Photo Credit: ThinkstockLois Lerner, the senior executive in charge of the IRS tax exemption department and the federal employee at the center of the exploding scandal over the IRS targeting of conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel non-profits, was given $42,531 in bonuses between 2009 and 2011.
That figure was included in data provided by the IRS in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Washington Examiner. Lerner is director of the IRS exempt organizations division, which processes and approves or denies applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Lerner received $17,220 for 2010, $14,691 for 2011 and $10,620 for 2012, the most recent year for which the IRS said data was available. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-15 21:12:182016-04-11 11:21:14IRS Exec Got $42k in Bonuses in Three Years
Photo Credit: Daily Caller The Internal Revenue Service gave confidential documents from conservative groups to the investigative website ProPublica, the website reports.
ProPublica says after the 2012 election it requested documents from 67 organizations, and the IRS sent them information on 31 groups. Nine of groups had not yet been approved for nonprofit status. Releasing information on unapproved applicants is against IRS rules.
“Deeming that they were newsworthy,” Propublica made six of those applications public after redacting financial information, a story on Propublica’s website said Monday.
All the groups the IRS sent information on were for conservative groups, ProPublica said. None were for liberal groups, even though ProPublica requested information on liberal and centrist groups.
“We requested applications from the IRS for all groups that didn’t report their donors for political spending to the [Federal Election Commission],” ProPublica reporter Kim Barker said in an email to Newsmax.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-14 20:44:572016-04-11 11:21:17Another Obama Scandal: IRS Illegally Leaked Info About Conservative Groups to Liberal Website
Photo Credit: APThe Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups is outrageous. Those who did this should be fired immediately. That’s obvious.
It continues a slovenly week for Barack Obama. The President has been very proud of the absence of scandal in his administration, and rightly so. The inability of his opponents to find any significant corruption in the historic $800 billion stimulus package was a real achievement, given the speed of the payout. None of his top aides have been caught up in taking bribes while in office–although their race through the revolving door into lucrative private sector positions is well beyond nauseating.
As in most presidencies, there have been an awful lot of political hacks populating the mid-reaches of this Administration. In the Obama instance, these have shown an anachronistic, pre-Clinton liberal bias when it comes to the rules and regulations governing many of our safety net programs, like social security disability. And now they have violated one of the more sacred rules of our democracy: you do not use the tax code to punish your opponents.
Photo Credit: APBy BYRON TAU, LAUREN FRENCH and TARINI PARTI. The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday to conservative political groups for giving their tax documents extra scrutiny — validating the worst fears of Republican activists who have long accused the Obama administration of politicizing the process.
Roughly 75 groups were singled out using words like “tea party” or “patriot” in tax documents, Lois Lerner, who is responsible for overseeing tax-exempt groups, said on a hastily arranged conference call Friday afternoon.
The White House said Friday that the IRS inspector general is investigating the matter.
“What we know about this is of concern,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said, emphasizing that the IRS is an independent agency with only two political appointees. The agency is technically a division of the Treasury Department.
“It certainly does seem to be based on what we’ve seen to be inappropriate action that we would want to see thoroughly investigated,” Carney said. Read more from this story HERE.
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Obama’s spokesperson actually had the gall to blame the illegal targeting on a Bush IRS appointee:
GOP blitzes Obama administration after IRS admits targeting tea party groups during election
By Alexis Levinson. Republican lawmakers are calling for a full investigation into the Internal Revenue Service after a top official revealed Friday that the agency specifically flagged tea party and conservative groups for review to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
Several Republicans voiced suspicion last year that the IRS was unduly focused on conservative groups, after several groups reported that they had been asked to fill out extensive amounts of paper work and go to great lengths to prove they were not violating their tax-exempt status.
Earlier today, ahead of a report by the inspector general for tax administration, the IRS admitted that it had targeted conservative groups for additional reviews, with an eye toward catching violations of tax-exempt status. Groups were singled out based on keywords such as “patriot” and “tea party” in their tax-exempt status applications, according to Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to the inspector general in June 2012 asking that the committee be provided with “periodic updates” on the investigation into whether the IRS was applying an inappropriate level of scrutiny to such groups.
“The Committee will aggressively follow up on the IG report and hold responsible officials accountable for this political retaliation,” reads a new statement on the oversight committee’s web site. A representative from the committee confirmed to The Daily Caller that this would include hearings, but did not give a time or schedule. Read more from this story HERE.
‘I’m not good at math’: The IRS’ public relations disaster
By Aaron Blake. About a half-hour into a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon, senior Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner said something she will regret.
“I’m not good at math,” she confessed as she tried to summon a statistic.
Lerner clarified that she is a lawyer and not an accountant (a fair defense) but the remark instantly blew up on Twitter — an IRS official being bad at math!? — and wound up punctuating what was a torturous response to the IRS’ admission that it inappropriately targeted tea party groups.
A skeptical press corps peppered Lerner with questions, many of which she and her staff were unable or unwilling to answer. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-11 04:23:522016-04-11 11:21:33IRS Targeted Tea Party Groups in 2012 Election, Now Apologizes (+video)
Photo Credit: Daily CallerConservative radio talker Mark Levin appears to have touched off the investigation into Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative political groups back in March 2012.
In a letter last year on behalf of the Landmark Legal Foundation, an organization he heads, Levin requested an investigation into what he called “misconduct.”
On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service revealed that it had improperly targeted conservative groups for audits during the 2012 election. During a conference call, Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of exempt organizations, explained that IRS staffers selected groups that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax exempt status.
Levin told The Daily Caller Friday afternoon his organization had litigated similar complaints of political audits during the Clinton administration and specifically referenced the Heritage Foundation as one of the tax collector’s targets at the time.
More recently, Levin said, conservative and Tea Party groups approached him complaining of harassment by the IRS, which prompted his organization to petition Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-11 04:23:442016-04-11 11:21:33Mark Levin May Have Prompted IRS-Conservative Group Revelations
Photo Credit: Scott SadyThe US Senate on Monday passed a bill aimed at ending tax-free shopping on the internet but the move looks set to face fierce opposition before it becomes law.
The Marketplace Fairness Act, which has cross-party supporter and the backing of powerful retailers, would give states the power to require retailers with sales over $1m to collect state and local sales taxes for online purchases.
The bill has the support of president Barack Obama the majority of senators including Republican John McCain but Marco Rubio, seen a potential Republican presidential hopeful, and Rand Paul both voted against the bill.
The bill passed the Senate by 70 votes to 24 but faces a second test in the House of Representatives where internet retailers and conservatives are already lobbying against the tax. House leaders have yet to schedule hearings or votes on their version of the measure.
The legislation would overturn a 1992 supreme court ruling that said a state could not force a retailer to collect sales tax unless the retailer had a physical presence in the state.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-07 01:51:232016-04-11 11:21:57Senate Passes Internet Sales Tax Bill Amid Opposition from Conservatives
Photo Credit: Getty Images Conservatives are outraged after a Democrat in South Carolina allegedly insulted Republican Gov. Nikki Haley’s Indian heritage at a party gathering in Columbia on Friday.
The state’s Democratic Party Chairman, Dick Harpootlian, is believed to have said the party will take on the Conservative in the next gubernatorial race and send ‘Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from.’
Gov. Haley was born in the U.S. but her parents are from India.
Yahoo political reporter Chris Moody tweeted on Friday that Mr Harpootlian made the comment, in support of Democrat challenger Vince Sheheen, who has declared he will run for governor.
There were no details on the venue or context for the comment but Harpootlian is at the helm the 2013 Dem Weekend in Columbia, South Carolina.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2013-05-05 02:32:582016-04-11 11:22:02Outrage after Democrats Insult Nikki Haley’s Indian Heritage Saying they’ll Send the Republican Gov. ‘Back to Wherever the Hell She Came From’
Photo Credit: Getty Images Below is the transcript of an interview conducted with Louie Gohmert as he walked back to his office after a Fox Business Network television appearance on Capitol Hill. In the interview, Gohmert discusses the state of the GOP, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and whether he has considered running for Senate…
What do you think the 2012 election said about the GOP? A lot of commentators say it showed that the GOP has to change on immigration or become supportive of gay marriage to remain competitive. How do you see it?
I think if we had done the things we promised that we wouldn’t be told that now we have to pander. You know, Scott Walker showed if you make promises and you do what you promise, you don’t have to pander. And, you know, Chris Christie has done somewhat the same thing. You make promises when you’re running, and keep your promises. And even when people disagree with you or don’t like you, they will look upon you as being a person of honor and they’ll respect you and you will be elected again. It’s just that people are so hungry for elected officials that will do what they say and say what they’ll do and keep those promises.
So you don’t accept the argument that the country is changing and the Republican Party has to change with it?
The country is always changing and we do need to change, and by changing we change the way we message, but there are some things — like honest, integrity — those kind of values that never go out of vogue. And I think people are hungry for honesty and integrity and I think that’s where we need to be — not pandering. And I also think if we start making the kind of changes that you’ve talked about policy-wise, even though they’re diametrically opposed to what we’ve said when we’ve been elected, I don’ think we’ll come back. People would rather have somebody of honor and integrity. I mean look at [George] Washington. People disagreed with him. He didn’t have 100 percent agreement on a whole lot of things, but he was a man of integrity and kept his word and that’s why we still celebrate him today, in addition to being very brave.
Family Research Council (FRC) officials released video of federal investigators questioning convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who explained that he attacked the group’s headquarters because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified them as a “hate group” due to their traditional marriage views.
“Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups,” Corkins tells interrogators in the video, which FRC obtained from the FBI. “I found them online, did a little research, went to the website, stuff like that.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-25 02:45:592016-04-11 11:22:53Convicted Domestic Terrorist Admits He Attacked a Conservative Group Because of Southern Poverty Law Center (+video)
Photo Credit: John ShinkleRepublican-backed legislation meant to alter a piece of Obamacare has picked up some unlikely opponents: conservatives.
The Club for Growth, ForAmerica and the Heritage Foundation have come out against the bill, which the House is expected to take up later this week.
The critics argue that the bill would prop up a program that should be killed. The measure would move $4 billion from the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which was created under the health care law, to the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Program, which ran out of money earlier this year.
For America President Brent Bozell said that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who supports the bill and pushing it behind the scenes although he is not listed as a sponsor or a cosponsor, is to blame.
“Rather than sticking to his promise to repeal the massive government takeover of healthcare that is Obamacare, which led to Republicans taking the House majority in 2010, [Cantor] is actually advocating shoring up a portion of the law that does nothing to use free market-based reforms to cut healthcare costs,” Bozell said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-24 00:58:102016-04-11 11:22:58Cantor Pushing Obamacare Bill, but not to Repeal it as Promised
