{"id":22140,"date":"2014-03-04T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T20:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22140"},"modified":"2014-03-04T15:01:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T20:01:00","slug":"sometimes-new-rules-wont-solve-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22140","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes New Rules Won’t Solve The Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Review Online<\/a> posted an article yesterday about the recent problems in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

There are two competing models for reforming the Internal Revenue Service\u2019s oversight of the political activities of certain nonprofit organizations: one put forward by the IRS itself, in the form of a regulatory<\/a> rule change, a second put forward by Representative David Camp (R., Mich.<\/a>) on behalf of the House Ways and Means Committee<\/a>. Neither program is sufficient, because neither reflects the reality behind the recent IRS scandal, which was not the result of murky rules or bureaucratic incompetence but rather of what gives every indication of being deliberate misuse of federal investigatory resources for partisan political ends. That there have not been criminal charges in this matter is probably at least as much a reflection of the highly politicized Department of Justice<\/a> under Eric Holder<\/a> as it is of the facts of the case. The problem, then, is that both the IRS plan and the Camp plan assume that the IRS ought to be regulating rather than being regulated.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article points out the in America, the government is prohibited from regulating free speech–yet that is exactly what the IRS has tried to do since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United<\/a> Decision.<\/p>\n

The article at National Review Online reminds us:<\/p>\n

No rule change from the IRS \u2014 nor Representative Camp\u2019s well-intentioned but wholly inadequate reforms, which amount to a list of minor no-nos such as inquiring about an audit target\u2019s political or religious beliefs \u2014 is going to change the fact that the agency is full of highly partisan bureaucrats with a political agenda of their own and an inclination to abuse such police powers as are entrusted to them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes with comments about Representative David Camp’s proposal to fix the IRS:<\/p>\n

But his proposal falls short in that it assumes that the IRS is a proper and desirable regulator of political speech. It is not. It is not even particularly admirable in its execution of its legitimate mission, the collection of revenue: Its employees have committed felonies in releasing the confidential tax information of such political enemies as the National Organization for Marriage<\/a> and Mitt Romney<\/a>, and the agency itself has perversely interpreted federal privacy rules as protecting the criminal leakers at the IRS rather than the victims of their crimes. The Camp bill, thankfully, would address at least that much, but it would still leave the IRS in charge of determining whether its employees were playing politics with audits and decisions. The IRS does not inspire confidence as a practitioner of self-regulation, much less as a regulator of political speech.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We need honest people in Washington. Until we have that, I am not convinced that any amount of laws will make a difference.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Review Online posted an article yesterday about the recent problems in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The article reports: There are two competing models for reforming the Internal Revenue Service\u2019s oversight of the political activities of certain nonprofit … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6596,395,284,678,144,352,7209,1963],"class_list":["post-22140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission","tag-eric-holder","tag-internal-revenue-service","tag-irs","tag-michigan","tag-mitt-romney","tag-national-organization-for-marriage","tag-united-states-house-committee-on-ways-and-means"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22141,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140\/revisions\/22141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}