Sunday, May 19, 2013

There Are So Many Angles to the IRS Scandal that Rather than Writing an Op-Ed on the Subject, I Will Just Let You Read What Has Been Released Over the Past Few Days by "The Blaze" Since the Liberal Mass Media Is Trying to Cover This Up

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground."

- Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, Paris, May 27, 1788

There are so many angles on the whole IRS scandal that I cannot possibly keep up with every single story.  Rather than present my take on the whole situation right now, I will post a slew of stories from various

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IRS ACCUSED OF STEALING 60 MILLION MEDICAL RECORDS THAT COULD INCLUDE EVERY CALIF. STATE JUDGE AND HOLLYWOOD EXECS


Yesterday, the founder of one of the conservative groups targeted by the IRS brought up his concerns regarding if the agency could be trusted to handle health care information under Obamacare if it is known already to disclose information that it wasn’t legally allowed.

15 IRS Agents See Lawsuit Brought Against Them for Allegedly Stealing 60 Million Health Records
(Photo: Shutterstock.com)
At the same time, the IRS is already being presented with a case from a company that claims it stole more than 60 million medical records of more than 10 million Americans.
The complaint filed by John Doe Company against 15 John Doe IRS agents (this is how the plaintiff and defendants are identified) states that these records could include those of every California state judge, state court employees, members of the Screen Actor’s Guild and the Directors Guild, and “prominent citizens in the world of entertainment, business and government, from all walks of life.”
Court House News reported that the records were obtained while the IRS was investigating a tax matter with a warrant for a former employee of the company. The warrant authorized the IRS to obtain financial records of the employee in question, “not seizure of any health care or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter.”
“[...] none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search,” the complaint stated. The amount of records seized in March 2011 is “roughly one out of every twenty-five adult American citizens.”

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BUSINESS

INCREDIBLE: OFFICIAL IN CHARGE OF IRS OFFICE RESPONSIBLE FOR CONSERVATIVE TARGETING NOW HEADS AGENCY’S OBAMACARE OFFICE


Well, this can’t be good.
It appears that the official who oversaw the Internal Revenue Service office responsible for targeting conservative groups has moved on from that post and now heads the agency’s Obamacare division.
Sarah Hall Ingram Used to Head IRS Office Responsible for Conservative Targeting, Now Heads Agencys Obamacare Office
From ABC News:
The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and isnow the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.
Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.
Grant said Thursday he would resign as commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division on June 3, TheBlaze reported. He was appointed to the post just eight days ago.
Here’s a May 8 press release announcing his extremely short-lived promotion:
But here’s something ​really ​interesting: Ingram received more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012, slightly before and well after her office started targeting conservatives, theWashington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott reports.
“Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009,” the Examiner report adds, “then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.”
News that the IRS official heading the agency’s Obamacare office used to run the division responsible for conservative discrimination comes on the heels of House Speaker John Boehner calling for a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
“Fully repealing ObamaCare will help us build a stronger, healthier economy, and will clear the way for patient-centered reforms that lower health care costs and protect jobs,” Boehner said shortly after the House passed a “repeal Obamacare” measure.
“Obamacare empowers the agency that just violated the public’s trust by secretly targeting conservative groups,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-In.) added. “Even by Washington’s standards, that’s unacceptable.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his reaction to the Ingram revelation:  “stunning, just stunning.”
Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter
Featured image C-SPAN. This post has been updated.

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GOVERNMENT

HOW TO TELL IF THE IRS IS EYEING YOU FOR A TAX AUDIT


[Editor’s note: The following is a cross post by Kelley Holland that originally appeared onCNBC.com]
You consider yourself a law abiding citizen, and you are not starting a nonprofit organization with conservative ties.
Even so, you may be a candidate for a tax audit—and you may have no clue what you have done to warrant the attention of the IRS.
The nation’s tax collectors have long made it a practice to look for discrepancies, omissions and suspicious activity to uncover tax evasion and fraud. And lately, the IRS has expanded its monitoring to include social media.
The agency now keeps an eye out for online discussions about nonpayment or underpayment of taxes, and even sale prices of goods on sites like eBay that don’t match what taxpayers report.
In a world where companies like Amazon can keep tabs on consumers’ online activities, the shift by the IRS is reasonable, says Edward Zelinsky, a law professor at Cardozo Law School. “This was always known to people in the tax community that the IRS, like everybody else in the 21st century, was monitoring online.”
But Zelinsky is just one expert concerned about the lack of transparency around the IRS’ practices. The agency “is so secretive about what is going on that that really erodes public confidence,” he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union has also expressed qualms about IRS secrecy. That group filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents explaining whether the IRS always obtains search warrants to read email and other electronic communications. “Unfortunately, while the documents we have obtained do not answer this question point blank, they suggest otherwise,” wrote Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney at the ACLU.

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GOVERNMENT

SURPRISED? OUTGOING IRS HEAD TESTIFIES THAT QUESTION REVEALING IRS SCANDAL LAST WEEK WAS PLANTED

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