Tea party groups get major payout in lawsuit settlement with IRS
Still working for the Democratic Party: Tea party groups have settled their lawsuit with the IRS in which they will split a $3.5 million payout from the government agency for harassing them for their political beliefs.
The $3.5 million closely approximates the fines the IRS would have had to pay in damages for each intrusive scrutiny of tea party groups, had the agency been found in violation of the law. The money will be split with half going to the lawyers who argued the case and the other half to more than 100 tea party groups, which will get a cut of about $17,000 each.
Judge Michael R. Barrett called the settlement “fair, reasonable and adequate.”
The settlement doesn’t actually include an admission of wrongdoing by the IRS, though Mr. Greim and others said the payment is perhaps an even bigger mea culpa.
Meanwhile, the depositions in this suit by IRS managers Lois Lerner and Holly Paz remained sealed. Both are fighting to keep them from coming public, claiming unsealing them will put them at physical risk.
Yeah right. What I think unsealing these depositions will clearly show is how corrupt these two partisan hacks were in using the IRS to help the Democratic Party and to squelch the free speech of conservatives. This is what they don’t want the public to know.
Meanwhile, there remains no guarantee the IRS won’t do this again, mainly because the agency and its employees have generally gotten away with it. No one was fired. Many who participated in the harassment even got bonuses.
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 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
Still working for the Democratic Party: Tea party groups have settled their lawsuit with the IRS in which they will split a $3.5 million payout from the government agency for harassing them for their political beliefs.
The $3.5 million closely approximates the fines the IRS would have had to pay in damages for each intrusive scrutiny of tea party groups, had the agency been found in violation of the law. The money will be split with half going to the lawyers who argued the case and the other half to more than 100 tea party groups, which will get a cut of about $17,000 each.
Judge Michael R. Barrett called the settlement “fair, reasonable and adequate.”
The settlement doesn’t actually include an admission of wrongdoing by the IRS, though Mr. Greim and others said the payment is perhaps an even bigger mea culpa.
Meanwhile, the depositions in this suit by IRS managers Lois Lerner and Holly Paz remained sealed. Both are fighting to keep them from coming public, claiming unsealing them will put them at physical risk.
Yeah right. What I think unsealing these depositions will clearly show is how corrupt these two partisan hacks were in using the IRS to help the Democratic Party and to squelch the free speech of conservatives. This is what they don’t want the public to know.
Meanwhile, there remains no guarantee the IRS won’t do this again, mainly because the agency and its employees have generally gotten away with it. No one was fired. Many who participated in the harassment even got bonuses.
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 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
Did not Lois Lerner get very substantial bonuses from GWB?
Did not Lois Lerner get very substantial bonuses from GWB?
You mean Obama?
I have no idea what she got paid or what her role was under the Bush administration but she got big bonuses while carrying out Obama’s pogrom of persecution against political dissidents. Now if Bush had ordered her to do the things Obama ordered her to do, the bonuses she received under different administrations might be a valid comparison.
Thanks wodun! Yes, I mean GWB. She also got substantial bonuses from the Obama administration. I thought I remembered something about a comparison to GWB.
PS A friend’s non-profit organization had the authorization signed by Lois.
Could the persecution of tea party groups be considered campaign donations to their political opponents?
Can we please criminally prosecute the people who gave and received those donations?
Lerner was voted to be in contempt of Congress in 2014, but that was just a show-vote. The Obama DOJ determined they would not file an indictment and Speaker Boehner refused to follow up and do anything.
She currently collects her pension and will never, ever, be held accountable.
Blatantly illegal actions even un Constitutional actions taken by un elected government employee officials that specifically were designed to deny a citizen, many citizens of their Constitutionally guaranteed rights to free association and free speech, in the government officials pursuit of their chosen partisan political causes, and no consequences. Even when there is clear and unambiguous and self admitted evidence provided. Something that can not be unseen, the two political and legal realities. Not even an attempt at even a suggestion of responsibility, only defiance and a settlement ironically paying off those who’s rights have been violated with their own money! Its almost too funny.
This is a clear example of the Political realm exercising and abusing the power that they have been entrusted with and protecting those who operate within it, “Their own”. This is weaponized government and they are weaponized against the Public realm. They protect their own and they justify it by either talking themselves into thinking that they will no longer be able to operate if those within feel insecure, no matter what they do, OR They themselves will certainly be caught up in the whirl wind of justice eventually. I like the second choice myself, many are for sure all guilty of much of the same at some level at some point in time.
We will also see similar attempts to protect in the coming FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA abuses of power in their conspiracy to deny a private citizen their civil rights and then remove a duly elected president and deny the people who elected him their civil rights. The argument will be presented that “These are people who have sacrificed and were dedicated public servants for 20 years and 30 years, they deserve their pensions”. They love to exalt themselves into the sainted heavens, much like a very religious preacher who preaches against prostitution, and then it is revealed that all he does in his off hours is screws prostitutes, four a at time while swinging from a trapeze.
This is the nature of man related to power. Given and entrusted with power without real checks and balances with real consequences for illegal and abusive actions taken nothing else can result. It becomes an accepted culture where there becomes two legal realities, until someone comes along that has the will and determination to break that perverted and accepted culture of abuse of power model.
If that person comes along, a leader of vision and special abilities, and is able to accomplish this cleansing to a great degree then there remains hope. If not then there can be expected chaos, disruption and unrest. We wait to see which path we will be taking.
And it is the existence of the Constitution that is the ONLY thing that has the potential to distinguish America from all other great civilizations throughout history from the fate that eventually engulfed them. MAGA