Poor Richard's News: Senate Democrats block resolution to condemn the corrupt IRS bully tactics
And why would they do such a thing, you may ask? I’ll get to that in a second but first, here’s the story.
from Rand Paul’s office:
Today, Senate Democrats placed a hold on Sen. Rand Paul’s recent resolution that condemns the targeting of Tea Party groups by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and calls for an investigation into this practice.
“This resolution is not about Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal. It is about arrogant and unrestrained government vs. the rule of law. The First Amendment cannot and should not be renegotiated depending on which party holds power,” Sen. Paul said. “Each senator took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, yet Senate Democrats chose to block my resolution and thus refused to condemn the IRS for trampling on our First Amendment rights. I am incredibly disappointed in Washington’s party politics and I am determined to hold the IRS accountable for these unjust acts.”
read the actual resolution here
As this whole IRS thing unfolds, keep in mind that the IG report redacted the initial reason for the exemption office’s actions. That trail could very well end up leading to Senate Democrats. In fact, many top Senate Democrats actually wrote letters to the head of the IRS demanding they do exactly what they did.
Advocating Progress: Bush Used the IRS, FBI, CIA and Secret Service to Go After Opponents -- Where Was the Fox and GOP Outrage?
Fox News apparently doesn’t even know (or is pretending not to know) the Bush administration used the IRS in the same way the Obama adminstration allegedly did.
And here’s the even more incredible thing: the Bush cabal didn’t just use the IRS for its political hackery –…
You know how it is, my team can do no wrong. Way Republicans will always go after the Democrats and the Democrats for doing the same exact things. Its political theater. Both are corrupt and should be removed from our political lives.
(via thepoliticalfreakshow)
Infowars: Did Obama Know Too? IRS Officials Knew Patriots And Tea Party Groups Were Being Targeted 2 Years Ago
Michael T. Snyder
The American Dream
May 13, 2013The IRS has finally publicly admitted that patriots and Tea Party groups were being specifically targeted for “extra scrutiny”, but the truth is that top IRS officials knew that this intimidating and harassing behavior was taking place two years ago. A report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that is going to be released this week shows that the targeting of patriots and Tea Party groups began as early as March 2010, and that the head of the IRS tax-exempt organizations division was specifically told about this targeting in June 2011.
But then the IRS lied to Congress five separate times between November 18th, 2011 and June 15th, 2012 about what was going on. IRS officials flat out lied to Congress and adamantly denied that patriots and Tea Party groups had been specifically targeted. So should we believe the IRS now when they try to pin the blame on a few “low-level” employees in Cincinnati? And were Barack Obama or any members of his administration ever told about any of this? After all, patriot groups and Tea Party organizations were screaming bloody murder about this harassment at the time and if the truth had come out before the election it could have been a massive embarrassment for the Obama campaign. Are we to believe that nobody inside the Obama campaign ever had any discussions about this? If Obama or those close to him did know what was going on, why didn’t they ever do anything to stop it?
According to Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, any groups that had the words “patriot” or “tea party” in their names were specifically targeted for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. The demands that were made on some of these groups were extraordinary.
One group from Kentucky was sent an 88 page questionaire…
Conservative groups complained during the election that they were being harassed by the IRS. They said the agency asked them an inordinate number of questions to justify their tax-exempt status, and 27 Tea Party groups joined with conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice to push back on the IRS.
Kentucky 9/12 Project is one of the conservative organizations that joined with Sekulow to complain of government overreach.
Its executive director, Eric Wilson, said his group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2010. He said the IRS responded with an 88-page questionnaire that sought all the organization’s correspondence, the names of its members — along with details of group’s activity on Facebook and Twitter.
In other instances, the level of information that was requested was beyond absurd…
Stephanie Scruggs, who works with The912Project andUnited in Action, said, for example the IRS demanded copies of every single post to every single organization website page, Twitter feed and Facebook feed.
The IRS also requested contact information for family members of each board member. And yet another demand was for the name and contact for every person who ever had attended one of the group’s meetings.
And remember, this kind of scrutiny was only reserved for patriots and Tea Party groups. Obviously the intent was to harass, intimidate and damage those groups at a very politically sensitive time.
It would have been one thing if the IRS had come out right away and had admitted the mistakes and had worked feverishly to fix them.
But that did not happen.
Even though the IRS knew exactly what was going on, IRS officials vehemently denied that targeting of patriot and Tea Party groups was taking place in response to five different congressional inquiries between November 18th, 2011 and June 15th, 2012.
If the IRS had admitted the truth to Congress, it would have been extremely damaging to the Obama campaign. During that time period, the outcome of the election was very much up in the air, and so IRS officials may have played a role in altering the outcome of the election by blatantly lying to Congress.
Several newspapers, including USA Today, have acquired excerpts of the report that is going to be released this week. These excerpts show that the IRS has known about this targeting of patriot and Tea Party groups for a very long time…
The timeline was part of a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which has been investigating the IRS’ treatment of Tea Party groups at the request of Congress. The report is expected to be critical of the IRS actions. Excerpts obtained by USA TODAY provide a timeline investigators compiled through e-mails and interviews with IRS officials.
It shows that on June 29, 2011, IRS officials in Cincinnati told Lerner how they were handling applications for tax-exempt status for Tea Party groups. Certain groups, the briefing paper showed, were subjected by the IRS to further investigation based on politically loaded terms in the tax-exempt application file. Groups were singled out for enhanced scrutiny if:
• The words “tea party,” “patriots,” or “9/12 project” appeared anywhere in the group name or case file;
• The group’s stated issues included government spending, government debt or taxes;
• The organization had a goal of educating the public via advocacy or lobbying to “make America a better place to live;”
• Any statements in the case file critical of how the country is being run.
And you know what? A lot of those groups still have not had their applications approved. The delays and the harassment continue to this day.
Needless to say, a lot of Republicans are extremely outraged by this revolting behavior by the IRS. For example, check out what Senator Susan Collins said on Sunday…
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Sunday called the Internal Revenue Service’s singling out of conservative groups for extra scrutiny “absolutely chilling” and called on President Obama to condemn the effort.
“This is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound distrust that the American people have in government,” Collins, a moderate Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It is absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra review, and I think it’s very disappointing that the president hasn’t personally condemned this and spoken out.”
And of course many Tea Party groups are absolutely livid…
“The IRS has demonstrated the most disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of government power,” said Jenny Beth Martin, National Coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. “This deliberate targeting and harassment of tea party groups reaches a new low in illegal government activity and overreach. It is suspicious that the activity of these ‘low-level workers’ was unknown to IRS leadership at the time it occurred. President Obama must also apologize for his administration ignoring repeated complaints by these broad grassroots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens again. We reject a simple apology that does nothing to alleviate the danger of this happening again.”
This is just another reason why the IRS needs to be shut down. The truth is that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was during a time when there was no federal income tax. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “100 Years Old And Still Killing Us: America Was Much Better Off Before The Income Tax“.
But even if the IRS is shut down, this kind of harassment is going to keep happening because Democrats at the highest level continue to send signals that it is okay to demonize patriots and Tea Party groups. Just check out the following examples of this phenomenon from a recent article by Lloyd Marcus…
Democrat VP Biden said, “Republicans want y’all back (blacks) in chains.” Democrat Rep. Andre Carson said the Tea Party movement would “love” to see black Americans “hang from a tree.”
Democrat Alan Grayson said, “Republicans want you to die quickly.”
Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters said, “The tea party can go straight to hell.” Think about that folks. Millions of Americans who oppose Obama ignoring the Constitution and cramming his socialist/progressive agenda down their throat have been told by a Democrat to go to hell.
When top government officials use this kind of hateful language, of course their subordinates are going to feel free to apply “extra scrutiny” to patriots and Tea Party groups.
And it seems absurd to suggest that nobody in the Obama administration knew about any of this. We now know that the head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups knew that patriots and Tea Party groups were being specifically targeted. We also know that the IRS lied to Congress five times when they were specifically asked about this harassment. Without a doubt, members of the Obama administration and key players in the Obama campaign were aware of what Congress was asking the IRS. Did any of them ever look into these allegations to see if they were true? Once they looked into these things, did they report back to Obama?
The inner circles of political campaigns tend to be obsessed with any potential threats that could derail their candidates. It is crazy to think that those close to Obama never talked about any of this or looked into it to see if it might be a significant problem for the campaign.
One thing is for sure – this goes a lot, lot higher than just a few “low-level” employees in Cincinnati.
The American people deserve the truth about this.
Let’s hope that they get it.
What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?: Ron Paul makes a prediction on what the response will be to the Boston bombings....
“I would not be surprised if the Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events. The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to take their liberties.”
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Poor Richard's News: Washington Post: Ted Cruz is Joseph McCarthy
Liberals will never stop spewing nonsense. They have a seemingly endless supply of utterly ridiculous things to say. And at a time when our nation’s eyes are fixed on the apprehension of one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, Dan Milbank of the WaPo is busy comparing Ted Cruz to Joseph McCarthy.
From the WaPo:
Is there nobody who can tell Ted Cruz to shut up?
The young senator from Texas has been on the job for about 100 days, but he has already turned upside down the Senate’s ancient seniority system and is dominating his senior Republican colleagues. He’s speaking for them on immigration, guns and any other topic that tickles his fancy; Republican leaders are seething at being outshone yet are terrified of challenging him.
Consider his news conference this week to promote the Republican alternative to gun control. With Cruz on the stage in the Senate TV studio: the bill’s primary author, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a 32-year Senate veteran and longtime chairman or ranking member of the Finance and Judiciary committees; Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (10 years in the Senate and eight in the House); and Dan Coats of Indiana (12 years in the Senate and eight in the House).
But Cruz took over the lectern and refused to relinquish it. He spoke 2,924 words for the cameras, more than Grassley (904), Graham (1,376) and Coats (360) — combined. Factoring in his dramatic pauses to convey sincerity and deep thought, Cruz’s dominance was even more lopsided. The others shifted uncomfortably and looked awkwardly around the room. At one point, Graham requested a chance to speak. “Can I?” he asked Cruz.
Cruz is 42, the same age Joe McCarthy was when he amassed power in the Senate with his allegations of communist infiltration. Tail-gunner Ted debuted in the Senate this year with the insinuation that Chuck Hagel, now the defense secretary, may have been on the payroll of the North Koreans. Cruz also wrote in Politico that “Hagel’s nomination has been publicly celebrated by the Iranian government.” He later alleged that Democrats had told the Catholic Church to “change your religious beliefs or we’ll use our power in the federal government to shut down your charities and your hospitals.”
(Don’t) Read the Rest
Let me translate this. Far-left Dana Milbank doesn’t like conservatives. He is a liberal ideologue bent on pushing a progressive agenda. That’s it. Because of this, he feels threatened by Ted Cruz, a new senator who is not playing nice like most Republicans. Ted Cruz is a shining example of someone who is fearlessly defending liberty and Mr. Milbank, and liberals like him, can’t stand it. So they have set out to destroy him. Look at the article. His excuses for comparing Cruz to McCarthy are: He’s long-winded, he’s the same age that McCarthy was when he started his accusations and he confidently and clearly exposes the sinister motives and schemes of the Democratic party. I challenge Mr. Milbank to cite an example of where Cruz has been wrong. He has been right about everything. On drones, on guns, on Newtown, on Obamacare, on everything. Milbank’s problem is not that Cruz is like McCarthy, his problem is that Cruz is a threat to the advancement of progressive policy. And that’s just something that a liberal is not going to tolerate.
So, Mr. Milbank, to answer your question, I will not tell Senator Cruz to shut up, I will tell him to speak louder.
Exit Question: Is there nobody who can tell Dana Milbank to shut up?
Poor Richard's News: Great News! Lawmakers considering giving themselves Obamacare exemption
Isn’t this just like the government? Now that Obamacare is starting to show itself for just how terrible it is, the Politico is reporting that lawmakers want out. No, not to get everyone out. They just want to be exempt from it, themselves.
From Politico:
Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.
The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.
A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”
Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.
This is truly unbelievable. The Republicans I understand. To their credit, no Republican voted for this miserable legislation (although I wish they’d try a little harder to repeal it). But Democrats? You voted for it! If it was such a great law, why would you want to be exempt? And if it’s not such a great law, why did you vote for it? The only rational explanation of this is that this law was never about helping anyone. It was about power. It was about government control. Those on the right have been ridiculed for leveling that accusation. But if lawmakers go through with this, I defy anyone to come up with a different explanation.
This law must be repealed.
#truth #equal #statism #getgovernmentoutofmarriage #democrats #republicans #gaymarriage #trueliberty #homosexuality
Poor Richard's News: Democrat election worker charged with voting 6 times for Obama, additional voter fraud in 2011 and 2008
Last month we reported the story of Melowese Richardson, a Cincinnati election official, admitting on camera that she voted twice.
Once again, here’s the video:
Now, Richardson has been charged by prosecutors with voting six times in the 2012 elections as well as additional fraudulent votes in 2011 and 2008.
from Fox News:
She admitted voting twice in the presidential election last November, and now, Obama supporter Melowese Richardson has been indicted for allegedly voting at least six times. She also is charged with illegal voting in 2008 and 2011.
The 58-year-old veteran Cincinnati poll worker, indicted Monday, faces eight counts of voter fraud. Two others, one of whom is a nun, have been charged separately.
Richardson had admitted on camera to a local TV station, “Yes, I voted twice,” claiming she was concerned that her vote would not count. She also said there “was no intent on my part to commit any voter fraud.”
“I’ll fight it for Mr. Obama and Mr. Obama’s right to sit as president of the United States,” she proclaimed in the interview.
Officials charged that she voted in her own name by absentee ballot and also in person at the polls, but Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney Joseph Deters said she also is charged with voting in the name of five other people in various elections.
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to maintain that voter ID laws are unconstitutional and unwarranted.
Intervention: Democrats in denial about Washington’s spending addiction
Basically, the Democrats think that there’s no problem until the country is flat broke. They look at the private sector of the economy and they don’t see wealth generated by a free people in the marketplace, they just see a river of tax revenue they haven’t collected yet.
Poor Richard's News: Connecticut Democrat to 17-year-old girl: "If you're bashful, I've got a snake sitting under my desk"
A Democrat state representative in Connecticut lost his position as Deputy Speaker this week after making a wildly inappropriate comment to a 17-year-old girl during a budget appropriations meeting.
Here’s the audio:
Here’s the background: the girl was giving testimony about her experience working at the Connecticut Science Center. She talked about how teaching children about snakes had helped her to overcome her shyness.
“I am usually a very shy person, and now I am more outgoing. I was able to teach those children about certain things like snakes that we have and the turtles that we have… I want to do something toward that, working with children when I get older.”
Rep. Ernest Hewett responded after the girl’s testimony, ““If you’re bashful I got a snake sitting under my desk here.”
Hewett has since been stripped of his position as Deputy Speaker, and the Democrat is under even further pressure to resign.
from The Day:
On Friday, Hewett said, “If she had said elephants, I would have said elephants.”
He dismissed Republican calls for his resignation.
“I plan to stay in my job and represent the city of New London. Resign, not in my life,” he said.
He said he was 56 and didn’t have a blemish on his record.
“You are going to persecute me for sexual innuendo?” he said.
The fact that Hewett admits it was sexual innuendo is astounding. It’s not about “persecution;” it’s about holding represented officials accountable for their behavior. Making sexual remarks to minors is no laughing matter, and any public official who does so should lose his or her job.
Infowars: The truth about assault weapons bans and background checks
John Lott
foxnews.com
February 28, 2013With Senate Judiciary Committee meeting this week, it’s likely that new gun control bills will be drafted very quickly. There are in essence two parts to the bills: the part that deals with the “assault weapon ban” and the part that deals with “universal background checks.” The first one faces long odds of passage, but the second might well pass.
Democrats will undoubtedly push for an assault weapons ban. The ban has become a central tenant of the Democratic party, with Obama’s calls “to get weapons of war and massive ammunition magazines off our streets” and even Michelle Obama claiming crimes are being committed with “automatic weapons.” Senator Dianne Feinstein is pushing hard to reinstitute the earlier assault weapon ban, which she had originally enacted in 1994.
Proponents of an “Assault Weapons Ban” often argue their point by posing the question: “Why do people need a semiautomatic Bushmaster to go out and kill deer?”
Read more
Poor Richard's News: 40 things that have changed since the last Federal budget was passed.
The last time a budget was passed in the Democrat-controlled Senate was April 9, 2009. That’s exactly 1400 days ago today.
To mark such a momentous occasion, I thought I’d take a look back at how the world was before April 9, 2009. A lot has changed since then…
- Manti Te’o hadn’t yet played his first game as a freshman at Notre Dame
- Michael Jackson was still alive.
- The iPhone didn’t support 3G data networks.
- Susan Boyle hadn’t yet been discovered on Britain’s Got Talent
- Conan O’Brien was the host of the Tonight Show on NBC
- Nobody had ever heard of Ke$ha
- Obamacare hadn’t yet passed.
- Hannah Montana The Movie was #1 at the box office
- The first episode of Jersey Shore hadn’t yet aired
- George Steinbrenner was still alive and the owner of the Yankees
- A gallon of gasoline cost only $2.06
- Obama had not yet won a Nobel Peace Prize
- Gold cost $958 per ounce
- Everybody still thought Tiger Woods was a classy guy
- Anthony Weiner was still in Congress
- Neither the Vancouver nor the London Olympics had happened
- Justin Bieber had never released an album
- The United States had a AAA credit rating with every agency
- You could still buy a 100 watt incandescent light bulb
- Charlie Sheen still starred on Two and Half Men
- The Saints had never won the Super Bowl
- Amy Winehouse was still making music
- Brett Farve played quarterback for the New York Jets
- Bernie Maddoff was still operating his ponzi scheme
- Lance Armstrong was still riding in the Tour De France
- David Hasselhof was judge on America’s Got Talent
- Seve Jobs was still the CEO of Apple
- Oprah Winfrey still had a daytime TV show
- Chrysler and GM had not yet filed for bankruptcy
- The H1N1 Swine Flue scare hadn’t happened
- Hosni Mubarak was the President of Egypt
- Ted Kennedy was still a Senator
- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince hadn’t yet released to theaters
- Myspace was more popular than Twitter
- BP had not yet spilled 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico
- Skinny jeans were not yet a fashion trend
- Osama Bin Laden was still hiding out in Pakistan
- Prince William hadn’t yet proposed to Kate Middleton
- The National Debt was less than $11 Trillion
- Tim Tebow was still playing for the Florida Gators
This is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of stuff has happened in the past 1400 days, but a budget passing the US Senate is not one of them.
Infowars: Reaping the Whirlwind: the Colorado Model and Gun Control
Bob Adelmann
New American
February 21, 2013On February 18, the Democrat-controlled Colorado House of Representatives passed all four gun control bills over an out-numbered Republican minority’s noisy and occasionally emotional protests.
[…] These four bills are headed to the Senate where Democrats hold a 20-15 advantage over Republicans. And Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is expected to sign at least three if not all four of the bills, making them laws of the state.
In covering the bills for the Associated Press, Ivan Moreno noted that “the vote [on] Monday in Colorado’s gun control debate is part of the shift in the region’s politics to the left.”
The Threat to Republicans: A new poll shows the majority of Americans believe the party is "out of touch" and "too extreme."
To extreme??? How can you say the GOP is to extreme, but the DNC is not? The use the same bloody script. Support the same big goverment spending and they both want to have a nanny state.
When in the last ten years have you seen the GOP not go lock step with the Democrats ? In turn, When have you not seen the Democrats go lock step with the Republicans?
What all this boils down to is style, not substance. The Democrats are more slick with their message then the Republicans. Has nothing to do with policy. It did. People would see there is no difference in the 2 parties. They would see they are both ultra extrema statists who want to take away our rights for the sake of central planning.
