Let me if I can figure this out from the information currently available…
After the Citizen’s United decision, a huge amount of new political groups popped up and claimed tax exempt status. The large chunk of these were inspired by Karl Rove and carried names like “Tea Party Against Taxes” and other such things.
The head of the IRS is a non-political position that is appointed by the President for a 6 year term. It is fairly independent of the Presidency after that. George W. Bush, in one of his last actions before leaving, appointed Douglas Shulman to be Chair, and Obama was stuck with him for his entire first administration.
When Shulman saw the doubling of applications for tax exempt status, he opened an office in Cleveland with the responsibility of reviewing them. This office then decided “Hey, you know, groups that are anti-tax probably are the ones most likely to file false claims for tax exemption.” While that is probably true, what they did next was wrong: They targeted any group with the words “Tea Party” or similar right-wing key words, looking for applications that should be denied. (And, as an aside, they did find some.)
Still, targeting groups based on the position they hold clearly violates the 1st Amendment and was absolutely wrong.
Everyone agrees on that point, including Obama, who has called the action “outrageous.”
This has not appeased the right-wing conspiracy buffs who are sure that this was an edict from Obama in the first place — as if the President decided to order the head of the IRS — a Bush appointee — to stupidly target groups and the Bush appointee went along with it without a word. And people are buying it. They’re actually believing that happened.
As we all know from the Benghazi hearings, the lack of evidence has never stood in the way of a good witch hunt.
ventrellaquest.com 
The IRS is constantly trying to untrain the complacent employees on policies they’ve started and then found out they were illegal. In meetings people are told to shut up when they point out something is an OSHA or tax payer privacy violation. The “it’s a government job” thing is getting out of hand. The IRS couldn’t handle a conspiracy from someone outside the IRS, they have plenty of theirown. The Austin IRS buildings are currently abuzz with the conspiracy that the recent new policies are baiting employees to follow the policies and violate regulations so they get fired in order to save the IRS money.
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The Tea Party style groups are overwhelming conservative formed by disgruntled former Republicans. They muddle the conservative message and split the conservative vote, posing little or no threat to Democrats. It seems to me that it is actually the Republicans who would benefit from undermining these groups. Despite this, I still wouldn’t lay blame at the foot of a Bush appointee because the better explanation is that anti-tax political groups would naturally receive closer scrutiny by the IRS in applying for tax exempt status. But for Conservatives to attempt to accuse Obama of somehow being responsible smacks of willful dishonesty.
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I’m not blaming the Bush appointee either; I’m blaming underlings who should have known better. This was wrong, but it was minor screw-up by small bureaucrats who should have known better. It’s not some huge scandal.
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Politicians are scrambling like mad as if it were indeed a huge scandal. I suppose in large part this is because the I.R.S. is so unpopular it’s an easy bad guy to beat up on. Some of the same politicians who, during the previous administration, defended erosion of our constitutional guarantees for the sake of national security are now staunch defenders of that same Constitution under these politically favorable circumstances. I guess we shouldn’t expect much integrity from any of them, only political maneuvering.
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But were they targeted because of their political views or because they were a tax dodge? According to what I have read the guy that heads the IRS is a Bush appointee, so any chance of this being politically motivated is absurd. At least it gets the psychopaths off of the other non-event, Benghazi, for a few minutes.
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They targeted groups based on their names alone. If they had “Tea Party” or “9/11” or “Patriots” in their name. That’s not the same thing as targeting a group called “We Hate Taxes And Don’t Want to Pay Them.”
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Using the IRS to try to screw you political enemies is an impeachable offense. We need to know “what the president knew and when he knew it” and we need to know that as soon as possible.
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I agree with that. My point is just that it seems pretty unlikely that the FBI chair knew about it, much less the President, and to make accusations of such at this stage is not supported by any facts at all and contradicted by what we know.
If evidence later shows otherwise, then action should be taken.
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