Tag: Tea Party

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IRS Continues Illegal Action

In a decision largely ignored by many major media sources, A federal agency violated the Constitution, was unlawfully used for partisan purposes, and refused to comply with a court order to cease and desist in its illegal actions. That’s the essence of a verdict by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday, in a case involving the targeting of groups that merely disagreed with the Obama Administration’s political perspectives.

Thirty-eight non-profit organizations from twenty-two states were subjected to violations of their First Amendment rights.

According to the American Center for Law and Justice  (ACLJ), which represented the aggrieved organizations, a lower court’s dismissal of their claims was made in error, on the unfounded position that the IRS had since ceased all allegedly illegal activity. The Court of Appeals criticized the IRS’s untruthful arguments that it had voluntarily ceased all illegal activity, stating unequivocally in the opinion that “voluntary cessation [by the IRS of the alleged illegal activity] has never occurred.”

In the decision, The Court of Appeals clearly voiced its disdain for the IRS’s cynical and dishonest position, according to ACLJ:

“The IRS proudly boasts that ‘no more than ‘two’ applications for exemption remain pending with the IRS.’  Further, they claim, ‘the vast majority of the plaintiffs lack a personal stake in the outcome of the lawsuit . . . .’    We would advise the IRS that a heavy burden of establishing mootness is not carried by proving that the case is nearly moot, or is moot as to a ‘vast majority’ of the parties.  Their heavy burden requires that they establish cessation, not near cessation.

“Specifically addressing the two organizations who still await a determination from the IRS after more than five years after submitting their applications, the court stated:

“The IRS offers a rather puzzling explanation for why the continued failure to afford proper processing to at least some of the victim applicants should not prevent a finding of cessation. That explanation is that the organizations whose applications were still pending ‘were involved in ‘litigation’ with the Justice Department . . . .’  . . . It is not at all clear why the IRS proposes that not ceasing becomes cessation if the victim of the conduct is litigating against it.  The IRS position is reminiscent of Catch-22 from the novel of the same name. Under that ‘catch,’ World War II airmen were not required to fly if they were mentally ill.  However, anyone who applied to stop flying was evidencing rationality and therefore was not mentally ill.  See Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1971).  ‘You are entitled to an exemption from flying,’ the government said, ‘but you can’t get it as long as you are asking for it.’
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“The court also noted that the IRS failed miserably to meet its burden to demonstrate that it had voluntarily ceased the allegedly discriminatory conduct and to demonstrate that ‘(1) there is no reasonable expectation that the conduct will recur [or] (2) interim relief or events have completely and irrevocably eradicated the effects of the alleged violation.’  The court further noted:

“ [I]t is absurd to suggest that the effect of the IRS’s unlawful conduct…has been eradicated…”

The Court noted: “Instead of processing [applications for nonprofit status for the affected organizations] in the normal course of IRS business, as would have been the case with other taxpayers, the IRS selected out these applicants for more rigorous review on the basis of their names, which were in each 4 instance indicative of a conservative or anti-Administration orientation.admitted by the Department of Treasury in the 2013 report of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)…To place in context our discussion of TIGTA’s findings, we recall that under the First Amendment, the government “has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.”

Information obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request reveals that officials “orchestrated a complex scheme to dump conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants into a bureaucratic ‘black hole.’ Another 294 pages of documents … also recently released by Judicial Watch further establish that ‘top IRS officials in Washington, including Lois Lerner and Holly Paz, knew that the agency was specifically targeting ‘Tea Party’ and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the public…

“This upcoming December will mark the 7th year anniversary since [the orgnaizations involved] mailed in their application requesting tax-exempt status and the IRS cashed their check…The IRS constructed a special group to send all ‘applications associated with the Tea Party’ to …’Group 7822’; designed as a ‘special team apparently developed specifically to snare targeted organizations’ tax exemption requests to ensure that they would ‘not be approved before the November 2012 presidential election.’ The IRS was able to protect the administration of this group by hiding its operations and activity behind the hundreds of layers of the bureaucracy alive and well within the IRS and the cooperation of other government agencies.”

The use of the IRS to influence the 2012 presidential campaign is not just history.  The abuse of federal agencies continues, as can be seen in the failure of the Department of Justice to review recent voting irregularities.

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Bureaucrats vs. the Ballot Box

Free elections in the United States are increasingly endangered. The threat comes from a number of fronts, including the use by the Obama Administration of federal agencies to intimidate political opponents, and the increasingly oppressive and biased actions of campaign regulatory agencies.

The most well-known scandal is the action by the Internal Revenue Service to attack Tea Party groups, which oppose President Obama’s policies. Despite the clearly illegal nature of the IRS action, and the mandate of the court to produce information about its misdeeds, the tax agency continues to evade compliance with the law.

Last month, as noted by the Courthouse News Service :

“The Sixth Circuit slammed the IRS for continuing to resist, after nearly a year, an order compelling it to release lists that Tea Party groups say singled them out for harsh scrutiny….The targets of such attention allegedly faced year-long delays in the processing of applications, tight deadlines for responses, and requests for large amounts of unneeded documents.     After a federal judge cracked the whip ….the IRS continually shrugged off the court order and filed its own petition claiming that the documents were confidential.  Disagreeing with that characterization, the three-judge appellate panel said applications that were accepted or rejected are not considered “tax-return” information, and are not afforded such confidentiality… the decision does demand the documents be released “without redactions, and without further delay.”

Judicial Watch’s  Investigation revealed that email exchanges between former Internal Revenue Services (IRS) Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner and enforcement attorneys at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) demonstrated that the IRS provided “detailed, confidential information concerning the tax exempt application status and returns of conservative groups to the FEC,” a violation of federal law.  Included with the email exchanges were IRS questionnaires to a conservative group that contained questions of a hostile nature.

In its March 16 decision, the Sixth Circuit Court bluntly  stated:

“Among the most serious allegations a federal court can address are that an Executive agency has targeted citizens for mistreatment based on their political views. No citizen…should be targeted or even have to fear being targeted on those grounds. Yet those are the grounds on which the plaintiffs allege they were mistreated by the IRS here. The allegations are substantial: most are drawn from findings made by the Treasury Department’s own Inspector General for Tax Administration. Those findings include that the IRS used political criteria to round up applications for tax-exempt status filed by so-called tea-party groups; that the IRS often took four times as long to process tea-party applications as other applications; and that the IRS served tea-party applicants with crushing demands for what the Inspector General called “unnecessary information.” Yet in this lawsuit the IRS has only compounded the conduct that gave rise to it. The plaintiffs seek damages on behalf of themselves and other groups whose applications the IRS treated in the manner described by the Inspector General. The lawsuit has progressed as slowly as the underlying applications themselves: at every turn the IRS has resisted the plaintiffs’ requests for information regarding the IRS’s treatment of the plaintiff class, eventually to the open frustration of the district court. At issue here are IRS “Be On the Lookout” lists of organizations allegedly targeted for unfavorable treatment because of their political beliefs. … almost a year later, the IRS still has not complied with the court’s orders.”

The IRS defiantly continues to seek to use its enormous power to influence elections.  A Capital Research  analysis reports:

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The concept of campaign regulation is also threatening the future of free elections in the United States. It is, under the guise of “taking the influence of money out of politics,” placing both free speech and free elections under the thumb of biased bureaucrats intent on replacing the will of the people with the goals of a politically biased elite.

A CATO examination of campaign regulation noted:

“campaign finance regulations favor incumbents, stifle grassroots activity, distort and constrict political debate, and infringe on traditional First Amendment freedoms. There is little reason to believe that still more regulation and public funding will yield positive results.The framers of the Bill of Rights provided for the First Amendment to keep the government from attempting to limit political debate and criticism. We should recognize the wisdom of that decision and return to the system of campaign “regulation” that the Founders intended: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.”

An Institute for Justice study concurs:

“the federal government and most states have passed campaign finance laws that blatantly violate [free speech] rights. Sold as efforts to control the influence of ‘money’ in politics, the laws in fact regulate what money buys—political speech—and what it represents for many citizens—a meaningful opportunity to participate in the political process…In short, in America, it is now constitutional for the government to control and even ban political speech and participation. To borrow from Justice Thomas in his now-famous dissent in the Kelo case: Something has gone horribly awry with the Court’s—and the country’s—approach to the First Amendment.”

The New York Post’s examination of the Big Apple’s local campaign finance board concluded:

“Tired of voting? Here’s good news: The city’s Campaign Finance Board might soon do the choosing for you. It’s headed that way, anyhow. Even now, the CFB’s independence is in doubt, as current members may curry favor to win reappointment…the CFB, which pretends to boost democracy … operates as an unelected barrier to campaigns and political speech. In fact, the city’s entire campaign-finance system, which costs taxpayers millions, has proven itself a sham that’s only invited abuse and corruption.”

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Political Parties, Major Media Miss the Point

Was George Washington right about political parties after all? The First President famously disliked the concept of permanent established parties, fearing that loyalty to them would supersede allegiance to the national interest.

As the U.S. continues to battle high unemployment, crushing debt, a sluggish economy, and a rapidly deteriorating international condition, federal elected officials seem helpless to effectuate any substantive remedies.

Despite Mr. Obama’s dismal track record, his fellow Democrats are reluctant to confront him, concerned that criticizing one of their own will lead to party disunity that will harm their re-election chances.

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As both Democrats and Republicans seem mired in a quagmire, key media players, especially the increasingly flaccid White House Press Corps, find ways to dwell on topics that are of lesser relevance.  The Malaysian jet story, tragic as it is, hardly warrants more intensive coverage than a national economy in unrelenting crisis, or the rebirth of international conflict evident in Crimea or the Pacific. Yet, the 24-hour a day, seven days a week concentration on it dwarfs any emphasis on other topics.

President Washington was certainly ahead of his time.