EasyEd
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Post by EasyEd on May 15, 2013 11:24:28 GMT -5
B & G Board is pretty quiet about the many scandals we're seeing now. All you left-of-center posters: what do you have to say about (1) the IRS allegedly targeting conservative groups (plus some Jewish groups and religious persons), (2) the alleged cover-up of the before, during and after Benghazi attack, and (3) Justice supposedly hacking AP sites ?
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Post by badgerhoya on May 15, 2013 12:11:21 GMT -5
(1) Wrong. People who came up with the idea should be punished -- especially since it looks like they continued doing it after being told not to. Damaging to Obama, even though it was completely out of his control.
(2) Sound and fury signifying nothing. CIA seems to be in CYA-mode, and wanted to blame State for the problems. State wanted CIA to own up to the fact that they FUBARd. My advice to Rs on this -- focus on why CIA FUBAR'd rather than going after Clinton / Obama.
(3) Wrong - but lots of blame to go around... specifically on folks who want Justice to go hard after government leakers, the law allowing Justice to do this w/o a warrant.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on May 15, 2013 13:59:24 GMT -5
Benghazi is the biggest non-story I can recall in many decades. The kind of manufactured rage "story" that is all motive on the part of the outraged while lacking any apparent reasonable motive ascribed to the alleged perpetrators. There is just no reasonable payoff to do what it is the right is claiming the "administration" did within minutes or hours of a very dynamic and confusing situation. There is no logical political payoff here for this "outrage" to even pass the sniff test. And honestly what in hell does it matter what words were used to describe an event that was literally still smoking? There is no there there. I get angry with people who are willfully pretending that mistakes/confusion = lies/cover-up very clearly and only because they detest the politician in question and wish to see political points scored. (Like most of the particularly stupid anti-Bush people who still screech about the Hussein WMD "lies.") Or the morons who simply ascribe all responsability for the actions of the entire executive branch and all security and intelligence agencies DIRECTLY on the man in the White House. Presuming of course he is in the other party of course. If their guy wins? You switch off that unreasonable super-culpability standard real quick like.
The IRS thing is very disturbing. And needs aggresive investigation. I will be pretty surprised if the reasonable among us will be able to pin it on Obama directly though when the facts are in- which they must be soon. Which is the entire point of EasyEd's post no doubt.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on May 15, 2013 13:59:50 GMT -5
Can you no longer delete duped messages? I can only edit them but leave them there like this one?
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bmartin
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Post by bmartin on May 15, 2013 14:01:22 GMT -5
The IRS thing is an inevitable outcome of very bad lawmaking. When Congress, with the help of the courts, sets up a system that draws the line for non-profit status at "not primarily political" they are asking the IRS to get into these non-profit applicants' business and make determinations about their level of political advocacy. When a group applies for tax-exempt status it is voluntarily restricting its own political speech and requiring the IRS to check it out. It can be political or it can be tax-exempt, but not both.
Of course there are better ways for the IRS to do this that would appear more neutral on its face, but the only effective way to enforce the law is to poke around enough to measure the political activity and that is guaranteed to entangle the IRS in a political storm. Now everyone in Congress will say how inappropriate it is for the IRS to target politically-motivated organizations for investigation when that is exactly what Congress mandated that the IRS must do.
Of course they should subject groups from the left and center to the same scrutiny, and they may for all we know, but during this time period the overwhelming majority of possibly-too-political applications were coming from the anti-[fill in the blank] groups from the right that probably should not qualify for a tax subsidy. Can anyone name a lefty group with non-profit status that is as political as the average tea party non-profit applicant?
When the IRS provided guidance that explained to black churches the types of things that they are not allowed to do, the right said the IRS was training them how to campaign for Obama.
When the IRS told tea party non-profits similar guidance about the types of things that they are not allowed to do, the same people call it IRS intimidation.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on May 15, 2013 14:50:43 GMT -5
Of course they should subject groups from the left and center to the same scrutiny, and they may for all we know, but during this time period the overwhelming majority of possibly-too-political applications were coming from the anti-[fill in the blank] groups from the right that probably should not qualify for a tax subsidy. Can anyone name a lefty group with non-profit status that is as political as the average tea party non-profit applicant? Ummm, Moveon.org comes to mind. Blaming this (or excusing this) on an upswing in conservative activism is an extremely lame cop out.
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bmartin
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Post by bmartin on May 15, 2013 16:10:16 GMT -5
I agree that MoveOn.org and Crossroads GPS should not be tax exempt. I would get rid of the whole class of tax exemptions. What I said about the upswing in conservative activism is true. There was a huge increase in applications from conservative groups with explicitly political motivations. If the IRS has a mandate to enforce a policy that an organization whose primary purpose is political is not eligible for tax exemption, then the IRS has to scrutinize those groups. If they did not also scrutinize groups on the left then that is wrong. But since forever the problem has been that the IRS enforcement was much too weak and all sorts of political activism has been subsidized and undisclosed as a result. At least a few liberal groups were targeted and one was denied for being political: www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05-14/irs-sent-same-letter-to-democrats-that-fed-tea-party-row-taxesThe Internal Revenue Service, under pressure after admitting it targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups for scrutiny in recent years, also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status. One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected. Progress Texas, another of the organizations, faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.
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Post by rustyshackleford on May 15, 2013 18:32:58 GMT -5
I agree that MoveOn.org and Crossroads GPS should not be tax exempt. I would get rid of the whole class of tax exemptions. What I said about the upswing in conservative activism is true. There was a huge increase in applications from conservative groups with explicitly political motivations. If the IRS has a mandate to enforce a policy that an organization whose primary purpose is political is not eligible for tax exemption, then the IRS has to scrutinize those groups. If they did not also scrutinize groups on the left then that is wrong. But since forever the problem has been that the IRS enforcement was much too weak and all sorts of political activism has been subsidized and undisclosed as a result. At least a few liberal groups were targeted and one was denied for being political: www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05-14/irs-sent-same-letter-to-democrats-that-fed-tea-party-row-taxesThe Internal Revenue Service, under pressure after admitting it targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups for scrutiny in recent years, also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status. One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected. Progress Texas, another of the organizations, faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries. What you said about the upswing is true? Are you we supposed to take your unsubstantiated claims as proof? The fact that you're characterizing the number of applications from conservative groups as inordinately high and additionally claiming they unambiguously had 'explicit political motivations' without any support whatsoever is really not the way to make an argument or to come across as somebody who'll consider opposing views properly. Neither is getting the facts wrong. Many of the organizations that were targeted here (that were subjected to lengthy audit processes/illegal requests for donor lists which is debilitating for an organization (not to mention the individuals whose lives are ruined by it)) were trying to file as 501(c)(4) organizations which may lobby for legislation, and unlike 501(c)(3) organizations can also participate in political campaigns and elections - as long as their primary activity is the promotion of 'social welfare'. 501(c) (4) Notes It turns out that there are some pretty strict rules regarding what organizations can file as 501 (c)(3) and (c)(4) and that there are some purposely nebulous ones because the government purposely doesn't want to potentially inhibit social welfare organizations which focus on civics. So it's absolutely allowable to have an organization which purports to teach citizens about the 'constitution' or whatever other public civics they're claiming under these designations. Both (c)(4) and (c)(3) organizations are expressly prohibited from 'supporting political candidates' which was the stated purpose of Emerge America - the equal balance group you're trying to make hay of to detract from what is a serious and troubling scandal. Emerge America explicitly says its mission is to train Democratic women to run for office. That violates any type of bright line test one can imagine and it's amazing that you're trying to claim that such a denial shows some type of equivalency. The fact that two other groups faced the same type of questioning that about 500 groups of an opposing political view faced says even less. Not only should we expect many many more examples like progress texas and clean elections texas but there's no evidence that they faced the same type of treatment that we're now hearing from many of the groups at the center of this scandal. There's no evidence that any of those 2! groups had their donor lists leaked to media organizations/opposing political groups, that they were asked for reading lists, all of their members, facebook posts etc like the groups in IRS scandal were. At the end of the day I understand this is the new tack of those who are so partisan that they can't recognize a dangerously politicized overstepping of power (or frankly don't care because it wasn't their side) - an attempt to claim that while any partisan targeting was wrong the real problem was that the rules allow for too much of this to go on anyway (which again is not true from what you can see above). All of this helps deflect while you also claim that there just aren't these awful disingenuous groups on your side (media matters, CAP, americans united, common cause, progress IOWA just off the top of my head - not to mention the damn agency itself and the IG put out a report admitting fault!) so it's not a surprise this targeting seems preferential. Not only do both of these awful arguments reveal the bubble that partisans tend to live in where they think their side is any better but it deflects from serious questions that should be asked. For the posters who already are making assumptions that there is no involvement anywhere higher up in the government, how could you possibly know that and why would you assume so unless it was your own partisan biases leaking through? The IRS admitted these violations as inappropriate ITSELF on a friday in response to a planted question right before an IG report on the issue came amount the following weekend (which the white house knew since april Hill Article). Since then you've had more and more groups step forward, media organizations find inappropriate leaks on top of targeting, revelations that this political targeting was known for years and by people high enough that they had to inform their chief counsel AP Report and that this was clearly partisan USA Today Report. At the same time you had major editorial boards NY Times Editorial , groups of US Senators Schumer Letter and the President's campaign pressuring the IRS to do exactly these things to these groups link. The fact that this partisan targeting occurred for years and was known to people at high levels in both the IRS and Treasury Dept suggests that there was at the very least a dangerous ineptitude by senior officials in the government and possibly something more malicious considering how there were clearly political forces that were encouraging such activity. This doesn't mean that President Obama or somebody high up in the administration is definitely directly culpable for anything but it's equally as lazy and malicious to claim that they probably weren't and immediately try to set politically drawn boundaries on an investigation. If the acting director of the IRS has already had the ax fall IRS acting commissioner resigns you can bet this is a serious issue. It should be - this is exactly the type of thing that everybody assumed the government would never do - or as John Stewart put it - This has, in one seismic moment, shifted the burden of proof from the tin foil behatted to the government.
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bmartin
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Post by bmartin on May 15, 2013 18:56:39 GMT -5
Well I worked for a Congressman who was targeted by every 9/12 and Tea Party and Patriot named group in the region and 100% of what they did was political.
And the stats about the increase in right wing groups are in all the papers and everywhere in the Internet. If you lived in the United States in the past 4 years you could not miss them or their transparent political agenda.
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hoyainspirit
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Post by hoyainspirit on May 16, 2013 7:30:31 GMT -5
Benghazi is B.S.
With regard to the IRS, the real scandal is that agency allowing political organizations to masquerade as charities or "social welfare" organizations to avoid taxes on themselves and their donors, and to keep their donors secret, a practice which has been occurring for years and one which has been abused far more by the right than the center or the left.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on May 16, 2013 9:02:29 GMT -5
Benghazi is not BS, though I will concede that what they are focusing on in this current investigation is mostly BS.
Benghazi was a very massive failure on many fronts and deserves a much more thorough investigation than what was performed by that review board who didn't even interview the Secretary of State.
What is most troubling about Benghazi is how unprepared the government was for a potential attack in what is widely known as a terrorist and al Qaeda breeding ground. More than a decade after 9/11 and no one either (A) saw the danger or (B) listened to those who DID see the danger?? Sorry, but that is not a "non-story."
From a political perspective, what is highly nauseating about Benghazi is not how talking points got edited, but how everyone from the President to SecState to Susan Rice were willing to stomp all over the First Amendment in public comments following the attack.
I will grant that this attack is mostly being used as a political cudgel by the Republicans, though. Which is unfortunate.
But sorry, bin. It wasn't minutes or hours. It was days and weeks. And they did lie. Knowingly.
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Post by rustyshackleford on May 16, 2013 11:04:32 GMT -5
Well I worked for a Congressman who was targeted by every 9/12 and Tea Party and Patriot named group in the region and 100% of what they did was political. And the stats about the increase in right wing groups are in all the papers and everywhere in the Internet. If you lived in the United States in the past 4 years you could not miss them or their transparent political agenda. I can't believe that as an elected representative of the government and one of his staff/interns you were subjected to the cruelty of having to deal with constituents who had problems with the positions they were taking. What has democracy come to? This sense of entitlement is exactly the type of thing that lets partisans excuse what is a vicious targeting of those they disagree with. And of course 100% of what you witnessed those groups do was political - that was the only medium through which you interacted with these groups (or maybe I'm wrong as you clearly strike me as the even handed type of person who followed up and attended their meetings and discussions (which they undoubtedly have)). Are you that naive that you think the entire country should just stick their heads in the sand and not interact with their representatives - or that when they do that constitutes all of the activity of their group? Again you're claiming increase in right wing groups versus left wing groups and citing 'the internet' (well thanks). Aside from the fact you have no justification of that you also don't have a very good track record - you were wrong on whether groups are allowed to be political (they ARE - but wait now according to you they were 100% political!), tried to spout the latest false equivalency citing some left of center groups (horribly wrong) and have ignored repeated evidence, admissions, firings, reports all of which point to how maliciously partisan this scandal this is. At this point this is simply partisan apologism for one of the worst types of non violent abuses a government can commit.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on May 16, 2013 11:04:46 GMT -5
It is not a non-story as far as State/CIA are involved but it most certainly is as an Obama story. As you say the manufactured sense of rage is serving as a lazy cudgel for the purpose of trying to make something stick on Obama by people who have proven cannot possibly be reasonable in their judgement of the man. This is a great example of why the vitriol and yes hatred of the anti-Obama brigade does the right a disservice by an obvious lack of any perspective. I found it just as disgusting when the Move-on types and their irrational hatred of Bush. Presidential politics on both sides has become so ugly and juvenile that I hate the people ostesibly on my side as much as those on the other side. That's quite an accomplishment.
Benghazi is a very typical story of government ineptitude bordering on criminal incompetence. It was a tragedy and a preventable one and is firmly in the section of why you want government doing as little as possible. But it was not a presidential event. And no, I don't expect the Sec of State to be hauled before the mob, er Congress, to be humiliated for a low level Intel/State clusterfkcu which should not in the least be surprising to those of us who inherently distrust big government. If you are surprised by bureaucrats trying to paint their actions in the best possible light in this day and age I don't know what to tell you. There is too much CYA culture at all levels of both sides to play it for political effect.
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Post by rustyshackleford on May 16, 2013 11:05:27 GMT -5
With regard to the IRS, the real scandal is that agency allowing political organizations to masquerade as charities or "social welfare" organizations to avoid taxes on themselves and their donors, and to keep their donors secret, a practice which has been occurring for years and one which has been abused far more by the right than the center or the left. Read the thread before you reveal you're a partisan apologist who doesn't care about facts or about government abuses as long as its aimed at the right groups.
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Post by rustyshackleford on May 16, 2013 11:29:33 GMT -5
By the way here's a report which shows the exact opposite of what some on this thread are claiming about the number of groups filing as 501 (c) (4) groups: philanthropy.com/article/IRS-Rationale-for-Tea-Party/139277/The audit says the IRS began to use “inappropriate criteria” to single out applications in March 2010. By April 2010, a “sensitive case report” was issued on “Tea Party cases,” indicating that managers in Cincinnati were aware of the sensitive nature of the reviews.
According to the audit, 1,735 groups applied for 501(c)(4) exemption for the federal fiscal year that ended September 30, 2010—six months after the IRS began its scrutiny. That was down slightly from 1,751 the prior year.Perhaps the argument now should be that the applications increased the following two years so the agency was just implementing prescient policies based on political activity they saw would increase - because it sure as heck wasn't because of a preceding increase in applications. Considering that there were multiple changes during those increased applications though it looks pretty clear that the IRS started this targeting before an increase - also note that while there is an increase listed in the following two years there's nothing about what the political orientation of those organizations were. Also from the article: “In fact, the number of 501(c)(4) applications dropped between 2009 and 2010, when the IRS began its unconstitutional targeting. That’s plain from the IG report,” Mr. French said. “Even if applications did increase—as they eventually did—the solution is to create viewpoint neutral, constitutionally appropriate criteria for evaluation, not to implement ideological screening.”
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TC
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Post by TC on May 16, 2013 14:22:50 GMT -5
It turns out that there are some pretty strict rules regarding what organizations can file as 501 (c)(3) and (c)(4) and that there are some purposely nebulous ones because the government purposely doesn't want to potentially inhibit social welfare organizations which focus on civics. I literally could not stop laughing at this sentence. Every part of it is wrong.
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EasyEd
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Post by EasyEd on May 17, 2013 9:23:00 GMT -5
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hoyainspirit
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Post by hoyainspirit on May 17, 2013 9:33:47 GMT -5
With regard to the IRS, the real scandal is that agency allowing political organizations to masquerade as charities or "social welfare" organizations to avoid taxes on themselves and their donors, and to keep their donors secret, a practice which has been occurring for years and one which has been abused far more by the right than the center or the left. Read the thread before you reveal you're a partisan apologist who doesn't care about facts or about government abuses as long as its aimed at the right groups. Um, OK.... Get back to me when you follow a post I've made with something that makes sense. Ezra Klein weighs in. The scandals are falling apart
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TC
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Post by TC on May 17, 2013 9:42:21 GMT -5
Bob Woodward also got humiliated by the White House three months ago when they released the email proving that no one was trying to threaten him, calling him on his BS. I think his rationale for comparing this to Watergate - his idea that not immediately linking Benghazi to Al Qaeda without hard proof is somehow a Wategate-like coverup - is frankly insane.
The IRS issue is a scandal, but Republicans are already overplaying it without even trying to connect the dots. Boehner's "who's going to jail for this" was pretty funny when no one has spelled out what crime has been committed here.
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Post by rustyshackleford on May 17, 2013 12:16:03 GMT -5
It turns out that there are some pretty strict rules regarding what organizations can file as 501 (c)(3) and (c)(4) and that there are some purposely nebulous ones because the government purposely doesn't want to potentially inhibit social welfare organizations which focus on civics. I literally could not stop laughing at this sentence. Every part of it is wrong. Laughing and claiming something is wrong in the face of written proof and overwhelming legal precedent that states otherwise isn't a very convincing argument. That's fine though - I'll make the explicit argument none of the partisans here seem to be able to - first there's even a legislative activities exemption in the exemptions manual: As long as the legislation that an organization attempts to influence is germane to its social welfare purposes, the organization is engaged in activities that further social welfare purposes. See for example Rev. Rul. 67–293, 1967–2 C.B. 185 (promotion of legislation on animal rights); Rev. Rul. 76–81, 1976–1 C.B. 156 (advocacy of anti-abortion legislation);Secondly, there are fairly specific activities the IRS permits and doesn't permit that mostly revolve around the direct support of candidates in some way - that's why for example giving candidates ratings on an issue aren't permissible Example of Impermissable Activity while actually advocating for changes in tax/environmental/social issues law is Permissable Activity. Now at some point amidst your laughter, failure to read actual law and decisions, and references to the 'the internet' for false claims I'd like to see those who are trying to brush over this scandal actually try to make a factual argument.
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