Another legal case that could blow the IRS open
The lawsuit of a pro-Israeli organization, filed in August 2010, makes the IRS extremely vulnerable to deep legal investigation.
[Y]esterday saw the beginning of the discovery phase in the lawsuit by Z-Street a pro-Israel organization that was told its application for tax exempt status was being delayed because “…these cases are being sent to a special unit in the DC office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.” …
Judge Jackson gave the IRS until June 26 to respond to Z-Street. That deadline has now passed, so the case enters discovery. This means that Z-Street can subpoena IRS officials, place them under oath, and ask them questions about how they acted, and cross examine them closely. They can also subpoena documents and require their production. This is much different than a House committee hearing in which members have only a few minutes to ask questions, and when friendly Democrats have their opportunity to apologize for the impertinence of daring to ask questions of our IRS masters. Depositions taken under oath can last many hours and involve detailed questions.
What makes the Z-Street case unique and potentially extremely damaging is that its lawsuit was filed in August 2010. That filing placed the IRS under legal obligation to preserve records.
As the article notes, as a legal proceeding it will be practically impossible for the IRS to stonewall, as it has done during Congressional hearings. Like the Judicial Watch case that will have a hearing on July 10, the IRS was required under the law to make sure evidence was not destroyed, and failed to do so. And like that case, the court will have the right to demand answers about that failure and get them.
I want to underline the basis of the Z-Street case: An IRS official admitted that this organization’s tax exempt status was being delayed merely because its “activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.” Think about that. The IRS believes it can decide your tax liability and status based on your political opinion.
Doesn’t that capture in a nutshell the entire scandal, in which the IRS was used as a weapon to harass opponents of the Democratic Party and specifically of Barack Obama.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The lawsuit of a pro-Israeli organization, filed in August 2010, makes the IRS extremely vulnerable to deep legal investigation.
[Y]esterday saw the beginning of the discovery phase in the lawsuit by Z-Street a pro-Israel organization that was told its application for tax exempt status was being delayed because “…these cases are being sent to a special unit in the DC office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.” …
Judge Jackson gave the IRS until June 26 to respond to Z-Street. That deadline has now passed, so the case enters discovery. This means that Z-Street can subpoena IRS officials, place them under oath, and ask them questions about how they acted, and cross examine them closely. They can also subpoena documents and require their production. This is much different than a House committee hearing in which members have only a few minutes to ask questions, and when friendly Democrats have their opportunity to apologize for the impertinence of daring to ask questions of our IRS masters. Depositions taken under oath can last many hours and involve detailed questions.What makes the Z-Street case unique and potentially extremely damaging is that its lawsuit was filed in August 2010. That filing placed the IRS under legal obligation to preserve records.
As the article notes, as a legal proceeding it will be practically impossible for the IRS to stonewall, as it has done during Congressional hearings. Like the Judicial Watch case that will have a hearing on July 10, the IRS was required under the law to make sure evidence was not destroyed, and failed to do so. And like that case, the court will have the right to demand answers about that failure and get them.
I want to underline the basis of the Z-Street case: An IRS official admitted that this organization’s tax exempt status was being delayed merely because its “activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.” Think about that. The IRS believes it can decide your tax liability and status based on your political opinion.
Doesn’t that capture in a nutshell the entire scandal, in which the IRS was used as a weapon to harass opponents of the Democratic Party and specifically of Barack Obama.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I have a feeling the IRS will settle and pay damages rather than allow the truth to come out, especially because the taxpayers will foot the bill.
I guarantee to you that Judicial Watch is not going to settle its suit. They don’t do these suits for the money, but to uncover government corruption. They have the resources to take this to the limit, and will relish doing so.
Where are we on this time line proposed by Alexander Tyler when we have such offences going on like the IRS and the many, many more that this administration seems to be so determined to press to the hilt? Can we be aware of the pitfalls of a Democracy and rewrite the ending? Can that cycle be broken?
In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the
University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the
Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: “A democracy is always
temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent
form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until
the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous
gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from
the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally
collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a
dictatorship.”
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the
beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200
years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.”
The Obituary follows:
AMERICA……………….Born 1776, Died 2012
It doesn’t hurt to read this several times.
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in
St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning
the last Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory
McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens
of the country.
Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low
income tenements and living off various forms of government
welfare…”
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
“complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of
democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population
already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million
criminal invaders called illegal’s – and they vote – then we can say
goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
Good thought provoking analysis, Cotour- so good I credited you while copying much of the information to my notes.
Just to clarify, I did not write that piece, it was sent to me in an email and I copied it to this site. I appears to be a reasonable analysis based on my knowledge of history and my understanding of the human animal.
Are we destined to go through the cycle or can we break the cycle? We are certainly very close to finding out the answer to that question in the coming months? Years?
I hate to say it, Cotour, but before I passed it along to some of my friends, I found on Snopes that it is “mostly false”:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp
It seems that the election statistics are bogus — Professor Olson denies writing them — and no one knows who to attribute the quotes or the cycle to. For many years, I have used the part about a democracy surviving until the population votes to overspend its treasure.
Of course, we are a republic, rather than a democracy, and it is the fiduciary responsibility of our representatives to not overspend. It looks like ours have failed at the most important part of their job.
I like best the part of the cycle that says liberty leads to abundance, as it is a free people who are most willing to be productive.
If it is in fact a creature of the internet I apologize, I did not look any further than my own screen. That is the price for posting something without doing your due diligence. I have been fooled before although I am in general more cautious.
That being said I find the stated stages of a civilizations cycle to be a reasonable estimation of that cycle and you can not argue that we seem to be on that road and I still ask, understanding that we are a Republic and not a pure Democracy: If we can understand the cycle are we able to through our unique Constitutional structure to avoid the pit falls of the stated cycle?
I post here a Wiki entry related to the alleged Tytler (apparently they also misspelled his last name) quote and he seems to be in very good company having being lumped in with Alexis de Tocqueville.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tyler
As for the numbers I have not looked into them at all and suspect that they would be the main illustrative purpose of the piece (true or manufactured) being tied together with the quotes. I consider myself re-instructed on this item and look to improve my postings in the future.
PS: I am currently in a conversation with, as I have described him, a high priest in the Global warming / Climate change / Climate disruption religion. I have presented him with many examples of false information, false data, and just plain IMO self interested convenient interpretation of human activity and its effects, much of it from this web site. And time after time he Poo-Poo’s everything I present and calls it all a misinterpretation and obfuscation of the actual facts and points out that much of the information is fraudulent and all manufactured in order to support a position and that “he” understands how to interpret. I think he is a bit of an “elite” thinker and a bit of an Al Gore Kool Aid drinker (he met him you know and he’s really a nice guy. Although I do not get the correlation. Maybe its me.)
My conclusion: The internet a most powerful tool of information and communication and it can be used to disseminate information and disinformation. Let us not be naive.
“… all manufactured in order to support a position and that ‘he’ understands how to interpret. I think he is a bit of an “elite” thinker and a bit of an Al Gore Kool Aid drinker (he met him you know and he’s really a nice guy. Although I do not get the correlation. Maybe its me.)”
Is your friend a scientist/engineer/statistician/technical type? If not, he may not have the background to interpret data. Naturally, Gore (a politician, but what politician would tell a lie?) wouldn’t manufacture any false data, even if it *did* result in his immense fortune (he did better on global warming than the Koch brothers did on denial — Gore made money, the Kochs paid money — but don’t let facts get in the way of a good tyrannical takeover of the world where the Al Gores get to rule).
Maybe his opinion is based upon hero worship, or he may also have come under the delusion that the seriousness of the consequences demands that something must be done, just in case:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=12914
“Because a Venusian invasion could happen, and that if it did the world would be destroyed, we should protect against it, right? Because a black hole might meander our way, and that if it did the world would be destroyed, we should protect against it, right? Because nanobots could turn nasty, and that if they did the world would be destroyed, we should protect against them, right?
“You could go on endlessly listing potential Judgment Days, but in none of them are the scenarios of destruction evidence in favor of their occurrence.”
(We have kind of drifted from the original topic of the IRS cover-up, but both topics are about a tyrannical takeover of the US.)
My friend is an environmental lawyer (there’s your first problem) and he has a science / physics degree. To be honest with you he is not doing well in his attempt to explain away my observations and skepticism, as per my experience he tends to call people disparaging names, everyone else is nuts and is unable to properly understand. Like I said, maybe its me.
He may in fact be reading this, he does check into this site here and there. If he has read this thread he will know who I am talking about.
There is so much BS flying around that it has become more of a competition between self interested party’s then a search for the truth. And my rule is, the more a politician insists on something being true you can bet it is definitely a lie X’s 2. You can take that to the bank.
“he tends to call people disparaging names, everyone else is nuts and is unable to properly understand. Like I said, maybe its me.”
Don’t worry, you probably are a disparaging name, and nuts to boot. On the other hand, when everyone else is nuts, maybe the person who really is nuts is the only one who isn’t.
Although the degree helps, it is when you actually have had to interpret test/experimental results and come up with the right answer to make something work that you really learn about science, engineering, and data. It is all theoretical up to that point.
Then again, the cost of mitigation may be greater than the cost of dealing with the problem as it happens (assuming that it does, after all, the next ice age is only millennia away):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heamMWFQ_qY (1-1/2 hours, Christopher Monckton on the cost of climate change)
Of course, your friend won’t believe a word of it, because it disagrees with his worldview.
Everyone develops their intuitive interpretation of information and we formulat what reality will look like based on that intuitive interpretation.
If I were to tell you that a man could be knocked off of his bicycle by a truck and fall onto a mattress from that same truck and walk away from the incident your understanding of how things work might tell you that that would not be likely to happen if not impossible.
http://youtu.be/0ZxcGwIgJsc
And then after you witness the evidence you might consider rearranging your interpretation. What happens with climate change is that the future can be interpreted as being an unknown divided by different lengths of time and multiplied by the political agenda that grows around it, where now all realities can live and thrive until they are proven to be true or not true. And that moment can be eternally reinterpreted and put off. Which is not to say that we do not need to clean up the way things are done.
Ah, but you used an example that already occurred, so the likelihood that it happens is 100%.
Climatologists are creating models that say that something will happen, but then it doesn’t, so the likelihood that it happens is 0%.