L.A. Times Repeats False and Discredited “Surge of Applications” Excuse for IRS’s Political Targeting
On Thursday, the L.A. Times published this attempt to exculpate the IRS by Matea Gold:
IRS problem started with vague tax exemption rules
IRS was ill-equipped to handle the deluge of tax-exempt applications from ‘social welfare’ organizations and to police their political activities, experts say.
In spring 2010, agents in the Cincinnati office of the Internal Revenue Service, which handles applications for tax-exempt status, faced a surge of filings by new advocacy groups, with little guidance on how to treat them.
Their decision to deal with the problem by singling out tea party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny has now triggered a criminal inquiry, congressional investigations, the departure of two top IRS officials and the naming of a new acting commissioner Thursday.
That was certainly the narrative being put out by Lois Lerner and other defenders of Obama when the scandal first hit. There’s just one tiny little problem with that narrative: it was factually untrue.
A number of people have sought to explain the IRS targeting of Tea Party, patriot, and 9/12 group applications — as well as those from other conservative groups — for “specialist team” treatment (mainly delays and excessive and inappropriate questions) in 2010 by pointing to the Citizens United decision that year allowing for unlimited, undisclosed fundraising by such groups. That’s the explanation IRS official Lois Lerner gave a week ago when she first revealed that the agency had improperly handled a slew of applications — the political shorthand was a mistaken attempt to deal with a surge in applications.
“[W]e saw a big increase in these kind of applications, many of which indicated that they were going to be involved in advocacy work,” Lerner said.
But Todd Young, a Republican congressman from Indiana, pointed out at Friday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing with former acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George that this was not the case, according to the very data the IRS provided to the Treasury IG’s office.
There were, he noted, actually fewer applications for tax-exempt status by groups seeking to be recognized as social-welfare organizations that year than the previous one, according to this IRS data. The real surge in applications did not come until 2012 — the year the IRS stopped the practice of treating the Tea Party class of groups differently from others.
There were a couple of ways reporter Matea Gold could have known this. She could have analyzed the data herself to determine whether there had been a surge as she reported in her lede — or she could have read this analysis by the Chronicle of Philanthropy:
Applications for tax exemption from advocacy nonprofits had not yet spiked when the Internal Revenue Service began using what it admits was inappropriate scrutiny of conservative groups in 2010.
In fact, applications were declining, data show.
That was published on May 15, the day before Gold published her faulty L.A. Times article.
Obama defenders and the L.A. Times (sorry for the repetititions and also the redundancy!) are entitled to their own opinions — but not to their own facts. This one is worth a note to the Readers’ Representative.
I just hope those dirty Kochs don’t buy the paper and make it into a hyperpartisan conservative rag!!!
notsomsm (04f0de) — 5/18/2013 @ 9:38 amParaphrasing something somebody said on twitter, when you’re used to carrying water for President Asterisk, everything looks like a bucket.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/18/2013 @ 9:43 amit is only appropriate that a false and discredited paper carries a false and discredited story, just as they print Ted Rall’s “cartoons”.
at least they are consistent in their incompetence.
redc1c4 (403dff) — 5/18/2013 @ 9:52 amShhhh. There are federal jobs for reporters and Soros funded grants on the line. Stifle yourself.
glenn (647d76) — 5/18/2013 @ 10:08 amThe Times is nothing if not predictable:
Spin, prevarications, and down-right lies!
It is unfortunate that journalists cannot be “disbarred”.
askeptic (2bb434) — 5/18/2013 @ 10:10 amwe can look to the historical record to gain an understanding about the extent to which fascists can rationalize malfeasance on the part of their beloved authoritarian government
they’re just getting warmed up
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/18/2013 @ 10:15 amIt falls under the French proverb what a wicked animal, it dares to defend itself’ because no one else will.
narciso (3fec35) — 5/18/2013 @ 10:19 amAll the news that’s fit to
Colonel Haiku (479309) — 5/18/2013 @ 10:21 amprintline the birdcage or mebbe wrap a dead fish…This is from Mark Steyn’s column at National Review online:
In April last year, the Obama campaign identified by name eight Romney donors as “a group of wealthy individuals with less than reputable records. Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law, others have made profits at the expense of so many Americans, and still others are donating to help ensure Romney puts beneficial policies in place for them.” That week, Kimberley Strassel began her Wall Street Journal column thus:
“Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.
“Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. . . . The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.”
Miss Strassel wrote that on April 26, 2012. Five weeks later, one of the named individuals, Frank VanderSloot, was informed by the IRS that he and his wife were being audited. In July, he was told by the Department of Labor of an additional audit over the guest workers on his cattle ranch in Idaho. In September, he was notified that one of his other businesses was to be audited. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never previously been audited, attracted three in the four months after being publicly named by el Presidente. More to the point he attracted that triple audit even though Miss Strassel explicitly predicted in America’s biggest-selling newspaper that this was exactly what the Obama enforcers were going to do. The “separate, sinister entity” of the government of the United States went ahead anyway. What do they care? If some lippy broad in the papers won’t quit her yapping about it, they can always audit her, too — as they did to Miss Strassel’s sometime colleague Anne Hendershott, a sociology professor who got rather too interested in Obamacare and wrote about it in the Journal and various small Catholic publications. The IRS summoned Professor Hendershott to account for herself, and forbade her husband from accompanying her, even though they filed jointly. She ceased her political writing.
A year after he was named to the Obama Dishonor Roll, the feds have found nothing on Mr. VanderSloot, but they have caused him to rack up 80 grand in legal bills. This is what IRS defenders (of whom there are more than there ought to be) mean when they assure us that the system worked: Yes, some rich guy had to blow through the best part of six figures fending off the bureaucrats, but it’s not like his body was found in a trunk at the airport or anything, if you know what I mean, Kimmy baby.
(End of column excerpt)
Y’all should read the entire column. Per Mr. Steyn’s style, it’s witty and scary at the same time.
Whitey Nisson (7f9f6a) — 5/18/2013 @ 10:29 amAs Michael Barone predicted in early ’09:
askeptic (2bb434) — 5/18/2013 @ 10:35 amGangster Government!
Amazing. Ear Leader himself said this practice was unacceptable, yet they’re STILL trying to spin it as being caused by the opposition.
Per•son•al Re•spon•si•bil•i•ty
Icy (64e97d) — 5/18/2013 @ 10:41 amExcellent column, Whitey!
Colonel Haiku (479309) — 5/18/2013 @ 11:13 amThe one constant in all these scandals is that you can’t attempt to defend the administration without lying, and then repeating the lies long after they’ve been discredited, and then ultimately you have to not mind the fact you’re discrediting yourself as a complete knave or fool.
Steve57 (9b1cdb) — 5/18/2013 @ 11:26 amWhitey’s column has a mistake in it. I saw Mr. Vandersloot interviewed by O’Reilly and he stated that he had been audited once before in the last thirty years, but then was audited in June 2012 by IRS, August 2012 by the Dept. of Labor, and then again by the IRS in September of the same year.
peedoffamerican (a84075) — 5/18/2013 @ 12:36 pmConventional wisdom is that Treasury and IRS (and by extension the Obama Administration) knew the IG’s report would expose years of political dirty dealing in IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division, so to get ahead of the news cycle Lois Lerner planted a question to make sure it was an IRS manager pretending to be forthright who let the cat out of the bag.
What bothers me is that Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Jack Lew, is now Treasury Secretary and could have easily suppressed or at least delayed the IG’s report. He could have controlled the timing of the revelations and the resultant brouhaha. Additionally, it was Eric Holder who surfaced the AP phone records scandal, again controlling the timing.
Isn’t it curious that Administration figures are responsible for focusing public attention on both the AP and IRS scandals while serious questions remain unanswered about Obama and his role in Benghazi?
ropelight (978dc9) — 5/18/2013 @ 12:52 pmmeanwhile Mr. ropelight National Soros Radio has been told to push this idea:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/05/17/184857776/why-the-irs-scandal-is-built-to-last
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/18/2013 @ 1:04 pmteh planet is fine
Colonel Haiku (4e91b0) — 5/18/2013 @ 1:06 pmbut these leftwingers are f*cked
ruin it for all
The LA Times is a rag. I hope the Koch brothers buy it and fix it!
Liberal Tolerance (c1e307) — 5/18/2013 @ 1:10 pmPeedoff: If you read Whitey’s whole comment, you will notice he was quoting an excerpt from a Mark Steyn article. Too quick to criticize that time, weren’t you? You probably need to take that up with Mark Steyn.
PatAZ (f11d55) — 5/18/2013 @ 1:43 pmI note that most MSM folks are now framing the scandals as “what the GOP is doing to hurt Dear Leader” instead of the real issue.
Well, O is the first meta president, so I guess he only has meta scandals.
Patricia (be0117) — 5/18/2013 @ 1:53 pmLA Times article –
misleadinglying.Yawn. Couldn’t this be written every single day?
Progs need the lies to sustain themselves in their delusions of superiority. Truth would end life as they know it.
in_awe (7c859a) — 5/18/2013 @ 6:08 pmSome guy wrote a book about “lies and the lying liars who tell them.” I wonder what party he had in mind ? Since he write one of the letters to the IRS asking them to focus on the Tea Party, I guess he knows liars.
Mike K (dc6ffe) — 5/18/2013 @ 8:45 pmYou mean the one who headed the Air America scam, and failed to pay taxes in a great number of states.
narciso (3fec35) — 5/18/2013 @ 8:50 pmPeedoff: If you read Whitey’s whole comment, you will notice he was quoting an excerpt from a Mark Steyn article. Too quick to criticize that time, weren’t you? You probably need to take that up with Mark Steyn.
Comment by PatAZ (f11d55) — 5/18/2013 @ 1:43 pm
I wasn’t criticizing Whitey, Pat. I was pointing out that the “column” he pasted by Stein was in error, and I don’t consider furthering the truth to be criticism. Now aren’t you the one that was a little quick whipping out the criticism pistol?
Maybe I should have said, “
peedoffamerican (35b482) — 5/19/2013 @ 2:07 amWhitey’s columnThe column Whitey pasted has a mistake in it.” I figured most readers here are intelligent enough to comprehend that. But my mistake. I apologize to you for assuming such and will make sure in the future to be more specific.Something else about this whole IRS thing I’m surprised no one else has speculated… I’ve heard that the lady (ahem, benefit of doubt) who was in charge of the exemption division at the time of all the “don’t-call-it-partisan-or-targeting” is now overseeing the Obamacare implementation @ IRS.
There’s been a bit of outrage to the effect of ‘you don’t put someone whose behavior resulted in an internal investigation into a more prominent role’, but I’ve actually wondered the opposite: any chance being handed a high-up position in the next big huge division was a feature, not a bug, e.g. payback for playing ball?
I have zero insight or evidence, and don’t think the timeline has been clarified…but that was certainly the first explanation that popped into my mind, and I’ve not heard it mentioned at all. Maybe it has been and I’ve just missed it, or its already inconsistent with known facts…?
rtrski (87a57b) — 5/19/2013 @ 7:51 amNotice that when a scandal surfaces the pattern is nearly always the same. Obama claims he just learned about it from news reports. He’s absolutely outraged, and he quickly appoints a team of cronies to get to the bottom of it and report back, if he hasn’t already got a whitewash report in progress.
Then his stooges go on TV and portray the obvious cover-up as a completely independent investigation fully exonerating the President and his inner circle of WH policy makers while branding low and mid level scapegoats as merely overworked or possibly inept but certainly not malicious.
Then they stonewall Congressional investigations, pretend they’re cooperating while refusing to comply with document requests and claim they just can’t seem to recall anything important.
ropelight (a5369f) — 5/19/2013 @ 10:30 amLook up “Jamie Gorelick” and you’ll have your answer.
Rob Crawford (49918b) — 5/19/2013 @ 11:41 amThere are two possible explanations with the Obama administration and all of these scandals:
1. The administration is just flat out lying and knew about these scandals well in advance or knew through political channels (maybe not government channels) that they were going on.
2. The administration is just flat out incompetent and we have an entire political party gone rogue in the various departments and agencies of government and Obama can’t get things under control.
Those are pretty much your two choices. This is looking more to me like an administration that is being run by a hidden committee somewhere and Obama just does/says what he is told. So who is on the Democrats’ Politburo?
crosspatch (6adcc9) — 5/19/2013 @ 9:16 pm“low level officials” in the Obama administration are probably getting plenty nervous about now.
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/05/19/obama-administration-behind-another-leak-hanging-israel-out-to-dry-putting-them-in-greater-danger/
crosspatch (6adcc9) — 5/19/2013 @ 9:22 pmAnd they say that fiction writing is dead.
Icy (ef6bf9) — 5/19/2013 @ 10:24 pmPresident Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years.
“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.”
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (9b8d07) — 5/19/2013 @ 10:25 pmNot The Onion, but close.
President Obama used his weekly radio address
It’s scary because I really can’t tell whether that’s parody or not. I can easily imagine Obama in real life saying such nonsense. IOW, I wouldn’t past him to voice the words of an immature, dishonest, smug community organizer—which, in fact, is who he truly is.
Yikes.
Mark (9028ae) — 5/19/2013 @ 11:58 pm28. I’m receiving telltale signs of the commandeering of the Left, flying the flag of thuggish incompetence and congenital corruption of Chicago on a DC vessel of the Corruptocrat Anti-American Death Cultist Borg.
Incompetence and treason are working together for ill.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 5/20/2013 @ 12:30 amI’m sure this is just accidental;
http://riehlworldview.com/2013/05/justice-dept-spied-on-fox-news-james-rosen-now-left-goes-after-abcs-jonathan-karl.html
narciso (3fec35) — 5/20/2013 @ 5:36 amalways follow links by narciso-
double standard as usual, when the press discloses sensitive material under a repub administration, even if it harms national security and is non-partisan (like financial dealings of terrorists), it is patriotic dissent and good for the country
if it is under a dem administration, then it gets treated with the harshest per/prosecution
I think the press should be held accountable, along with government leakers, if the info really is classified and hurts US interests
but it should be a fair and equal standard
and if the obama folks rile the press because of over-reaching, well, maybe the press will at least react when it is their own interests being harrassed
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 5/20/2013 @ 8:45 amIt’s pretty bad when the Washington Post gives the main purveyor of your “facts” “a bushel of Pinocchios” MSM fratricide.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 5/20/2013 @ 9:21 amThere’s another side to a story about a truly corrupt IRS such as we seem to have.
Obama has a lot of supporters who can do a lot more than provide a donation, but also lobby hard for tax breaks. google is a great example, with reference to Obama’s data analysis used for voter turnout and information.
How can we know that Obama’s supporters are getting a normal amount of scrutiny from the IRS? I mean, all this manpower to shut down Tea Partiers has to come from some other task, right?
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