Tag Archives: Tea

May 16, 2013 · 3:24 PM

Former NAACP Chair Says The IRS Was Right To Target Tea Party Groups (VIDEO)

Julian Bond; photo: Nikki Khan, The Washington Post;@PBS

I absolutely agree with former NAACP Chair, Julian Bond.  This entire faux outrage fiasco is designed to make the president look bad.  That has been the objective of the GOP since Tuesday, January 20th, 2009.

Addicting Info

As my colleague Egberto Willies wrote on Tuesday, this whole tempest in a teacup over the IRS scrutiny of groups who used “tea party” or “patriot” in their names is foolish. He is correct in stating that the IRS was well within its boundaries and, indeed, was doing exactly what it should have been doing. The granting of a 501(c) status is a very big deal. When I was on the staff of the one of the largest Pagan churches in the country, it took us years to be approved for that tax-free status. The IRS doesn’t hand those exemptions out like candy: you must prove that you fit the qualifications. Most of the Tea Party groups most certainly did not, not if they were engaged in politics.

We are not the only ones who think that the IRS was doing its job, either. Former NAACP Chairman, Julian Bond, told Thomas Roberts of MSNBC:

 

“I think it’s entirely legitimate to look at the tea party. Here are a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who’ve tried as best they can to harm President Obama in every way they can.”

Mr. Bond found himself in a similar situation back in 2004 when, after a speech he’d given criticizing then-President George Bush, he received a letter from the IRS advising him that the NAACP was being investigated because of what he said. He thought that he was exercising his right to free speech but, as some of us know, criticism of Bush was not covered by that right.

But criticism of Obama? Well, that’s an entirely different matter. We’ve seen it time and again: Tea Party “patriots” with outrageous signs saying horrible things about a duly elected president. And these are most definitely not non-political groups. As Mr. Bond noted:

“They are the Taliban wing of American politics. We all ought to be a little worried about them.”

When Roberts asked Bond if that wasn’t a bit harsh – calling the TP the “Taliban wing” of American politics – Bond replied that it wasn’t at all too harsh and that we should all be concerned about their influence. He did say that it was wrong of the IRS to be so heavy-handed and chided them for not explaining their actions better. But Bond was adamant that this situation has no parallel to the targeting of the NAACP in 2004.

Now a liberal group called Progress Texas has come forward saying that they received the same level of scrutiny that the Tea Party groups did. Their executive director, Ed Espinoza, said in a statement:

“Progress Texas and the Tea Party strongly disagree on the role of government. Yet, when we applied for tax-exempt status, Progress Texas received the same type of additional scrutiny that Tea Party groups are complaining about. The similar treatment indicates the IRS was likely addressing a flood of 501(c)4 applications after Citizens United, and undermines the paranoid notion that Tea Party groups were singled out.”

Exactly. This entire “scandal” is being blown up out of all proportion. The IRS, the agency that collects the taxes for the American people to run our government, should be wary of groups that apply for 501(c) status. Even more so when the applicants have been so brazen about its involvement in politics. This faux outrage is silly. The IRS was just doing its job and the Tea Party groups are doing what they do: blame the government and whine about taxes. Same as it ever was.

Here’s the video of Bond’s appearance:

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May 15, 2013 · 8:10 AM

4 key findings from the Inspector General’s report on the IRS scandal

An internal report says the White House had no hand in the IRS scandal.

This has been a heck of a week for the Obama Administration.

The  GOP has several gripes with Obama over Benghazi details. Then there’s the Tea Party who feel victimized for being flagged by the IRS (they blame Obama of course.)  Finally, the newest scandal over  someone ordering  specific reporters from Associated Press targeted to have their phones tapped over national security leaks.

The following report details with the IRS scandal…

The Week

The agency used “inappropriate criteria” to flag Tea Party groups for scrutiny

The Obama administration this week has been beset by a spate of scandals, one of which was the revelation that the IRS targeted conservative political groups that applied for tax-exempt status. Now, a much-anticipated internal report has found that the agency erred in singling out those groups over an 18-month period starting in 2010. The report, conducted by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and delivered to Congress on Tuesday, offered new insight into the developing scandal.

In response, President Obama said in a statement that he had instructed Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew “to hold those responsible for these failures accountable, and to make sure that each of the Inspector General’s recommendations are implemented quickly, so that such conduct never happens again.”

Here, four key findings:

1. Staffers developed “inappropriate criteria” to flag applications
According to the report, the IRS office in Cincinnati that processes all applications for tax-exempt status deliberately targeted Tea Party groups for further review — though the report did not go so far as to say that the targeting was politically motivated. While the IRS admitted as much last week, and even offered a mea culpa for the practice, the report is the first independent verification of its existence.

“The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention,” the report states.

The IG report reviewed 296 applications as of last December, of which 108 had been approved, while another 160 had been left pending. About one-third of the applications flagged for further review contained “tea party,” “patriots,” or “9/12″ in their names, the report found.

2. BOLO: “Be on the lookout”
According to the report, the Determinations Unit within the IRS in May 2010 began developing criteria for singling out applications with “Tea Party,” “Patriots,”  ”9/12,” or other “political sounding” names for added scrutiny. The unit then drafted a spreadsheet of groups flagged under this criteria, which came to be known as the “Be on the Lookout” list, or BOLO.

The department distributed the first BOLO list in August 2010, but the criteria for flagging an organization in the spreadsheet quickly broadened. By mid-2011, the criteria had expanded to include groups focused on “government spending, government debt, or taxes,” as well as groups critical of how the government was being run, and those that sought to educate the public about how to “make America a better place to live.”

The IRS insisted that the guidelines were “shorthand” that could be used to flag all overtly political groups — not only Tea Party ones — that were trying to receive tax-exempt status as “social welfare” organizations. Yet the IG report disagreed with that assessment.

“Whether the inappropriate criterion was shorthand for all potential political cases or not, developing and using criteria that focuses on organization names and policy positions instead of the activities permitted under the Treasury Regulations does not promote public confidence that tax-exempt laws are being adhered to impartially,” the report states.

3. The review process led to “substantial delays”
The increased scrutiny resulted in “substantial delays” for flagged applications, with some left pending for up to 1,138 days. According to the report, some applications sat open through the last two election cycles due to “ineffective management oversight” that left unclear how specialists should process applications.

The report says that agency management “did not ensure that there was a formal process in place for initiating, tracking, or monitoring requests for assistance,” and that guidelines for processing pending applications often changed, leaving lower-level staffers unsure how to proceed. In the most egregious instance, the Determinations Unit stopped working on applications entirely for a 13-month period while awaiting further guidance.

“Although the processing of some applications with potential significant political campaign intervention was started soon after receipt, no work was completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months,” the report said.

Some 170 groups received requests for additional information from the IRS. According to the report, 98 of those requests, or nearly 60 percent, were later found to be unnecessary. Those requests sought a range of information, including the names of donors, the size of their donations, and details on how those contributions were used. Other requests asked about organizations’ political affiliation and outside activities.

4. Some political cover for the White House
Republicans have demanded to know whether anyone in the Obama administration had a hand in ordering the extended reviews. Yet the report appears to have cleared government higher-ups, determining that the program was limited to “first-line management” within the agency, and that it was not “influenced by any individual outside of the IRS.”

Instead, the report pins much of the blame on the agency’s management structure, saying that “insufficient oversight provided by management” allowed the program to go on as long as it did.

According to the report, agency executives immediately demanded that the criteria for flagging applications be changed when it came to their attention in June 2011. The requested changes rolled back the program’s focus to cover activity simply deemed to be “political, lobbying, or [general] advocacy,” with no mention of political affiliation. However, agency specialists charged with flagging applications changed the language back six months later, in January 2012, with no approval from IRS executives because they thought the new guidelines were too vague. Those criteria would stay in place until May, when executives once again ordered that they be changed.

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May 8, 2013 · 1:08 PM

John Boehner Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot, and Insults The Troops In Spectacular Fashion

I think we need to look at John Boehner as an inanimate Howdy Doody type puppet and his puppet masters are the Tea Party in Congress.  Not that Boehner was ever an astute majority leader anyway…but the new crop of 2012 Tea Partiers have him on strict lock-down.  Anything John Boehner says is not his own thought.

PoliticusUSA

John Boehner opened mouth and inserted foot in a spectacular fashion when he told Bloomberg that paying back China was a higher priority than paying the troops.

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December 26, 2012 · 6:37 PM

Sam Donaldson to tea party: ‘It’s not your country anymore – it’s our country’

Sam Donaldson

Clearly no one of any prominence in the political media or in congress has spoken out against the Tea Party before.  This is why former ABC News anchor man, Sam Donaldson is in the news…

The Raw Story

During an appearance on Chris Matthews‘ syndicated weekend talk show, ABC News contributor and analyst Sam Donaldson criticized the tea party and argued that the movement and the Republican party were becoming increasingly in danger of irrelevancy.

“It’s the Tea Party and thinking of the Tea Party and people like that that are driving the Republicans out of contention as a national party,” he said.

Donaldson said that he had a particular aversion to the campaign slogan “We want to take back our country.”

“Guys, it’s not your country anymore – it’s our country and you’re part of it, but that thinking is going to defeat Republicans nationally if they don’t get rid of it,” he said.

Watch the video, via Newsbusters, below.

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August 31, 2012 · 2:54 AM

What We Already Knew About The Tea Party And ‘The Newsroom’ Finally Said Out Loud

 

Newsroom is the best show on TV, bar none.  When The West Wing was on, in my opinion, it was the best show on TV.

Aaron Sorkin produced both shows.

MoveOn.org

EDITOR’S NOTE: While they have way too much in common, the actual Taliban uses political violence to achieve its ends and the Tea Party doesn’t — and that’s an important distinction.

 

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August 13, 2012 · 6:13 PM

Tea Party Group Fined For Booking 1,600 Rooms In Vegas, Not Paying For Them

I know that the value called integrity has pretty much left politics in general, but why didn’t the Tea Party head of Las Vegas Operations at the time consider making a deal to pay some portion of the money to the hotel?

The Huffington Post

Apparently what doesn’t happen in Vegas also stays in Vegas.

A judge slammed a now-defunct Tennessee outpost of the Tea Party for reserving more than 1,600 rooms at a Las Vegas hotel and cancelling just weeks before the group’s scheduled event — without paying the bill, according to the Tennessean. The judge ruled that the group owes $500,000 for the cost of the rooms plus more than $200,000 for the accrued interest. In total they’re on the hook for $748,000, according to Bloomberg.

The convention, which never happened, was originally scheduled to take place at theVenetian Casino Resort from July 14-18, 2010, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The meeting was first postponed until October and then later cancelled.

The Tea Party group decided to cancel the event in September, citing the economy. Judson Phillips, the founder of the Tea Party Nation, told the Daily Caller at the time  that there just weren’t enough people willing to pay $399 to spend the weekend watching Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs spout their wisdom.

Watch this Bloomberg video here…

 

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January 24, 2012 · 8:11 AM

Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founder’s Slave-Owning History

What’s wrong with the Tea Party in Tennessee, not enough publicity lately?  This is absurd on so many levels…

The Huffington Post

A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes  to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country’s founders being slave owners.

According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”

“The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at,” Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal.

During the news conference more than two dozen Tea Party activists handed out material that said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

And that further teaching would also include that “the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.”

The group demanded, as they had in January of last year, that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

The latest push comes a year after the Texas Board of Education approved revisions to its social studies curriculum that would put a conservative twist on history through revised textbooks and teaching standards.

The Texas revisions include the exploration of the positive aspects of American slavery, lifting the stature of Jefferson S. Davis to that of Abraham Lincoln, and amendments to teach the value of the separation of church and state  were voted down  by the conservative cadre. Among other controversial amendments that have been approved is the study of the “unintended consequences” of affirmative action.

The board approved more than 100 amendments affecting social studies, economics and history classes for Texas’s 4.8 million students.

The influence of the amended textbooks will likely reach far beyond the state of Texas. The state is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks, and many other states adopt Texas’s books and standards.

Continue reading…

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October 21, 2011 · 3:49 AM

Tea Party Group Urges Small Businesses ‘Not To Hire A Single Person’ To Hurt Obama

The GOP, including the Tea Party, has become quite transparent in their attempt to make President Obama a one-term president.  They’re banking on the fact that the majority of Americans polled feel tha the President is not doing a good enough job on the economy.  Therefore, they don’t worry about blow-back in openly blocking anything related to creating jobs for out of work Americans.

They honestly believe that they can subvert any attempts by the POTUS to get Americans back to work without any collateral damage on their part.  The GOP is banking on this come the 2012 elections.  The Tea Party Nation has now created a straw-man by requesting that jobs not hire anyone until the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations cease.

I think it’s unpatriotic to keep millions of people out of work and possibly lose everything they have just to get one man out of office.   How do they keep getting away with this behavior with impunity?

In retrospect, this can only help the President’s re-election efforts in the long run.  If not, this country has hit solid rock bottom, politically.

Think Progress

Congressional Republicans have acted shocked and offended at Democrats’ suggestions that they are intentionally sabotaging the economy to try to win back the White House in 2012. Republicans have refused to pass President Obama’s jobs plan — which experts estimate will create at least 1.9 million jobs — and proposed an alternative plan that Moody’s says “will likely push the economyback into recession.”

Now influential Tea Party leaders are throwing caution to the wind and openly lobbying business owners to stop hiring in order to hurt Obama politically. This week, Right Wing Watch picked up on a message Tea Party Nation sent to their members from conservative activist Melissa Brookstone.

In a rambling letter titled “Call For A Strike of American Small Businesses Against The Movement for Global Socialism,” Brookstone urges businesses “not hire a single person” to protest “this new dictator”:

Resolved that: The current administration and Democrat majority in the Senate, in conjunction with Progressive socialists from all around the country, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning news media (Indeed, most of the news media.) have worked in unison to advance an anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda. [...]

I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped.

Brookstone cites Democrats’ support of the Occupy Wall Street movement as proof that Obama, media elites, and the like are “against business, private property ownership and capitalism.” Although she fails to explain how a freeze on hiring would send a bold pro-business message, given that such a boycott would further damage the economy and exacerbate high national unemployment.

But these Tea Partiers are only too happy to put politics ahead of the well-being of 14 million unemployed Americans, not to mention the businesses who are looking for qualified workers.

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October 4, 2011 · 1:00 AM

Top 5 Reasons Why The Occupy Wall Street Protests Embody Values Of The Real Boston Tea Party

Think Progress

In recent years, the Boston Tea Party has been associated with a right-wing movement that supports policies favoring powerful corporations and the wealthy. As ThinkProgress has reported, lobbyists and Republican front groups have driven the current manifestation of the Tea Party to push for giveaways to oil companies and big businesses.

However, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations picking up momentum across the country better embody the values of the original Boston Tea Party. In the late 18th century, the British government became deeply entwined with the interests of the East India Trading Company, a massive conglomerate that counted British aristocracy as shareholders. Americans, upset with a government that used the colonies to enrich the East India Trading Company, donned Native American costumes and boarded the ships belonging to the company and destroyed the company’s tea. In the last two weeks, as protesters have gathered from New York to Los Angeles to protest corporate domination over American politics, a true Tea Party movement may be brewing:

1.) The Original Boston Tea Party Was A Civil Disobedience Action Against A Private Corporation. In 1773, agitators blocked the importation of tea by East India Trading Company ships across the country. In Boston harbor, a band of protesters led by Samuel Adams boarded the corporation’s ships and dumped the tea into the harbor. No East India Trading Company employees were harmed, but the destruction of the company’s tea is estimated to be worth up to $2 million in today’s money. The Occupy Wall Street protests have targetedbig banks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, as well as multinational corporations like GE with sit-ins and peaceful rallies.

2.) The Original Boston Tea Party Feared That Corporate Greed Would Destroy America. As Professor Benjamin Carp has argued, colonists perceived the East India Trading Company as a “fearsome monopolistic company that was going to rob them blind and pave the way maybe for their enslavement.” A popular pamphlet called The Alarm agitated for a revolt against the East India Trading Company by warning that the British corporation would devastate America just as it had devastated South Asian colonies: “Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. [...] And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions, and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin.”

3.) The Original Boston Tea Party Believed Government Necessary To Protect Against Corporate Excess. Smithsonian historian Barbara Smith has noted that Samuel Adams believed that oppression could occur when governments are too weak. As Adams explained in a Boston newspaper, government should exist “to protect the people and promote their prosperity.” Patriots behind the Tea Party revolt believed “rough economic equality was necessary to maintaining liberty,” says Smith. Occupy Wall Street protesters demand a country that invests in education, infrastructure, and jobs.

4.) The Original Boston Tea Party Was Sparked By A Corporate Tax Cut For A British Corporation. The Tea Act, a law by the British Parliament exempting tea imported by the East India Trading Company from taxes and allowing the corporation to directly ship its tea to the colonies for sale, is credited with setting off the Boston Tea Party. The law was perceived as an effort by the British to bailout the East India Trading Company by shutting off competition from American shippers. George R.T. Hewes, one of the patriots who boarded the East India Trading Company ships and dumped the tea, told a biographer that the East India Trading Company had twisted the laws so “it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants, who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies, but, on the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen, that transported immense quantities of this commodity.” Occupy Wall Street demands the end of corporate tax loopholes as well as the enactment of higher taxes on billionaires and millionaires.

5.) The Original Boston Tea Party Wanted A Stronger Democracy. There is a common misconception that the Boston Tea Party was simply a revolt against taxation. The truth is much more nuanced, and there were many factors behind the opposition to the East India Company and the British government. Although the colonists resented taxes levied by a distant British Parliament, in the years preceding the Tea Party, the Massachusetts colony had levied taxes several times to pay for local services. The issue at hand was representation and government accountable to the needs of the American people. Patrick Henry and other patriots organized the revolutionary effort by claiming that legitimate laws and taxes could only be passed by legislatures elected by Americans. According to historian Benjamin Carp, the protesters in Boston perceived that the British government’s actions were set by the East India Trading Company. “As Americans learned more about the provisions of the new East India Company laws, they realized that Parliament would sooner lenda hand to the Company than the colonies,” wrote Carp.

Progressive political movements, from Martin Luther King to Mahatma Gandhi, have drawn on the original American Boston Tea Party for inspiring civil disobedience against oppression. Indeed, the very first Boston Tea Party was truly radical and faced scorn from elites and conservatives of the era.

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August 31, 2011 · 2:49 PM

Palin/O’Donnell Event Descends Into Total Chaos

I love this synopsis from one of the great comments over at  The Regulator:

Is anyone surprised by this?

Okay, so Palin was invited, then Christine O’Donnell. Then O’Donnell was uninvited and invited again. Now Palin has uninvited herself. O’Donnell has been uninvited. They’re trying to woo Sarah back. I think.

I love those Tea Baggers….

H/t: Gilligan

Think Progress

Update, 12:57 PM: According to NBC, Tea Party of America president Ken Crow said “I had to cancel O’Donnell,” and is trying to lure Palin back to the event.

First Sarah Palin was scheduled to attend the Tea Party of America’s Iowa rally this weekend. Then Christine O’Donnell was invited. Then Christine O’Donnell was uninvited. Then she was re-invited. Now Palin is out. Maybe.

Easy to follow, right? According to the Wall Street Journal, Palin will not share the stage with O’Donnell, who she famously endorsed in 2010, because the ex-governor is sick of “continual lying” by the event’s organizers. But there’s still confusion over what’s going on: Real Clear Politics‘ Scott Conroy disputed the report on Twitter, saying sources had told him the event was only “on hold,” while a Tea Party of America official told reporter Shushanna Walshe the event was still a go after a talk with Palin.

It’s easy to see where Palin might get a negative impression of the organizers, however. After initially asking O’Donnell to join the event, Tea Party of America’s top officials split over their reasons for rescinding O’Donnell’s initial invite, with president Ken Crow citing scheduling problems and co-founder Charles Gruschow citing widespread disdain for the former Senate candidate among Tea Party activists. They quickly brought her back into the fold, however, and Crow said they had“panicked” initially in dropping her.

Palin, who has yet to rule out a presidential bid, will still visit Iowa this weekend for other events.

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