{"id":24224,"date":"2014-11-04T15:33:17","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T20:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24224"},"modified":"2014-11-04T15:33:17","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T20:33:17","slug":"using-the-internal-revenue-service-to-target-conservative-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24224","title":{"rendered":"Using The Internal Revenue Service To Target Conservative Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

We still don’t know exactly what went on with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)<\/a> and the targeting of conservatives and conservative groups. I can tell you that after making a small donation to the Tea Party a few years ago, my husband and I were audited for the first time in 45 years (nothing in our taxes had changed). Well, evidently the targeting of conservatives was aided and abetted by some members of Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yesterday The Daily Caller <\/a>reported that they had obtained copies of correspondence between Senator Jeanne Shaheen<\/a> and the IRS showing a plan to harass conservative groups during the 2012 election.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IRS is aware of the current public interest in this issue,\u201d IRS chief counsel William J. Wilkins, a White House<\/a> visitor described by insiders as \u201cThe President\u2019s Man at the IRS,\u201d personally\u00a0wrote in a hand-stamped memo to \u201cSenator Shaheen\u201d on official Department of the Treasury<\/a> letterhead on April 25, 2012.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The memo, obtained by TheDC, briefed the Democratic senator about a coordinated IRS-Treasury Department plot to target political activity by nonprofit 501(c)(4) groups. The plot was operating out of Lois Lerner\u2019s Tax Exempt Government Entities Division.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0…Shaheen got the inside info from the IRS, making it clear she was the point person in a group composed of six close Democratic colleagues including Chuck Schumer<\/a> and Al Franken<\/a>, who joined with Shaheen in quietly writing a letter to then-IRS commissioner Doug Shulman<\/a> expressing their concern about new nonprofit groups engaging in political activity in 2012.<\/strong><\/div>\n

The Democratic senators\u2019 publicly available March 9, 2012 letter asked the IRS to \u201cimmediately change the administrative framework for enforcement of the tax code as it applies to groups designated as \u2018social welfare\u2019 organizations\u201d by introducing a new \u201cbright line test\u201d for how much a tax-exempt group can invest in political activity and by setting a new rule that at least 51 percent of a group\u2019s activity must non-political. The senators called for more elaborate disclosures about finances and \u201cundertakings\u201d in groups\u2019 form 990 submissions and sought new rules about how much donors could write off as business expenses.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The problem here is that the new rules would be specifically aimed at conservative groups. There was no effort made to be even-handed about putting restrictions on liberal PAC’s, unions, or other groups on the left side of the aisle.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately many Democrats do not endorse the concept of free speech when it does not conform to their ideas. The Democrat party<\/a> has also shown that it is not above using the full weight of the government to stifle conservative speech. Using the government as a political weapon is not an idea that belongs in a representative republic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We still don’t know exactly what went on with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the targeting of conservatives and conservative groups. I can tell you that after making a small donation to the Tea Party a few years ago, … 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":[664,284,678,8158,8340],"class_list":["post-24224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-democrat-party","tag-internal-revenue-service","tag-irs","tag-irs-targeting-of-conservative-groups","tag-seantor-jeanne-shaheen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24224","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=24224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24226,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24224\/revisions\/24226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}