Hey kids, guess what the local Fox affiliate here in Cincy found about the regional IRS office last night?
FOX19 has exclusively learned that as many as four people may be the first Cincinnati Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees to face disciplinary action, and possibly even criminal charges, for allegedly targeting Tea Party and Liberty groups applying for non-profit status.
That’s four, not two. Just in case you can’t count, being a regular Fox viewer and all, they cover that again (emphasis theirs):
However, despite the claim of just two employees being involved, FOX19 has exclusively learned from two separate sources that there could be at least four Cincinnati employees involved.
Those four employees, whose names we have chosen to withhold until they have been officially confirmed, have each worked in the IRS Exempt Organizations Department.
And they have Sources(tm)!
One of FOX19’s two sources went on say that these four IRS workers claim “they simply did what their bosses ordered.”
This qualifies as a major national bombshell or something. Perhaps the President should rehire and re-fire Steven Miller as acting IRS Commissioner again to cover the other two IRS guys here in Cincy. You know, just in case you thought the GOP, the press, and the haters weren’t going to immediately move the goalposts after last night.
Baud
I loved that show.
[email protected]
Criminal charges for what? Offending the RW’s sensibilities?
Baud
Who knew turkeys couldn’t fly?
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud: As God is my witness….
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
As God is my witness….
Zandar
Yeah, the Cincinnati Cyclones hockey team still has WKRP Turkey Demolition Night around Thanksgiving every year.
SiubhanDuinne
Sorry about the double post. FYWP told me “Your comment failed. Please try again.” So I did.
Going through major adjustments with the new format on my iPad. I guess I can get used to anything and I may eventually come to love it, but for the moment it’s … challenging.
c u n d gulag
GOP POV:
FOUR!
Not two – FOUR!!!!!
That makes this worse than The Teapot Dome Scandal, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11 X 1,000!!!!!!
IMPEACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PS: Don’t you love how we always refer back to scandals that happened under Republican Presidents?
We don’t know why we do that…
We’re having a battle over talking points right now, so we’ll see what we finally decide on soon.
Maybe it’ll be “Worst Than That ‘The BJ Heard Round the World,'” X 1,000,000,000,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!
weaselone
@c u n d gulag:
It will probably turn out that the two additional employees did not work in the IRS EOD while these inappropriate searches were carried out.
RSA
@c u n d gulag:
It’s even worse than when someone at the post office (a federal employee!) stole a package that I sent. Impeaching Obama is the only solution.
Cassidy
No one should have been fired in the first place.
KCinDC
I’m still seeing essentially zero in the media about what would seem to be an essential point to claims of “targeting” or being “singled out”: What other criteria were being used besides those related to the Tea Party? The TIGTA report says “Based on our review of other BOLO listing criteria, the use of organization names on the BOLO listing is not unique to potential political cases…. We did not review the use of other named organizations on the BOLO listing to determine if their use was appropriate.” Without that context, it’s impossible to evaluate the significance of “tea party” being included on the list.
Similarly, saying that there were lots of investigations of tea party groups is meaningless unless we know how many tea party applications there were relative to other applications. If the surge in tea party applications made up, say, 20% of the total applications, they could easily have made up half of the suspiciously political-looking applications that warranted investigation. I haven’t seen any reporting on what the actual numbers were.
SteveM
The original CNN story said that the (now-fired) IRS commissioner “emphasized that the problem with IRS handling of tax-exempt status for tea party groups was not limited to these two employees.”
Angela
OT. But wanted to note that I just noticed the graphic on the mobile app. I love it. Thanks for using the little man!
Cassidy
@KCinDC: None of that matters. All that matters is that it fed into their WATB victim complex of persecution by the gov’t and the media enabled them because they want to breathlessly opine about
the sheriff is still a nig(clang)a possible scandal.cintibud
God I hate that station! I used to think that the Faux News slant was mainly for cable and the local outlets did what all local outlets do – local crimes, accidents, city council bickering, etc. But they have a segment in which they spread the fever from the swamp. The other night I saw the breathless investigation as to how the feds are buying all the ammo to keep it out of the hands of the real patriots.
Being an old fart, I still like to watch local news on the TV and I can’t stay up as late as I used to. Those asshats are the only local news at 10 PM and I still get sucked into turning it on before bed to catch the weather and sports. The “We report to direct you what to decide” segment is right before and if I turn it on too early the blood pressure will go up. I think I’m finally learning to just check the laptop instead
Patrick
Did Fox19 have any sources/information as to how many IRS employees were involved when it targeted Greenpeace, NAACP and a liberal church in California? Until right-wingers are equally outraged at liberal groups being targeted, please spare me your crocodile tears about this non-scandal.
Schlemizel
My 3 favorite WKRP lines:
1) As God is my witness I thought turkeys could fly
2) I HAVE A MONKEY ON MY FOOT!
3) I AM the air
so many other great moments
bjacques
Mmm…Bailey Quarters…
MomSense
The villagers just want the big bad IRS to stop persecuting these obviously apolitical tea party groups and return to going after all those no good moochers who claim the Earned Income Credit.
gnomedad
A jillion times worse than Hitler!!
Kay
@KCinDC:
The reporting is horrible. I knew it would be.
The Washington Post is doing the same thing FOX is doing here, making a breathless connection between DC and this office.
If you look at the timeline, what we know now, anyway, it went to DC because of the investigation. Which makes sense in a non-scandalous way, it SHOULD go to their bosses.
They’re presenting this backward. They’re implying that the direction from DC came prior to any investigation.
Patricia Kayden
Until heads are on spikes, the GOP will not be satisfied. THEY WANT BLOOD, people.
Morbo
@SteveM: Then the question becomes “Who changed the talking points?”
Emily
Two employees, or maybe four, out of how many in the Cincinnati office? A dozen? 100?
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: @Schlemizel:
Sadly, I’d take Les Nessman over the current yahoos that are in our media.
Patrick
At least he was not a stenographer like today’s media is.
Baud
@Kay:
Chuck Todd was the voice of reason on the Today show this morning. It’s that bad.
Chris
There are FOUR LIGHTS!
Zam
If only the Tea Party was registering black people to vote, then we would never have had to deal with this. Hell we’d probably be holding investigations as to why they get tax exempt status.
Kay
@Baud:
I avoid it, but I have satellite radio in the car and I drive a lot for my job.
I listened to Paul Begala and Jake Tapper yesterday, and Tapper was just horrible. Fact-free. There’s quite a bit of information on this. There’s no reason to pretend we know nothing. Propublica, the non-profit news site, has actually been covering these petitions since Citizens, not to look for IRS targeting, but to follow the dark money. They know a ton. They request and receive the approved petitions. They’re building a “dark money” database of sorts.
Begala was solid. Good job. He has a directness that is persuasive. I don’t know if it’s contrived, but it adds credibility.
liberal
@KCinDC:
This is essentially what I said a couple days ago here. To make a fair assessment, you’d have to look at the space of searches conducted, the rules (or lack thereof) governing searches, the space of all groups that are reasonable candidates for investigation, the fraction of those which are conservative, etc etc.
liberal
Big problem is that the Dems (with Obama leading the charge, if the lead in the Wash Post can be believed) are caving and agreeing that the IRS did something terrible.
Rob
Lost in the IRS thing is that during Bush, we actually did have people admit they were using their positions to be political. Remember Monica Goodling? That was actually a worse scandal than the IRS thing.
liberal
@Rob:
Not to mention wholesale violations of the Hatch Act by e.g. the head of the GSA.
f space that
There are probably more than four that had some involvement.
Next poutrage sub-plot to this will be that any rank and file employees will have due process protections against Boehners cry for jail time. If anyone makes a move against an IRS bargaining unit employee NTEU will be all over that. The Teabaggers will then get to rend their garments over the horribleness of Unions.
agrippa
Only four? All this razz matazz over four?
We are doomed!!
Shakezula
Really, it isn’t that we have nothing to back this and would be tap-dancing through Libel Land if we did name names. However, if someone from that office, or near that office or who knows about that office wants to drop us a completely anonymous tip naming names, we’d have to run that, wouldn’t we?
Along with photos, addresses, names of family members…
Senyordave
@liberal: @Rob: Ah, Monica Goodling. The young woman whose job was to make sure that nobody working for the Justice Dept had any of those liberal-type leanings. In other words, politcizing the Justice Dept, which truly is a major issue. But the media is too stupid or disinterested to have made that a big story, and the Democrats just don’t know how to do outrage even when something really is outrageous.
Keith G
Might I suggest that y’all just check in with these stories every other day or just once a week.
Barring any wretched miscalculation on the part of Team Obama, these stories are going to turn out okay. People done wrong, and that hint of blood in the water will cause a frenzy. Big deal.
The GOP simply wants to drive attention away from the progress that really needs to be made the next two years. We need to start driving attention back to things that matter.
the GOP wants to suck attention away from the important progress yet to be made
Patrick
@liberal:
At least Harry Reid tried to remind people/media that there was no Republican outrage when the IRS targeted liberal groups.
Keith G
Sorry for the posting issues. The way my device interacts with the mobile version is a freaking nightmare.
Todd
I guess the outrage is about “targeting” (or reviewing, as it were) the puffy, pasty-faced, salt of the earth, simple, naive, well-meaning teatards.
I’m not sure that I’d give a shit even if teatardtopia got the ACORN treatment.
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
Test
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
@Senyordave:yep. There was a lot of liberal outrage over that scandal. And it’s all gone down the memory hole. The assumption is that Holder is running Gonzales’ justice department.
Chris
@Patrick:
This just occurred to me – was there ever any talk of impeachment or “worst scandal since Watergate!” back when the federal government revoked the tax-exempt status of all-white “Christian” academies in the Deep South? I mean, that was targeting institutions based on their politics too, wasn’t it?
I’ve honestly never really thought about this crap much before now because I’ve always seen tax-exempt statuses for social institutions as a privilege, not a right.
liberal
@Patrick:
ISTR that someone in the Senate, maybe Levin, agreed there should be an investigation.
And like I said, right now the Wash Post is saying that the acting head of the IRS has resigned, at least partly at Obama’s urging.
The Dems are just morons on this. The right-wing wet dream is no IRS, all taxes collected as flat payroll taxes. There’s no reasonable evidence that it was improper to use “tea party” as a search term—it has the word “party” in it, for Christ’s sake.
JPL
@Shakezula: The station has hired Michelle Malkin to see what type of counter tops they have.
liberal
@Todd:
In ACORN’s case, Congress was thinking of going ahead with a bill of attainder.
In the teatard’s case, the IRS was just trying to enforce what are admittedly overly complicated regs.
Cassidy
I really wish they had just said “Fuck yeah, we gave extra scruitny to these idiots. That’s our fucking job you dingbats.” I know, it’s not politically viable, but just once I’d like to see these assholes get treated they way they deserve.
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
@liberal: it is possible that the democrats use those organizations for funding, too and are trying to limit the IRS in that area, too.
Chris
@Cassidy:
FTFY.
mikefromArlington
Gimme an f’in break. The crime here is we are subsidizing losers like Armey and Rove to rake in money from Americans to enrich themselves. Americans should be outraged that these clowns circumvent the tax code with outrageous loopholes like this while most small businesses pay infinitely more in taxes.
That’s the crime here.
AliceBlue
Jon Stewart has been insufferable all week over this. Think I’ll tune out TDS for a while.
Shakezula
@JPL: Groovy. She can lurk around their children’s schools while she’s at it. And where’s crap weasel par excellence J. O’Keefe IX? Surely there’s a need for his genius documentary skills. (Provided no one asks for the original, unedited tapes.)
Patrick
@liberal:
No argument from me. It should be patriotic to pay taxes and support the IRS. Hell, without the IRS, where would the funding for our military come from?
You are exactly right, the Dems are cowards on this issue. And why aren’t they (other than Reid) speaking out more forcefully about the abuses towards liberal groups that we know took place.
artem1s
So when are the congresscritters who singled out defunding ACORN for political reasons going to retire?
weaselone
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound:
Probably also an element of wishful thinking. If they act tough regarding this minor infringement, certainly the next time we have a Republican Administration and they egregiously target liberal groups then the press and the Republicans will come to their aid.
KCinDC
At least the Post’s Wonkblog is mentioning the relevant fact that liberal groups were investigated too—and that one of them, unlike the tea party groups, was actually denied tax-exempt status. But this information doesn’t fit the narrative, so it will vanish without a ripple.
Suffern ACE
@Patrick: well, the reason they aren’t talking about the abuses liberals took under the past administration is perhaps those abuses were wrong and the “bush did it too” is kind of admitting to a political scandal that isn’t the case here?
Ajaye
Meme of the day: Obama is Nixonian and this is WTW (worse than watergate!!!!!!!!!!!). He has an enemies list and is using the IRS as one of his tools to persecute and shut down his enemies. They want a link directly to WH, so naturally they will get excited about any evidence that expands the circle of wrongdoers. The more folks involved the more likely they can find a link back to the WH. “IRS agent Doe once met Obama at a Christmas party 20 years ago in Hawaii. ”
The tell is this: most “reporting” on the “scandal” has used the phrase without context that TP groups were “targeted.” The “reports” I heard from msm also said over and over again, no direct link to the White House has been found yet. Cut to Boner raging on about people definitely going to jail about this. Hmmm.
Chris
@Patrick:
I’m not sure if they’re cowards or realistically assessing the fact that the IRS is broadly hated in the general public and that defending them will confirm all the “tax and spend” stereotypes about Democrats that make people not like them.
What they should be doing, though, is asking why it’s only now, when conservatives groups are being “targeted,” and none of them have actually lost their tax exempt status, that Official Washington is getting outraged when liberal groups who were actively denied that status are being ignored (to say nothing of far worse measures like using the FBI to actively infiltrate such groups). Equal treatment regardless of politics is something that moderate and apolitical people can recognize and get behind, even if they don’t like the IRS.
Just Some Fuckhead
Travis, there’s a monkey on my foot!
MikeJ
@Zandar: The Cyclones should play clips from the tornado show where the only civil defense info Les has is for a commie invasion. Hordes of godless tornadoes, etc.
Just Some Fuckhead
Zandar, embrace Scandalgate.
Rommie
More Rock and Les Nessman!
Scott S.
Hell, I don’t know why the IRS isn’t doing more to target the teabaggers. Why shouldn’t anti-American proto-terrorist hate groups get investigated?
Shakezula
@Patrick:
What need for an army when Brave Patriots would band together and defend America from foreign invaders? Unless someone actually did invade the U.S., in which case Brave Patriots would abjectly surrender and tell the invaders where filthy invader haters lived.
Wool-verines!
liberal
@KCinDC:
Yeah, well, that’s Brad Plumer, who is both left-of-center and very intelligent. The number of prominent MSM types who fit both those criteria is a very small number.
Chris
@Shakezula:
This. It’s what goes unsaid in all the “WOLVERINES!” bullshit.
chopper
@Ajaye:
i see what you did there.
Todd
@Chris:
I was talking yesterday with a friend of mine who is a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. We cooked up a brilliant idea for a movie (or maybe a short skit) which features a late middle aged Teatard in a fatty scooter trying to fight off insensate hordes of urban invaders after GOPers fracture the economy completely. He is outside fighting, shooting some of the guns that he hauled out from his home.
We fast forward the battle to the moment the battery on the fatty scooter gives out, and Our Hero realizes he can’t get it recharged since the power is out. We enjoyed the sound of the pathetic grind and dying clicks, and his frantic radio calls for somebody, anybody to bring him a Medicare-paid battery….
Cassidy
All joking aside, I’m really wondering if this cold war is gonna get hot in my lifetime.
Steve Crickmore
At a congressional hearing March 22, 2012, Shulman, the IRS Commissioner, was adamant in his denials. (Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press)
While this was happening, several committees in Congress were writing numerous letters to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to express concern because tea party groups were complaining of IRS harassment. “There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people” who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman said at the House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing”..
Sincé when did Balloon Juice give so much succor and relief to the duplicity and incompetence of the head of a quasi independent agency (even a head who was a Republican appointee)? I suppose since Obama became president..I thought we had much better standards, or are we back to the lessor of two evils argument.
Cassidy
@Steve Crickmore: That’s a giant, steaming pile of horseshit. But hey, if it gets your purity boner to go boing, boing, I guess that’s cool.
Steve Crickmore
Just like Watergate, it not the two or three or four rogué employees, it is their lack of supervisión, probably their connivance, and the subsequent cover-up and negligence right to the top.. Obama has acted much more expetiously on this than Balloon Juice . The IRS is expected to be impartial. I thought that was fundamental, but I get the feeling from most most of the comments on this partisan site that such groups, i.e. such as those who put the word consitution in their name should be singled out for a special audit or targeted. I guess DougJ was right after all Watergate “is no big deal” to Balloon Juice, as long as we, on the left are the offenders.
weaselone
@Steve Crickmore:
As you noted in your original post, the head of the IRS was a Bush appointee. We have no clue as to the political leanings of the others involved.
Comrade Dread
“Obama lied! Men… enjoyed tax free status on their 501c organizations while they were slightly inconvenienced by having to do a little more paperwork and wait a few months longer for full IRS approval of their applications!”
Bill in Section 147
@Steve Crickmore: You used, “just like Watergate,” in a sentence to make a point about this IRS non-event. Which is unlike Watergate in any substantial way.
My kids, just like Watergate, get into more trouble for lying about sneaking a cookie than sneaking the cookie. Also…I get totally like Hitler when they lie or is it fib, just like Watergate. Well, I should amend that, I get just like a Hitler caricature from a movie. But it is all the same.
Cassidy
@Steve Crickmore: That’s some mealy mouthed dumbassery.
patroclus
I can see it now…It spells “W’……..”K”……..”R”…….”P”.
They’re hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Oh the humanity!!
patroclus
There ain’t no use in denying it. Some day, you’re gonna buy it.
liberal
@Steve Crickmore:
There’s not really much in the way of evidence that anything unfair was done. By your standards, the only fair thing to do would be to audit every group at the same frequency, or audit randomly. Who’s going to dictate what searches are “fair” if terms with actual semantic content are used?
Midnight Marauder
@Steve Crickmore:
Fantastic. Just outstanding.
burnspbesq
Poor Steve Miller.
As a result of being thrown under the bus in the IRS non-scandal, he will become the subject of an intense bidding war among the Big Four accounting firms, all of which can sell his broad and deep understanding of how to make things happen within the IRS to clients for north of $1,000/hr (he can’t personally represent anybody before the IRS for a couple of years, and can’t ever represent anybody in a specific matter that came across his desk while we was an IRS employee). His income will increase by somewhere between 5x and 10x. And he won’t have an onerous billable-hour requirement.
Yeah, it sucks being the fall guy for Republican fauxtrage.