I can’t believe I actually wasted my time reading the Inspector General’s report on the IRS. How unbelievably boring it is! This is another non-scandal. Or, rather, the scandal is that the IRS didn’t actually deny tax-exempt status to a single Tea Party or Glenn Beck-inspired 9/12 applicant. Not one. Sure, they delayed responding to some of those applicants. They asked for inappropriate information from some of those applicants. But they didn’t actually tell any of those nutballs to take their tax-exempt application and stuff it where the sun don’t shine.
When someone simultaneously tells you that they don’t intend to engage primarily in political behavior and that their organization is a “party,” you ought to do a little investigating, don’t you think?
That these morons in the IRS screwed up is undeniable. They were horrible at their jobs (and badly understaffed, I might add). Instead of creating a stupid Be On the Lookout (BOLO) criteria for Tea Party folks, they should have crafted ideologically-neutral language that had the effect of doing the exact same thing. And then they should have promptly DENIED most of the requests because being Dick Armey’s anti-tax stooge doesn’t qualify you as a charitable organization concerned with the general welfare.
You’re right about this. And Benghazi, if anything, shows what a bunch of dipshits the CIA is. Neither is what the TradMed and the GOP claim. I do admit that I don’t feel one bit of sympathy for Jay Carney. Why? When he was on the other side of the podium at the WH Briefing Room, he was doing the same stupid crap the press is doing now.
Yes, it is entirely appropriate under current circumstances to crap on Jay Carney’s head.
I’ve often said that the best financial reform we could have without changing the laws is to actually staff the agencies. Most agencies that are supposed to be regulating or looking out for shady things are horribly understaffed.
It’s the “reinvented and streamlined federal agencies. Bill Clinton’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government that was assigned to Al Gore for implementation.
It made doling out federal contracts to the friends of Bush/Cheney so much easier.
All right, given that it’s a dud, let’s hear your rationalization of why Holder has ordered a criminal investigation into this.
Because it’s potent shit.
Explanation, any time the GOP goes buga-buga, this administration ducks for cover and agrees with the wingnuts that they have a point. It’s why everyone now believes that there was a pre-planned terror attack by Islamists on the Benghazi Special Mission Compound when that may not be true.
The only reason this is such a story is because until now, Obama’s administration has been remarkably scandal-free. And it isn’t a little ironic that main players in the IRS scandal (including “I was never good at math”) were Bush appointees. Even Jon Stewart was playing it up, as though this might be his one chance to be outraged at this administration.
A similar IRS scandal happened under Bush. I don’t remember what the Democrats in Congress did about it, but if it was their usual milquetoast response, they won’t have my sympathy.
Bingo.
The Republicans are taking advantage of the cleanliness of this administration, the very lack of scandal stories, to exploit people’s desire to appear even-handed.
It’s not all that different from the claims that the media won’t report “the other side of the story” about climate change.
Lawrence O’Donnell is hammering the point that the IRS changed the wording in the original law that is now the reason (well that and just poorly educated agents) there’s trouble interpreting whether these nutjobs qualify.
His point is that the original wording explicitly determines the qualifier when the statue uses “exclusively” when it comes to the activity but the IRS guidlines changed that to “Primarily” thus begging for interpretation rather than ‘what part of no politiking don’t you guys understand?’.
Firing of the agents who made/allowed for the targeting works for the Rep war machine in this case; but going back to the original statute’s wording and thus intent would boot the big boys’ which works for everybody.
Is this tax exempt status more for the donors than anything else? The Sierra Club always tells its donors that donations are not tax exempt. It seems ridiculously unfair that tea party donors would get to deduct this stuff if the Sierra Club can’t.
It’s the era of the Incredible Shrinking Scandal.
Has anyone heard anything about Solyndra lately? How about the use of drones to kill people on American soil?
Very flashy, headline-grabbing charges that lead either nowhere, or to interesting academic questions that have very little to do with the real world, and eventually fade away, seem to be the order of the day.
“When someone simultaneously tells you that they don’t intend to engage primarily in political behavior and that their organization is a “party,” you ought to do a little investigating, don’t you think? “
Yes. They were doing what they’re supposed to do. Just not clueful about what a minefield everything has become.