{"id":22227,"date":"2014-03-12T08:55:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T12:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22227"},"modified":"2014-03-12T08:55:19","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T12:55:19","slug":"somehow-the-new-york-times-missed-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22227","title":{"rendered":"Somehow The New York Times Missed This"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday The <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_House_Committee_on_Oversight_and_Government_Reform\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Committee on Oversight and Government Reform<\/a> released its <a href=\"http:\/\/oversight.house.gov\/release\/oversight-report-lois-lerners-role-irs-targeting\/\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> on Lois Lerner&#8217;s role in <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"IRS Contact Information\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hrblock.com\/free-tax-tips-calculators\/tax-help-articles\/General-Filing\/IRS-Contact-Information.html?action=ga&amp;aid=64623&amp;out=vm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"handrblock\">IRS<\/a> targeting.<\/p>\n<p>These are the highlights of the report (The link above provides a link to the entire report. The highlights include page numbers):<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key Document Based Highlights (documents and testimony in appendix):<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"The Tea Party\" href=\"http:\/\/teaparty.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Tea Party<\/a> \u201citching for a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Constitutional law\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Constitutional_law\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Constitutional challenge<\/a>:\u201d Lerner and her colleagues, after being under public pressure from <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Barack Obama\" href=\"http:\/\/www.barackobama.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">President Obama<\/a> and other <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Democratic Party (United States)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.democrats.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Democrats<\/a>, engaged in an e-mail exchange about how they could showcase their scrutiny of a Tea Party applicant for public disclosure, despite rules protecting the secrecy of unapproved applications.\u00a0 The conversation turned to the possibility of a court case \u2013 if a Tea Party applicant would challenge the IRS ruling.\u00a0 On this, Ms. Lerner opined, Tea Party groups would litigate because they are \u201citching for a Constitutional challenge.\u201d \u2013 p. 41<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Lerner discusses political scrutiny that isn\u2019t \u201cper se political:\u201d In one e-mail exchange that began with a discussion of an article noting, \u201corganizations woven by the fabulously rich and hugely influential Koch brothers,\u201d Lerner told colleagues, \u201cwe do need a c4 project next year.\u201d\u00a0 While she initially says, \u201cmy object is not to look for political activity,\u201d later in the exchange she acknowledges that it will examine political activity. \u201cWe need to be cautious so it isn\u2019t a per se political project.\u00a0 More a c4 project that will look at levels of lobbying and pol. Activity along with exempt activity.\u201d \u2013 p. 17<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Lerner broke IRS rules by mishandling taxpayer information:\u00a0 While Lerner told Congress under oath, \u201cI have not violated any IRS rules or regulations,\u201d e-mails show Lerner handled protected 6103 taxpayer information in her nonofficial e-mail account. In a November 2013 letter from Daniel Werfel, Werfel notes, \u201cWe do not permit IRS officials to send taxpayer information to their personal email addresses. An IRS employee should not send taxpayer information to his or her personal email address in any form, including redacted.\u201d \u2013 p. 33<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Lerner planned to retire in October all along: While House Democrats have <span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2013\/sep\/23\/lois-lerner-irs-official-tea-party-scandal-retires\/?page=all\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">pushed<\/span><\/a><\/span> that Lerner was forced out by the IRS as a result of the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Treasury_Inspector_General_for_Tax_Administration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">TIGTA<\/a> report; new e-mails indicate that Lerner had planned an October retirement long before TIGTA released its report.\u00a0 Her paid leave amounted to a paid vacation preceding her retirement \u2013 it does not appear that the IRS penalized her in any way for her conduct. \u2013 p.\u00a0 40-41<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Despite knowing about improper scrutiny, Lerner had IRS blame victims: An IRS document bearing Lerner\u2019s signature shows that in March 2012, despite knowing about improper scrutiny at that time, Lerner reviewed and signed off on a<\/strong> <strong>response to Congress that blamed applicants for heightened scrutiny.\u00a0 \u201c[T]he IRS contacts the organization and solicits additional information when the organization does not provide sufficient information in response to the questions on the Form 1024 or if issues are raised by the application \u2026. The revenue agent uses sound reasoning based on tax law training and his or her experience to review the application and identify the additional information needed to make a proper determination of the organization\u2019s exempt status.\u201d \u2013 p. 36<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Concern <i><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Citizens United<\/a><\/i> hurting Democrats:\u00a0 Lerner believed the Executive Branch needed to take steps to undermine the Supreme Court\u2019s <i>Citizens United<\/i><\/strong> <strong>decision.\u00a0 A senior advisor to Lerner e-mailed her an article about allegations that unknown conservative donors were influencing <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Senate\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8905555556,-77.0088888889&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8905555556,-77.0088888889 (United%20States%20Senate)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">U.S. Senate<\/a> races.\u00a0 The article explained how outside money was making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to remain in the majority in the Senate.\u00a0 Lerner replied:\u00a0 \u201cPerhaps the FEC will save the day.\u201d \u2013 p. 21<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Citizens United created pressure for IRS to \u201cfix the problem\u201d:\u00a0 According to Lerner: \u201cThe Supreme Court dealt a huge blow, overturning a 100-year old precedent that basically corporations couldn\u2019t give directly to political campaigns.\u00a0 And everyone is up in arms because they don\u2019t like it.\u00a0 The <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Federal Election Commission\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fec.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Federal Election Commission<\/a> can\u2019t do anything about it. They want the IRS to fix the problem.\u201d \u2013 p. 20<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\u201cMulti-Tier Review\u201d: \u00a0Lerner personally directed that Tea Party cases go through a \u201cmulti-tier review.\u201d An IRS employee testified that Lerner \u201csent [him an] e-mail saying that when these cases need to go through multi-tier review and they will eventually have to go to [Judy Kindell, Lerner\u2019s senior technical advisor] and the Chief Counsel\u2019s office.\u201d\u00a0 A D.C. IRS employee said this level of scrutiny had no precedent. \u2013 p. 24-25<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Head of the IRS Cincinnati office\u2019s testimony refutes Lois Lerner and President Obama\u2019s O\u2019Reilly interview assertion that this was all about a \u201clocal office\u201d: \u201c[Y]es, there were mistakes made by folks in Cincinnati as well [as] D.C. but the D.C. office is the one who delayed the processing of the cases.\u201d \u2013 p. 44<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Unless we are willing to live in a country where the laws are made and changed at will by whichever political party is in charge, Ms. Lerner has to be held accountable for her behavior. There is enough evidence against her to move forward with legal action. It is time to do that. Unfortunately, her behavior is typical of the Obama Administration&#8217;s disregard for the U.S. Constitution and the law.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: currentColor; float: right;\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_h.png?x-id=bbfa87bd-af47-4e09-b783-4fdac5c96f21\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released its report on Lois Lerner&#8217;s role in IRS targeting. These are the highlights of the report (The link above provides a link to the entire report. The highlights include page numbers): &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22227\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[97,6596,5598,284,678,5796,528,283,189],"class_list":["post-22227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission","tag-federal-election-commission","tag-internal-revenue-service","tag-irs","tag-lois-lerner","tag-tea-party","tag-treasury-inspector-general-for-tax-administration","tag-united-states-house-committee-on-oversight-and-government-reform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22227","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=22227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22228,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22227\/revisions\/22228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}