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Hasta el NY Times lo admite. El IRS persiguio al Tea Party

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Hasta el NY Times lo admite. El IRS persiguio al Tea Party  Empty Hasta el NY Times lo admite. El IRS persiguio al Tea Party

Mensaje por Charlie319 Vie Feb 28, 2014 10:33 am

En lo que es un gancho al higado a las aspiraciones de muchos politicos de izquierda (Democratas), el NY Times imprime esta columna que trata de desviar culpa, pero que cronologicamente es impactante:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/opinion/edsall-why-the-irs-scandal-wont-go-away.html?src=rechp&_r=0

The Opinion Pages|Contributing Op-Ed Writer

Why the I.R.S. Scandal Won’t Go Away
Thomas B. Edsall

In the continuing battle over Republican allegations that the Obama administration pressured the Internal Revenue Service to obstruct Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status, three well-known political figures are among those likely to benefit: Karl Rove and David and Charles Koch.

The story began in 2010, but did not become public until May 10, 2013, when Lois Lerner, then the director of the little-known Cincinnati-based Exempt Organization Division of the I.R.S., which reviews applications for tax-exempt status for nonprofits, publicly acknowledged and apologized for the practice of targeting Tea Party groups for special scrutiny.

Lerner’s admission came four days before J. Russell George, the Treasury department’s inspector general for tax administration, released a critical report confirming that conservative groups had indeed been targeted. Its title presents its conclusion: “Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review.”

George and his investigators found that in August 2010, the I.R.S. Exempt Organization Division had distributed to its staff a “Be On the Look Out (BOLO)” warning about groups with the words “Tea Party” in their name. These Tea Party-linked groups were to be subject to detailed examination regarding their eligibility for tax-exempt status. The BOLO directive was later expanded to include organizations that contained the word “patriot” in their names.
George and his staff examined 298 applications “identified as potential political cases” that had been singled out by the Exempt Organization Division for special review. Seventy-two had the words “Tea Party” in their titles, 11 had the word “patriot,” and 12 had the numerical phrase “9/12,” referring to a national project founded by the conservative television and radio commentator Glenn Beck.
Republicans immediately pounced, alleging that the Obama administration had initiated a politically motivated witch hunt against groups perceived as threatening Democratic prospects in the 2012 election.

Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who is a subcommittee chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox News that that pursuit of conservative nonprofits by the Exempt Organization Division of the I.R.S. “doesn’t pass the smell test. That the very agency charged with enforcing Obamacare was systematically targeting conservative groups that came into existence because they opposed Obamacare, and they were doing it for a two year time period and they started the very month Obamacare came into existence, and nobody knew about it and this was just the work of a couple of agents in Cincinnati. That makes absolutely no sense.”

Darrell Issa, Republican of California and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told CBS that “this was the targeting of the president’s political enemies effectively.”

Congressional Republicans have demonstrated exceptional persistence and determination in their efforts to keep this nine-month-old controversy alive, convinced that it is a partisan goldmine. Since last May, the Ways and Means and Government Oversight Committees have, together, held at least a dozen separate hearings on the issue of I.R.S. targeting of conservative groups.

Meanwhile, the Exempt Organization Division has been paralyzed. Employees have been forced to deal not only with House investigations, but also with an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, another by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, an investigation by the Department of Justice and a civil suit brought by 41 of the targeted Tea Party groups.

“It’s been a huge distraction for the agency,” Marcus Owens, who was the director of the division from 1990 to 2000, told me. Owens, who is currently a tax lawyer in private practice, added: “They have gone into a bunker or a zone of silence. The events have caused a lot of tax administration to grind to a halt.”
So what, you may ask.
Well, in addition to reviewing applications for tax-exempt status for nonprofits, the Exempt Organization Division investigates complaints against nonprofits. These complaints include formal charges filed by watchdog organizations like Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center that political groups are inappropriately claiming to be, in I.R.S. terminology, 501(c)(4) “social welfare organizations.” The major advantage of organizations that qualify for tax exemption under section 501c of the tax code is that 501(c)s can keep their donors secret, unlike political action committees.

Why is this relevant to Karl Rove and David and Charles Koch?
The answer is that many of the complaints that have been filed with the Exempt Organization Division by campaign-finance-reform advocates have been filed against the multimillion dollar political organizations closely tied to Karl Rove and to David and Charles Koch.

In 2010, Rove founded Crossroads GPS, as a “social welfare” organization, claiming tax-exempt status in accord with existing (if disputed) interpretations of campaign-finance and tax law. Since its founding, Crossroads GPS has spent a total of $253.6 million in support of Republican political candidates and organizations allied with the Republican Party, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In its complaint to the I.R.S., Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center argued that “the statement made by Crossroads GPS two years ago on its application for tax-exempt status that its campaign activities will be ‘limited in amount, and will not constitute the organization’s primary purpose’ are simply not credible, in light of the actual practices of the organization and the tens of millions of dollars Crossroads GPS spent on campaign ads since then.”

Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads GPS, dismissed the Democracy 21 allegations as “the fourth frivolous complaint in 12 months from a highly ideological group.”
The Center for Responsive Politics has put together a chart of what it calls “the Koch brothers’ labyrinthine network of political groups.” One of the major pieces of this network, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, is the Center to Protect Patient Rights, a 501(c)(4) that has spent $232 million since 2009, much of it funneled to conservative and pro-Republican groups, including 60-Plus, Americans for Job Security and the Club for Growth.

With work at the Exempt Organization Division at a standstill, Owens pointed out that “the clear impact of the investigations has been to throw a proverbial wooden shoe into the machinery, causing it to grind to a halt.”

Owens told me that attempts to determine the degree to which some 501(c)(4) groups “played fast and loose with the tax law will soon be lost to history.” Under the law, he explained, the I.R.S. must act on complaints within three years of the date an organization files what is known as an annual 990 report.

“The statute starts running when a return is filed,” he wrote in an email. “990 returns are due on the 15th day of the 5th month after the close of the organization’s fiscal year, with the possibility of two three-month extensions. As a result, an organization with a calendar year fiscal year can file its 2010 990 as late as Nov. 15, 2011. The statute of limitations on the return filed on the last day possible will normally run out on Nov. 15, 2014.”

The potential success of the continuing congressional investigations in bringing the work of the Exempt Organization Division to a halt provides some explanation for the persistence of House Republicans in pressing the scandal despite repeated setbacks.
Republican determination to pursue these investigations remains unabated despite the failure, so far, to produce a smoking gun linking the scandal to the White House, and a series of stumbling blocks embarrassing to the Republican Party.

It turns out, for example, that the decisions to put organizations marked by the words “Tea Party,” “patriot” and “9/12 project” on BOLO lists were made while Douglas Shulman was the commissioner of the I.R.S. Shulman was appointed to a five-year term in 2008 by George W. Bush.
In addition, on July 12, Democrats disclosed that organizations with the word “progressive” in the name were also subject to BOLO warnings at the I.R.S.

These road bumps have not deterred House Republicans from attempting to promote their argument that they are victims of an overly zealous and politicized I.R.S. On Feb. 5, Jim Jordan of Ohio countered President Obama’s assertion that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the I.R.S, telling Fox News: “Of course the president is confident. Of course he can say there is no corruption. Because the fix is in.” Jordan is set to chair another House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee hearing on the I.R.S. on Feb. 26.

There are two conclusions that can be drawn from the I.R.S.-Tea Party saga.
The first is that the losers will be the bit players. These include Lois Lerner, who resigned; the I.R.S. staffers in Cincinnati, many of whom have been forced to hire private counsel; and the generally innocuous, low-level Tea Party groups, like the Rochester Tea Party Patriots and the Acadiana Patriots in Louisiana, which have suffered questioning and delays in getting their applications for tax-exempt status approved
.

The second is that the big players will in all probability skate. Karl Rove and Charles and David Koch are unlikely to see their tax-exempt political organizations reined in or to see any restraints placed on the tremendous financial clout of their 501(c) independent expenditure groups, clout made possible by their adroit use of the “social welfare” designation and by an aggressive, unyielding approach to campaign-finance law and I.R.S. regulations.
Charlie319
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