Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Just in time for this Tea-Publican dog and pony show on Thursday:
Reps. Gosar, Salmon, Schweikert and Franks to Host Congressional Field Hearing
Thursday, August 22, 2013
CONGRESSIONAL FIELD HEARING – THE I.R.S. AND THE E.P.A. – BUREAUCRATS OUT OF CONTROL?
TIME: 3:30PM- 7:30PM (Doors will open at 2:00PM)
LOCATION: Mesa Arts Center
Virginia G. Piper Repertory Theater
1 E. Main Street
Mesa, AZ 85211
The Washington Post reports today that Congressman Chris Van Hollen will file a lawsuit today over the REAL IRS Scandal -- that any of these 501(c)(4) organizations engaged in politics ever received tax exempt status in the first place. Pay attention Doug MacEachern, you GOP agitprop hack. High-ranking Democrat to sue IRS over tax-exemption rules:
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said Tuesday that he will serve as lead plaintiff in the case, which addresses one of the main concerns that surfaced with the recent IRS targeting controversy: differences between federal law and the IRS rules on eligibility for 501(c)(4) candidates.
Current law says the organizations must engage “exclusively” in social welfare activities, but IRS tax code requires only that they are “primarily engaged” in such purposes. That discrepancy has led to confusion for application processors, who have struggled to determine what constitutes political activity and how much should disqualify groups from tax-exemption, according to agency officials.
“I don’t think the IRS should be in the business of determining whether the primary purpose of an organization is political or educational,” Van Hollen said in an interview Tuesday. “The statute is very clear they should not be in that business.”
Three campaign-finance watchdog groups — Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen — are joining Van Hollen in the lawsuit. They have scheduled a joint teleconference Wednesday to discuss the legal action.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a similar lawsuit against the IRS. The case is ongoing, according to Dave Merchant, spokesman for the group.
Congressman Van Hollen was a guest on the The Last Word Tuesday night with Lawrence O'Donnell, who is the only Beltway media villager to have gotten the REAL IRS Scandal right -- that any of these 501(c)(4) organizations engaged in politics ever received tax exempt status in the first place. The ‘real IRS scandal’: Now, a lawsuit:
Rep. Chris Van Hollen is preparing to file a lawsuit in federal district court challenging the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service over the agency’s interpretation of the 501(c)(4) law that determines tax-exempt status for social welfare organizations.
Hoping to force the agency to clarify its rules, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee said Tuesday that he will serve as lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, which will address one of the primary concerns with the recent IRS targeting controversy: differences between federal law and the IRS rules on eligibility for 501(c)(4) status. The lawsuit, also filed by three campaign-finance watchdog groups—Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen—challenges IRS regulations adopted in 1959 that govern eligibility for tax-exempt status under 501(c)(4).
“What we’re asking the court to do is to instruct the IRS to apply the law as it was written,” the Maryland congressman said on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. “The way the law was written – it was never intended that the IRS would be in the business of trying to determine whether an organization that was seeking this special 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status, whether it’s primarily engaged in political activities or primarily engaged in social welfare activities.”
The original Revenue Act of 1913 states that organizations must engage “exclusively” for the promotion of social welfare, but IRS rules say that organizations can qualify if they are “primarily engaged” in social welfare purposes. This inconsistency has confused Democrats and other critics who have said that the IRS’s interpretation of the law has made it impossible to determine what fully constitutes political activity and how much of this engagement should bar groups from tax-exempt status.
Rep. Van Hollen added, “The law is clear. You can only get that status if you’re exclusively involved in social welfare activities and because they totally mangled the English language when they put forward the regulations, the guidelines, the IRS has been in this position of trying to dig into the backgrounds of organizations to say ‘Are you primarily involved in social welfare activities or political?’”
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GOP agitprop hack Doug MacEachern at The Arizona Republic has been beating the GOPropaganda "IRS scandal" drum even after it had been debunked by the evidence. The world is still waiting for your correction and retraction, MacEachern, and how about an apology? A 'nail in the coffin' of the IRS 'scandal':
With every passing revelation, the misguided uproar looks a little sillier.
The ranking Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee ranking member, Sander Levin, D-Mich., released new information Tuesday from the Internal Revenue Service to provide further evidence that progressive groups were singled out for scrutiny as were conservative groups.
The documents include an IRS training presentation that instructs IRS employees to screen tax-exemption applications for Democratic leaning "Emerge" organizations alongside "progressive" and "tea party" organizations.
Three organizations tied to the national Emerge America organization -- Emerge Nevada, Emerge Maine and Emerge Massachusetts -- sought tax-exempt status in 2011. They were denied -- the group, which helps recruit and train Democratic women for electoral politics, was deemed too political.
And so, when it came time for the IRS to scrutinize organizations, it instructed IRS employees to screen for "Emerge" along with "progressive." If the tax agency were singling out conservatives, as Republicans and a few too many reporters claimed, this obviously wouldn't have happened.
Making matters slightly more amusing, the same new materials show the IRS had a "Be On the Look Out" warning that called for heightened scrutiny to "ACORN successor" organizations.
Levin said in a statement, "Once again it is clear that the Inspector General's report left out critical information that skewed the audit's findings and set the stage for Republicans to make completely baseless accusations in an effort to tarnish the White House. These new documents make it clear the IRS scrutiny of the political activity of 501(c)(4) organizations covered a broad spectrum of political ideology and was not politically motivated. Republicans should stop trying to twist the facts to fit a faulty 'enemies list' narrative and instead join in the effort to fix the mismanagement problems at the IRS tax-exempt division as I have called for since day one."
Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) added, "This new information should put a nail in the coffin of the Republican claims that the IRS's actions were politically motivated or were targeted at only one side of the political spectrum."
And yet, even now, the right continues to insist there's an IRS "scandal" that only conservatives can see.
* * *
What was annoying has since become tiresome. Republicans were so heavily invested in this controversy that they feel the need to keep up appearances, but it seems they're just going through the motions -- no one could honestly take the story seriously anymore.
To reiterate a point from July, this would be a great time for at least some accountability. There were countless Republicans and mainstream pundits -- left, right, and center, from Limbaugh to Jon Stewart -- who were absolutely convinced that this story was legitimate and President Obama bore responsibility for the wrongdoing we now know didn't exist.
And yet, the scandal that evaporated into nothing has led to precious little introspection among those who demanded the public take it seriously. The political world flubbed this one, and instead of acknowledging that, it's simply moved on as if it hadn't made a mistake.
That would be you, Doug MacEachern. Man up.
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