Originally Posted by Fern View Post
Sure it is, and the IG's report confirms it.
(See IG report page 30.)
You see any Liberal sounding names in there? Of course not.
So yes, under the new March 2010 directive only conservatives were targeted.
Correct, and I've stated again and again and again and again that choosing just right-wing terms for that part of their targeting was inappropriate.
What you continue to ignore over and over is that this specific targeting method was responsible for only about one-third of the total applications selected for additional screening. As with Pulsar and others, you are intentionally cherry-picking a minority subset of applications and pretending they represent the whole. They. Do. Not. Not now, not ever.
No.
That, among other things is wrong.
Again, it is important to understand we have two parallel programs for selecting applicants for additional scrutiny:
1. As has been previously explained to you the IRS has had processing procedures in place, which include follow up or additional questions (which, BTW, are considered to be appropriate and not inappropriate), since 1913.
The groups chosen for these procedures use a different criteria. An apolitical one. This group is NOT included in the 300 group chosen with admittedly inappropriate political criteria.
2. The new program initiated in March 2010 and using the inappropriate political criteria (their names). This group numbers approx 300 applicants.
The 1/3 number you quote above is the number of TEA Party, 9/12 and patriot groups composing the politically selected criteria totaling 300.
I do not recall the IG report concerning itself with any groups/applicants chosen for additional scrutiny/questions under the long employed general criteria I mention under #1 above.
I.e., we have a pool of 300 groups chosen using inappropriate political criteria. We are not concerning ourselves with the others because they are not part of this new 'special process' nor were they unacceptably delayed.
Now, what does the IG's report tell us about this special group of 300?
* 100% of the group including "Tea Party, Patriots or 9/12" were selected for this 'special procedure'. That totals about 100 groups.
While the team of specialists reviewed applications from a variety of organizations, we determined during our reviews of statistical samples of I.R.C. § 501(c)(4) tax-exempt applications that all cases with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were forwarded to the team of specialists.
(See page 8 of the IG's report.)
* The IG's report tells of nothing about who the remaining 2/3 were, only that they were chosen under the inappropriate political criteria and do not have "TEA Party, 9/12 or Patriot" in their names.
Now who could be in that 2/3 group? Conservative sounding groups, liberal sounding groups, or a mix? We don't know. The IRS has been asked by Congress to identify them and they have failed to do so, missing their deadline.
However, we do know that there are many claims from conservative other than TEA party etc that they were subject to this. These include pro-Isreal groups, 'Clean Election' groups (generally supporting voter ID laws) and pro-Life groups.
I.e., some portion of that 2/3 is clearly composed of other conservative sounding groups.
I would also point out that in none, none, of the criteria for selection is any liberal sounding name or activity included. None.
Also, we have very very few liberal groups claiming they were subject to additional procedures. In fact, we cannot even rule out that they were chosen under the general criteria and not the inappropriate political criteria (at least not that I've seen and I've looked several times). And to my knowledge there are none, none, that claim their application were delayed beyond the 270 deadline.
OTOH, the IG report shows that +98% of the TEA party etc groups were delayed beyond 270 days, in fact 81% were delayed beyond a yr (365 days).
So,
nobody concerned about this "cherry picking" anything. We are going off the evidence that exists NOW. No more, no less.
At this point, there is NO evidence to demonstrate that this special inappropriate process wasn't directed soley, or predominately, at conservative groups. When the IRS produces the list of the names of the groups that were selected under the new inappropriate political guidelines then we'll have a better understanding.
(But right now, we know 100% of conservative named groups were chosen.)
Further, the IG examined those applications and found the majority of them did, in fact, show the significant levels of political activity that warranted further investigation (a fact I've also cited before). That means that although these IRS employees chose a politically incorrect shortcut for finding questionable applications, their shortcut worked. It was a perfectly valid approach ... except for the part where they didn't also use left-wing keywords to provide balanced selection. But yet again, that specific selection technique was only responsible for about one-third of the total applications selected for detailed review.
That's irrelevant.
If the process is illegal/improper it doesn't matter that the 'ends (seemed) to justify the means'.
The IG report also found that some were excluded that shouldn't have been etc. (It should be noted that we don't know what criteria the IG used to determine if additional info was required or not. The IG is not a tax lawyer etc.)
In short, it's a poor process, and one the IG ruled was
inappropriate and not just for political reasons:
inappropriately identified specific groups applying for tax-exempt status based on their names or policy positions instead of developing criteria based on tax-exempt laws and Treasury Regulations.
(See page 5 of the report.)
You also ignore that the important question is that of intent. Did these employees intend to discriminate against right-wing groups, or did they make a poor choice while looking for easy ways to separate the no-brainers from the truly questionable applications?
So they chose 100% of the conservative sounding groups and you're asking for evidence that they intended to do that? Really?
It's either political or they have empirical evidence demonstrating that 100% of the conservatives groups previously approved and now operating were not following the rules so it's justified to select 100% of the new ones. As to the latter possibility, please provide any evidence of this.
Fern
This whole 'scandal' is about new, unprecedented and inappropriate follow up questions etc targeted at conservative groups, not the 'normal' follow up questions that have always existed.
Yes, so you keep claiming, yet you've ignored my repeated requests to cite credible evidence supporting that allegation. Based on what you've presented to date, all you have are your assumptions that this screening was different based on the complaints of a one lawyer (true?) suing the IRS. Were I to use such flimsy evidence as proof of some right-wing malfeasance, you would rightly dismiss it as biased and potentially unreliable.
For heaven's sake, that's the IG's ruling:
The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of potential political campaign intervention.
As to the "new" part of my remark, the IG report makes clear the criteria were developed in March 2010. So, yes it's new.
Unprecedented? Yes, of course it is. Otherwise please find examples where it has been used before.
Sorry, Breitbart's overt dishonesty and willingness to fabricate propaganda disqualifies them from serious consideration in my book.
The Breitbart link was only included to document that the IRS has still not provided the info Congress requested. You don't need to take Brietbart's word for it, it can easily be confirmed by googling.
Fern
Facebook
Twitter