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IRS Scandal? Eh … just a distraction. Really. Move on, wingnuts [Darleen Click]

ramirez_20130518

NYSlimes sets about to shove criminal IRS behavior down the memory hole

The Washington Post has two front-page above-the-fold articles on the scandal, a news story and an in-depth look at the IRS in the wake of the controversy. There’s also a tough lead editorial expressing renewed outrage at the IRS’s conduct and demanding thorough reform.

Yet after the first dramatic day of congressional hearings, the New York Times has no front-page coverage at all of the scandal per se. Instead we have a story on President Obama’s efforts to move his agenda forward, beyond “distraction.” The Times story quotes White House aides accusing Republicans of seizing on “woes” to thwart the president’s agenda. The paper itself seems to be taking the White House line.

Just below the Times story on Obama’s attempts to move past “distraction,” a tiny squib notes that there is an article about the IRS on page 12. The teaser is: “Republicans are widening their aim at the Internal Revenue Service.” The headline of the page 12 Times article itself is: “Republicans Broaden Scope of I.R.S. Inquiry, Hoping to Entangle White House.” For comparison, the Post’s front-page news story headline is: “Panel grills IRS on tax targeting.” In other words, the Times treats the scandal as little more than a Republican-hyped distraction, while the Post takes it as a matter that should concern everyone. In contrast to the Post, there is no Times editorial on the scandal today.

New line of idiocy from DailyKos (I will NOT link to them) is that 3 “Democrat-leaning” groups may have received same letter from IRS so SHUT UP, wingnuts, he said.

More chilling, is Leftists taking up Nancy Pelosi’s line that this is the fault of Citizen’s United and that no one anywhere should be allowed to donate money without their personal information in a government database.

For the Transparency!

36 Replies to “IRS Scandal? Eh … just a distraction. Really. Move on, wingnuts [Darleen Click]”

  1. sdferr says:

    Hoping to Entangle White House

    The NYTimes should perhaps refresh its recollection of the structure of government, and the Executive in particular, under the Constitution.

  2. sdferr says:

    Individuals learn what it’s like to be an ant at the focus of a child’s tormenting hand-lens.

  3. sdferr says:

    3 “Democrat-leaning” groups may have received [the] same letter from IRS

    Would that be the “letter” inquiring of their relationship with Dylan Nonaka, or the one inquiring of their relationship with Justin Binik-Thomas?

  4. BigBangHunter says:

    – No, it’s the one asking them if they need any help making out their donation forms to the DNC.

  5. Dalekhunter says:

    So, where in this ‘scandal’ talk is the real possibility that some of these Tea Party groups have indeed been masquerading as 501C3s. If they are right wing political organizations committed to advancing a legislative agenda and not providing charitable care they should be punished. It’s just the most tedious and boring sort of faux outrage.

    #tyranny

  6. sdferr says:

    Tyrants are easily bored. This propensity could even lie at the core of their motivation to lord it over other people. They happen to “like” vicious excitement.

  7. geoffb says:

    There was no surge in 501(c)(4) or (c)(3) applications in 2010 when the IRS implemented the special scrutiny of conservative sounding groups. 2011 was when there was a surge which happened after the IRS started its actions.

    There Was No Surge in IRS Tax-Exempt Applications in 2010
    Fewer groups sought recognition as 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations that year than in 2009, according to the Treasury Department.

  8. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Not as tedious and boring as you taking offense at what you call faux outrage.

    #2+2=5
    #Oceana is at war with East Asia. Oceana has always been at war with East Asia

  9. geoffb says:

    Meet a 501(c)(3) which admits in their IRS form 990 to engaging in partisan political activity and yet they have never had any problem with the IRS for doing so. Nasty Tea Party types they are.

  10. DK, why do you hate reality?

  11. SBP says:

    “So, where in this ‘scandal’ talk is the real possibility that some of these Tea Party groups have indeed been masquerading as 501C3s.”

    So, where in this ‘scandal’ talk is the real possibility that some of thes”progressive” and “social justice” groups have indeed been masquerading as 501C3s, but were somehow not subject to the same targeting by the IRS?

    Idiot.

  12. JHoward says:

    When I say leftism is a disorder writ large this crap is what I’m referring to: To say that justice — such as we’re ever going to get it, which is only mentally — is a distraction is to engage in blaming the victim for observing the crime. It is to 2013 what Move On was to Clinton. It is denial, The Lie.

    I’m not going to have that argument with these liars just the same I don’t debate with denialists personally. As I think Dicentra said recently, that’s a pose, not an argument.

    And indeed it is, one aimed at pathological dishonesty behind which lies the inherent fraud of collectivism, the left’s ultimate aim and as much an assault on the individual as it is on the structure of sound and just governance.

    It’s all fractal. The personal is the community-level is the national is the global.

  13. SBP says:

    “Democrat-leaning” groups may have received [the] same letter from IRS”

    The last number I saw was something like 400 groups, exactly three of which were Democrat-leaning. Fair and balanced!

  14. John Bradley says:

    Do we have an evidence, other than the assertion monkey’s assertion, that these Tea Party groups were trying to register as 501(c)(3)s and not the considerably more permissive 501(c)(4)s?

    501(c)(4)s can be political as all get-out (see for example the lobbying arm of the NRA, or Planned Parenthood), and can even endorse candidates as long as such endorsements are part and parcel of their greater Social Goal (gun rights, abortion on demand, stopping abortion on demand, etc.)

    Donations to (c)(3)s are tax deductable, and as such those organizations are made to jump through much higher hoops, and are strictly prohibited from engaging in political activity. You know, like the completely non-partisan MMFA.

  15. BigBangHunter says:

    – Did you really think the numbnuts on the Left were going to sit by quietly as their pet nafarious schemes to game elections get attacked for the crimes they represent.

    – Come on peoples.

  16. sdferr says:

    the numbnuts on the Left were going to sit by quietly

    The current trouble is mostly constituted by the numbnuts on the nominal Right (Camp, Boustany, et alia) who’ve been sitting quietly by, watching the passing progressive parade.

  17. BigBangHunter says:

    – They have to force themselves to believe that tyranny can be controlled and manipulated so it never focuses on them. Its who they are, its what they do as Jeff is found of saying.

    – Its also why so many times they end up in blindfokds against the wall when their appointed tyrrant shows them reality up close and personal.

  18. Silver Whistle says:

    I have it on good authority that these are indeed just ‘scandals’, so there.

  19. sdferr says:

    Says Cassidy “allegedly targeted”: this, after the IRS concocted a staged “apology” for targeting when they learned the IGs audit would say as much — so deeply is Cassidy into the weeds of the investigation.

  20. Silver Whistle says:

    Maybe Dale Khunter can look for Cassidy’s ball while they’re strolling in the weeds together.

  21. sdferr says:

    Says Cassidy with Obama, with Lincoln:

    I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of liberty will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the minds, old as well as young, Right as well as Left.

    Lincoln did say that, didn’t he? David Axelrod certainly thinks so.

  22. Silver Whistle says:

    Slavery, liberty, tomato, tomahto.

  23. dicentra says:

    As I think Dicentra said recently, that’s a pose, not an argument.

    ‘Twas I.

    Interestingly, the person I said that to on Twitter favorited it. For future use, I reckon.

    The Italian and the Greek that I was wrangling with turned out not to be as far left as their original assertions indicated, but that doesn’t explain why they objected to the original comment: that we don’t need economists running the economy any more than we need ecologists running the ecosystem.

  24. dicentra says:

    Also, the IRS investigation is still going on, as that AG dude tried not to say.

    They’re going to find plenty of evidence that Being Conservative (or, mejor dicho Against Obama) has always been sufficient cause to initiate a rectal exam audit.

  25. dicentra says:

    “Just a distraction” = “You’re over the target! Back off! Back off!”

  26. SBP says:

    40 years ago yesterday, Archibald Cox was appointed as the Watergate special prosecutor.

    When he got too close, Nixon ordered him fired. Several resigned rather than carry out the order. The one who finally agreed to do it was Bork, which is one reason I was never a big fan of his.

    Do you think anyone in the Justice Department today has that kind of integrity?

    Neither do I.

  27. dicentra says:

    Over at neo-neocon, the psychology of this kind of denial. Whitaker Chambers, on Harry Freeman:

    No matter how favorable his opinion had been to an individual or his political role, if that person fell from grace in the Communist Party, Harry Freeman changed his opinion about him instantly. … If you taxed him with his former views, he would show surprise, and that surprise would be authentic. He would then demonstrate to you, in a series of mental acrobatics so flexible that the shifts were all but untraceable, that he had never thought anything else.

    That’s also a characteristic of Narcissists: the ability to rewrite history in your own brain is a drastic defense mechanism: in the Narcissist, to defend against the idea that he’s made a mistake; in the Leftist, to defend against the fact that he’s a monster.

  28. I don’t get why they’re so afraid to admit to being monsters. Monsters are just cuddly and misunderstood. They don’t even like having to scare little children for energy.

  29. Darleen says:

    Donations to (c)(3)s are tax deductable, and as such those organizations are made to jump through much higher hoops, and are strictly prohibited from engaging in political activity. You know, like the completely non-partisan MMFA.

    And the non-partisan colleges & universities

  30. dicentra says:

    Monsters are just cuddly and misunderstood. They don’t even like having to scare little children for energy.

    Steyn’s criticism of Sesame Street.

    I’ll admit I’d never thought of it that way until he pointed it out a few months back. I was aware of the Hollywood stereotype of the redneck who hears the gentle aliens rustling in the woods, then comes out guns a-blazin’, because they kill anything they don’t understand, no questions asked.

    When in reality the redneck is far more likely to walk right up to the alien in the woods and take it home like a pet, regardless of the alien germs or radiation or razor teeth or other dangers you should rule out first.

    The scenario presented in V is far more likely: lovely aliens promise to use their power for good and we trust them when we totally, TOTALLY shouldn’t.

  31. dicentra says:

    Donations to (c)(3)s are tax deductable, and as such those organizations are made to jump through much higher hoops, and are strictly prohibited from engaging in political activity.

    Let us continue to emphasize that LBJ engineered that last feature out of pure spite, because a non-profit nearly defeated him in a Senate race, and therefore there’s no moral logic behind it, despite how we’ve become accustomed to thinking.

  32. geoffb says:

    Hey… it’s not like the government was stockpiling guns and ammo while they were targeting Tea Parties and Jews.

  33. Ernst Schreiber says:

    When [Archibald Cox] got too close, Nixon ordered him fired. Several resigned rather than carry out the order. The one who finally agreed to do it was Bork, which is one reason I was never a big fan of his.

    Did Cox get too close, or did he exceed his mandate?

    Teddy Kennedy wasn’t a big fan of Bork either, and for the same reason.

  34. geoffb says:

    Welcome to the future.

  35. Robert Bork was urged to stay by the AG [Richardson] and his second in command once they had made their decision to resign in order that the DOJ could keep functioning.

    He knew he would be forever tarred by staying, but he did it any way for the good of the country.

    Robert Bork did many heroic things in his life.

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