Senate Democrats to the IRS: You’re our only hope!
Senate Democrats aren’t interested in fixing the campaign-finance system. They’re interested in getting the IRS to intimidate their opponents and fix their own electoral woes in the midterms.
More here. The Democrats are making it very obvious that they support the harassment of their opponents by the IRS.
Working for the Democratic Party: 100% of the 501(c)(4) non-profit groups audited by IRS were conservative.
Working for the Democratic Party: At House hearings this week witness after witness have recounted how the IRS harassment of conservatives continues.
“I want to make three primary points here today,” said Mitchell. ”First, the IRS scandal is real. It’s not pretend, it’s real. Number two, the IRS scandal is not just a bone-headed bunch of bureaucrats in some remote office contrary to what the President of the United States told the American People on Sunday. And, number 3, the IRS scandal is not over. It is continuing to this day. And the Department of Justice Investigation is a sham. It is a nonexistent investigation.”
The article also notes that Obama’s claim that there is not a “smidgen of corruption” about this scandal is a lie, especially since the IRS began this story by admitting it had acted improperly in targeting conservatives, and had made this admission after the then IRS head had told Congress that no improper targeting had taken place. (In other words, he lied in sworn testimony to Congress.)
More information about this week’s on-going IRS hearing in the House can be found here. I have also posted below the fold some of the testimony of Cleta Mitchell and Catherine Engelbrecht. Watch it. Their description of the government attacks on conservatives is quite horrifying.
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“I will not retreat. I will not surrender. I will not be intimidated, and I will not ask for permission to exercise my constitutional rights.”
The words of one conservative who was harassed by the IRS and the Obama administration merely because she opposed them politically. Her most recent action? She is filing a formal complaint against Democrat Congressman Elijah Cummings for joining in on that harassment.
The IRS harassment of conservatives continues.
The massive abuse of government power by the Obama administration against their conservative opponents nationwide makes anything done in New Jersey by Chris Christie’s underlings seem petty and inconsequential.
“I think it was a sham from the beginning.”
And what might that sham be? If your first thought is of the Obama administration’s investigation into the IRS scandal, you’d be right on the money!
The Obama administration closed the investigation without interviewing any of the victims of the harassment by the IRS.
Meanwhile, the administration as well as the Democrats in Congress are working hard to codify that harassment, so that the IRS can continue to work for the Democratic Party through the 2014 election.
Seven months after the IRS scandal broke, the FBI has finally contacted some of the conservative groups that were harassed by the tax agency.
“After seven months of no contact from federal investigators, a small number of our clients recently received a request for an interview from the FBI,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice, which represents more than three dozen groups.
He said the clients were evaluating FBI’s request but were troubled by the revelation of Ms. Bosserman’s political leanings. “This development creates a serious conflict of interest and raises more questions and doubts about the Obama administration’s promise to get to the bottom of what happened,” he said.
The last paragraph refers to the fact that Barbara Bosserman, the person named by Obama to lead the FBI investigation, is also a big time donor to Obama’s campaign. The conservative groups have very legitimate reasons not to want to talk to the FBI under these circumstances, as anything they say might instead be used against them by this very partisan use of government power.
We must once again contrast how Obama has dealt with this admitted misuse of government power with that of Chris Christie. Tells us a great deal about Obama, doesn’t it?
More than eight months after an outraged President Obama said he would get to the bottom of the IRS harassment of conservatives, we finally find out who is heading his investigation: a big name Democratic Party donor.
“By selecting a significant donor to President Obama to lead an investigation into inappropriate targeting of conservative groups, the Department has created a startling conflict of interest. It is unbelievable that the Department would choose such an individual to examine the federal government’s systematic targeting and harassment of organizations opposed to the President’s policies. At the very least, Ms. Bosserman’s involvement is highly inappropriate and has compromised the Administration’s investigation of the IRS,” Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday. “We request that you immediately remove Ms. Bosserman from the ongoing investigation.”
In other words, Obama and his administration are stonewalling, which strongly suggests that they had everything to do with approving and directing this harassment of their political opponents.
Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS is now harassing the insurance broker who has helped people losing their insurance under Obamacare.
The man received a visit from a Treasury Department Inspector General who demanded personal information about the cancer patient the broker was helping. When this information was refused, the official instructed the broker
to resolve the issue with the IRS immediately, and that if he did not, “you may be visited again by other IRS representatives in your home and we do reserve the right to garnish your wages and lien your assets.”
How nice. Obey the orders of the Obama administration or they will use the IRS to destroy you.
Note also that this harassment is going on right now, six months after the scandal was revealed and Obama claimed he was outraged by it and would put a stop to it. He lied. As he revealed recently in his interview on MSNBC, he sees nothing wrong with this harassment.
I just realized that my post above left out one important detail: The cancer patient had appeared on Fox to describe how he had lost his health insurance because of Obamacare. Almost immediately thereafter both he and his broker received audit notices from the IRS.
Why is the IRS regulating political activity at all?
The answer is that many Democratic politicians and progressive activists think new rules limiting political speech by nonprofits will benefit Democrats politically. Stymied by judicial decisions restricting direct government regulation of political speech, and by a Federal Election Commission whose bipartisan makeup prevents Democratic commissioners from forcing through partisan rules on a party-line vote, these politicians and activists have decided to dragoon the IRS into doing their work.
More precise terms to describe this kind of behavior are fascists and jack-booted thugs.
Obama tells Chris Matthews what he really thinks of the IRS harassment of conservatives.
[Y]ou’ve got an office in Cincinnati, in the IRS office that — I think, for bureaucratic reasons, is trying to streamline what is a difficult law to interpret about whether a nonprofit is actually a political organization deserves a tax exempt agency. And they’ve got a list, and suddenly everybody’s outraged.
I seem to remember Obama himself expressing outrage to the press soon after the scandal broke and promising an investigation. Obviously, he lied about his outrage. He also lied about the investigation, since it is now more than six months later and the so-called investigation has yet to contact any of the victims of the IRS harassment.
Gee, he seems to lie a lot, doesn’t he? I also wonder if he has any outrage over the IRS’s auditing of that cancer patient and his insurance agent soon after the patient appeared on Fox criticizing Obamacare. I suspect not.
The FBI has been stonewalling the House investigation into the IRS scandal.
Obama claimed he was outraged by this scandal and would hunt down the perpetrators. He lied of course. He instead apparently told the FBI to block all investigations wherever possible.
Finding out what’s in it: A mother with multiple sclerosis has lost her health insurance because of Obamacare.
She will likely face an IRS audit now as well, since she has gone public with her story. Can’t have these little people speaking bad of our great leader.
Working for the Democratic Party: A cancer patient who went on Fox to talk about how Obamacare has made him lose his health insurance is now being audited by the IRS.
Another way to describe this despicable behavior by the Obama Administration and the IRS is that they are fascist, jack-booted thugs. But that would be uncivil of me, even if it is entirely accurate.
Update: The insurance broker who saw the Fox news report and then helped the cancer patient keep his insurance is now also being audited.
Working for the Democratic Party: The Obama administration yesterday proposed outlawing political speech by any non-profits.
The IRS would enforce these new rules, which would make official the harassment of conservatives that the IRS did during the run-up to the 2012 election. Though they claim these rules would apply to all political groups, you and I know that they will likely use these rules selectively to squelch the speech of the administration’s opponents.
If you have any doubt, consider the selective manner in which the National Park Service enforces its laws. The leftist Occupy movement was allowed to do whatever it liked during its protests, despite being in clear violation of the law, but veterans were blocked from visiting open-air national monuments during the government shutdown in October.
This decision by the Obama administration also reveals Obama’s total support for that IRS harassment of conservatives. He liked it, and now wants to make it official. Moreover, the failure of his so-called investigation into the IRS scandal to contact any of the groups harassed, even after six months, tells us again that President Obama actually supported the harassment and is acting to stonewall the investigation.
Working for the Democratic Party: Newly released emails provide more evidence that IRS official Lois Lerner was lying when she said the IRS scandal was confined to the low-level employees in Cincinnati.
An IRS official blasted Lois Lerner for her attempt to blame the agency’s targeting scandal on low-level employees in Cincinnati, according to newly released emails. “Cincinnati wasn’t publicly ‘thrown under the bus’ (but) instead was hit by a convoy of Mack trucks,” wrote Cindy Thomas, former director of the IRS exempt organizations office in Cincinnati, in a May 10, 2013 email to Lerner obtained by the House Ways and Means Committee.
Thomas wrote the email on the very day that the IRS targeting scandal broke when Lerner, a senior agency official based in Washington, D.C., admitted that her exempt organizations division engaged in improper targeting of conservative groups.
The truth was that the low-level employees in Cincinnati were getting their orders to harass conservatives from high up the chain in Washington.
The House committee investigating the IRS scandal issued a new subpoena yesterday.
In reading the article, it is very clear to me that the Democrats and the Obama administration are stonewalling the House committee, and that the so-called bi-partisan report being prepared in the Senate is likely to be a whitewash.
Working for the Democratic Party: IRS official Lois Lerner illegally provided private tax information to other government agencies.
A conservative government watchdog says it has obtained emails revealing that the Internal Revenue Service sent conservative groups’ private tax exemption application and tax return information to the Federal Elections Commission, in violation of federal law.
According to Judicial Watch, the emails from Jan. 2009 to the present, provided by the FEC in response to an August 2013 Freedom of Information Act request, yielded a “revealing email chain” between former Internal Revenue Services (IRS) Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner and enforcement attorneys at the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Working for the Democratic Party: Not only did Sarah Hall Ingram illegally share confidential taxpayer information with White House officials, she met with White House officials 165 times.
Of Ingram’s 165 White House meetings with White House staff, a staggering 155 of them were hosted by deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew, according to a June Watchdog.Org analysis of White House visitor records. Ingram exchanged confidential taxpayer information with Lambrew and White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
I notice that Obama’s so-called outrage over the IRS scandal has not caused him to remove Hall as the person in charge of the IRS’s implementation of Obamacare.
Working for the Democratic Party: Sarah Hall Ingram, now in charge of administrating Obamacare for the IRS, not only advised the White House on how to harass conservative organizations, her emails appear to have illegally included confidential tax information.
And just remember: This woman is now in charge of managing the IRS department that will implement Obamacare, giving her access to everyone’s health and tax records. If you say something that she (or Obama) doesn’t like, don’t be surprised if those records end up in the hands of Obama, to use against you.
Gee, maybe this explains why the Democrats have been willing to even shut down the government to get Obamacare up and running.
