America
IRS Chief Says 'Mistakes Were Made' But Weren't Partisan
by Mark Memmott

May 14, 201311:07 AM "Mistakes were made, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan motivation," the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service writes in USA Today's op-ed pages.
In his first public comments on the growing controversy over the extra scrutiny the agency admits it gave in recent years to conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status, Steven Miller says:


Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. — "We are — and will continue to be — dedicated to reviewing all applications for tax-exempt status in an impartial manner."
— "There was a shortcut taken in our processes to determine which groups needed additional review. The mistakes we made were due to the absence of a sufficient process for working the increase in cases and a lack of sensitivity to the implications of some of the decisions that were made."
One shortcut, as has been reported, included singling out groups that wrote the words "tea party" or "patriot" in applications for tax-exempt status.
Organizations are eligible for tax-exempt status if they are "social welfare groups," NPR's Brian Naylor reported on Morning Edition. But they are not eligible for that status if they engage in a substantial amount of political activity.

According to Brian, "The IRS sent long and complex questionnaires to the targeted groups asking for information on everything from its social media presence to its donors." The extra attention delayed some of the groups' applications and added to their legal bills.
Miller became the IRS's acting commissioner last November, succeeding Douglas Shulman. In his permanent role as deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, the IRS says, "Miller provides direction and oversight for all major decisions affecting the four taxpayer-focused IRS Divisions: Wage and Investment, Large Business and International, Small Business/Self-Employed, and Tax Exempt and Government Entities."

Miller could have alerted Congress to what the IRS had been doing last summer. The Associated Press writes that "Monday, the IRS said Miller was first informed on May, 3, 2012, that applications for tax-exempt status by tea party groups were inappropriately singled out for extra scrutiny."

On July 25 of last year, Miller testified before the oversight subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. According to a transcript of that hearing, GOP Rep. Kenny Marchant of Texas said, "I have been contacted by several of the groups in my district. And they feel like they are being harassed. I don't have any evidence that that is the case. But they feel like they have been harassed and feel like the IRS is threatening them with some kind of action or audit."
Marchant asked about the questions the IRS was asking such groups to answer in order to prove their right to be exempt from taxes.
Miller did not mention that some conservative groups were getting extra scrutiny from IRS career staff at one of the agency's offices in Cincinnati, where such work had been centralized. He said, in part, that many of the groups applying for tax-exempt status "are very small organizations and they are not quite sure what the rules are, and so we are working with them to ensure that they understand what the rules are. It is my hope that some of the noise that we heard earlier this year has abated as we continue to work through these cases."
At another point during the hearing, Miller said of the groups applying for tax-exempt status that "some come in and they are doing things that either are close to the line, impermissible, unclear as to which of those two that they might be and those may take a longer time still, and they will be referred to specialists in Cincinnati and elsewhere that will take a look to justify it and see whether or not the organization qualifies as a public charity."
On Monday, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida called on Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and President Obama to "demand the IRS commissioner's resignation, effective immediately."
Update at 11:45 a.m. ET. McConnell Calls On Administration To Stop "Stonewalling":
"With Congress preparing to hold hearings on the IRS's holding conservative groups to extra scrutiny," Reuters reports, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that he is "calling on the president to make available, completely and without restriction, everyone who can answer the questions we have as to what was going on at the IRS, who knew about it, and how high it went."

"No more stonewalling, no more incomplete answers, no more misleading responses, no holding back witnesses, no matter how senior their current or former positions — we need full transparency and cooperation," McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Steven Miller

Uh, the acting IRS commissioner was asked to resign and did.

I'm hoping that Holder will be next.

No misconduct or other felony charges will be investigated?

'Soros Gave $6.1 Million to Groups Linked to Pressure on IRS to Target Conservative Nonprofits

As IRS efforts targeting politically-conservative groups gained momentum, George Soros-funded liberal groups repeatedly called on the IRS to investigate conservative nonprofit organizations.

While the first reported instances of extra IRS scrutiny for conservative groups began in Cincinnati in March of 2010, the attacks began to pick up steam on a national level soon after Soros-funded groups began firing off letters to the IRS in October of that year - following the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.

The talking points of these groups then bounced around a carefully created progressive "echo chamber," until they eventually made their way into established media outlets. Key IRS policy changes about how it investigated conservative groups took place soon after it received three separate letters sent by Soros-funded liberal organizations.

Several Soros-funded groups including the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, the Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones and Alternet have worked to pressure the IRS to target conservative nonprofit groups. The subsequent IRS investigation flagged more than 100 tea party-related applications for higher scrutiny, including applications that included the words "Tea Party" and "patriot."

The IRS scandal can be traced back to a series of letters that the liberal groups Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Democracy 21 sent to the IRS back in 2010 and 2011. Both groups were funded by George's Soros's Open Society Foundations. The CLC received $677,000 and Democracy 21 got $365,000 from the Soros-backed foundation, according to the Foundation's 990 tax forms.

The letters specifically targeted conservative Super PACs like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, asking the IRS to scrutinize them more thoroughly to determine whether or not they should retain their tax-exempt status.

On Oct. 5, 2010, when the first letter was sent to the IRS, calling specifically for the agency to "investigate" Crossroads GPS. The letter claimed Crossroads was "impermissibly using its tax status to spend tens of millions of dollars in the 2010 congressional races while hiding the donors funding these expenditures from the American people." Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer wrote a blog post for the liberal Huffington Post to promote it, and the effort to get the media to notice the anti-conservative campaign began.

On June 27, 2011, a second letter by the CLC and Democracy 21 complained about enforcement of 501(c)(4) tax regulations, asking "that the IRS issue new regulations that better enforce the law." Two days later, an IRS senior agency official was briefed on a new policy targeting groups which "criticize how the country is being run," according to a Washington Post story. According to the Post, this policy was later revised.

A third letter by the CLC and Democracy 21, on Sept 28, 2011, got media traction. The letter showed the escalation of the left's complaint about 501(c)(4) groups. It challenged "the eligibility of four organizations engaged in campaign activity to be treated as 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations." The four organizations included Crossroads GPS, Priorities USA, American Action Network and Americans Elect.

The Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity ($2,716,328) published a "study" on 501(c)(4) groups, on October 31, which drew heavily from, and referenced, the CLC and Democracy 21. The Center for Public Integrity has strong media connections and boasts an advisory board that includes Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News, and Michele Norris, an NPR host, as well as a board of directors with such prominent names as Huffington Post CEO Arianna Huffington, Steve Kroft of CBS News's "60 Minutes" and Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist).

This study then led to a Mother Jones article about a month later, on November 18, which was reposted on the left-wing blog Alternet on November 21. By December of 2011, the topic had been picked up in a New York Times editorial, and then began receiving other media coverage. That editorial called for "the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on the secret political money already flooding the 2012 campaign from partisan operatives ludicrously claiming to be 'social welfare' activists."

On Jan. 15, 2012, the IRS targeted groups focused on limiting government or educating people about the Constitution and Bill of Rights

Alternet and Mother Jones are both members of The Media Consortium, which is designed to do exactly what happened here. The Media Consortium was created to be a progressive "echo chamber," where 63 separate left-wing media outlets can network and share ideas, as well as cross-promote stories. Other members of the Consortium include such liberal outlets as The Nation, Democracy Now! and The American Prospect. The consortium has also received $675,000 in Soros funds since 2000. Alternet ($285,000) and Mother Jones ($485,000) have both also received individual funding from Soros's Open Society Foundations.

This isn't the only time the IRS has targeted conservative groups recently, nor is it the only connection between the IRS and Soros-funded groups. The IRS gave the left-wing journalism site ProPublica the applications for nine conservative groups pending tax-exempt status.

The IRS also released the confidential donor lists of the National Organization for Marriage to the liberal Human Rights Campaign. Both the Human Rights Campaign ($2,716,328) and ProPublica ($300,000) are also Soros-funded. Despite its blatant liberal leanings, ProPublica boasts a staff of well-known journalists, including veterans of The New York Times and The Wall Street journal, as well as of liberal operations like the Center for American Progress and The Nation, and has even won two Pulitzer Prizes.

'CONTINUED

Timeline Shows Influence of Soros-Funded Groups
•March 1-17, 2010: First ten reported cases of targeting by the IRS against groups that had ties to the "tea party or similar organizations."
•Sept. 16, 2010: TIME article "The New GOP Money Stampede" quotes Wertheimer;
•Sept. 23, 2010: DISCLOSE act, a campaign finance disclosure act specifically targeting a Tea Party group, in the writing of which the CLC participated, fails in the Senate;
•Sept. 28, 2010: Democrat Senator Max Baucus writes a letter to the IRS, citing the TIME article;
•Oct. 5, 2010: Democracy 21 and Campaign Legal Center petition IRS, Wertheimer writes HuffPo article;
•Oct. 7, 2010: Legal brief from HoltzmanVogel PLLC against the Democracy 21 petition;
•Oct. 14, 2010: Dick Durbin asks IRS to investigate American Crossroads, HuffPo coverage;
•June 27, 2011: Second petition to the IRS by CLC and Democracy 21;
•June 29, 2011: IRS senior agency official Lois Lerner briefed on efforts to target groups which "criticize how the country is being run";
•Sept. 28, 2011: CLC and Democracy 21 petition IRS again, this time about four conservative groups;
•Oct. 31, 2011: CPI "investigation";
•Nov. 18, 2011: Mother Jones article;
•Nov. 21, 2011: Alternet repost of Mother Jones Article;
•Dec. 29, 2011: New York Times oped;
•Jan. 15, 2012: IRS targeted groups focusing on limiting government or educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights;
•February 2012: First articles promoting this issue appear in New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times

$6.1 Million in Soros Funding Since 2000

Center for Public Integrity: $2,716,328
Campaign Legal Center: $677,000
Media Consortium: $675,000
Mother Jones: $485,000
Democracy 21: $365,000
ProPublica: $300,000
Alternet: $285,000
Human Rights Campaign: $600,000

http://cnsnews.com/blog/mike-ciandella/soros-gave-61-million-groups-linked-pressure-irs-target-conservative-nonprofits
-----------------------------------------------

Amount given by the Koch brothers to IRS to target liberal nonprofit groups: $0.00.

This was a coordinated effort between Obama and his band of merry trolls, and no amount of Obama's ******** will convince anyone that he wasn't involved and that he is "just as outraged" as everyone else. That's pure ********.

Here's the truth of what happened. The Tea Party scared the living **** out of Camp Obama, because of what they did in 2010. The Obama administration then decided to use it's useful idiots to go after Tea Party organizations to keep them either too busy handling the IRS to do their functions or too scared of the IRS to complain about not getting their tax exempt status and just called it quits.

This is not going to go away and it's only the beginning. We now have to investigate all of these organizations and find the ties back to the administration.

Make no mistake about it. The Obama administration knew this was going on and probably enjoyed it.

We now have three major scandals going on at the same time; Benghazi, IRS targeting conservative groups, and the AP phone tapping.

Dear Old George,still putting his Money in the Service of the Public!
That sick Louse!

All just a smoke screen. He wasn't commish in 2010 when all this began.
Lets make someone resign and it will all go away. Seems to be the way this administration "fixes" things.

yep,that Bus is Wide and Long...................!
Plenty more space underneath!

How funny! Refusal to prosecute Black Panthers for intimitating voters and poll watchers? Nothing. Running guns illegally to Mexican drug cartels? Nothing. Lying under oath (and to the American people on TV) over the Benghazi atrocity? Nothing. Trying to pass off an obviously forged birth certificate as "authentic?" Nothing. Catching the IRS illegally harassing conservative groups and passing along confidential tax return info to Democrat operatives? Nothing. Wire-tapping some AP reporters? WOW!!!!!!

The "acting" commissioner wasn't even "acting" when this all came down and that act was scheduled to end in June (when his resignation takes place) anyway

Wait and see what position he is awarded after this fraud ends

seems he was going to resign anyway!