Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Thursday his constituents have suggested they were audited by the Internal Revenue Service because they donated to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign...
"What I would tell you, is our whistleblower side is lit up," Coburn said Thursday on the news channel. "And I got a phone call yesterday and one of the things I want to know is, everybody that contributed to Romney, I want to know what their audit rate was because the indications out of Oklahoma are right now is if you happened to be a conservative and wealthy and gave to Romney, you had an audit where you'd never gotten an audit before..."
Coburn's comments come as Congress is investigating the IRS's targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny. The IRS has apologized for inappropriately flagging groups for additional scrutiny because they had certain words in their titles, such as Tea Party...
...Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) in a floor speech last week also said that a number of his constituents spoke of being audited during the 2012 presidential campaign for the first time... “These folks believe the audits were conducted for no other reason than the fact that their groups were conservative. And they believe the questions they’ve been asked have more to do with their political views than their business activities," McConnell said.
...Earlier in the week, Rep. Patrick Tiberi (R-Ohio) said that people have come to him saying the IRS targeted them for criticizing the Obama administration. Tiberi recounted how a former colleague told him about a radio host who received an audit from the IRS after he criticized the Obama administration... "And this is not a national guy, this is a local talk show host in a city outside Ohio, and he's been very critical of the administration and as soon as he started being critical of the administration, coincidentally, he got audited and he got audited by the Cincinnati office,'" Tiberi said.
To sum up:
Just to confirm: IRS targeting conservatives, DOJ targeting Fox, HHS targeting recalcitrant insurers, Benghazi killers running free. Got it.
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) May 22, 2013
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
1 comment:
Quotes from the movie "Dr. Strangelove"
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(AMG: Russian Ambassador de Sadesky reveals to the US President and the Advisor to the President Dr. Strangelove the existence of the Doomesday Machine. A large number of Russian nuclear bombs will automatically trigger if the damaged US bomber gets through. Only people who have shelters for 10 years will survive the nuclear fallout.)
Ambassador de Sadesky: Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack. And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision-making process which rules out human meddling, the Doomsday machine is terrifying, simple to understand, completely credible, and convincing.
Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?
Ambassador de Sadesky: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
Dr. Strangelove: Based on the findings of the report, my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious.
=== ===
Applied to the IRS scandal. Here is a bit of speculation.
Denying tax status to new Tea Party groups prevented many of them from forming, and convinced many others to give up rather than deal for years with intrusive examinations by the IRS. This directly reduced political activity against Obama. Secrecy was useful and did not harm the intended political results.
Directing tax audits at wealthy donors to Romney was just mean. They had already contributed, and any deterrent effect would come from advertising the fact that they would be audited in the future if they gave to Romney efforts today. That could not be advertised, so the deterrent effect was minimal. Also, wealthy donors are able to withstand tax audits, although they cost a chunk of money.
Then, the entire operation depended on a secrecy which could not last indefinitely. That is amazing. Team Obama didn't care if the word got out, as long as Obama was reelected first. They figured they could handle that scandal. Let's hope they are wrong.
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