Some time ago speculation ran through the MSM and the Internets about which playbook The Champ's administration has been following in terms of its domestic and international policies. Was it George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, or Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged?
The consensus came down for Atlas Shrugged, a novel whose villains seemed to have enjoyed a kind of ethereal, literary karma and wound up in President Barack Obamas administration. The premise behind the consensus was that before you can depict a country in ruins governed by an all-knowing, all-controlling totalitarian régime, it must first be ruined. I'll go with Atlas Shrugged.
#2
From the posted article"There is the astronomical debt rung up by the Obama administration for which we might need to coin a new term that would describe it."
Ok, I'll take a shot... Zimming the economy. Replace all references to Zimbabwe in the link with US Economy after Obama, and I think you will have a "new descriptor".
But of course all Rantburg readers knew that already.
[Ynet] Despite atrocities committed by Syrian regime, alleged Israeli Arclight airstrike united Arab world against Jewish state
Since the revolution in Syria began, many Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike, have been mulling over whether Israel should intervene in the civil war there. The Arabs, Sunnis, Christians and Druze are watching their brothers across the border being butchered or becoming refugees. The Jews are reminded of the world's indifference during the Holocaust. The alleged Israeli Arclight airstrike gave us a definitive answer. It was as though the rival sides took a break from the mutual killing and recalled their common denominator -- the hatred of the "Zionist enemy."
The Arab world is finding it very difficult to come to terms with the Israeli intervention in Syria, as it put a spotlight on the intolerable truth: Despite a corpse count nearing 100,000, the Arab world is not really intervening in a massacre that is occurring in the heart of the Islamist nation.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/22/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
#1
Assad Butchers Sun Explodes, Israel Still Blamed
The following is timeline on the issues regarding the IRS Exemptions office in Cincinnati. The timeline is compiled from various sources. Due to the sheer volume of information, it does not go into 'wonk-territory' detail. And despite the second paragraph (which I consider ironic rather than editorial), it is intended to be just what it is - a timeline.
15 February 2009: Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, gives an interview to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In the interview Ms Kelly mentions that her Union has been working with the Obama transition team , that her Union was "looking for a return to what we used to call partnership... for me, its about collaboration, and that she had been at the White House on 30 January 2009 while President Obama "was signing some executive orders".
13 May 2009: At his Arizona State University commencement speech, President Obama notes that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He jokes, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets... President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."
2009: Due to a tweak Congress makes to the tax code, more than 400,000 nonprofit groups around the country are threatened with an automatic loss of tax exemption, forcing them to re-apply for exemption. The start of what would be tens of thousands of applications begin reaching the IRS Exemptions office in Cincinnati.
2010: The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision on campaign financing frees corporations and unions to spend money on elections. Hundreds of new applications begin to arrive from Tea Party and other organizations. Most were 501(c)3 organizations, which now sought a different status, 501(c)4, under which "social welfare" nonprofit groups may engage in a limited amount of election activity without registering as political action committees and disclosing their donors.
31 March 2010: Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, visits the White House at 12:30pm for a meeting with "Potus".
01-02 April 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggests the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager agrees (Source: IRS Inspector General report.)
(Early April?) 2010: Accountants and tax agents of Group 7822 (Exemptions Unit) of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati receive a directive from their manager. A growing number of organizations identifying themselves as part of the Tea Party had begun applying for 501(c)4 tax exemptions, the manager said, advising the workers to be on the lookout for them and other groups planning to get involved in elections.
19 April 2010: There are 18 groups undergoing extra scrutiny by the IRS Exemptions Unit because of their Tea Party affiliation. The first "sensitive case report" is written, and Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division in Washington, is given a summary of the IRS' investigation into Tea Party targeting. Lerner's office is given "a chart summarizing all sensitive case reports" (according to the 2013 IRS Inspector General's report.)
October 2010: Forty cases are under heightened review by the IRS Determination unit, 18 of them with "Tea Party" in the group names. Specialists throughout the Exemptions Determinations Unit had been issued a "Be on the Lookout" notice for Tea Party applications, and some were given training on how to evaluate groups planning to do election-related work. Complaints surface that the "technical unit", lawyers who advise the specialists on the tax law and primarily based in D.C., had been slow in providing guidance on the applications work, according to the I.R.S. Inspector General.
October 2010: As part of a reorganization of the unit, responsibility for the cases is shifted to a different group of specialists. Some applications that had been farmed out to Determinations Unit specialists elsewhere are moved back to the Cincinnati office.
October 11 2010: Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asks via letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman that he "examine the purpose and primary activities of several 501 (c)(4) organizations that appear to be in violation of the law." Durbin singles Karl Rove's group, Crossroads GPS.
June 29, 2011: Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division in Washington, is officially briefed in detail. The number of Tea Party groups under examination has grown to more than 100. Ms. Lerner orders during the briefing that the IRS change its target terms for what kind of groups would have to go through the agency's rigorous review. The briefing ends with a commitment to "develop a guide sheet for processing these cases."
July 2011: Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division in Washington, holds a briefing with employees involved with the review. She learns just how far off track the Cincinnati office had gone: specialists had been told to flag not only Tea Party groups, but applications describing particular policy views, like opposition to federal spending, that tend to be espoused by conservative groups. In all, more than 100 applications had been flagged. Almost none had been approved. Ms. Lerner insists that the specialists broaden their criteria to flag any group that had suggested plans for lobbying or political activity, according to the IRS inspector general.
November 2011: A midlevel official in Washington temporarily overseeing the Cincinnati IRS office, according to the IRS Inspector General, tells a supervisor there that the guidance was "too lawyerly." The guidelines are then revised several times, as new specialists and lawyers join the effort.
January 2012: IRS Employees in Cincinnati, apparently without consulting senior officials, choose new keywords, including "educating on the Constitution" and "social economic reform/movement." The specialists in Cincinnati and elsewhere begin sending out increasingly exhaustive, sometimes intrusive questionnaires.
2012: Intrusive questions prompt many of the Tea Party groups to complain that they had been targeted by the IRS in an election year. Ms. Lerner orders the Cincinnati unit to stop issuing new requests for more information, while other managers seek to retract some requests for donor information and grant extensions for answering questionnaires to other groups caught in the net. Word of the problems began to percolate through the upper ranks of the IRS in D.C., though exactly how much is known and who knew it is not yet clear.
January-February 2012: Letters containing intense questioning of Tea Party groups are sent from the IRS office in Cincinnati, as well from at least one other office in Laguna Niguel, CA.
Jan. 25 2012: IRS Exemption Unit "Be on the Lookout" criteria is changed again, from the more general terms introduced the previous summer of 2011 to a more specific criteria: "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement."
29 February 2012: Louise Lerner, director of the Exempt Organizations Division in Washington, halts new requests for information, and discusses rescinding the IRS demand that groups applying for exemption print out their entire websites for submission.
08 March 2012: Steven Miller, then Deputy Commissioner for services and enforcement, tells a unit within the IRS that if an applicant contacts them about "having to provide donor information, the Determinations Unit would allow them to not send the donor names but would inform them that the IRS may need it later."
March 2012: Former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman tells House Ways and Means lawmakers that the IRS was not giving extra review based on the political leanings of the nonprofit groups. The IRS maintains that Shulman did not know details of the program when he testified.
March 2012: Congressional Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Jim Jordan (R-OH) ask Louise Lerner, director of the Exempt Organizations Division in Washington, to provide a list of all organizations that the IRS had subjected to special scrutiny. Lerner replies that she could not legally reveal information about groups that were not approved and that identifying targeted applicants that were already approved would require additional work, specifically a "manual review of each file." She does not identify any of the organizations.
March 2012: A letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman from 32 House Democrats led by Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) asks the commissioner "to investigate whether any groups qualifying as social welfare organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code are improperly engaged in political campaign activity." Seven Senate Democrats also send a letter in the upper chamber, telling Shulman "if the IRS is unable to issue administrative guidance in this area then we plan to introduce legislation to accomplish these important changes." The letter is signed by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Michael Bennet (C-CO), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR.), Tom Udall (D-NM), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH.) and Al Franken (D-MN)
23 and 27 March 2012: Top officials at the IRS, including now current acting commissioner Steven Miller discuss "concerns with the media attention the Tea Party applications were receiving."
24 April 2012: IRS officials begin to "identify troubling questions [during the determination process], which organizations received them, and which members of the team of specialists asked them."
03 May 2012: The IRS tax-exempt and government entities office informs Steven Miller, then Deputy Commissioner for services and enforcement, about the "improperly identified" applications.
Mid-May 2012: IRS officials from Washington make another trip to Cincinnati to conduct a training session with IRS officials there. IRS officials in Washington begin review of "all potential political cases began in Cincinnati." The "be-on-the-lookout" criteria is changed to "organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention."
May 2012: After issuing no approvals for months to any organization that had been flagged for special scrutiny because of political activity, the May, the IRS in Cincinnati issues a handful of exemptions that month and then nearly 40 in June, many of them to Tea Party groups, according to public agency records.
21 May 2012: IRS officials in Washington decide that donor information "could be destroyed or returned to the applicant if not used to make the final determination of tax-exempt status."
04 June 2012: The IRS completes a total of 180 donor information requests, and drafts a letter to the tea party groups "that provided donor information" that inform the organizations that "the information was destroyed." There is no indication that the letter is actually sent out.
04 June 2012: Treasury Department general counsel is informed on the IRS inspector general's audit. IRS Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin is informed "shortly after" the Treasury Department general counsel was told.
14 December 2012: ProPublica publishes an article on CrossRoads GPS that contains the following:
The IRS sent Crossroads' application to ProPublica in response to a public-records request. The document sent to ProPublica didn't include an official IRS recognition letter, which is typically attached to applications of nonprofits that have been recognized. The IRS is only required to give out applications of groups recognized as tax-exempt. In an email [December 13 2013] an IRS spokeswoman said the agency had no record of an approved application for Crossroads GPS, meaning that the group's application was still in limbo.
March 2013: Treasury officials are informed of the results from the IRS inspector general's audit.
22 April 2013: White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler is informed of the IRS Inspector General's audit.
10 May 2013: The Internal Revenue Service apologizes to Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations for what it now says were overzealous audits of their applications for tax-exempt status. Lois Lerner, the director of the I.R.S. division that oversees tax-exempt groups, acknowledged that the agency had singled out nonprofit applicants with the terms "Tea Party" or "patriots" in their titles in an effort to respond to a surge in applications for tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012.
10 May 2013: News emerges that Louise Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division in Washington had planted the question regarding systemic problems within the IRS Exempt Organizations Division in handling of Tea Party exemption applications with an audience member at a conference of tax lawyers, the Exempt Organizations Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association.
13 May 2013: President Barack Obama strongly condemns officials at the Internal Revenue Service for singling out conservative groups during the lead-up to the 2012 elections. In a press conference, President Obama calls the reports "outrageous" and intolerable, while saying he would reserve harsher judgment for when a fuller report on the IRS's actions is formally released.
12 May 2013: In an email response to a Washington Post query, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said: "NTEU is working to get the facts but does not have any specifics at this time. Moreover, IRS employees are not permitted to discuss taxpayer cases. We cannot comment further at this time." A call to the NTEU office in Cincinnati resulted in a similar response: "We've been directed by national office. We have no comment."
13 May 2013: ProPublica reports that the same IRS division that designated Tea Party and conservative groups for special scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle provided the investigative-reporting organization with confidential applications for tax-exempt status of some of those groups. ProPublica reports that the division released "nine pending confidential applications of conservatives groups" in response to a request from the investigative-reporting organization for the applications of 67 nonprofits in November 2012.
14 May 2013: The IRS Inspector General states that incompetence, not malice, was behind the tax agency's heavy scrutiny of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the lead-up to the 2012 elections. The 48-page IG report states that the IRS behavior was "not politically biased," that the actions were was due to lower-level staff who did not understand their jobs and sometimes acted insubordinately, and that it was not driven by the White House. The IG report, while laying much of the blame onfront-line IRS employees and middle managers, points to "ineffective management" that allowed the situation to occur.
15 May 2013: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says he was first informed of an IRS investigation of groups seeking tax-exempt status in mid-March of 2013 during a getting-to-know-you conversation with the IRS inspector general, but did not learn about the tax agency's targeting of conservative groups until May 10, 2013.
16 May 2013: President Obama announces the resignation of acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller. The President appoints Daniel I. Werfel, the controller of the Office of Management and Budget, to be the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.
17 May 2013: Now-former Internal Revenue Service acting commissioner Steven Miller, at the House Ways and Means hearing, apologizes "for the mistakes that we made and the poor service that we provided" and denies the activity was partisan. "Partisanship or even the appearance of partisanship has no place at the IRS. I do not believe that partisanship motivated the people who engaged in the practices."
18 May 2013: From the New York Times: Even as the agency was scrutinizing small nonprofit organizations, critics say, it appears to have done little to crack down on large 501(c)4 groups that spent at least half a billion dollars on political advertising during the last four years, some in seeming defiance of the I.R.S. rules. Efforts by the agency to clarify those tax rules -- a potential first step toward curbing abuses -- began last summer but are still in the early stages.
"There's a buzz in the office about this Tea Party situation," said Neal Juarez, a case advocate in the Taxpayer Advocate Service. Like several other I.R.S. workers, Mr. Juarez was skeptical that employees in Cincinnati would have acted as they had without some direction from leadership in Washington. "You know what they say when there's trouble,' he added. 'You know what rolls downhill."
19 May 2013: Business Insider prints an article from the Atlantic Wire that paints a picture of the IRS Exemptions office in Cincinnati as "an organization trying to do politically tricky work while it struggled to cut costs -- and failing."
20 May 2013: The American Spectator publishes an article by Jeffrey Lord detailing potential involvement by the National Treasury Employees Union in treatment of Tea Party tax exemption applications by the IRS.
UPDATE: 20 May 2013: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tells reporters that Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and "other members of the senior staff" knew about the investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative groups last month, more than two weeks earlier than when the story broke on 10 May 2013. The statement seems to contradict what the White House Press Secretary said last week on May 13, and 14 2013, both about who was informed of the investigation and what they were told. Today White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said it would have been inappropriate for the White House to take action before the report was finalized and released and there was no need to inform the President.
21 May 2013: The attorney for Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division in Washington, says that Ms. has Lerner stated her intention to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights after being called to testify; she will refuse to answer questions from the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday 23 May 2013.
#1
But, but but no one at the WH knew! Excellent product. Thanks Pappy.
special prosecutor n. an attorney from outside of the government selected by the Attorney General or Congress to investigate and possibly prosecute a federal government official for wrongdoing in office. The theory behind appointing a special prosecutor is that there is a built-in conflict of interest between the Department of Justice and officials who may have political or governmental connections with that department. The most famous special prosecutor was law professor Archibald Cox, originally chosen to investigate White House (and President Richard Nixon's) involvement in the Watergate scandal. President Nixon demanded that Attorney General Elliot Richardson fire Cox who was being aggressive in his investigation, and Richardson resigned rather than comply, as did Assistant Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Deputy Attorney General Robert Bork finally discharged Cox.
#2
Doesn't explain the 'True the Vote' case where the ATF, FBI, and EPA were involved in harassing the woman who filed and her husband's business in an effort to shut her down (and protect the illegal voting going on).
#3
Re. True the Vote - the harassing agencies were able to find violations, which 'proves' their investigations were righteous. Of course the codes are now so Byzantine I don't believe it is even possible to not be in violation of one in order to comply with another.
#5
As I was told repeatedly yesterday, it's not illegal and even if it's improper, they're all civil servants and immune. Besides, shut up and you're racist.
#6
Was also informed that we (our Tea Party) will not protest our IRS office because to do so requires a permit, which takes significant lead time to obtain (not sure, but probably fees too.)
#7
Due to a tweak Congress makes to the tax code, more than 400,000 nonprofit groups around the country are threatened with an automatic loss of tax exemption, forcing them to re-apply for exemption.
That part is incorrect - exempt org's of all stripes either had to start filing Federal tax returns (990, 990-EZ, 990-PF or 990-T / postcard filing) or lose tax exempt status. It only applied to exempt org's that weren't filing tax returns. The IRS said 'start filing and you're fine; otherwise your exempt status will be revoked'. More details here.
That time entry has been struck, pending re-verification of the cited source.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/21/2013 11:36 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Doesn't explain the 'True the Vote' case
No, it doesn't and it won't.
Frankly, the 'True the Vote' is a separate case; covering it at this point would dilute the timeline and cause me to spend a lot of time and effort running down yet more trails. Look at what happened to Ken Starr (not that I'm comparing myself to him -hardly) and his primary investigation when he was tasked (deliberately imnsho) to do other, 'related', investigations.
I'm not going to rework or add to the timeline to cover that. Feel free to work the 'True the Vote' case on your own.
#10
A clarification on my 11:01 post - I only meant the bolded part - 'forcing them to reapply for tax-exempt status' portion was incorrect. I agree with the rest of that sentence, and my link substantiates that, so you may reconsider the strike to that part of the sentence only.
Also - while I'd have to do some digging (can't do it now, as I'm working on preparing a 990 right now!) I don't believe that 'thousands of applications' were the result of this change of the tax law.
#11
Raj, I don't have access to my notes right now, but "thousands of applications" was in the referenced articles. Possibly hyperbole or 'excuse' but it was in there.
#12
Pappy - it's possible (but not likely - see below) that some of these non-filing org's still didn't file by the deadline (May 15, 2010) and would then have to re-file the application, but any CPA worth their salt would have advised them to file the returns because it's way easier.
I even did a side project to get me some exempt org. clients, sending out about 100 snail mails and follow-up phone calls to non-filing org's in my area that the IRS published as non-filers. Turns out the overwhelming majority of those 100 org's (I'd say 75% to 80%) were no longer active, so you could say I have pretty solid first-hand knowledge about this issue.
In recent years, the offices biggest headache was not the rising tide of political groups seeking tax exemptions or the growing calls from Washington lawmakers, chiefly Democrats, demanding closer scrutiny of big-spending political operations claiming tax-exempt status. The office was consumed with a different problem: a tweak Congress had made to the tax code that threatened more than 400,000 nonprofit groups around the country with an automatic loss of tax exemption, potentially putting some out of business, according to a report by the Taxpayer Advocate Service, which handles complaints about tax cases. Tens of thousands of such groups had reapplied for exemptions, overwhelming the office with queries and paperwork.
They can go after the AG office and the entire executive branch as well as congress, and Holder cannot fire them. All the GOP needs to do is find their testicular fortitude and appoint the counsel - current law is already in place.
An key question as we slide into the 2014 elections is: what if they get away with this? Oh. I'm sure the janitor at the Cincinnati office will be fired and many harsh editorials will be written, but suppose they are no serious consequences for the WH or the senior IRS bureaucrats? They will have very publicly made the point that at minimal cost to themselves they can use the IRS to punish you for donating to conservative candidates or otherwise speaking out against Champ and his crew. And perhaps that's the point of the whole exercise.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/22/2013 16:31 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
