The Latest Lie: IRS Targeted Conservatives

I just heard NPR refer to the IRS "targeting" conservative groups. By this time, they have to know that is a lie. Sadly, I am not at all surprised. NPR is dependent enough on its corporate sponsors that it is part of the corporate media.

And I don't believe this is a matter of ignorance by the media. It is part of a wide-ranging, long-term pattern of the media serving the interests of the power elite which owns or funds them.

http://crooksandliars.com/dave-johnson/latest-lie-irs-targeted-conservatives

by Dave Johnso, crooksandliars.com
May 21st 2013

Remember the video of the guy in the "pimp costume" who got advice from ACORN employees on how to run his prostitution ring? Turns out the whole story was just a lie, a doctored-video smear job on an important organization. The guy never wore a "pimp costume" and the real, undoctored videos showed that ACORN employees did nothing wrong. But a lie travels around the world before the corporate media bothers to check the facts. The "news" media blasted the story everywhere, and Congress was so outraged they forced ACORN to close its doors. And here we are again.

The corporate media is blasting out the story that the IRS "targeted conservative groups." Some in the media say there was "IRS harassment of conservative groups." Some of the media are going so far as claiming that conservative groups were "audited."

This story that is being repeated and treated as "true" is just not what happened at all. It is one more right-wing victimization fable, repeated endlessly until the public has no choice except to believe it.

Conservative Groups Were Not "Targeted," "Singled Out" Or Anything Else

You are hearing that conservative groups were "targeted." What you are not hearing is that progressive groups were also "targeted." So were groups that are not progressive or conservative.

All that happened here is that groups applying to the IRS for special tax status were checked to see if they were engaged in political activity. They were checked, not targeted. Only one-third of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Once again: Only one-third of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Conservative groups were not "singled out," were not "targeted" and in the end none were denied special tax status – even though many obviously should have been.

From last week's House hearings on this:

Rep. Peter Roskam, R-IL: "How come only conservative groups got snagged?"

Outgoing acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller: "They didn't sir. Organizations of all walks and all persuasions were pulled in. That’s shown by the fact that only 70 of the 300 organizations were tea party organizations, of the ones that were looked at by TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration]."

Bet you didn't see that blasted all over your TV news that night.

-----

Here's the story. After the "Citizen's United" decision allowed unlimited corporate money into elections there was a flood of applications to get special tax status that allowed an organization to hide its donors from the public, and in some cases even be tax-exempt. But the rules say that political groups can't get this special tax status. The IRS has to check out applications for tax status to see if it is really a political group trying to sneak in to a special tax status.

Because they were flooded and couldn't check out every applying organization, the IRS group looked for things in the applications that "flagged" an organization as possibly a political group. These flagged applications were then passed along to specialists to look deeper and determine if they were legit or not.

So What Was The "Wrongdoing"?

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has issued a full report: Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review that looked into the accusation that the IRS "targeted" tea party groups that were applying for special tax status for extra scrutiny. The report is not all that long. You should read it. (Apparently most the people you are hearing from in the media haven't read it.)

-----