Wednesday, May 15, 2013

IRS Scandal Threatens to Overshadow Benghazi

ROGER ARONOFF May 15, 2013
You would have thought that the Obama administration would have learned from the growing Benghazi scandal that the best way to handle such controversies is to get out in front of them, and put it all out there, rather than let it drip, drip, drip, as is now happening with the recent IRS blowup.
According to The Washington Post, based on documents it obtained from a congressional aide, the Internal Revenue Service has targeted and singled out for added scrutiny, groups applying for tax-exempt status which have made statements that "criticize how the country is being run" and that were involved in educating Americans "on the Constitution and Bill of Rights."

If so, this IRS scandal could well be an abuse of power by the executive branch, reflecting one of the issues that was an article of impeachment drawn up for then-President Richard Nixon, before he resigned.
"Lois G. Lerner, the IRS official who oversees tax-exempt groups, said the ‘absolutely inappropriate' actions by ‘front-line people' were not driven by partisan motives," reports The Washington Post.
"Does anyone actually believe this?" asks Joe Klein of Time Magazine. "But I don't think Obama ever wanted to be on the same page as Richard Nixon," writes Klein. "In this specific case, he now is."
In 1998, when liberal journalists such as Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, and Lars-Erik Nelson of The New York Daily News said that President Clinton should resign in the wake of revelations about lying to the country about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, it foreshadowed the impeachment that would occur several months later. And though 50 U.S. senators voted to remove him from office, the requirement was for two-thirds of the Senate, and Clinton remained in office to complete his second term.
When a liberal Obama enthusiast like Joe Klein starts comparing Obama to Richard Nixon, that spells trouble.
President Obama announced on Monday at his joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron that he had not heard of the scandal until it made major news last Friday, following Lerner's public statement, which seemed inadvertent. The Washington Post said that "it appeared to have happened by chance when Lerner, appearing Friday at a conference held by the American Bar Association, responded to a question about the allegations by conservative groups." When asked later why she announced it, she said that she "heard it was going to be leaked on Friday."
So what exactly happened with the IRS, and when? The New York Times has published a timeline that covers from March 2010 to May 2012, and outlines the changing criteria that the
IRS Determinations Unit employees used to refer applications for extra scrutiny.
In March and April 2010 the unit "began searching for requests for tax exemption involving the Tea Party, Patriots, 9/12" and "political sounding names" such as "We the People" or "Take Back the Country," according to The New York Times. In July 2011, after concerns were raised, the definition was made more generic and the politicization was removed.
But in January 2012, these criteria were again highly politicized to target "Political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, social economic reform/movement" (emphasis added). The criteria were supposedly corrected to be less political starting in May 2012.
May 2012 is also when, as ABC News reported, the current acting IRS commissioner, who was then deputy commissioner, was aware of these actions by the agency. ABC called it a "controversy" on their evening news on Monday, while both NBC and CBS led the news with the story and called it a "scandal."
In all, about 300 applications were referred for special scrutiny. Of these 300 organizations, 85 were flagged for having the words "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their name, while 11 more had "9/12" in their name. "So far, none of those applications have been rejected, although some have been withdrawn," reports ABC News (emphasis added). According to the Post, 130 out of the 300 organizations have had their tax-exempt status approved, while 25 have withdrawn their applications.

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