New IRS Allegation: Targeting Existing Conservative Groups

Previously, we know that the IRS admitted to targeting conservative groups applications for tax exempt status, particularly those with "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names, for extra scrutiny.  If by "extra scrutiny", you mean being asked absolutely  outrageous questions about their members, prayers, and thoughts, and then having the application thrown into a black hole where they were never (even to this date) evaluated.  But now we have news that the IRS may also have targeted existing conservative groups in an effort to harass them, and potentially take away their exemptions.

IRS Targeted Existing Conservative Organizations, Too?!

Leaders from existing conservative organizations The Leadership Institute and the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute have made credible claims that they, too, were targeted by the IRS.

The former has been in existence since 1979, yet the IRS chose to investigate its compliance with tax laws in June 2011, costing it $50,000 in legal fees and requiring it to locate and hand over 23,000 pages of paperwork. The latter group learned in January 2011 that the IRS had selected 2008 to audit -- the year one of its leaders went off the payroll temporarily to work for (gasp!) Sarah Palin.

Darryl Issa has asked the Treasury Inspector General to launch an investigation into this second aspect of the targeting scandal; predictably, Elijah Cummings objects.

We challenge  Rep. Cummings to come up with similar harassment of 'progressive' groups.

I remind you once again of my "modest proposal" for IRS abuse in particular, and which can be extended to similar agencies demonstrating political bias:

What I propose is affirmative action with regard to politics. Congress must pass a law that stipulates that the new hiring for any agency must consist of liberals, conservatives, libertarians and communists in proportion to their representation in the voting population of the country (not the region the federal jobs occur in, which would tend to also be very liberal). Thus, in time, conservatives could expect to claim approximately half of the federal jobs in the county.

There are some minor issues. For example, persons claiming the affirmative action quota for a federal job would need to provide evidence that they are, in fact, conservative. In this day of cell phones with built in cameras, it would be easy to photograph your ballot and present it as proof of your political alignment. Don't like to reveal your political alignment? Don't vote and hope for one of the "unaligned" quota spots. Of course, we won't call them quotas, just "guidelines."

Thus, with a diversity of opinion reflecting the countries split on important issues, the few "rogue" liberal agents in the IRS (and other agencies with a political diversity issue; EPA and Education likely have similar issues), would be balanced by conservatives who would scotch any attempts to twist the agencies goal to a liberal line. Similarly, liberals would tend to be sensitive to and resentful of conservative attempts to do the same.