Home
http://seeingtheforest.com/the-latest-lie-irs-targeted-conservatives/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SeeingTheForest+%28Seeing+The+Forest%29
"Remember the video of the guy (O'Keefe) in the “pimp costume” who got advice from ACORN employees on how to run his prostitution ring? Turns out the whole story was just a lie, a doctored-video smear job on an important organization. The guy never wore a “pimp costume” and the real, undoctored videos showed that ACORN employees did nothing wrong. But a lie travels around the world before the corporate media bothers to check the facts. The “news” media blasted the story everywhere, and Congress was so outraged they forced ACORN to close its doors. And here we are again.
The corporate media is blasting out the story that the IRS “targeted conservative groups.” Some in the media say there was “IRS harassment of conservative groups.” Some of the media are going so far as claiming that conservative groups were “audited.”
This story that is being repeated and treated as “true” is just not what happened at all. It is one more right-wing victimization fable, repeated endlessly until the public has no choice except to believe it.
Conservative Groups Were Not “Targeted,” “Singled Out” Or Anything Else
You are hearing that conservative groups were “targeted.” What you are not hearing is that progressive groups were also “targeted.” So were groups that are not progressive or conservative.
All that happened here is that groups applying to the IRS for special tax status were checked to see if they were engaged in political activity. They were checked, not targeted. Only one-third of the groups checked were conservative groups.
Once again: Only one-third of the groups checked were conservative groups.
Conservative groups were not “singled out,” were not “targeted” and in the end none were denied special tax status – even though many obviously should have been.
From last week’s House hearings on this:
Rep. Peter Roskam, R-IL: “How come only conservative groups got snagged?”
Outgoing acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller: “They didn’t sir. Organizations of all walks and all persuasions were pulled in. That’s shown by the fact that only 70 of the 300 organizations were tea party organizations, of the ones that were looked at by TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration].”
Bet you didn’t see that blasted all over your TV news that night.
Click here to watch the video clip of this. It’s worth it.
And from Bloomberg reporting: IRS Sent Same Letter to Democrats That Fed Tea Party Row, (emphasis added, for emphasis)
One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected. Progress Texas … faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.
In a statement late yesterday, the tax agency said it had pooled together the politically active nonpartisan applicants — including a “minority” that were identified because of their names. “It is also important to understand that the group of centralized cases included organizations of all political views,” the IRS said in its statement.
Again, for emphasis: “It is also important to understand that the group of centralized cases included organizations of all political views,” the IRS said in its statement.”
But no matter, its conventional wisdom now that “the IRS targeted conservative groups.” And it’s very useful to the right if people believe this. But it just is not true. (If you want to see conventional wisdom at work watch this clip from the most recent Saturday Night Live.)
What Did Happen?
Here’s the story. After the “Citizen’s United” decision allowed unlimited corporate money into elections there was a flood of applications to get special tax status that allowed an organization to hide its donors from the public, and in some cases even be tax-exempt. But the rules say that political groups can’t get this special tax status. The IRS has to check out applications for tax status to see if it is really a political group trying to sneak in to a special tax status.
Because they were flooded and couldn’t check out every applying organization, the IRS group looked for things in the applications that “flagged” an organization as possibly a political group. These flagged applications were then passed along to specialists to look deeper and determine if they were legit or not.
So What Was The “Wrongdoing”?
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has issued a full report: Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review that looked into the accusation that the IRS “targeted” tea party groups that were applying for special tax status for extra scrutiny. The report is not all that long. You should read it. (Apparently most the people you are hearing from in the media haven’t read it.)
According to the report, the swamped IRS group involved in this came up with ways – “criteria” – to identify groups that really needed to be checked further because it was possible they might be engaged in the kind of political activity that would exclude them from getting the special tax status. (The rules for what constitutes political activity that would keep a group for getting special tax status are, to say the least, not clear. See the P.S. below.) Some groups were chosen to receive the required scrutiny because they had “political-sounding” names. Some of the “political-sounding names” included the words “tea party.” Others included “We the People” and “Take Back the Country.” (The inspector general’s report does not disclose if or which other “political sounding names” were also used as criteria.)
And the other problem was that the scrutiny these groups received involved some “unnecessary, burdensome questions.”
That was the extent of the wrongdoing. At a time when they couldn’t give all applying groups the necessary scrutiny they used criteria that included the names of an applying group to decide if it would get the required scrutiny. And they asked “unnecessary, burdensome questions.” That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Normally all groups applying for special tax status would and should all get looked at to see if they were really political groups. In this case no groups received any extra scrutiny as has been accused, instead many received less than usual. No group was “singled out” or “targeted” for extra scrutiny, instead they were not given the free pass others were getting because of the overload of applicants.
The IG report concluded that it was wrong to use a group’s name as a criteria to help determine if an applicant would be checked out at a time when there were so many applications that every group was not being checked out. (However, the IG report did say that most of the groups forwarded with this criteria in fact should have been forwarded.)
Again, that’s the wrongdoing that has triggered the absolute frenzy of outrage you are hearing from … everyone. They said it was silly to use a group’s name as criteria for deciding if they should be checked out thoroughly at a time when the IRS was too busy to thoroughly check all applications as they usually do. And they said groups filing for a special tax status but suspected of political activity were then asked “unnecessary, burdensome questions.”
And again, that’s it, That’s the whole “scandal.” That’s the whole “IRS harassing conservative groups.” That’s the whole “Obama the dictatorial tyrant going after his enemies” hissy-fit. (Please read Digby’s The Art of the Hissy-Fit)..."
MORE AT SITE
