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RS Targeted Progressive Groups More Than Tea Party -AATTP


Mad Mike

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BREAKING: IRS Targeted Progressive Groups More Than Tea Party | Americans Against the Tea Party

 

 

 

IRS documents provided to ThinkProgress through a Freedom of Information Act request seem to indicate that not only did Tea Party groups not receive “systematic scrutiny because of their political beliefs,” but progressive organizations found themselves under much higher scrutiny than any conservative group.

 

I'm shocked... shocked, I tell you!  :rolleyes:

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Probably should have been in the existing IRS thread.

And I think I'll wait till there's more to this than Americans Against The Tea Party reporting on a Think Progress article.

 

:)

 

my mom says i am very handsome, and so does my sister!

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When this hits different outlets, I'll pay attention. I do believe Issa has nothing and is pressing to create something now that he's spent millions of our dollars hunting nothing. But still.....when its not on Daily Kos or ThinkProgress....but even a NBC. I'll note it.

 

Oh yeah, lets merge with whatever that other thread was.

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I honestly don't know how many times I could have told y'all in the IRS thread. I am glad this information is finally getting out in the public.

 

For those questioning Think Progress. Click the link. The provide the source documents received via the Freedom of Information Act and uploaded them on scribd. Read them yourself.

 

http://www.scribd.com/collections/4492912/IRS-Be-On-the-Look-Out-docs

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I honestly don't know how many times I could have told y'all in the IRS thread. I am glad this information is finally getting out in the public.

 

For those questioning Think Progress. Click the link. The provide the source documents received via the Freedom of Information Act and uploaded them on scribd. Read them yourself.

 

http://www.scribd.com/collections/4492912/IRS-Be-On-the-Look-Out-docs

 

^ This.

 

It's not like they just made a claim. They posted the documents that PROVE the claim.

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I agree that this is an overblown subject, but in your very link the writer buries and admission right before the final paragraph (a common tactic in writing to keep your article "honest"):

The IRS has admitted that it improperly flagged applicants containing common Tea Party keywords for additional scrutiny, but this seems to be more because of the blanket “additional review” forwarding for political-sounding organizations than anything else.

So the IRS has admitted to "improperly flagging" Tea Party groups for "additional scrutiny". This means they received additional scrutiny when compared to "blue" or "progressive" groups. And then the writer attempts to justify this improper flagging took place. In his attempt to do so he ignores the fact that "additional review" is supposed to be applied to any potential political lobby, but the IRS has admitted that the Tea Party was exposed to greater scrutiny than any other political lobby-type group. And there are emails from Lois Lerner that state as much

 

This is literally a textbook way to "debunk" and issue while admitting the issue exists, without being dishonest.

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I agree that this is an overblown subject, but in your very link the writer buries and admission right before the final paragraph (a common tactic in writing to keep your article "honest"):

So the IRS has admitted to "improperly flagging" Tea Party groups for "additional scrutiny". This means they received additional scrutiny when compared to "blue" or "progressive" groups. And then the writer attempts to justify this improper flagging took place. In his attempt to do so he ignores the fact that "additional review" is supposed to be applied to any potential political lobby, but the IRS has admitted that the Tea Party was exposed to greater scrutiny than any other political lobby-type group. And there are emails from Lois Lerner that state as much

 

This is literally a textbook way to "debunk" and issue while admitting the issue exists, without being dishonest.

 

No, it means that the Tea Party received more scrutiny then average.  Not every group has to have a clear political lean.  It's possible that blue groups were attacked more then red ones while both still receiving above average scrutiny.

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I agree that this is an overblown subject, but in your very link the writer buries and admission right before the final paragraph (a common tactic in writing to keep your article "honest"):

So the IRS has admitted to "improperly flagging" Tea Party groups for "additional scrutiny". This means they received additional scrutiny when compared to "blue" or "progressive" groups. And then the writer attempts to justify this improper flagging took place. In his attempt to do so he ignores the fact that "additional review" is supposed to be applied to any potential political lobby, but the IRS has admitted that the Tea Party was exposed to greater scrutiny than any other political lobby-type group. And there are emails from Lois Lerner that state as much

 

This is literally a textbook way to "debunk" and issue while admitting the issue exists, without being dishonest.

 

Oh really... Which part of this did you fail to comprehend?

 

 

 

Republican staffers have provided an extensive report explaining that the language was “changed to broader ‘political advocacy organizations,’ the IRS still intended to identify and single out Tea Party applications for scrutiny.” However, this claim falls short of the reality presented by actual IRS records–and the fact that heightened scrutiny for left-leaning groups was longer-standing than for Tea Party organizations.

 

irs_foia-65.jpg

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Oh really... Which part of this did you fail to comprehend?

Nice way to ignore everything I said and post a ginormous graph.

 

You can ignore what you choose to ignore. There is a reason the paragraph I posted was included in the article. There is a reason the IRS has admitted to improper flagging of the Tea Party and not to improper flagging of Progressive. There is a reason a higher up in the IRS wrote in emails her concerns with specifically targeting Tea Party-linked groups. 

 

And remember, I lead with the statement that I think this all overblown. 

 

Oh, and when citing a source, you might want to liit posting from a guy who has this as his "bio" and writes for a group calle "Americans Against the Tea Party:

John is an unfortunate Liberal soul who lives uncomfortably in the middle of a Conservative hellscape. While he is not a fan of politicians, period, he has developed a deep-seated hatred for the bigotry, fear mongering, and lies of the Right Wing.

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Nice way to ignore everything I said and post a ginormous graph.

 

You can ignore what you choose to ignore. There is a reason the paragraph I posted was included in the article. There is a reason the IRS has admitted to improper flagging of the Tea Party and not to improper flagging of Progressive. There is a reason a higher up in the IRS wrote in emails her concerns with specifically targeting Tea Party-linked groups. 

 

And remember, I lead with the statement that I think this all overblown. 

 

Oh, and when citing a source, you might want to liit posting from a guy who has this as his "bio" and writes for a group calle "Americans Against the Tea Party:

 

And again you ignore the FACTS shown in documents, simply because you don't like the source. 

 

And Larry is correct... You are misunderstanding that statement. The graph is a visual representation of numerical facts. The tea party was flagged for extra scrutiny LESS than progressive groups, LESS than pro Medical Marijuana groups,  LESS than successors to Acorn. And when you add them all up, This is what you get....

 

IRS_targeting.jpg

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No, I'm not. The IRS has admitted they "improperly flagged" Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. That means they should not have been flagged. Which means they were specifically targeted. There is no admission of improper flagging of any other group. The chart shows that progressive and blue groups were flagged more than the Tea Party. Woohoo. That doesn't change the fact the IRS has admitted they improperly flagged groups associated with Tea Party for additional scrutiny. Improper being the key term. Now, if you want to claim that progressive or blue groups were improperly flagged for additional scrutiny, and can provide and admittance from the targeting entity, fine. Otherwise you are posting charts that use semantics to change the frame of reference.

 

From the mouth of the IG of the IRS:

“Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the ‘progressives’ identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012,” George wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill.

The inspector general also stressed that 100 percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12” in their name were flagged for extra attention.

“While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report, including employee interviews, e-mails and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention,” George wrote to Levin, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee…

George’s letter says that the “progressive” identifier on BOLO lists was not in a section used for selecting potential political cases, and that the IRS had developed inappropriate criteria to flag Tea Party applicants as potentially political.

According to George, six of the 20 progressive groups that applied for tax-exemption between 2010 and 2012 received close scrutiny. Of the 292 tea-party groups that applied, …all 292 did

"Based on the information you flagged regarding the existence of a 'Progressives' entry on BOLO lists, TIGTA performed additional research which determined that six tax-exempt applications filed between May 2010 and May 2012 having the words 'progress' or 'progressive' in their names were included in the 298 cases the IRS identified as potential political cases. We also determined that 14 tax-exempt applications filed between May 2010 and May 2012 using the words 'progress' or 'progressive' in their names were not referred for added scrutiny as potential political cases. In total, 30 percent of the organizations we identified with the words 'progress' or "progressive" in their names were processed as potential political cases. In comparison, our audit found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt applications with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were processed as potential political cases during the timeframe of our audit."

 

So, how can you justify what Think Progress is claiming when the IG submitted a letter to Congress stating otherwise? Semantics.

The term “progressive” was flagged in a general warning to agency screeners — one that remained on the list throughout the time in question — that the applications of progressive organizations may not merit 501©(3) designation, which prohibits groups from engaging in political activity. That warning, according to an IRS source familiar with the review process, did not prevent first-line screeners from recommending an application be approved.

 

The same lists, between August 2010 and February 2012, directed screeners by default to send tea-party applications to a special group for further review and for coordination with lawyers in Washington, D.C. “They are different,” says the agency source of the designations made for progressive and tea-party groups. 

So, progressive was flagged, but did not prevent approval without additional scrutiny. Tea Party was flagged, and was barred from approval until additional scrutiny was applied via a separate entity investigating from Washington DC.

 

Semantics. Flagging vs improperly flagging. Think Progress takes a BOLO list and claims that everything on the list is treated exactly the same. Produce a pretty chart. Release to generate clicks from a targeted audience. Ignore what was already reported to Congress by the IG because it doesn't fit your ideal, but throw in a one liner to cover you near the end of the article. It is a play run by every slanted website. It is in all of their playbooks.

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Algorithms don't build themselves, there is a dba who inputs the data, and what to look for...it's not Skynet.

True, but they are based on numbers. So unless the IRS has had the algorithms programed to look for specific numbers that correlate to company ID numbers, then it's really difficult for the IRS to target a group or company.

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Look, I think targeting the Tea Party is fine. I got no problem with it. The issue here is not being truthful and then all the bogus reporting. When the IG for a federal entity comes out and says there is evidence that a specific group was targeted 100% of the time while the "other side" was targeted less than 30% of the time, that should be the end of the debate. It happened. Spinning statistics to show the side that was targeted less than 30% of the time was actually targeted more than the group that was tarheted 100% of the time is just that -- spin.

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True, but they are based on numbers. So unless the IRS has had the algorithms programed to look for specific numbers that correlate to company ID numbers, then it's really difficult for the IRS to target a group or company.

 

Agreed, I also don't know how their queries are setup, or even what type of db they use....so maybe it is Skynet.  :)

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I really can't believe this whole nonsense is still in the news anywhere

 

And I do believe the tailgate over the past several years has done a good job of not using such biased sources such as WND, Frontpage and others on the left. AATP might be one of the worst places to get this information 

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Popeman, I think you may be seeing what you want to see.   The word "progressive" is kind of generic.  Not targeting that word isn't surprising.  However, I have seen no official statements about whether medical marijuana advocacy groups or ACORN successors or any other more specific liberal advocacy groups were targeted in the same way as Tea Party groups.

 

What I am saying is that the underlying "scandal" here was supposed to be about politically-driven bias against Tea Party and conservative groups, with liberal Lois Lerner doing the bidding of the Obama Administration.  That's the story Issa and Fox have been screaming since day one.   These figures suggest that this wasn't remotely the case.   It looks like they were targeting all sorts of new groups, liberal and conservative and perhaps neither.   The IRS may have screwed up and Tea Party groups may have suffered for it, but so did lots of people.

 

Long story short: once again, a Darrell Issa scandal is just another pile of Issa.  


Look, I think targeting the Tea Party is fine. I got no problem with it. The issue here is not being truthful and then all the bogus reporting. When the IG for a federal entity comes out and says there is evidence that a specific group was targeted 100% of the time while the "other side" was targeted less than 30% of the time, that should be the end of the debate. It happened. Spinning statistics to show the side that was targeted less than 30% of the time was actually targeted more than the group that was tarheted 100% of the time is just that -- spin.

 

This is where you got lost.  There isn't an "other side" to the Tea Party.  There was no "liberal Tea Party" that got preferential treatment because there wasn't any such group.  The closest thing the left had was the Occupy mobement, and those guys couldn't organize themselves enough to find an office to pick up some tax forms.  

 

Is medical marijuana advocacy the "other side" of the Tea Party?   Acorn successor groups?  Why not?

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Popeman, I think you may be seeing what you want to see.   The word "progressive" is kind of generic.  Not targeting that word isn't surprising.  However, I have seen no official statements about whether medical marijuana advocacy groups or ACORN successors or any other more specific liberal advocacy groups were targeted in the same way as Tea Party groups.

 

What I am saying is that the underlying "scandal" here was supposed to be about politically-driven bias against Tea Party and conservative groups, with liberal Lois Lerner doing the bidding of the Obama Administration.  That's the story Issa and Fox have been screaming since day one.   These figures suggest that this wasn't remotely the case.   It looks like they were targeting all sorts of new groups, liberal and conservative and perhaps neither.   The IRS may have screwed up and Tea Party groups may have suffered for it, but so did lots of people.

 

Long story short: once again, a Darrell Issa scandal is just another pile of Issa.  

So you are going to take stats compiled from Think Progress via a FOIA request over the actual audit conducted by the IG for the IRS? And you are going to ignore the difference between the two different types of flagging? If 'progressive' is flagged, but available for approval and 'tea party' is flagged, but unavailable for approval until a secondary investigation is complete, you are going to consider those equal?

Put this in police terms:

 

BOLO:

White, work vans with California plates.

 

STOP AND DETAIN:

All drivers of white work vans with California plates.

 

There is a distinct difference between the two.

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So you are going to take stats compiled from Think Progress via a FOIA request over the actual audit conducted by the IG for the IRS? And you are going to ignore the difference between the two different types of flagging? If 'progressive' is flagged, but available for approval and 'tea party' is flagged, but unavailable for approval until a secondary investigation is complete, you are going to consider those equal?

 

I just explained why I don't think the generic word "progressive" is the other side of the coin of "Tea Party."  

 

And yes I am interested in the documents released on the FOIA request, because it looks like they were asking different questions than the IG audit.  The IG audit proved that Tea Party groups were flagged.  We all knew that.  As far as I can tell, it didn't ask if any other liberal advocacy words or concepts other than the word progressive were flagged, or why.  From what I can see, the tea party groups fell into the same net as lots of other brand new advocacy groups that the IRS hadn't seen before and wasn't sure about.  They weren't targeted because they were conservative.  They were targeted because of bureaucracy.  Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how it looks.

 

My point is, the fact that tea party groups were flagged doesn't seem to support the the Darrell Issa "Obama sicced the IRS on the Tea Party" scandal theory.   I swear, George W Bush never should have hired that Lois Lerner in the first place.   

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