfunctional state of affairs that has come to characterize Washington D.C. generally and Capitol Hill in particular. Gridlock aside, the Tea Party’s penchant for economic austerity works to the movement’s disadvantage as this economic policy has come to be seen as a failure, even among serious conservative thinkers in organizations like the American Enterprise Institute. Finally, the movement is now beset by scandal as well, its onetime Congressional standard bearer Michelle Bachmann has decided not to run for reelection with a scandal of her own as a backdrop.
The essence of American democracy has always been compromise and it has been at those junctures in American history where the practice of compromise broke down that our democracy has been seen to fall short, sometimes with disastrous results, the Civil War being the most obvious example. In the current era it has been the Tea Party movement that has epitomized the belief put forth by Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser of pre-Civil war fame, who famously stated, “If you can’t compromise you can’t govern.” Today the American people know that there is little in the way of real political progress being made in Washington D.C. They see the Republican Party and the Tea Party specifically as the reason why. Furthermore, after three plus years on the American political scene, serious Tea Party missteps at the level of Republican Presidential politics and in Senate races have cast Tea Party politics and politicians in a less than flattering light. All one need do is think back over the clown fest that was the 2012 Republican primaries or some of the absurdities surrounding Tea Party backed candidates for the U.S. Senate during the last two election cycles and it’s not hard to see why, even in the wake of the current scandals and with issues that play right into the anti-government creed, that the Tea Party could still fail to benefit from this current state of affairs.
Scandals have rocked Washington before and they will rock it again. That said there’s another reason that the current round of scandal may fail to reinvigorate the Tea Party movement. The reason for this is that voters have had over three years to get to know the movement and there seems to be little coming out of it that those who don’t already support it find compelling. In fact if you go back inside the data in PollingReport.com you find that the numbers prove that those respondents who claim they don’t know enough about the Tea Party have been halved since data collection began in 2010, sometimes falling to single digits. It could be that even though the average American is disgusted with the state of American politics, those same Americans may see the Tea Party movement as part of the reason for that disgust and therefore the movement isn’t seen as part of the solution. After all one of the chief complaints about Washington today is gridlock, a word synonymous with the Tea Party and that’s not a good thing.
If the aforementioned is in fact the case, and I for one strongly believe it is, then there is little in the way of hope to be had from all of this that will ultimately bode well for the Tea Party. Yes voters can punish the Obama and the Democrats in 2014 at the ballot box, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve finally and firmly embraced the ideas of the Tea Party and the far right. We can see a replay of the 2010 elections which I believe to have been nothing more than a protest against the perceived excess of the first Obama administration rather than a rejection of progressive ideas. For if in fact the 2010 elections had been a rejection of the essence of the first Obama administration there would have never been a second one and as we all know it was Barack Obama and not a champion of the far right who was elected in November of 2012. In other words, as far as the fortunes of the Tea Party movement are concerned, the more things change the more they seem to stay the same.
Steven J. Gulitti
30 May 2013
Sources:
IRS targeting scandal a political ‘gift from heaven’ for Tea Party groups; http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/299765-irs-scandal-a-political-gift-from-heaven-for-tea-party
Tea Party Looks to Gain Momentum in IRS Scandal Aftermath; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/tea-party-irs_n_3302392.html?ref=topbar
Sam Tanenhaus: The Government’s Worst Face; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/sunday-review/the-governments-worst-face.html?pagewanted=all
Confusion and Staff Troubles Rife at I.R.S. Office in Ohio; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/us/politics/at-irs-unprepared-office-seemed-unclear-about-the-rules.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
IRS Scandal Letters: Other Offices Sent Requests To Target Tea Party Groups, NBC News Reports; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/irs-scandal-letters_n_3349174.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?
Trio of Scandals Puts Obama, Holder in Hot Seat; http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/05/republicans-media-bare-down-on-administration-facing-two-scandals.html
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Obama and Nixon: A Historical Perspective; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/obama-nixon-watergate_b_3305611.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?
Groups Targeted by I.R.S. Tested Rules on Politics; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/us/politics/nonprofit-applicants-chafing-at-irs-tested-political-limits.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Nate Silver: New Audit Allegations Show Flawed Statistical Thinking; http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/new-audit-allegations-show-flawed-statistical-thinking/?ref=politics
PollingReport.com: The Tea Party; http://www.pollingreport.com/politics.htm
Obama’s rating steady in face of controversies, likely buoyed by rising economic hopes; http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-21/politics/39402441_1_benghazi-attack-president-obama-irs-action
Obama, politics, IRS and Benghazi; http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/05/21/National-Politics/Polling/release_237.xml
Obama’s poll numbers hold up despite the storm of scandal; http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/302451-obamas-poll-numbers-hold-up-despite-the-storm-of-scandal
These words make sense to Lois Lerner, who was the Director overseeing tax exempt organizations. Now she is on paid leave, what a country!!!!
I am confused, who is stating Obama knew of this profiling, or what some would say, voter suppression. Just b/c IRS Commissioner David Schulman visted Obama 157 times during this timeframe, doesn’t mean he knew of it.
This issue has nothing, zero to do with the popularity of the Tea Party, or what voters think are the most important issues of the day. It has to do with who ordered the profiling, the harassment of conservative groups, and why did Learner lie to congress when asked over a year ago if targeting was going on. We all should be offended t what happened, unless you don’t want to live in a democracy.
Schulman was listed as being scheduled for 157 visits to the White House, but he may not have actually visited that many times, and even if he did, that does not mean that he spoke with or even was in the same room with Obama. So it is not intellectually honest to suggest that proves that Obama knew anything about this (and we don’t even really know what the “this” really is for that matter).
But it’s another factoid in a a case where it was first suggested, it was low level Cincinnati IRS workers went rogue. Did Schulman meet with WH political operatives? Fair question, no?
you were not asking the question so much as insinuating the answer. That is not intellectually honest.
In fact, public visitor records only have him signing in on 11 occasions. There’s a big difference between being cleared to attend something and actually attending it. And 11 visits in four years doesn’t seem like a particularly unreasonabl amount of times for the head of the IRS to be visiting the White House. Hell, 22 times would be all that unreasonable.
OFA (Obama for America) morphed into OFA (Organizing for America) under the control of the DNC and then was IRS approved as OFA (Organizing for Action), a 501-c-4, during the same time frame that the TEA Party applications were being hyper-scrutinized for political activity.
I cannot think of another example of a politician turning his war chest into a public charity – which is, of course, where other retiring politicians can donate their war chests. And the funds are then laundered with non-disclosure availability.
But there’s nothing remotely political about that. How can the scrutiny be so misunderstood?
in a dirt fight. I don’t think this bodes well for anybody. Although the tea party may have little to show for this scandal, in the eyes of a reasonable person, there is something unseemingly about having the collective might of the IRS engage in punitive auditing and selective approval of non-profit statuses of those people and organizations in the loyal opposition. The data on this thing is still coming in and I would also suggest that the jury is still out on the height and breadth of this thing. The numerous visits of the IRS Chief to the White House (reported over the last few days)lends some credence to the story. And while the story may not have legs beyond a month or so, but I do have to admit to feeling a fair amount of concern. I want agencies of the government to be free of political intrigue. Let’s admit it, if this were happening during a Republican administration, we would outraged.
So far, what we’ve got is low-level IRS staff scrutinizing 501C3/4 applications for tax-exempt status submitted by organizations who oppose paying taxes. Would we be similarly concerned about security officials paying special attention to extremist Muslim organizations? I don’t think so.
Meanwhile, the prior Republican administration literally FLOODED the DoJ with political appointees. It pushed competent and objective career prosecutors out of the way in order to make room for political zealots selected because of their extremist GOP loyalties. It literally endangered the lives of undercover operatives as punishment for political offenses.
Shall we instead compare this to Contragate, brought to us by Reagan/Bush? Or to Watergate?
In fact, we have to back to the Eisenhower administration to find a GOP White House that was not thoroughly and pervasively corrupt — at least when measured by the standards of “political intrigue” used to characterize the current tempest-in-a-teapot.
I also note that whether outraged or not, we have to go all the way back to the Nixon administration to find serious punishment not ameliorated as soon as possible by presidential pardon.
I don’t think this was partisan. Misguided? Perhaps. I think when a right-wing organization goes all over the media with anti-tax nonsense, it should expect special attention from the government when it asks for no-tax status.
I want DoJ staff selected on the basis of objective competence, not political loyalty. I want congressional legislation specifically forbidding military action to be obeyed.
You want to talk about using the IRS for political purposes? Show me the “enemies list” compiled by the director of the FBI and personally administered by the Attorney General. Show me the groups of ex-CIA intelligence operatives recruited, trained, managed, and funded by the President, the President’s staff, the Attorney General, the Director of the FBI, and the head of the NSC. THAT is what “having the collective might of the IRS engage in punitive auditing and selective approval of non-profit statuses” looks like.
This “scandal” is manufactured nonsense.
Obama is taking the IRS situation, very seriously. So is all the major networks, except MSNBC (surprise, surprise). Now we can expect Tom to post some fringe Tea Party protestors, and paint the entire movement with his broad brush. Most Tea Party folks don’t want tax increases and budget cuts. And to squash another fable, no politician was spat upon while walking through a Tea Party protest. Just didn’t happen, no video either.
Tom- the enemies list was the profiling techniques, used by the IRS. Then asking for donors, who then get audited (queue Gomer Pyle saying “surprise…surprise”), then having pro-life group sign an affidavit promising not to protest any Planned Parenthood facility.
And you compare this to a birth certificate? Mindboggeling, and disappointing, to say the least.
So since Reagan admitted mistakes in Iran/Contra, we sweep the IRS (I take the Fifth) scandal, under the rug? I find the profiling and voter intimidation of Tea Party groups, along with coincidental audits of Romney donors, much, much worse, than saving U.S. hostages and keeping the Contras whole, as Reagan did.
I should know better than to answer you. Jeesh, what a mish-mash of right-wing rubbish and talking-points.
No, the enemies list was NOT profiling techniques. The “profiling technique” was a keyword search. Not exactly hi-tech, and it was done by a low-level staffer. That has nothing in common, AT ALL, with a hand-drawn list of individual names drawn by the President and his staff, and handed to the sitting Attorney General.
“Admitted mistakes in Iran/Contra”???? Jeesh, there you go again. We are talking about selling arms to Iran, for crying out loud. While Iran was at the top of the list of terrorist nations, a few short years after the hostage crisis. We are talking about using CIA planes to move cocaine from Central America to the Northeast, sell it on the streets, use the proceeds to buy illegal arms, and ship those illegal arms back on the SAME CIA planes to be distributed to the Contras. That operation violated drug laws, the explicitly voted will of Congress, and the opinion of the majority of Americans. You call that a “mistake”?
Why do you think the US worked so hard to put away Manuel Noriega? He was the contact point for the operation, and he threatened to spill the beans about the whole operation.
I sweep nothing under the rug, because there isn’t anything to sweep.
“Saving U.S. hostages”? Are you talking about the same hostages I’m talking about, the ones held by the same Iranian terrorists that we sold arms to? Where on EARTH do you get the idea that we saved them?
“Keeping the Contras whole”? You mean illegally supporting a terrorist mob that tried (and failed, fortunately) to bring down the democratically-elected government of Nicaragua.
Comments like yours make my point for me, far more eloquently than I could possibly make up on my own. Thank you.
The proceeds from the sale of weapons to Iran, went to the Contras together, “body and soul”. So Reagan and Bush erred on the side of life, and subordinates got carried away.
To smear the CIA as selling cocaine to kids, is sick. It is true some Contras did traffic cocaine, b/c they were desperate for funds, when Congress cut their knees out from under them, leaving them exposes to the Communists. Put down the wide brush, it’s spattering all over the place, and looks terrible.
Three facts:
1. The Contras were complete scum.
2. The Congress of the United States had passed legislation prohibiting any further federal support of them.
3. A cabal of right-wing fundamentalists violated that prohibition by selling arms to Iran. A nation that occupied our embassy a few short years before and held American hostages for fifteen months. A nation so high on the list of enemies that we bought for Saddam Hussein the fourth largest army in the world to fight against them. So high on the list of enemies that the WWF had a bad guy who “came from” there. The same Iran half the GOP wants war with today. If Barack Obama even sent a diplomatic message about brokering peace talks to a country like that, the GOP would try to impeach him. And the Ollie North people SOLD THAT COUNTRY WEAPONS.
Ollie North should still be in maximum security prison today.
This IRS business is nothing more than a few employees using as keywords the same words used by the overwhelming majority of groups who were applying for 501(c)(4) status in the relevant time period. All of these groups, many of whom probably should not have 501(c)(4) status, got it. I’m not seeing a scandal. Just more GOP fake victim syndrome.
And with that I’m flat out done discussing anything with Dan.
I mean what is next, our government would allow semi-automatic weapons to get in the hands of drug dealers in Mexico, and have our own boarder patrol agents and hundreds of Mexicans to be slaughtered? What, Fast and Furious?
Before you lock up Col. Ollie North, be advised he was awarded 2 Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star, while serving in Vietnam.
Yet another faux scandal that is less than meets the eye AND actually started under Bush to boot! I’m pretty sure all the military awards in the world do not immunize you from criminal prosecution.
John Kerry received three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star, while serving in Vietnam. Then he went on to a career in public service while not being convicted of bribery, obstructing a Congressional investigation, or destruction of documents. Since he was not convicted of any felonies, he didn’t need to use a technicality to escape punishment. It’s debatable whether this was a better career path than North’s, since it precluded his becoming a Fox News personality.
My guess would be Col. North. I wont repeat what Kerry said about our soldiers, and who he compared them to (initials G.K.).
and why didn’t Caspar Weinberger go to jail? That experience jaded me when I was younger.
And why so many on the right feel he is a hero, even to this day. He violated several federal laws, he armed Islamic extremists in the Middle East along with death/rape squads in Central America, and he hated following orders. What about any of those things describes a good soldier rather than a terrible one? There are plenty of conservative soldiers I have great admiration for: Col. Yeager, Colin Powell, Stormin’ Norman, even John McCain (at least his service record). There is nothing about North’s actions that remotely resemble what a good, Patriotic American should be doing.
You might want to actually examine McCain’s service record.
A Navy flier who wasn’t the son of an active-duty admiral would certainly have been grounded after three accidents. Even the mission which landed him in a POW camp is seen by some as showing a lack of judgement – he chose not to attempt to evade the missile that destroyed his plane, when such evasive maneuvers had a fair rate of success. For a long and unflattering examination of the man, see Make-Believe Maverick.
As for Colin Powell, you might check into his connection to the My Lai massacre.
My guess would be Ollie North would be much more well received. We all know what he did in the 70’s, along with a comment about being dumb and stuck in Iraq.
Even John McCain admits that the Vietnam war was a mistake, why is John Kerry vilified for protesting it? Thousands of honorable veterans did the same thing, and it’s a lot more honorable to serve with reservations than to support the war wholeheartedly and then get your Congressmen dad to keep you (barely) on base in Texas and Alabama. Getting mad at Jane Fonda is one thing, I get why veterans are mad at her, and she was incredibly naive and got used. But Kerry got wounded by the VC fighting for his country, no way he didn’t earn the right to protest. And I say this as someone who thinks he was a mediocre Senator and terrible candidate.
When I speak to Vietnam Vets (the few I know), man…, steam comes out of their ears at the mention of his name.
No one questions whether North served bravely. But that in no way exonerates him or even mitigates crimes committed long after. It is stupid to suggest otherwise.
North followed orders, he didn’t go “rogue”. And yes, his past service should be considered, after the hell he went through in the 60’s.
Now, please answer my question about conflicts of interest with a spouse, up above.
At the risk of invoking Godwin, how did that defense work out at Nuremburg?!
and those who gave the orders serving the same sentence are not mutually exclusive. All Dan’s told us is that the rot went higher up.
You mention North’s name in the same breath as Nuremburg? Nothing will cease to amaze me, I will leave it at that.
You, not Christopher, wrote “North followed orders, he didn’t go ‘rogue’. ” Do you actually KNOW what the “Nuremburg defense” means, and why Christopher quite properly cited it?
The very fact that you are spouting all of this rubbish about the Contragate conspiracy is why the blanket pardons were so wrong.
You got all hot under the collar because I dared to remind you of the drug smuggling that helped fund the illegal conspiracy. I invite you to familiarize yourself with the real facts. You can, for example, read about your hero’s knowledge of the racket in his own handwriting. Similarly, your hero demonstrated in another entry in his own handwriting that he was well aware that “$14M to finance [the arms in the warehouse] came from drugs”.
Then-Senator John Kerry was well on the way to establishing the NSC involvement in this unsavory and illegal operation in his own investigation. I call your attention to documents like this Kerry Committee report that concluded:
The ugly truth is that President George W. Bush (himself likely involved in the conspiracy) successfully obstructed the several investigations that were well on the way to revealing the hideous realities of what Oliver North and his co-conspirators were actually doing.
I’m frankly surprised that you continue to argue this point. The more you expose the reality of what Contragate actually WAS, the more foolish the attempted comparison to anything happening today becomes.
I know what Nuremberg Trials are all about. Where Christopher is out if line is comparing North following his superior’s orders (thinking Reagan knew everything going on) to the Nazi’s following their orders to murder people. It’s so sick of a comparison, Tom.
A big part of the reason why Nuremberg was as a precedent. Of course Nuremberg should be brought up when people try to let low-level monsters on the hook (not that this was happening here).
Funny how you suddenly got so quiet about how Mr. North and the Contragate conspiracy used CIA assets to import cocaine into the US, sold it, and used the proceeds to fund the Contras.
When I first reminded you of that, you were outraged:
Now that you’ve seen the documented evidence that this immoral, “sick” (your word), and illegal operation actually DID happen, do you still want to crow about what a “hero” Mr. North was? Now that I’ve pointed you towards the National Security Archives that show that the conspiracy reached to the very highest levels of the Reagan administration (do you really believe that George H. Bush, the sitting Vice President and former director of the CIA, didn’t know about it?), do you still want to argue that “… Reagan and Bush erred on the side of life, and subordinates got carried away”?
Do you think it’s just coincidence that George H. Bush himself was implicated in the evidence, so that his pardons were in fact self-serving?
Now that you’ve seen just a small sample of evidence demonstrating the criminal conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of government that George H. Bush’s (I got misidentified him above) pardon covered up, do you still argue that the current kerfuffle is remotely similar?
Come on Dan, no one even remotely believe that you would apply that principle evenly, but it doesn’t matter. As I said, I don’t see how his far past military record even remotely mitigates his crimes. And as you full well know, following blatantly illegal orders is absolutely no defense, and it is not like every illegal thing he did was explicitly ordered either.
Also, if you look at North’s testimony, he thought the Executive Branch could legally fund the Freedom Fighters in Nicaragua, without Congressional approval.
Regardless, we should be talking about IRS abuses, but Tom had to go off on Iran/Contra, suggesting since Rep’s had “scandals”, this one with the IRS is just fine. So much for “Hope and Change”.
If I recall correctly Congress passed a law that specifically said in effect Thou shalt not fund the contras. Not much ambiguity there.
You give Republican war heroes a free pass. No one else.
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you’re just whistling past a graveyard. The murmuring I’m hearing is the discomfort of real people who are greatly concerned about the IRS being used to punish enemies and curtail opposition. Saying that “other administrations have done worse” does not put pink in this rose. This was supposed to be the change-maker, not the embracer of all things done previously. And now the latest revelations concerning our phone and internet records. So call it “manufactured nonsense, if that helps you sleep at night. I’m not sure that it is, though. Even Bold Progressives is a tad upset with the Administration over the Verizon records.
I was referring to this IRS “scandal” when I wrote “manufactured nonsense”. I stand by that characterization. I’m not attempting to pink any rose, I’m flat out saying there is no “there” there. I think the IRS staffers did the right thing, actually, and I think the kerfuffle is just standard extremist babble.
The Verizon record issue is real, and I am dismayed by it.
and I am terrified that our centrist Democrat POTUS is defending it. If it were so honorable and valuable to national security why did he not speak to the American people about his public policy endorsement of undermining our freedoms/civil liberties?
POTUS has all the right words for a person who has continued to expand the powers of the executive branch….just as GWBush did before him at the expense of constitutional guarantees.
Anyone watch Hardball tonight? How can folks be posting about the absolutely boorish US Senate candidates and not fired up about this????
Hello, BMG if it were a GOP POTUS pulling this $hit, you’d be ALL over it.
Tom calls the Verizon scandle an “overreach” by Obama. Now, if this was George W. Bush, would Tom be calling it just an “overreach” or would my peeps on BMG be writing “Bush shredding The Constitution”, for example. At least Bush was interested in calls going to terrorists countries, not a guy like me, calling to order a pizza on my cell phone.
Poo-poo it all you want Tom, Obama is W to the tenth power, when it comes to govt intrusion of liberties.
He pointed out that there is oversight from both the legislative and judicial branches and insisted there was no content being of the calls being divulged. Also, several companies have denied cooperating. I do think there are legitimate questions and I for one would have felt better if they had just come out earlier and said this is what we are doing and why. People are more comfortable knowing and uncomfortable with secrecy and I don’t think this basic information helps our enemies. I will gladly admit to reacting less to Obama doing this compared to Bush because frankly at a basic level I trust Obama alot more than I did Bush. The other thing that the President pointed out is if they want to investigate specific calls they would have to go back to the judge and get a warrant.
Christopher, at least you are honest in your selective outrage. Well, if Obama can do it, then Ted Cruz can, if he is elected POTUS. Just don’t whine about it, when he does.
I don’t trust Cruz any farther than I can throw him. Fortunately, what I do trust is he will never be President so that will be a moot point.
The NSA is collecting, or has the ability to collect, the metadata for EACH AND EVERY cellphone call. This means that the NSA can, in essence, track the location of any individual who keeps a cellphone
turned on. That is pretty much everybody.
I concede that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly prohibit the government from secretly following an individual for years at a time with no court order required. On the other hand, I don’t think the framers of the Constitution anticipated that government would ever have the ability to do that to EVERYBODY.
That is what we see unfolding today.
In my view, this isn’t and shouldn’t be about “trust” of a particular President. Mr. Obama is, sadly, teaching us that government abuses of privacy conducted in the name of “security” transcend the politics and policy of any individual office holder.
I suggest that, for the first time since our founding, technology has rendered obsolete the very framework within which we derive our human and civil rights. I also suggest that attempts to preserve that framework and crowbar technology into it will necessarily fail.
Instead, I think we need to fundamentally re-examine what “privacy” means in the richly-connected information culture of today and tomorrow. I suggest that even the attempted separation of private business and government is problematic in these matters. As much as I dislike the federal government having detailed knowledge of where I go for years at a time, I am even more opposed to any private enterprise having that capability.
The US Constitution was, arguably, the culmination of a revolutionary intellectual process that began with the Magna Carta of 1215 — about five hundred years earlier. I think we are at the very beginning of another enormously significant revolution. We must reset, from first principles, our understanding of individual rights, government, national sovereignty, and business. I think that the generations of my children and grandchildren must address this — the best I can offer is to do all I can to empower them with the intellectual discipline, skills, and passion needed to create a workable outcome.
This exemplifies what I think our culture should be discussing (as opposed to the manufactured nonsense of the latest GOP “scandals”).
I guess on balance I’m not too concerned about being trackable through my cell phone. In fact, if anything were to happen to me (victim of crime, medical emergency) and I were alone I’d probably appreciate that capability.
So you don’t mind that government officials have the ability to know where you’ve been, day or night, in perpetuity?
It sounds to me like you don’t place much value on your individual liberty and privacy.
I can’t think of instances where I would much care nor do I see it as preventing me from carrying on with my life. Not for this reason, but my phone is off a lot more than it’s on and frankly I doubt the government is interested in my whereabouts as a matter of course. If we start playing the game of “but it could happen” we start sounding like the gun nuts who think they have to arm themselves to the teeth just in case the government turns into a tyranny.
I think the issues are essentially twins. If you’re bold enough to gather cell and internet data on everybody in the US, you’re bold enough to sic the IRS on the supporters of the opposition, and prevent new oppositional non-profits from emerging. Seriously. It’s not like there aren’t some pretty cute left leaning non-profits. Acorn comes to mind.
Joe Klein wrote in Time, 05/27/13 edition, that “The IRS’ targeting of Tea Party Groups, is, however, an actual full-blown scandal. In fact, it is several scandals.” I tend to agree with him.
I’m with Lawrence O’Donnell who has pointed out that if there is a scandal here, it’s that the IRS essentially rewrote the law sometime back to interpret the requirement that groups seeking 501c4 status be “exclusively” engaged in social welfare activities as “primarily” so engaged. None of these groups was ultimately denied their requests even though they probably should have been by strict interpretation of the law as actually written.
You continue to repeat the right-wing lie rather than the facts.
The IRS did not target “supporters of the opposition”. Nobody “sic’d” them on anybody. Instead, some low-level IRS staffers chose (correctly, in my opinion) to use Google keywords to identify groups that, in their opinion, were likely to be promoting tax evasion and/or improperly seeking no-tax status.
That has virtually NOTHING in common with violating the privacy of every American by creating the ability to, among other things, maintain a permanent record of individual movements over an arbitrary period of time.
I certainly hope you are able to distinguish between these to very different issues — whether or not you admit that ability here.
Story is getting better and better, isn’t it? With odd-timed IRS audits of Romney donors, voter suppression tactics by the IRS, now we have this nugget, I must say, Hollywood would only dream of such a script. Of course, the villain would be George W.
Former IRS chief Doug Shulman’s wife works with a liberal lobbying group, Public Campaign, whose goal is to reduce the role of big special interest in politics. A bulk of their cash donations come from labor unions and Moveon.org. Let’s audit all NFP with the words “pubic”, “labor” and “green”. What’s fair is fair, no?
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/31/former-irs-commissioner-shulmans-wife-works-for-liberal-group-fighting-open-campaign-spending/
Read above comment, wanted to include my title
The political leanings of an official’s spouse are irrelevant, and have been for decades — except among certain populations.
Wives vote. Wives own property, without their husband’s signature. Wives hold bank accounts. Wives take loans.
Jeesh.
who works for a conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. Next time a controversial case is before the SCOTUS, I sure hope nobody mentions a potential conflict of interest with Justice Thomas, b/c his wife works for a conservative group.
As you said above, it’s irrelevant. I got it.
Are you admitting that indeed there is a conflict of interest with Thomas and his wife?
Unless Christopher recently changed is tune on the issue. What say you, hrs-Kevin, on this issue? I believe in pillow talk and the influence of a spouse, and their opinions influencing his or her spouses decisions/actions. For instance, I was kinda of a liberal guy, until I met my wife, who is conservative. I admit, she changed me to become more moderate in my thinking, I don’t think I’m much different than most guys.
Thanks for that, Dan. I needed a good chuckle.
I think your record on this site would suggest otherwise … at least about the moderate part. About the liberal part, I’m happy to take your word.
When you offer something more substantive than “pillow talk” for the spouses of either Mr. Shulman or Ms. Thomas, then we can have a conversation about conflict of interest.
Failing that, it’s irrelevant.
I notice that you haven’t responded to my earlier comment providing a benchmark for a real versus manufactured “scandal”.
There’s no scandal here (just like there’s no scandal about Benghazi, Mr. Obama’s birth certificate, ACORN, or any other of the long list of Fox News lies) — which explains why Fox News is so eagerly hyping it.
I strongly suggest a different source for your talking points. Personally I’m with Lawrence O’Donnell who says the IRS should go back to enforcing the law as written requiring these organizations to operate “exclusively” rather than “primarily” as social welfare organizations to be eligible for the tax exempt status.
“Quite frankly I don’t even like the idea of his wife working for a place like the Heritage Foundation, reported or not. A Justice has to be completely neutral in both appearance and fact. I’m sure Heritage has filed its share of amicus briefs in SCOTUS over the years.”
Or this.
There’s still spousal conflict.
I’m in no way suggesting wives shouldn’t have professional lives and independent careers, just preferably not such that intertwine so closely with their husband’s judicial positions and that engage in a level of politics and ideology that justices themselves should stay away from. To be clear, I’d make the exact same complaint about husbands of women on the bench in the same situation.
Again, substitute IRS with judicial, and we have a conflict, Christopher.
Now guess who wrote those comments on BMG? Guess what, I agree with this person.
Substitute SCOTUS for Commissioner of the IRS, and a wife working for an organization that would like to destroy the Tea Party/tax exempt status of many conservative groups, do you still hold the same belief, or is that cement cracking from under your feet?
They look familiar and largely agreeable to me, but I would not be so quick to assume an equivalency between the IRS and the Supreme Court. I would hold the latter generally to a higher standard, but certainly an IRS employee should not take the case of an organization that employs his wife. Likewise Thomas should recuse himself of cases to which Heritage is a party.
Perhaps even higher than SCOTUS.
Those are your exact quotes regarding Clarence Thomas, don’t flip-flop on me now, I concur with them.
No IRS official is appointed for life. None. No Supreme Court Justice has EVER been removed from office (only one, Samuel Chase, was impeached — that was in 1804, more than two hundred years ago).
You can worship whatever federal offices you like. I think Supreme Court Justices should be held to a MUCH higher standard.
is not that WE are OK with Clarence Thomas’s wife working at Heritage, which files briefs before the Supreme Court all the time. It is that YOU – the conservatives – have insisted for years it’s no big deal. The same way you insisted there was nothing to see with audits of churches that supported John Kerry.
Can’t have it both ways. If it’s OK for conservatives, it’s OK for everyone else. If anyone’s flip-flopping, it’s the conservatives. But they’re good at it. They magically woke up on January 20, 2009 caring about deficits for the first time in eight years.
If the far right really cared about upholding the Constitution and defending the law they would go after Obama and Holder for their contemptuous violations of the sovereign rights of American citizens to be charged with a crime and tried by a jury of their peers before they are executed, they would also go after them for breaching the First Amendment and engaging in a massive and pervasive wiretapping operation of members of the press. Those are real scandals, those are real outrages. And yes progressive should be the first, and not the last to hit the President and his law breaking AG on those issues.
This manufactured IRS scandal is a bunch of BS to keep the Fox viewers entertained, it has as much legs as the ‘smoking guns’ of the SSA hoarding guns, Obama being Kenyan born, or Obama maliciously allowing Benghazi on purpose. As Connor Friesdorf pointed out, the President is actually killing Americans with robots and the far right conspiracy theorists are outraged over what again?
If you think Holder did something wrong regarding wiretapping, then write a separate post on it. Apparently, nobody, including myself, care enuff about it.
Sorry.
The right in fact praises President Obama for breaking the law and boosting tr Constitution and condemn him for not doing it more often. They only “care enuff” when it’s fake bullshit that allows them to claim their party is victimized when its policies continued to be enacted by this government to our mutual detriment. It’s really laughable when they call him a sinister mastermind and a wuss in the same report, they are right he is a weak and ineffective President but for entirely different reasons.
That your point, but wiretapping a Fox news reporter, that’s serious?
My understanding is that no “Tea Party” group was ultimately denied their application. Wiretapping a reporter (AP I believe rather than Fox) is more concerning to me because it impinges on the constitutional guarantee of a free press. OTOH there is no constitutional guarantee or right to be exempt from taxes.
Seriously, you don’t see what happened, the IRS apology not withstanding?
Well, all I can say is, if Ted Cruz becomes our next POTUS, and the IRS targets groups with the words “progressive” or “fair tax”, don’t be up in arms, in fact, expect it.
They weren’t weakened and they deserved the scrutiny. There was no political targeting and the IRS director I believe was a Bush holdover. If God forbid Ted Cruz became President and reciprosity is the order of the day, do we get to demand the birth certificate, since unlike the President he really was born out of the country?
…show me evidence that Obama used the IRS to target his opponents like Nixon did then we can talk.
When the Valerie Plame leak broke, Pres. George W. Bush insisted everybody in his administration and all government officials, to be forthcoming, cooperate, and tell the whole truth. W. said he would fire any aide involved in the leak.
I wish Obama would take a page from W., perhaps issuing similar instructions to government employees and his people, such as asking people in the IRS not to take the fifth, would be a good start. Instead, we get whining about not having a Democratic House on Wednesday. Talk about crying me a river, Christopher.
Scotter Libby never received a pardon from W., let’s hope Obama follows suit on the IRS scandal.
I’m glad he didn’t pardon, but the culture in that White House, albeit more Cheney than Bush maybe was poisonous. The President should not be asking IRS personnel to do anything either way; it is their lawyers’ job to give legal advice.
If the president cant ask people in high government positions, to tell the truth and come clean, rather, it’s up to their lawyers as you suggested, is bizarre, to say the least.
I am not asking Obama to climb Mt. Everest, or hike 50 miles, my goodness. I suppose this explains why he can’t get much done.
We don’t know that the IRS did not do keyword searches for groups using the word “progressive”. We do know that most of the groups that were targeted were not in fact Tea Party or conservative groups.
“At the same time the Internal Revenue Service was targeting tea-party groups, the tax agency took the unusual step of trying to impose gift taxes on donors to a prominent conservative advocacy group formed in 2007 to build support for President George W. Bush’s Iraq troop surge.”
Drip…drip…drip..
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324682204578517563566848922.html
…not that i would trust that paper. Newsflash, taxes are imposed by legislation not the IRS and it would be the recipients that would pay any gift tax, not the donors. Plus, are you really implying blame Obama for scrutinizing groups formed during the Bush presidency to advocate for a policy current then and not now?
In fact, the IRS are the victims in all this, right? I give up man, I am reminded of an old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you cant make it drink.
…is much ado about nothing:)
“In addition to targeting conservative-leaning nonprofit groups, in at least one case the Internal Revenue Service took the extra step of targeting a group’s donors as well, the Wall Street Journal reports:
At the same time the Internal Revenue Service was targeting tea-party groups, the tax agency took the unusual step of trying to impose gift taxes on donors to a prominent conservative advocacy group formed in 2007 to build support for President George W. Bush’s Iraq troop surge.
The probe of the group, Freedom’s Watch, began in the unit led by Lois Lerner, the IRS official already under scrutiny for her role in the more recent targeting of conservative groups.
While the IRS confirmed the existence of the gift-tax initiative in 2011, the identity of the group involved—as well as the affiliation of individual donors—remained a mystery.
Former officials of Freedom’s Watch say they believe all five of the IRS audits involved donors to their group, based on conversations with IRS agents and donors at the time of the audits in 2011.
***
In February 2010, the same month the tea-party targeting started, according to a recent inspector general’s report, Freedom’s Watch was subjected to an IRS audit that focused largely on its political activities, an uncommon but not unprecedented action, election lawyers say. The probe broadened into other areas, including executive compensation.
About a year later, as many as five donors to Freedom’s Watch were subjected to IRS audits of their contributions that sought to impose gift taxes on their donations to the group, according to lawyers and former officials of Freedom’s Watch.
Tax experts say that effort was highly unusual. The IRS generally hadn’t sought to impose the gift tax on donations to tax-exempt groups such as Freedom’s Watch in at least 20 years, perhaps longer, following an unfavorable court ruling and changes in the law by Congress, according to lawyers and IRS documents.
The IRS action “was kind of like a nuclear bomb going off,” said Rob Kelner, who heads the election-law practice at Covington & Burling LLP. “Although we always knew this was a possibility, it disrupted that long-standing understanding among election lawyers that this was an area where the IRS wasn’t likely to go.”
You are answering DFW’s points. DFW is responding with tangentially relevant stuff that answers neither you nor any questions you have posed. The result, even if it lacks the all caps and exclamation points of JohnD, is much akin to a shouting match held sotto voce.
Our diarist, by the way, often mixes metaphors:
It is, well, unusual for a voice to be wild-eyed or level-headed.
Also unusual for a President to be a socialist and an Islamist at the same time, a Kenyan and an Arab at the same time, a weak sissy and a devious mastermind at the same time, a wide eyed naive idealist and cynical corrupt Chicago operator at the same time, a destroyer of the Constitution who ties America’s hands behind it’s back because of it, etc.
I am just saying it’s more infuriating to me, since if you want to impeach Obama there are areas to investigate-the unprecedented AG press wiretaps and the drone attacks on US citizens. But to do that would open their entire gang to prosecution for it’s even more heinous crimes during the Bush administration. That’s whats hypocritical and frankly unreal coming from the party that shrouds itself in the flag, the Constitution, and liberty.
…but impeachment would not be in order. The AP wiretapping was low level bureaucrats and drones are a legitimate weapon of war.
The problem isn’t that drones exist, it’s that they’re being dropped on teenagers.
…he is drawing a contrast between those who are wild eyed and those who are level headed.
You might check out whether the mixed metaphor appears in some of these sources:
http://my.firedoglake.com/sjgulitti/2013/05/31/the-irs-scandal-and-the-false-hope-of-tea-party-revival/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/31/1212917/-The-IRS-Scandal-and-the-False-Hope-of-Tea-Party-Revival (tip jar has precisely two tips in it as I post)
http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_j_gulitti/2013/05/31/the_irs_scandal_and_the_false_hope_of_tea_party_revival
http://mnprogressiveproject.com/the-irs-scandal-and-the-false-hope-of-tea-party-revival/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MnProgressiveProject+%28MN+Progressive+Project%29
http://www.thisworldwelivein.com/2013/05/31/the-irs-scandal-and-the-false-hope-of-tea-party-revival/
And finally, my favorite blog: http://bluecitypoliticsandcommentary.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-irs-scandal-and-false-hope-of-tea.html which consists of nothing but links to salon.com.
Commenter after commenter has described it as “wiretapping” – it was not wiretapping, the DOJ did not listen in on phone calls to reporters. They obtained records of who called who, and how long they spoke – if you’ve ever watched Law and Order, they’re commonly referred to as LUDS, for local usage details. AP reporters were not wiretapped, please stop spreading this nonsense.
I got caught up in the vocabulary previously used by others – mea culpa.
It is still a massive breach of trust and governmet overreach into press activities. I am not criticizing the President from the right on this, if anything I am stating that his entire strategy for fighting terrorism has perverted his civil libertarian instincts. I’d have expected this from war supporting Clinton, but from the constitutional law professor who so eloquently defended civil
liberties in speech after speech during the campaign it’s a major disappointment.
Like that other academic turned President (Wilson) he has allowed his idealism about the righteousness of the greater cause to overwhelm his principles on smaller but still important principles. The fact that we are trying people under the Espionage Act, not utilized since Wilson, confirms the analogy.
And Christopher they won’t be for long, there was compelling testimony from
the scientific commnity against unmanned weapons this week in front of the UN Human Rights Commission this week that may stir up action there.
Are they effective? Do they harm our standing in the world? These and other questions must be asked. I’m just saying that citizenship should not be a protection for those battling us overseas. My own gut reaction is that targeted drone strikes to one person is preferable to carpetbombing or other methods that are much less discriminating.
Drones cause more civilian casualties than other methods, it’s part of the reason the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan have turned so hard against continued US military presence. We got bin Laden, true Al Qaeda is reduced to a few scattered groups and the ones popping up in Mali and Yemen have far more to do with agitation against local governments and lack the capability to hit the US homeland or it’s interests overseas. It is time for this war to finally end, it should’ve ended with the death of Bin Laden, time to bring all the troops home and let the Middle East and Near East determine it’s own destiny without US interference. You will be happily surprised when the number of American casualties and terror attacks go down. Let’s get peace and liberty back, our troops have definitely earned it for us.
The article you linked talks about collateral damage, which of course is unfortunate and valid to discuss. It does not appear to refute the point I was trying to make that it’s relatively targeted as opposed to carpetbombing Dresden or atomizing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That’s NOT what you said
You are implying that they are ‘targeted’ to one person and comparing them to ‘less discriminating’ methoods. Now you are arguing that they are not any worse than other methods. You can’t have it both ways. Either you are killing one targeted person or killing hundreds of people. And yes they cause as much collateral damage as ‘smart bombs’, ‘surgical strikes’ and any kind of bomb. And they are drastically destroying our image in the area and allowing extremists to have legitimacy. A good friend is a Karachi based journalist and it’s all her paper is talking about, Pakistani-Americans are quite upset about this as are Muslim-Americans in general and our ISAF allies, who by the way we do not consult about where, when, and who we are striking. Time to wrap it up.
And to refute your bottom point the Dali Lama has not been killed yet, one can argue, as Putin already has, that the actions against Chechens and dissidents are acts of counter terrorism as opposed to political assassinations.
I am not arguing any moral equivalency between Al Qaeda terrorists and dissidents or conversely between the legitimate counter terrorist efforts of our government and the illegitimate suppressions of oppressive regimes. I am arguing it’s going to get increasingly harder for us to make that distinction and claim our unilateral drone attacks are ethically or legally different. We just sanctioned world use of this technology, and not all the executed will be bad guys and not all the executors will be friendly.
…and I guess I did originally picture a drone as so targeted it zeroes in and hits only who was intended. Regardless my pushback was a reaction to what seemed to be the notion of OMG we are using a WEAPON in a WAR! I still don’t get the Dalai Lama reference. If he ever were killed by a drone or otherwise assassinated every sane government would have every right to object regardless of their record with bad guys because nobody in their right mind could ever call the Dalai Lama a bad guy.
If you’d been correct about that, then we’d be guilty of intentionally blowing up numerous weddings and funerals, killing and wounding lots of children and other innocent people in the process.
I will retract some hyperbole about the Dalai Lama. The PLA has probably had ample opportunity to assassinate him and has not since they know it would backfire and make him a martyr. In all honesty he has really given up on Free Tibet in his lifetime and has become a global human rights activists, the Chinese have appointed a different Dalai Lama in his place in Tibet and probably think he is no longer a threat.
My point was, there are dissidents overseas who will be killed by drones. They will likely be far more low profile than the Dalai Lama or the other names I mentioned, but they will be killed. They will be killed remotely, unilaterally, and in areas where their killers have no sovereignty. It will be very difficult for the US to wag it’s fingers and say that those actions are wrong, because the tactic has been legitimized. Curtis LeMay thought the atom bomb was just another weapon, he didn’t even think he needed authorization from the President to use it* in an active theater of war. These actions will have consequences, and the more we continue to pretend they don’t or place our blind faith in Brennan and this President to carry them out, the worse off we will be.
*Truman was incensed when LeMay bombed Nagasaki, LeMay assumed that Truman’s order to drop approved the use of the atom bomb in an active field of war, while Truman wanted authorization for each target. This incident is what led to the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission, he wanted the bomb to be in civilian hands. Even as SAC commander LeMay felt he had the authority to bomb whatever and wherever he pleased once the President said we were at war.
When the Dali Lama, Ai Weiwei, Boris Berezovsky, Mohamed Reza Aref, foreign leaders of the Syrian Transitional Council or the elected Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority die in drone attacks, you and the United States have lost the right to decry on humanitarian grounds the legitimization of high tech political assassinations.
If so I missed that memo, but I’m pretty sure he’d be far from an attack site. I think you’re starting to hyperventilate a little on this one.
I look at ALL the events within 5 miles of Cambridge on Meetup and Eventbrite every week for the weekly listings I do (http://hubevents.blogspot.com). There has been exactly one meeting of any Tea Party group that I’ve seen within the last couple of months.
I’d guess that an aggregator for events held at colleges and universities would miss a lot of Tea Party events that would be attended by an older crowd and held at places like VFW halls.
…and they are pretty much members only. North Shore, Worcester, Greater Lowell, Pioneer Valley, Seven Hills, Calvin Coolidge, Plymouth, Greater Boston, Jewish TEA Party of America, even a TEA Party Italia!
Most events and meetings are posted there rather than liberal-controlled sites like Meetup.
Given that tech leans heavily blue, a lot of things are going to be “liberal-controlled” in some way or other. Red Mass Group is still running on a liberal platform, for example.
I would hope that Meetup is not unfair to conservatives.
must have 5 conservative meetings in Massachusetts listed for every liberal group. I guess when you’re that tiny a minority it’s important to band together.
are forcing conservatives to exhaust themselves in a blizzard of meetings?
“The meetings will continue until morale improves”?
It just took 32 seconds to load this page on a fast Windows 7 machine using Firefox 21.0.
From the status bar, it looks like the BMG page loads spend a lot of time waiting for facebook and google status, and the wordpress load itself seems to take awhile.
The delay looks to be proportional to some mix of initial diary length and number of comments. I doubt that there’s enough traffic on this thread (off the front page) at 1:45p on a Tuesday afternoon to suggest that server load is a significant factor.
Just about all the threads load slowly now; some of them load VERY slowly. Two computers on different ISPs, same experience. To use technical terms, there’s too much crap on the site. Throw some of it out.
More evidence that the IRS might not have been too far afield in examining many of these conservative groups: “Red flags and gray areas in IRS scandal”; http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/irs-scrutiny-politics-92254.html
We live in a culture where the same corporations who own the House and significant portions of the Senate also own much of the media — particularly broadcast media whose already insipid “news” coverage is the primary information source for voters and consumers.
This “scandal” is about ratings and advertising revenue, not facts.
for harassment, I mean, audits. Why issue an apology, if they did nothing wrong? Why plead the fifth? Why did IRS personnel ask for transfers b/c they felt uncomfortable in the profiling?
The IRS focused on groups that have long and loud history of extreme anti-tax and anti-government fervor. The very fact that the IRS did NOT target groups who advocate IN FAVOR of paying higher taxes means that tax evasion, not liberal/conservative, was the motive.
Groups that advocate violence should expect attention from DoJ. Groups that advocate tax evasion should expect attention from IRS.
They, and you, should stop whining.
What do they have to do with taxes? Then being asked not to protest at abortion clinics by the IRS. Even Congressman Jim McDermott says the targeting was wrong.
So what you are saying, any group who believes in low taxes, balaced budgets, are to be harassed, but those who believe in redistribution of wealth, get a rubber stamp seal of approval, by you and the IRS. Why bother having a blindfold on Lady Justice?
Groups that advocate against taxes, and that describe the government’s attempts to raise and collect taxes as illegitimate and even illegal should expect attention from the IRS. Groups that advocate violence, especially in the context of extremist religious movements (for examples, hits that result from a keyword search for “muslim jihad martyr”) should expect attention from the DoJ.
By the way, the GOP has been leading the most dramatic “redistribution of wealth” seen in centuries — taking the wealth of the ninety-nine percent and “redistributing” it to the top one percent. As the dust settles after the 2008 housing collapse, where do you think the wealth that the ninety-nine percent had accumulated in their homes for past two decades (since the GOP-caused S&L crisis) landed? When you and your extremist ilk advocate “paying off the national debt”, who do you think pays, and who do you think receives, the resulting “redistribution”?
“Lady Justice” is doing just fine. In fact, it was former (Bush Administration) Attorney General John Ashcroft (ardently anti-busing anti-choice) who felt the need to cover her breasts. Apparently they were too erotic for his refined tastes.
Dan, as you perfectly well know, we simply don’t know what they searched for in most of these cases nor what groups were affected.
Why issue an apology? Because regardless of the intent, the IRS really needs to stay away from even the appearance of being politically partisan. And one would not want to leave the precedent that it would be ok for a future Republican president to order the IRS to target liberal groups.
Why plead the fifth? Apart from the obvious insinuation, one might do so in a situations exactly like this where you are afraid of being further dragged into a partisan witch hunt. Remember that “incriminating oneself” doesn’t necessarily mean that one has actually done anything wrong, only that you are afraid that investigators will treat it that way. In this case, it is crystal clear, that regardless of the truth behind the matter, the Republicans in Congress are going for blood.
If you believe that refusing to testify against yourself is evidence of guilt, then you are clearly not qualified to ever be a juror.
Of course, if Congress really wants to compel testimony, they can always grant immunity. However, I suspect they already know that this is not a genuine scandal and would rather continue to grandstand than conduct a genuine investigation.
Thank God he took the stand in his own defense, he answered back against the govt. prosecutor. Believe it or not, as we huddled, first person said guilty. I said absolutely not, took out my notes (yes, I took notes), and then a few women agreed with me, and after 60-90 minutes, he was a free man. Point is, if he didn’t take the stand, I may not have been able to save him.
Unfortunately with jurors, too many want to go home to catch the Red Sox, or get dinner started. I made it very clear I was willing to stay until the building closes, and come back the next day and day after. Trust me, you want someone like me on a jury
Is this whole Tea Party uproar just another tempest in a teapot? To wit: “The conventional shorthand for the IRS scandal is that employees “targeted” conservative groups for extra scrutiny in the applications for tax-exempt status. Except, as an inspector general’s report showed, it wasn’t just conservative groups that got extra scrutiny. Plenty of liberal groups had to produce extensive documentation answer dozens of questions, too.”
See “Liberal Groups Say They Received IRS Scrutiny Too”; http://www.npr.org/2013/06/19/193383914/liberal-groups-say-they-received-irs-scrutiny-too
It would appear from the latest news that there is now even less reason to believe that the IRS actions as they relate to the Tea Party groups will in anyway translate into something that will aid in the revival of this stalled movement. To wit, “The controversy that erupted in May has focused on an ideological question: Were conservative groups singled out for special treatment based on their politics, or did the I.R.S. equally target liberal groups? But a closer look at the I.R.S. operation suggests that the problem was less about ideology and more about how a process instructing reviewers to “be on the lookout” for selected terms was applied to any group that mentioned certain words in its application.”
See I.R.S. Scrutiny Went Beyond the Political; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/us/politics/irs-scrutiny-went-beyond-the-political.html?pagewanted=all
Findings:
1) “…intrusive inquiries and bureaucratic hassles that pointed to no particular bias but rather to a process that became too rigid and too broad. The lists often did point to legitimate issues: partisan political campaign organizations seeking tax-exempt status, or commercial businesses hoping to cloak themselves as nonprofit groups. But even I.R.S. officials say lookout list warnings were often pursued in a ham-handed or overly rigid way.”
2) “Two months of investigation by Congress and the I.R.S. has produced new documents that have clouded much of the controversy’s narrative. In the more complicated picture now emerging, many organizations other than conservative groups were singled out: “progressive” organizations, medical marijuana purveyors, organizations formed to carry out President Obama’s health care law, and open source software developers who create software tools for computer code writers and distribute them free of charge.”
3) “According to the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, the I.R.S. received 199,689 applications for tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012. In 2012 alone, the agency received 73,319, of which about 22,000 were not approved in the initial review process. The inspector general looked at 296 applications flagged as potentially being from political groups. That means most of the applications pulled aside for further scrutiny in those years had nothing to do with politics, conservative or liberal, just as most of the red flags thrown up by the I.R.S.’s lookout lists were not overtly political.”
Moreover even the participants on capitol Hill realize that they may be on a “wild goose chase” here as well. Congressman Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA) said of the whole process thus far: “It turns out this has been a gross distortion of reality.” Even some of the more reasonable Republicans involved have walked back the notion that the IRS had intentionally focused on conservative groups generally or Tea Party groups in particular. Quoting the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight Congressman Charles Boustany Jr. (R-LA): “We haven’t proved political motivation.” And Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said that in retrospect, “suggestions that Mr. Obama had orchestrated an I.R.S. attack on his political enemies were unwarranted.”
Just another example of how this entire Tea Party flap is nothing but a “tempest in a tea pot”, so to speak: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) says Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, Russell George, failed to disclose that his staff found no evidence of political motivation in scrutiny the IRS gave to some groups seeking tax exempt status even after sifting through thousands of e-mails of IRS employees: Top Dem: IRS inspector general withheld information from Oversight panel; http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/310643-top-democrat-irs-inspector-general-withheld-key-information
USA Today: IRS scandal becoming increasingly partisan; http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/07/14/irs-scandal-partisanship/2515857/
“Low-level IRS employees will be called to testify before a congressional committee this week, even as Democrats move to challenge the very basis of the investigation into the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups.”
By now who can take this Tea Party – IRS “scandal” too seriously: “The IRS political appointee at the epicenter of insinuations that the Obama White House directed the targeting of tea party groups never discussed the issue with the president, a spokesman for the tax agency told The Huffington Post.
Over the past few days, several news organizations have reported that William Wilkins, the IRS chief counsel, met with President Barack Obama in the White House two days before his office suggested new criteria for how the IRS should scrutinize groups applying for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. The stories implied that Wilkins had taken directives from the highest level of the administration before deciding to inappropriately screen tea party organizations.
But the IRS said no such discussion took place.
“On April 23, 2012, William Wilkins attended an inter-agency outreach meeting at the White House with the president and a range of senior-appointed officials from various government agencies,” IRS spokesman Bruce Friedland said. “No IRS matters or tax issues were discussed. Wilkins did not meet with anyone else at the White House that day.”
Separately, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told CBS News on Wednesday that there was “no evidence” that a political appointee had been involved in the IRS screening of tea party groups.”
See: New IRS Scandal Twist Disputed By Jack Lew; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/irs-scandal-jack-lew_n_3648170.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=072513&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry
Oh, how convenient. All those emails lost because of a computer crash.
“Emails whose sender or recipient was outside the government, or inside other agencies, have mysteriously disappeared.
Still nothing to see folks?