The Latest OUTRAGE!

From this Sunday's Sunday Pops:

Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., says he wants to know why IRS agents are training with semiautomatic AR-15 rifles. The chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee says he saw the training firsthand at a federal firing range last month. The IRS defends such training. But asks Mr. Duncan, “Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability?” Look for a new run on AR-15s by their “targets.”[Bolding in original.]

Funny thing: THIS wingnut conspiracy theory grew out of ANOTHER wingnut conspiracy theory.

Take a look:

South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District representative wants to know why he saw IRS agents training with powerful, semi-automatic rifles.

Republican Jeff Duncan said he made the discovery at a Maryland Federal Law Enforcement Training Center on May 23.

The congressman was touring the facility with Homeland Security officials as part of his investigation into the amount of ammunition purchases the agency conducts.

Duncan told News 4’s Sean Muserallo he saw about eight or nine shooters identified to him as IRS agents practicing at an indoor 100-yard range.

“While we were sitting there,” said Duncan, “the gentleman told them to sling their weapons and load a 30-round magazine into the AR-15s they were training with.”

Duncan said he was concerned about what he saw.

Ah, yes.  The guv'ment is stockpiling ammunition wingnut conspiracy.  Representative Duncan poses the question:

Why do IRS law enforcement agents need standoff capability that you would have with a long rifle or with a weapon similar to an AR-15? They’re generally investigating tax evasion, fraud and money laundering. We think of the IRS as an audit agency more than doing the type of law enforcement where they have to use an AR-15.

Yes...who does he think commits tax evasion, fraud and money laundering?

For those investigations the IRS has a Criminal Enforcement Division.  Where they investigate:

• Narcotics related tax evasion 
• Counterterrorism related tax evasion

So, yea, I'd say they probably need the firepower.  And considering the anti-tax, anti-guv'ment climate in this country, such firepower seems, sadly, necessary:

The federal agency charged with ensuring the safety of IRS employees said it has seen an uptick in the past several years in threats against agency personnel.

In the past four years, there appears to have been a "steady, upward trend" in the number of threats against IRS employees, said an official with the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration. That assessment, offered in response to an inquiry from Dow Jones Newswires, is based on preliminary data, the official cautioned.

Wingnut conspiracies breed more wingnut conspiracies.  Especially in the fact-emptied reality of the Rightwing press.

Selective IRS Outrage

Unsurprisingly, from my good friends on the Tribune-Review editorial board:

The New York Times played the first-day story of the IRS harassing conservative groups at the bottom of page 10. Had the IRS done the same to liberal groups, The Times would have put out an extra edition.

Actually, this (IRS targeting/harrassing) has happened before - on the other side of the political aisle, of course.

And with nary a peep from the Scaife's Braintrust, of course.

But first some context from Salon.com:

While few are defending the Internal Revenue Service for targeting some 300 conservative groups, there are two critical pieces of context missing from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, at least from what we know so far, the groups were not targeted in a political vendetta — but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, from bona fide social welfare organizations. Employees are given almost zero official guidance on how to do that, so they went after Tea Party groups because those seemed like they might be political. Keep in mind, the commissioner of the IRS at the time was a Bush appointee.

And that link leads us to this:

In reality, campaign finance experts say, the IRS’ impropriety in targeting Tea Party groups is proof positive of the need for new regulations, as the whole problem started because employees charged with weeding out camouflaged political groups from actual social welfare organizations had no official definition to work off of. After Citizens United and attendant decisions eliminated the restrictions on how much money these groups could spend, their numbers doubled, mainly on the right as conservatives saw an opportunity to push unlimited secret money into elections. Some of these groups were blatantly political, even though they told the IRS they’d stay out of politics.

As Ezra Klein explains, with no formal test on what makes a political group, IRS employees went where the action was and focused on Tea Party groups. That approach was wrong and discriminatory, but the only way to fix it will be with better regulations and clearer demarcations of what makes a group political.

So the current situation was triggered by Citizen's United (and gee, what a great decision that's turned out to be, huh??) but the question arises: Has the IRS ever targeted any left leaning organization for similar harassment?  The Braintrust seems to think that it hasn't and that even if it had, the NYTimes would have "put out a new edition" to let everyone know.

 From Salon:

The well-known church, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, became a bit of a cause célèbre on the left after the IRS threatened to revoke the church’s tax-exempt status over an anti-Iraq War sermon the Sunday before the 2004 election. “Jesus [would say], ‘Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine,’” rector George Regas said from the dais.

The church, which said progressive activism was in its “DNA,” hired a powerful Washington lawyer and enlisted the help of Schiff, who met with the commissioner of the IRS twice and called for a Government Accountability Office investigation, saying the IRS audit violated the First Amendment and was unduly targeting a political opponent of the Bush administration. “My client is very concerned that the close coordination undertaken by the IRS allowed partisan political concerns to direct the course of the All Saints examination,” church attorney Marcus Owens, who is widely considered one of the country’s leading experts on this area of the law, said at the time. In 2007, the IRS closed the case, decreeing that the church violated rules preventing political intervention, but it did not revoke its nonprofit status.

And while All Saints came under the gun, conservative churches across the country were helping to mobilize voters for Bush with little oversight. In 2006, citing the precedent of All Saints, “a group of religious leaders accused the Internal Revenue Service yesterday of playing politics by ignoring its complaint that two large churches in Ohio are engaging in what it says are political activities, in violation of the tax code,” the New York Times reported at the time. The churches essentially campaigned for a Republican gubernatorial candidate, they alleged, and even flew him on one of their planes.

Where was the outrage from Scaife's Braintrust then?

Go to triblive.com and search for "All Saints Episcopal Church Pasadena" and you'll find two (2) articles. One from the AP discussing the National Cathedral performing "same sex weddings" and the other a straight forward news piece by David Brown that starts with this:

As nonprofit groups have increased their political activity, the Internal Revenue Service has stepped up efforts cautioning tax-exempt organizations on how to avoid trouble.

Which, shred of it's nasty political overtones, is exactly how the IRS got into trouble with those Tea Party groups in the first place.

All with no braintrust editorials decrying the scandal of it all.

Surprising, isn't it?

Ha! This One's Funny!

From today's Tribune-Review:

The George Soros-funded liberal group Media Matters might be violating its tax-exempt educational status by announcing it will engage in "guerrilla warfare and sabotage" against Fox News, says Mark Tapscott of The Examiner in Washington. That's because the group's 501(C)(3) status prohibits partisan political activity. The IRS will nip this in the bud, right? If we had a buck for every snicker just snorted, we'd be rich.

Here's the politico article the Scaife-funded editorial board references. In it, Mark Tapscott writes:

Media Matters, the George Soros-backed liberal agit-prop shock troops based in the nation’s capital, has declared war on Fox News, and in the process quite possibly has stepped across the line of legality.

David Brock, MM’s founder, was quoted Saturday by Politico promising that his organization is mounting “guerrila warfare and sabotage” against Fox News, which he said “is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

To that end, Brock told Politico that MM will “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests …” Murdoch is the founder of Fox News and a media titan with newspaper, broadcast, Internet and other media countries around the world.

There is nothing in the Politico article to suggest that Brock, who was paid just under $300,000 in 2009, according to the group’s most recently available tax return, has moved to change his organization’s tax status as a 501(C)(3) tax-exempt educational foundation.

Here's the Politico article Tapscott references.

The only problem with this whole argument is that the only way for Fox "News" to defend itself is to declare that it IS a part of the GOP. Fair and balanced, no more.

Even then, it's iffy -because here's what the IRS actually says:

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

Certain activities or expenditures may not be prohibited depending on the facts and circumstances. For example, certain voter education activities (including presenting public forums and publishing voter education guides) conducted in a non-partisan manner do not constitute prohibited political campaign activity. In addition, other activities intended to encourage people to participate in the electoral process, such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, would not be prohibited political campaign activity if conducted in a non-partisan manner.

On the other hand, voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention. [emphasis added.]

So unless Mediamatters starts telling people to favor one campaign or set of campaigns looks like they're safe.

Another made up scandal brought to you by the right wing media noise machine.