Treasury Knew of I.R.S. Inquiry in 2012, Official Says

You have to either be stoned or dead to not think Obama knew what his government was doing to the Tea Party.

From The New York Times…

The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

 

Behind the IRS, the National Treasury Employees Union; and Behind the Union, Democratic Politics

Behind every problem think liberal …

The Liberal Union Behind the IRS

It’s about a union: the National Treasury Employees Union. The NTEU. A left-wing union representing 150,000 employees in 31 separate government agencies, including the IRS. A union that not only endorsed President Obama for election and re-election, but a union whose current president, Colleen Kelly, was a 14-year IRS agent and now is both union president and Obama administration appointee (of which more in a moment).It’s about 94% of NTEU union contributions going to Democrats in the Senate and House in 2012 — candidates who campaigned as vociferous opponents of the Tea Party.

And the recently released report from the Treasury Inspector General? You will not find a single reference to the NTEU. Whose members are both player and referee in the exploding controversy over the IRS targeting of conservative groups.

Which raises the obvious question: how many NTEU members were involved in the writing of the Inspector General’s report?

…

Let’s first see how the IRS/NTEU game with the Tea Party and conservatives is played, shall we?

In the 2012 election cycle, the IRS union gave its money this way:

For the U.S. Senate:
Total to Democrats: $156,750
Total to Republicans: $1,000

For the U.S. House:
Total to Democrats: $391,062
Total to Republicans: $23,000

We have gone from having a country with a government, to having a government with a country.

 

Docs: IRS letters harassing groups came from DC HQ And CA, despite IG’s focus on Cincinnati employees

Well this is cute … Can’t anyone in the Obama administration tell the truth?

  

• Tax agency has admitted targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for special, politically motivated scrutiny
• IRS inspector general focused on wrongdoing in Cincinnati, Ohio office and ignored abusive letters coming from other cities
• MailOnline found letters from IRS’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, and from IRS offices in two southern California cities
• The American Center on Law and Justice is threatening to sue the IRS if 27 tea party groups aren’t granted tax-exempt statuses by Friday

Letters from the IRS to tea party-related organizations in Oklahoma City and Albuquerque, New Mexico show that IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C., and two satellite offices in California, were directly involved with sending harassing letters to conservative organizations that sought tax-exempt status.

The IRS has acknowledged only the involvement of its Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati, Ohio, which typically makes most decisions about granting or denying tax-exempt status to non-profit organizations.

And Wednesday afternoon, CNN cited a congressional source in reporting that the acting IRS Commissioner – whom President Obama fired later in the day – had identified two ‘rogue’ employees, both in Cincinnati, whom he thought were responsible for targeting right-wing organizations with tactics that were not applied to left-wing or non-political groups.

Steven Miller then the acting IRS Commissioner, described the two employees as being ‘off the reservation,’ according to the CNN source.

Miller, added CNN, had emphasized that the problem was not confined to just two staffers.

Tuesday’s report from the IRS Office of Inspector General, however, focused exclusively on the Cincinnati office.

This IG’s review, according to the report ‘was performed at the EO [Exempt Organizations] function Headquarters office in Washington, D.C., and the Determinations Unit in Cincinnati, Ohio.’

The Washington staffers involved, the IG report continues, were in charge of reviewing materials prepared in Cincinnati. ‘As part of this effort, EO function Headquarters office employees reviewed the additional information request letters prepared by the team of [Cincinnati] specialists,’ the report reads.

Nothing in the report describes letters sent by IRS employees in California or the District of Columbia.

Yet an April 21, 2010 letter to the Albuquerque Tea Party organization, containing a preliminary list of 10 questions, came from the IRS’s Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division in Washington….

Read more at dailymail.co.uk …

Reports: IRS Spared Liberal Groups as Tea Party Languished, More Conservative Orgs Targeted Than First Thought

Remember what we were told when this explosive story first broke less than a week ago?  The IRS official in charge of tax exemptions for organizations said the improper methods employed within her division were executed by “low level workers” in Cincinnati who weren’t motivated by “political bias,” and impacted roughly 75 organizations?  Wrong, wrong and wrong:

“Low Level” - Officials within the highest echelons of the agency were aware of the inappropriate targeting, including the last two commissioners — at least one of whom appears to have misled Congress on this very question.  Now Politico reports that Lerner herself sent at least one of the probing letters to an Ohio-based conservative group.

The director of the Internal Revenue Service division under fire for singling out conservative groups sent a 2012 letter under her name to one such group, POLITICO has learned. The March 2012 letter was sent to the Ohio-based American Patriots Against Government Excess (American PAGE) under the name of Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division…at the time of the letter, the group was in the midst of the application process for tax-exempt nonprofit status — a process that would stretch for nearly three years and involve queries for detailed information on its social media activity, its organizational set-up, bylaws, membership and interactions with political officials. The letter threatened to close American PAGE’s case file unless additional information was received within 60 days.

These burdensome requests were apparently designed to bury the victimized groups in paperwork.  Carol reported last night that some 58 percent of these applicants were asked for unnecessary information and data, according to the Inspector General’s review.  Some inquiries asked for screenshots of organizations’ Facebook posts and even lists of what books (!) its members were reading.

 

So Why Did It Take So Long To Approve Tea Party Applications

Many groups reported it took years …

IRS managers assigned one person to review all tea party tax requests

IRS managers delayed approval of tea party requests for routine tax exemptions by assigning all of them to a single employee in Cincinnati for special review, according to footnote 14 of the blockbuster Inspector General report.

The single employee was the only person working on the reviews for at least 18 months.

From early 2010, “the [review] team consisted of one specialist, but it was expanded to several specialists in December 2011,” says the report, entitled “Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review.”

At least here no one died in the IRS scandal, in the Benghazi scandal we have 4 dead Americans that died because our Pressy was busy and couldn’t send help.

More On IRS And The Tea Party

CHRISTIAN ADAMS NAMES NAMES: Meet the IRS Team in Charge of Exempt Organization Reviews.

Related: Attorney for Tea Party group: IRS told me a year ago about ‘secret working group.’

IRS Began Targeting Tea Party In March 2010

So it was a little bit earlier than said. IRS Began Targeting Conservatives in March 2010...

White House Council Was Notified Week Of April 22 2013 Of The IRS IG’s report

So I guess we are left to conclude the White House council, the president’s layer doesn’t  talk with Obama. He told us today that he read about it Friday last week.

Do you believe that? Or was the President doing his usual rope a dope and lying.

The Blaze reports …

Carney said the IRS inspector general notified the White House counsel’s office during the week of April 22 that it was completing a review of the IRS office in Cincinnati that targeted conservative political groups for special examination.

So which is it sir.

 

Another Welfare Handout Program: IRS issued billions in improper refunds, report says

The WP reports:

The Internal Revenue Service issued more than $11 billion in improper payments through its Earned Income Tax Credit program last year, according to an inspector general’s reportreleased this week.

Treasury Department deputy inspector general Michael McKenney found that the IRS has failed to comply for two consecutive years with the Improper Payments Elimination Act, which President Obama signed in 2010. The law requires federal agencies to reduce erroneous payments to a rate of less than 10 percent.

The IRS estimates that at least 21 percent of its EITC payments in 2012 were faulty. That rate showed a decline compared to the previous nine years, but improper payments over the same period increased about 22 percent, rising to at least $11.6 billion, according to the inspector general’s report.

 

Gunwalker: Fast and Furious Gun Found at Murder Scene, Was Purchased By Embattled ATF Supervisor

A Fast and Furious gun found at the murder scene of Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores, appears to have been purchased by embattled ATF supervisor George Gillett. Flores was used as a human shield before she was shot and killed by Mexican cartels during a shootout with the Mexican military.

beauty queen Maria Susana Flores

According to documents obtained by Senator Chuck Grassley, it appears Gillett purchased a number of different firearms at a gun dealership in Phoenix as part of Operation Fast and Furious. It also appears Gillett lied on 4473 forms by using an address that does not lead to his residence, which is a felony.

Grassley has sent a letter to the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz asking for further investigation. From the letter:

Read more at townhall.com … government gun running good, your gun bad.