Don's Tuesday column

         THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   7/23/2013

Principles and stories show the vendetta

 

 

Readers have seen column after column on the ironies, the hypocrisies, the propaganda and misrepresentations surrounding the IRS-targeting-conservatives scandal. You’ve read of the propriety of groups across America forming under the tax code into tax-exempt entities for legitimate advocacy and activism, and how liberal groups used and abused their status. Following are some first principles and stories behind the headlines.

Let’s start with something that the Washington Post (hardly a conservative shill) wrote two months ago in "Playing with Tax Records": "A bedrock principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends. So it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation."

I’ve read that Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass and intimidate but he reserved it for large companies and news media that drew his ire. John Kennedy also used the IRS to intimidate foes. Richard Nixon famously instructed the IRS to pursue his enemies. Bill Clinton had not only the IRS to sick on opponents but also acquired hundreds of FBI files on Republicans. Hmm, 3 Ds and 1 R. Did Obama instruct anyone? Even Indirectly?

From a targeted conservative group and individual, Jennifer Stefano, Pennsylvania state director, Americans for Prosperity, interviewed on "The Willis Report," Fox Business Network, we have the following:

Willis: "How were you targeted? Tell us your story." Stefano: "This was before I joined Americans for Prosperity. I was just a stay-at-home mother. I was pregnant with another baby, and I wanted to do what was right. My Tea Party group was becoming really large and I couldn’t run the money and the donations through my bank account. I was advised the IRS would come after you for that. So I started calling other groups and I thought I would file and create an organization, and here they were all getting targeted by the IRS and I got scared."

Willis: "Well, what were they asking you?" Stefano: "These are all out there now, and I have actually documents showing it. You know, ‘Send us your Facebook pages, your Twitter pages,’ and I said ‘Does that include personal pages?’ and they said, ‘Everything.’ They wanted to know your personal relationships with politicians and political parties. And I asked, ‘What would happen if I don’t send this to you?’ and they said, they made an insinuation like, ‘Look, it can be considered perjury if you omit things from the IRS.’ I’m a pregnant stay-at-home mother on one income, I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, I’m not doing anything.’ I stopped."

With this administrative tyrannical jack boot, elections are irrelevant when women like this can be intimidated into dropping their most noble of desires: advancing conservative values and principles to make a difference in our nation. IRS underlings, we now know, didn’t come up with this convoluted, Gordian knot of an inquisition; top echelons in Washington D.C. did. The latest news (6/21) from House hearings is that the directives came from the office of the top Obama-appointed IRS lawyer, William Wilkins, who is on the White House visitor logs over a hundred times, talking to someone about something.

This illustrates why the electorate looked different in 2012 compared to 2010. Liberals and news talkers were gloating over the supposedly fading Tea Party, an appearance obviously orchestrated to give just that image for propaganda and electoral purposes. That’s the Alinsky/Obama strategy: Don’t beat your opponents when you can get rid of them or dissuade them from showing up.

"Tea Party groups detail ‘harassment’ by IRS" (June 4, by Greg Korte, USA TODAY), listed numerous outrageous examples of the IRS vendetta. The Coalition for Life of Iowa was asked to have all its board members swear—under penalty of perjury—that it wouldn’t pray, picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood. "We never thought we would have to defend our prayer activities," said coalition president Susan Martinek.

The San Fernando Valley Patriots of California gave up seeking tax-exempt status last year after getting a list of 35 questions with 80 sub-questions. They were to list "our committed violations of local ordinances, breaches of the public order or arrests, along with how (we) conduct or promote illegal activities." Lauren County Tea Party in South Carolina submitted articles of incorporation multiple times, Facebook postings, videos of speakers at meetings, agenda, press releases, advertisements and other materials.

The National Organization for [traditional] Marriage said its donor list was leaked—no doubt by the IRS—to its political opponents, the pro-gay marriage Human Rights Campaign. "You can imagine our shock and disgust with this; we zealously guard our donors …" Releasing donor lists is a felony!

Religious groups targeted include: Billy Graham’s Evangelistic Association and its Samaritan’s Purse charity, Catholics United Education Fund, Christian Voices for Life and a Jewish group, Z Street.

In "Heightened Scrutiny" (May 13, Alana Goodman, Free Beacon), Dan Backer, attorney for TheTeaParty.net, was told in a slip-of-tongue from an IRS agent, "Yeah, we have this new working group that’s really looking at all these conservative organizations." From his pathetic, candid lips to our eyes and ears.