IRS Scandal | Reality Bats Last

Take just two minutes and watch Bill Murray demonstrate the IRS technic for judging applicants for tax-exempt status. Click here.

If Bill Murray were to later testify before Congress, and if he behaved as the IRS officials and their apologists have behaved, he would say that there was no real bias in his judgments. None at all.

It is clear that the powerful leftist union that runs the IRS has the same sense of fair play that Murray demonstrated. It is also clear that many Democrat leaders openly suggested that “tea party” types should be targeted.

On many occasions, President Obama made it clear that the “tea-baggers” were his enemies. On the campaign trail, Obama said, ”…we’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends”. He said, “voting is the best revenge”. Targeting conservatives with IRS intimidation and targeting Fox News reporters are two other forms of ‘revenge’. Are we now Venezuela?

In a story that broke last night, Kimberley Strassel reported on a 2008 Obama campaign strategy that was a precursor to using the IRS directly as a campaign tool. Read it all here. An excerpt:

The Bauer onslaught was a big part of a new liberal strategy to thwart the rise
of conservative groups. In early August 2008, the New York Times trumpeted the
creation of a left-wing group (a 501(c)4) called Accountable America. Founded by
Obama supporter and liberal activist Tom Mattzie, the group—as the story
explained—would start by sending “warning” letters to 10,000 GOP donors, “hoping
to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” The letters would
alert “right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal
trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.” As
Mr. Mattzie told Mother Jones: “We’re going to put them at risk.”

Strassel wrote another great column a few days ago entitled, “The IRS Scandal Started at the Top”. If you missed it, you can read it here.

Peggy Noonan also has an informative column here. An excerpt:

All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The purpose, obviously, was to overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, question by question and audit by audit.

It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved.

The man who reads the teleprompter says he wants to “get to the bottom of this”. He is just pretending to be angry. Behind the curtain, he is the bottom of this.

This is a woman we will need to learn much more about in the coming weeks. Sarah Hall Ingram is a highly valued employee at the IRS. In the last three years she has received $103,390 in bonuses for her excellent work. She was the Commissioner of the Tax-Exempt and Government Entitles Division. Under her leadership, groups that expressed a fear of large, out-of-control government were systematically crushed by her branch of our large, out-of-control government. They were specifically singled out for harassment for political reasons. Secret information about the conservative applicants was leaked to leftist opposition groups to facilitate further harassment.

This was an organized political operation using State power to silence opposition voices. It is part of every tyrant’s playbook. It tells you everything you
need to know about the current state of our country to see that those who favor
a limited government, the explicit goal of our founding documents, are now considered enemies of the State.

In a 2009 speech, Ms. Ingram explained her approach:

“As a practical matter, we cannot subject every application for tax-exempt status to a painstaking, leave-no-rock-unturned review. Nor can we audit every organization’s 990 every year. Nor would you want us to do so, right? To govern is to choose, and we must choose appropriately which applications or 990s to focus most attention on.”

It is clear now that by “choose appropriately”, she meant to harass the limited-government groups endlessly and let liberal and Islamic groups sail right through the approval process.

The good news is that this woman is no longer in charge of that department. The bad news is that she has been promoted and is now the head of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office. She and her comrades could have access to all your medical records. They will “choose appropriately” who has trouble with the State controlled medical system and who sails right through. They will decide if it is appropriate to share your medical history with others.

But don’t worry. I heard the outgoing IRS Commissioner say in hearings this morning before Congress that he has reviewed the situation and found that there was “no partisanship” in the years-long practice of singling out conservative groups for IRS harassment. None at all. There is just no reason to think that specifically targeting one side of the political spectrum had anything to do with politics.

And when Commissioner Steven Miller was asked why conservative groups were targeted for prolonged scrutiny, he said that it just happened because people were trying to be efficient. Sure. Months and months of delays with endless demands for more paperwork is the efficient way to go.

Miller was forced to admit that secret information gathered from certain conservative groups was passed along by the IRS to the conservatives direct political opposition. So the IRS illegally gathered information and illegally passed it along for political reasons. Mr. Miller said that these actions were “inadvertent”.

There is more evidence of direct lies from IRS officials in Kevin Williamson’s column, “The Nine Lies of Lois Lerner”. One thing we learn from Williamson’s article is that the current campaign by some officials to act surprised and disappointed by the news of IRS criminality is just a scam to deflect their own culpability. Everyone knew the Inspector General’s report on the IRS was about to be released. The IRS needed to jump ahead of the report and act concerned. They were not concerned for years prior to being caught.

UPDATE – Jeffrey Lord explains why the problem with the IRS is much deeper than the current scandal. Read “The Liberal Union Behind the IRS” and you will see why the IRS has it’s artillery aimed in one direction. They are a powerful battle-group in the leftist army. That will not change until something like the Fair Tax is enacted and the IRS is dismantled.

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