IRS: Neutered

So much winning.

The IRS Scandal, Day 1684: Fallout From Allegations Of Tea Party Targeting Hampers IRS Oversight Of Nonprofits

The main part of government tasked with policing those lines, the IRS’s Exempt Organizations division, has seen its budget decline from a peak of $102 million in 2011 to $82 million last year. At the same time, division employees have fallen from 889 to 642.

The division now lacks expertise, resources and the will needed to effectively oversee more than 1.2 million charities and tens of thousands of social welfare groups, according to interviews with two dozen nonprofit specialists and current and former IRS officials.

“This completely neutered them,” said Philip Hackney, a tax law professor at Louisiana State University and former Exempt Organizations lawyer at the IRS. “The will is totally gone.” ...

The Wheels of Justice Grind...

...Exceeding Slow, Yet Grind Exceeding Fine.

The IRS Scandal, Day 1580: Conservative Group Hoping For 'Perp Walks' After Breakthrough In IRS Lawsuit

Washington Examiner, Conservative Group Hoping for 'Perp Walks' After Breakthrough in IRS Lawsuit:

One of the groups that sued the Internal Revenue Service over its targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups believes there has been a breakthrough that will help them draw a more complete picture of what went on behind the scenes at the agency, four years after it took its case to court.

In a lawsuit involving True the Vote, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the IRS last week to release the names of employees involved in targeting conservative and Tea Party groups. Walton also told the IRS to explain why groups were targeted and search for additional records in agency databases from May 2009 to March 2015.

The IRS has until Oct. 16 to complete its records search.

Walton's order was a turning point for True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht in her legal battle with the IRS that began in 2013.

"We've come so far, and I believe that we are going to bring this thing to a head," Engelbrecht told the Washington Examiner. "I believe we will see the IRS correct its ways, and as to accountability, I'd love to see some perp walks." ...

Engelbrecht ... said just learning the names of those involved isn't enough for her. Instead, she wants the IRS to enact a policy prohibiting viewpoint discrimination. "That's our whole goal — it's to make sure this viewpoint discrimination can never occur again. It is procedurally prohibited," Engelbrecht said. "That they admit what they did was unconstitutional and won't happen to an organization, an individual, doesn't matter your political party preference. The IRS has been weaponized and needs to be put back in the box."

Abolish the IRS, Then Fumigate

TIGTA: 91% Of Taxpayers Whose Bank Accounts Were Seized By The IRS Had Acquired The Cash Legally

And this:

The IRS Took Millions From Innocent People Because of How They Managed Their Bank Accounts, Inspector General Finds

Oh, THERE They Are!

Corruption Chronicles

Well, no one can log in all the corruption in today's USA, but here are a couple, one regarding the IRS (rotten through and through), and the greens (also rotten). Oh, Can't forget Hillary, right?

George Will: Stopping the IRS

“The National Treasury Employees Union,” she says, “provides no protection to IRS employees that federal statutes and the civil service system do not already provide. It already takes an act of God to hold an IRS employee accountable for his or her actions. But it is worse than merely redundant for IRS employees to belong to the NTEU. Because it adds nothing to its members’ protections, it is a purely political organization. In 2014, fully 95 percent of its contributions went to Democrats, including 11 Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. So, the IRS employees’ union dues finance the election of people who are supposed to scrutinize IRS’ behavior.”

And this:

"Billionaire Trying to Force Costly Green Mandate on New York
John Catsimatidis pushing biofuel mandate as he finishes construction on Brooklyn biofuel plant"

Billionaire John Catsimatidis is working to slip a biofuel mandate that would add $150 million to New Yorkers’ heat expenses into the state budget just as a company he owns completes construction of the largest biofuel plant in the region.

The New York Post reports that Catsimatidis’ lobbyists are putting the pressure on State senators to slip a provision that would require all heating oil sold in New York to contain “2 percent or more of soybean oil and/or spent vegetable oils.”

Catsimatidis is building a biofuel-processing plant in Brooklyn that will be the largest plant in the Northeast, according to the report.

And of Course Hillary:

Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules

"WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.

Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Mrs. Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department. Mrs. Clinton stepped down from the secretary’s post in early 2013.

Her expansive use of the private account was alarming to current and former National Archives and Records Administration officials and government watchdogs, who called it a serious breach.

“It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business,” said Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath who is a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, defended her use of the personal email account and said she has been complying with the “letter and spirit of the rules.”"

Corruption goes clear to the core.

Fast & Furious: Concealed by Executive Privilege and Other Tales of Obama

Justice Dept. List of Withheld Fast & Furious Docs is 1,323 Pages Long

"For the first time, the Department of Justice has provided a detailed description of 15,662 Fast and Furious-related documents it is withholding from Congress, the public and the press under executive privilege exerted by President Obama.

The description comes in the form of a so-called Vaughn index ordered by a federal court in a lawsuit filed against the Justice Department by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. The Justice Department waited to provide the index, due yesterday, until 8:34 p.m.

The number of withheld documents is so extensive, that the list describing them is 1,323 pages long."

Yep. Just the list.

Obama Asserts Fast and Furious Executive Privilege Claim for Holder’s Wife [and mother]

"Judicial Watch announced today that it received from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) a “Vaughn index” detailing records about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. The index was forced out of the Obama administration thanks to JW’s June 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)). A federal court had ordered the production over the objections of the Obama Justice Department.

The document details the Attorney General Holder’s personal involvement in managing the Justice Department’s strategy on media and Congressional investigations into the Fast and Furious scandal. Notably, the document discloses that emails between Attorney General Holder and his wife Sharon Malone – as well as his mother – are being withheld under an extraordinary claim of executive privilege as well as a dubious claim of deliberative process privilege under the Freedom of Information Act. The “First Lady of the Justice Department” is a physician and not a government employee."

As for our borders:

AZ Sheriff: Obama Administration Refusing to Give Law Enforcement Names of Criminal Illegals

"Thursday on Fox News Channel's "Your World With Neil Cavuto," Pinal Co., AZ Sheriff Paul Babeu said the Obama administration not only "knowingly lied" about releasing criminal illegal immigrants last year but also they will not release the names of those criminals to law enforcement so they can protect the citizens.

Babeu said he sent a letter to DHS Assistant Secretary John Morton over a year ago top get the names of the criminals released in his county and to this point he has received no reply.

Babeu said, "I need to protect the citizens of my county and God knows where these individuals are. And they have a greater propensity for recidivism, the return to crime, because they're not even from our country. And they have committed some of the most egregious crimes of murder and armed robbery and assault against a cop.""

And this:

U.S. misinformed Congress, public on immigrant release"New records contradict the Obama administration's assurances to Congress and the public that the 2,200 people it freed from immigration jails last year to save money had only minor criminal records.

The records, obtained by USA TODAY, show immigration officials released some undocumented immigrants who had faced far more serious criminal charges, including people charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking and homicide.

The release sparked a furor in Congress. Republican lawmakers accused the Obama administration of setting dangerous criminals free. In response, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had released "low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records," a claim the administration repeated to the public and to members of Congress."

And the ever popular IRS:

Whistleblowers: IRS Officials Behind ‘Fraudulent’ Multi-Billion Dollar Corporate Tax Giveaways"A 10-year veteran IRS attorney has demanded a Congressional audit of the IRS to investigate the agency’s alleged role in allowing American corporations to illegally avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes at the same time the agency is cracking down on individuals and small businesses.

In a letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, IRS commissioner John A. Koskinen, and IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, Jane J. Kim, an attorney in the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel in New York, accused IRS executives of “deliberately” facilitating multi-billion dollar tax giveaways. The letter, dated October 19, will add further pressure on the agency, which is under fire for allegedly targeting conservative and Tea Party groups.

Kim, who has previously blown the whistle on “gross waste of government resources” in the IRS New York field offices [Senior IRS Lawyer Charges Chief Counsel's New York Office With Waste and Abuse], wrote in her new letter that senior IRS officials have “intentionally undermined the authority of the IRS Whistleblower Office” to avoid taking action “in cases involving billions in corporate taxes due.” The IRS also refuses to enforce laws for “large corporate taxpayers,” resulting in giveaways of further billions, despite applying the same laws with “draconian strictness to small business, the self-employed, and wage-earning individuals.” ...

Following coverage of her earlier allegations by Pulitzer Prize winning tax journalist David Cay Johnston, Kim was approached by a private sector lawyer representing corporate whistleblowers to the IRS, who told her that numerous legitimate investigations into corporate tax fraud were being shut down. Her letter sent on Sunday to the US Treasury and IRS described three such cases. ...

The private sector lawyer, a former IRS attorney in the Office of the Chief Counsel for over 15 years, said on condition of anonymity that Kim’s allegations are not isolated, but represent a deep-rooted trend: “The problem is the IRS upper management don’t want a big case going forward. They are purposely not working big cases. Employees are quietly encouraged not to expedite them, and to settle or dismiss them. I’ve seen the IRS sit on straightforward billion-dollar cases for years, and then decide not to pursue.” ..."

Nope. No Bias Here... Move Along.

Headline:

Networks Dodge Huge IRS Scandal News as DOJ Attorney Says Lost Lerner E-Mails Do Exist

And there is this:

IRS Shocker: Filing Reveals Lerner Blackberry Destroyed [after the hearings were started]

FFRF Slinks Away When Confronted Forcefully

Headline:

Militant Atheists Give up on Forcing IRS to Censor Sermons

"On Friday a federal judge in Wisconsin dismissed the Freedom from Religion Foundation's (FFRF) attempt to use the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon to censor houses of worship that preach on moral issues having political implications.

After almost two years of litigation, FFRF asked the court to dismiss its own lawsuit once the Becket Fund stepped in to defend the rights of a small Wisconsin church and its pastor. FFRF had relied on the so-called Johnson Amendment, a law that politicians use to restrict what some private groups can say about them, and which—by an accident of history—caught houses of worship in its web when it was passed 60 years ago.

"This lawsuit was a bad idea from the beginning. Who thinks the IRS should be deciding what a preacher says in a sermon?" said Daniel Blomberg, legal counsel for the Becket Fund. 

"Fortunately for the First Amendment, once FFRF encountered an actual opponent they—as Monty Python might say—gallantly chickened out. Today's win shuts down FFRF's first-of-its-kind attempt to make the tax man into a sermon-censorship board. Whatever people think about religion or politics, we all can agree that deciding what clergy say to their congregations should be a private religious decision, not one for bureaucrats or militant atheists."

FFRF filed the lawsuit in an attempt to force the IRS to enforce the ban, something the IRS has for decades been reluctant to do. The Becket Fund successfully intervened in the suit on behalf of Milwaukee-based Holy Cross Anglican Church and its vicar, Father Patrick Malone, a Benedictine abbot. The church argued that FFRF's suit must fail because enforcing the Johnson Amendment against its internal religious speech would violate federal constitutional and statutory law.

"The IRS has long threatened churches with speech restrictions but hasn't been willing to do much more for fear of losing in court. But FFRF's suit, which tried to force the IRS to make good on its threats, gave houses of worship a chance to fight back. Once FFRF realized its error, it packed up shop quickly," Blomberg said.

"It's remarkable to see the collusive way that FFRF and the IRS orchestrated getting out of this suit as fast as they could. From hiding documents to falsely promising to provide information, they did whatever they could to run away quickly," he added."

FFRF always picks on much smaller quarry to bully; many small entities cave in when confronted with an expensive lawsuit by the deep pockets of FFRF. When their victims do take them on in court, FFRF almost always loses (maybe always loses, as far as I know). They are bully/cowards who run away rather than lose another actual battle. I hope they are counter-sued for lawyer fees, harrassment and other expenses.