Email proves Obama administration targeted opponents for harassment by the IRS
Working for the Democratic Party: An email from an IRS agent, recently uncovered by lawyers representing tea party groups in a class action lawsuit, clearly shows that the Obama administration targeted for harassment conservative groups, based solely on their party affiliation.
[T]he April 1, 2011, email from Elizabeth C. Kastenberg, an official in the agency’s exempt organizations division, says it was explicitly the organizations’ politics that landed them on the target list. “These cases are held back primarily because of their political party affiliation rather than specifically any political activities,” Ms. Kastenberg wrote in an alert to other IRS employees, including her supervisor.
Edward Greim, the attorney for NorCal Tea Party Patriots and hundreds of other groups that are part of the class-action lawsuit, said that was a major admission. “What Kastenberg was saying was they have all different activities, and so there’s no ‘political activities’ that cut across this group. Instead, it’s really their political party affiliation they have in common,” he said. [emphasis mine]
In other words, the IRS decided to demand inappropriate information from these Republican organizations, merely because they were Republican, contradicting utterly the claim by the agency that they were only checking to make sure that these groups, based on their activities, should get non-profit status.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Working for the Democratic Party: An email from an IRS agent, recently uncovered by lawyers representing tea party groups in a class action lawsuit, clearly shows that the Obama administration targeted for harassment conservative groups, based solely on their party affiliation.
[T]he April 1, 2011, email from Elizabeth C. Kastenberg, an official in the agency’s exempt organizations division, says it was explicitly the organizations’ politics that landed them on the target list. “These cases are held back primarily because of their political party affiliation rather than specifically any political activities,” Ms. Kastenberg wrote in an alert to other IRS employees, including her supervisor.
Edward Greim, the attorney for NorCal Tea Party Patriots and hundreds of other groups that are part of the class-action lawsuit, said that was a major admission. “What Kastenberg was saying was they have all different activities, and so there’s no ‘political activities’ that cut across this group. Instead, it’s really their political party affiliation they have in common,” he said. [emphasis mine]
In other words, the IRS decided to demand inappropriate information from these Republican organizations, merely because they were Republican, contradicting utterly the claim by the agency that they were only checking to make sure that these groups, based on their activities, should get non-profit status.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
One subtle but important correction: the organizations were targeted not because they were Republican, but because they were Tea Party, .
The Tea Party actively promoted many things that the Republicans have long claimed to support, but actually don’t. This made the Tea Party a bigger threat to the Republicans than to the Democrats, and the Republicans were happy to have them bullied by the IRS.
I’m not optimistic that anything substantial will come out of this, and in any case the damage has already been done. I wish the Tea Party had been able to build on their momentum; they could have cleaned out many more RINOs than they actually did, and we could have made huge reforms by now.
Excelllent point – you beat me to it.
One other item is to see where this block buster story was in the national news last night. On CBS I think I was in the second half or later of the broadcast.
Sad the IRS has more power than the USG. Has any IRS leader ever gone to jail? We seem to have a government gone amok.
And I have people arguing with me that there is no such thing as “The Political Realm”.
Lerner and others plainly used their agency, the most feared agency in America, and its power as a political weapon for the benefit of their own political party. That is a classic example of abuse of power, I am hard pressed to think of a more overt and egregious one.
And what is the end result? An apology.
I suppose the political realm decided that it would be more disruptive to the bureaucracy if Lerner was prosecuted. It seems that “disruption” somewhere is the prime mover in these considerations to prosecute or not. Would real justice be done if the people became a real disruptive force to the existence of the government?
A timely example given today’s information dump: Gerald Ford admits to changing the trajectory of the bullet in the official report on JFK for the same reason, did not want to upset the people with actual facts and evidence. Think about that for a moment.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/03/us/ford-made-key-change-in-kennedy-death-report.html
Learner and Ford are but two glaring examples of how the empowered within government and political realm have changed and shaped the “truth” and have abused their power and what the people get to know (Certainly for our own good). Something to reflect on because the implications run deep through out our history specifically. Lots of commissions investigating events, lots of bureaucracy doing what they subjectively believe should be happening to serve their own political affiliation. Actual truth becomes a fleeting thing.
So I ask the question, does the political realm exist? Wait and see what if anything happens to Clinton and her associates.
Truth lies only in mathematics and physics and not in the words of man.
I’m unclear– are these emails from the government email system, or from the Gmail accounts everyone had?
Cotour-
…what?
Ref JFK….. oh my gosh, down the Rabbit Hole.
On a more contemporary note, what is the deal, with the alleged ‘hero security guard’ in LV? Who is this guy, and why can’t we know what he did?
Back to Hillary— as much as I want her in a State prison, I have zero faith anything will be done.
“It feels good to be a Clinton”
https://youtu.be/FECIYlo3KRY
0:58
Down the rabbit hole?
Did you not know that Ford changed the coroners report? Just facts, no rabbit hole.
>completely down the rabbit hole.
Tangentially, the National Archive did a large document dump in July. Nobody cared about those, but the October release is “special?”
…Manufactured Controversy.
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/2017-release
“The July release consists of 3,810 documents, including 441 formerly withheld-in-full documents and 3,369 documents formerly released with portions redacted.”
>Today’s scheduled release is supposed to be up today sometime.
Please explain “Down the rabbit hole” in the context that you mean.
Do you think that changing the trajectory of a bullet that killed the president is of no consequence?
Cotour and Wayne: I do not the discussion here to shift from the actual present-day scandals of the Clintons to conspiracy theories about a president’s assassination a half century ago. Philosophically there might be a connection, but the issue of importance now is the Clintons, Obama, and the corruption they were engaged in.
I apologize for my participation.