IRS
Trump's Antitrust Threat Against CNN is a Dangerous Escalation
Donald Trump has been president for less than six months and he's so eroded our sense of what is normal in a democracy that this is not the screaming headline of every newspaper: “White House advisers have discussed a potential point of leverage over their adversary” CNN, the ...read more
White House Epically Trolls Ted Cruz Over IRS Chief: "He Deserves Our Gratitude"
Apparently, Ted Cruz's minions in the House Dipshit Caucus is trying to inpeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, and so it was that TheBlaze's Fred Lucas asked Josh Earnest if the President still has confidence in the IRS chief on Monday. Earnest gave the emphatic boilerplate ...read more
Sorry, Republicans, Ted Cruz is Lying About Abolishing the IRS
It's America's favorite pander. Pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service is only slightly less attractive than promising unlimited, consequence-free sex with the partners of our choice. Nobody likes the IRS, and eliminating it entirely will surely resolve many, many ...read more
Drunk-Sounding Rush Limbaugh Tries Desperately to Link Benghazi with Ferguson
That took longer that I thought. After nearly two weeks of tensions in Ferguson, MO, far-right radio has finally shoehorned the crisis into its ongoing Benghazi and IRS narratives. I'm seriously shocked that it didn't happen sooner, a sign that perhaps the screechers are feeling ...read more
A Federal Appeals Court Just Dealt a Huge Setback To Obamacare
On Tuesday morning, a U.S. appeals court tossed out the IRS regulation that governs subsidies, dealing a huge blow to the Affordable Care Act. In effect, the court overruled the subsidies in the 36 states that chose not to set up their own insurance exchanges, meaning that ...read more
What Jon Stewart and the Rest Of the Media Aren't Telling You About the IRS Scandal
The revelation that all of the emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner's hard drive have been lost has given new life to the long-dead IRS "scandal," but there are a few key facts that the mainstream media, and its influential, unofficial ombudsman Jon Stewart, are failing ...read more
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As the IRS Scandal Goes Down in Flames, An Important Lesson for the NSA Story
So it appears as if the so-called IRS scandal has finally evaporated into nothingness. The central claim in this non-scandal was specifically that the IRS had been unfairly and exclusively targeting conservative tea party groups and, it was assumed, rejecting the 501(c)4 ...read more
The IRS Non-Scandal ‘Scandal’
By Beverly Bandler The Internal Revenue “scandal” has turned out not to be a scandal.As a Washington Post headline read: “The Obama IRS scandal retreats to the fever swamps.” The radical Right looked in vain for a “smoking gun” that would link Barack Obama to the charge that ...read more
The Real IRS Scandal: There's Just No There There
Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been on a quest to root out any evil doing or impropriety he can find in the Obama White House. The recent "scandal" at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) looked like it might tbe all the things Benghazi wasn't -- we can all relate to disdain ...read more
‘Dark Money’ Plot Behind IRS ‘Scandal’
By Beverly Bandler In the 2012 federal elections, “social welfare” nonprofits, known as 501(c)(4)s for their section of the tax code, emerged as the primary conduit for anonymous big-money contributions, pouring in more than $256 million and spending more money on TV ads in the ...read more
Tea Partier Admits Republicans Don't Want African Americans To Vote. No Sh*t.
Whenever a Republican says something horrendous, the subsequent apology usually involves a confession that saying the horrendous something was a "mistake" or "an error." Of course it is. The mistake was saying out loud what far too many Republicans believe to be true, but rarely ...read more
While Crying About IRS Political Targeting, Republicans Politically Target Nonexistent ACORN. Again.
Modern conservatives generally suffer from a persecution complex. At every opportunity, they leap at the chance to rend their garments and violently wail about being victimized by liberals. The most evident example of this psychosis is the conservative notion of a "liberal ...read more
The Other Side of the IRS ‘Scandal’
By William Boardman Almost everything you hear and read in the media about the current IRS “scandal” is based on deliberate falsification of basic facts. Some might call it lying. Here’s a reasonably typical media-framing of the IRS lie, from the usually careful and accurate ...read more
Six Facts Lost in the IRS Scandal
By Kim Barker and Justin Elliott In the furious fallout from the revelation that the IRS flagged applications from conservative nonprofits for extra review because of their political activity, some points about the big picture -- and big donors -- have fallen through the ...read more
Sound, Fury and the IRS Mess
By Richard Tofel ProPublica's job is to report the news rather than to make news ourselves, but sometimes we find an article of ours to be itself a subject of public debate. Last week was such a time, when two articles we had published back in December and January became ...read more
The Lost ‘Trifecta of Scandals’
By Beverly Bandler Appropriate questions should be asked and answered about the controversies over the IRS screening of 501-c-4 applications, the subpoenas for AP phone calls, and the Benghazi attack. Abuse of power should be checked with vigor, but hysteria should be avoided. ...read more
The Right’s ‘Scandal’ Funhouse Mirror
A hall of mirrors. (Photo credit: ŠJů) By Robert Parry The modern American news media operates like a giant right-wing funhouse mirror reflecting back some large things as small and some small things as large. The Right gets to decide which items will be misshapen in which ...read more
If You're Freaked Out by the AP and IRS Scandals, Blame a Republican
Call me a hopeless dreamer, but there ought to be a rule in politics banning anyone who caused a crisis from later bitching about the crisis. For the last four years, we've witnessed the Republicans, who voted for every Bush-era spending bill and irresponsible tax cut, crapping ...read more
IRS Office That Targeted Tea Party Also Disclosed Confidential Docs From Conservative Groups
By Kim Barker and Justin Elliott The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year. The IRS did ...read more
10 Examples of Bush and the Republicans Using Government Power to Target Critics
They say two wrongs don't make a right, but ignoring one of those wrongs while vilifying the other is intellectually dishonest and violently hypocritical, among other things. And certainly that's the case surrounding news that the IRS targeted tea party groups as a means of ...read more
IRS Believes It Can Read Your Emails Without A Warrant
Shocking revelations from the ACLU on the Internal Revenue Service's violation of personal privacy: IRS documents released Wednesday suggest that the tax collection agency believes it can read American citizens' emails without a warrant. The files were released to the American ...read more
IRS Should Bar Dark Money Groups From Funding Political Ads, Lawsuit Says
by Kim Barker ProPublica,Feb. 20, 2013, 11 a.m. A former Illinois congressional candidate and a government watchdog organization have teamed up to sue the Internal Revenue Service, claiming the agency should bar dark money groups from funding political ads. The lawsuit, ...read more
Could this Really Work? Occupy Wall St Wants to Buy Your Debt
Occupy Wall St movement has largely disappeared from the public's eye, not because it has diminished in ambition or desire to spark a social revolution, but because it has been working on the next phase of it's agenda - taking the economy back from Wall St and giving to the ...read more
Bank of New York Case Tests IRS Power to Halt Foreign Tax Abuses
by Megan Murphy and Vanessa Houlder, Financial Times, and Jeff Gerth In November 2001, Bank of New York, a mid-tier U.S. bank, transferred nearly $8 billion of its own assets to a trust in the small, business-friendly state of Delaware through several layers of newly created ...read more