Tag Archives: IRS
FBI and IRS Tea Party
Back in June a House committee wanted answers about IRS efforts to indimidate and silence Tea Party Groups. Lois Lerner, the IRS Director of Exempt Organizations took the fifth. There was very little Tea Party involvement in the campaign 2012 campaign. President Obama was re-elected.
The FBI has now declared “no harm no foul”, as Dan Henninger puts it.
Thus, two of the most powerful public institutions in the U.S.—the FBI and the IRS—have concluded no harm, no foul, and the memory hole swallows the Obama administration’s successful kneecapping of the GOP’s most active members just as they prepared to participate in the 2012 presidential campaign. Many—ruined or terrified by the IRS probes—shut down. Mr. Obama won.
Bystander President
The NYT has called President Obama the bystander president because he’s deluged by events that seem to have nothing to do with him – unless they’re good. Like the U.S. oil boom which he fought against tooth and nail and now takes credit for.
Here’s a Dana Milbank Washington Post column pondering the problem.
Bystander Protector
Obama is fond of Czars. Could Valerie Jarrett be his protective Rasputin? John Fund thinks so. He quotes her appraisal of the president:
“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Says Fund, “As a court flatterer of that caliber it’s no surprise that Jarrett has outlasted almost everyone who was in Obama’s original White House team”
IRS Song and Dance
IRS lavish spending on conferences included this video. Meanwhile the agency harassed conservative groups. An anti-abortion group was ordered not to protest near Planned Parenthood in exchange for its tax exemption and was asked intimidating questions.
“The questioning included requests for copies of Facebook postings, the content of prayers, political beliefs of members, résumés of board members and dealings with the media.”
Taking the Fifth on Your 1040
You don’t have to belong to a right wing constitutional group to suspect Lois Lerner pulled a fast one when she claimed she was innocent and then took the fifth.
The IRS has placed her on paid administrative leave.
Update: Here’s a Mark Steyn column about Lois Lerner signing off on, and backdating, the tax exempt status of a foundation run by the president’s brother. He also notes that you have no fifth amendment rights when it comes to the I.R.S.
IRS Care
The Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate is a tax and therefore Obamacare is constitutional under Congress’s power to tax. That means lots more work for the IRS. They’re building the largest government data base ever to combine personal information from agencies around the country.
