IRS Admits Targeting Conservative Groups During 2012 Election

An anonymous reader writes "A recurring theme in comments on Slashdot since the 9/11 attacks has been concern about the use of government power to monitor or suppress political activity unassociated with terrorism but rather based on ideology. It has just been revealed that the IRS has in fact done that. From the story: "The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election . . . Organizations were singled out because they included the words 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said. 'That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review,' Lerner said . . . 'The IRS would like to apologize for that,' she added. . . . Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. . . . she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. Tea Party groups were livid on Friday. ... In all, about 300 groups were singled out for additional review. . . Tea Party groups weren't buying the idea that the decision to target them was solely the responsibility of low-level IRS workers. ... During the conference call it was stated that no disciplinary action had been taken by those who engaged in this activity. President Obama has previously joked about using the IRS to target people." So it's not how they choose cases for review (except when it is), and was not motivated by political bias (except that it was). Also at National Review, with more bite.

Comments

If your group is

[Anonymous Coward]

If your groups is named after the most famous tax revoult in the history of the country I would expect the tax man to pay special interest to it.

Re:If your group is

[cold fjord]

If your groups is named after the most famous tax revoult in the history of the country I would expect the tax man to pay special interest to it.

That tax revolt was against the previous regime (the British Empire), not the current government (United States of America). The Tea Party advocates for legislative reform of the tax code and containing spending, not revolts against the government. This is clearly a case of abuse of authority by a government agency intervening in the political process for the benefit of the current administration. You've got a pretty big evidentiary burden if you want to try to justify that.

Re:If your group is

[hedwards]

That's true. However, organizations with those kinds of names are likely to be engaged in political activity which should render them ineligible for tax exempt status.

The fact that the IRS has permitted the LDS and Catholics to get away with using tax exempt resources to campaign does not mean that the IRS should be required to let everybody do it. It means that the IRS needs to do a better job of enforcing the code.

There do appear to be some abuses of power here, but keeping an eye on organizations likely to be engaged in political activity isn't wrong.

Re:If your group is

[RabidReindeer]

If your groups is named after the most famous tax revoult in the history of the country I would expect the tax man to pay special interest to it.

That tax revolt was against the previous regime (the British Empire), not the current government (United States of America). The Tea Party advocates for legislative reform of the tax code and containing spending, not revolts against the government. This is clearly a case of abuse of authority by a government agency intervening in the political process for the benefit of the current administration. You've got a pretty big evidentiary burden if you want to try to justify that.

At the time, the "previous regime" was still the current regime, and the Boston Tea Party was a message from the taxpayers of that regime to their overseas overlords that if they wanted to levy taxes, they'd darned well better allow the locals some say-so in the process. The general revolt only came after the Crown refused to take the hints.

The majority of the modern-day self-identifying Tea Partiers don't show much understanding of that motivation. At best, they complain about "wasteful" taxation, at worst, what they really want is no taxation at all (just keep yore dam commie socialist gummint hands offa mine Social Securrity!)

Holding that sort of attitude doesn't exactly make the tax people think warmly about you, needless to say.

Nonetheless, targeting people based on their political positions is wrong, regardless of their philosophy.

Re:If your group is

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true. However, organizations with those kinds of names are likely to be engaged in political activity which should render them ineligible for tax exempt status.

The fact that the IRS has permitted the LDS and Catholics to get away with using tax exempt resources to campaign does not mean that the IRS should be required to let everybody do it. It means that the IRS needs to do a better job of enforcing the code.

There do appear to be some abuses of power here, but keeping an eye on organizations likely to be engaged in political activity isn't wrong.

do you mean just like teachers unions?
mike

Re:If your group is

[PopeRatzo]

do you mean just like teachers unions?
mike

Mike, you can engage in political activity and still be a 501c3 or 4, but it can't be your primary activity.

An organization whose primary activity is political cannot be a non-profit according to those statutes. I'm sure even you would admit that the various teachers' unions are not primarily political organizations. Not as long as they are negotiating contracts, representing members, etc. There are a LOT of teachers in the US and the teachers' unions are very busy even in non-election years. You might be surprised to learn that there are lots of parts of the country where the locals do absolutely no political work at all.

Try this exercise: look up a few organizations that have the name "tea party" and/or "patriot" in their name and see how many of them meet the same criteria.

Re:If your group is

[Mashiki]

Clearly you're following a different Tea Party then I do.

Apparently you're following the OWS then. After all, they've actually tried to blow up bridges(Ohio) and have committed arson(Oklahoma) in the name of "overthrowing the government."

Re:If your group is

[cold fjord]

However, organizations with those kinds of names are likely to be engaged in political activity which should render them ineligible for tax exempt status.

I see. So you want government officials to make judgments based on the name of the organization instead of what is on the application? Instead of what they actually do? Interesting. Probably not a good idea though.

The fact that the IRS has permitted the LDS and Catholics to get away with using tax exempt resources to campaign does not mean that the IRS should be required to let everybody do it.

Under the law you can advocate for policy. If you don't like that, you try to change the law, not use the government to disadvantage your political opposition.

There do appear to be some abuses of power here,

That seems remarkably restrained. I think your eyesight is likely diminished by the targets of this being political groups you oppose . . . what what's a little overstep by the government if the outcome is agreeable, eh?.

But allow me to correct you - the IRS has admitted that it was wrong, over the line. They aren't hedging, why are you?

You find nothing truly troubling in the following?

The IRS’s Tea-Party Targeting

. . . perhaps most troubling, those tea-party organizations were sent letters of inquiry demanding information that would seldom if ever be demanded of any other applicant in the process. The IRS demanded lists of donors, names of spouses and family members, detailed information about political views and associations — all of that “under penalties of perjury.” Many applicants dropped out of the process. The questions were remarkably invasive: For example, the IRS demanded to know not only whether political candidates participated in public forums conducted by the groups, but which issues were discussed, along with copies of any literature distributed at the forum and material published on websites. (The IRS has been less forthcoming with its own materials related to this investigation.) If the organizations collected dues, the IRS demanded to know how much they were. It demanded everything down to the résumés of employees. The inquiry was not limited to members of the organization, its executives, or its directors, but included even their family members: The IRS demanded to know — again, under penalty of perjury — whether any of their family members might be thinking about running for office. Its demand for the names of all donors — and all recipients of grants — is in violation of IRS policy. . . more

--------

but keeping an eye on organizations likely to be engaged in political activity isn't wrong.

That wasn't the job of the people at IRS involved in this, so yes, it was worng. Or do you want random government officials "volunteering" to keep the voters in line? You know, just until after the election is over? Or, hey, if it works, why stop? (You won't complain if the shoe is on the other foot, will you?)

If you still just can't quite bring yourself to identify this as a big problem, I'm tempted to suggest some supplementary reading material.

Re: If your group is

[Mashiki]

And the tea party has people who wanted to take over a courthouse in Tennessee(or was it Georgia?) shoot immigrants in Arizona, and other fun activity.

You mean the usual protests held at a courthouse? Oh right, never mind that it was allowed by the local officers of the court or anything. And shooting "illegal" immigrants trespassing on private property, when the property owners are getting shot at, because the federal government isn't enforcing the law as it is. Not only that but they're actively refusing to arrest or detain people entering illegally into Texas, Arizona and California.

Blind ignorance is always fun isn't it? Let me know how that works out for you.

Re:If your group is

[OhPlz]

You're condemning all the people at the rallies by referring to some forum posts as evidence?

If people made that kind of sweeping generalization using comments here, imagine what they'd be saying about the computing industry.

Re:If your group is

[__aaltlg1547]

If your groups is named after the most famous tax revoult in the history of the country I would expect the tax man to pay special interest to it.

Not to mention that

political parties cannot be tax exempt organizations

. So using "party" in your group's name or any of its application documents in any sense that suggests politics ought to evoke particular scrutiny.

Re:If your group is

[__aaltlg1547]

The tea party also supports candidates which is a taxable activity. If you do that, your group is not tax exempt.

Re:If your group is

[cold fjord]

I see. So you want government large enough to know what every organization (and presumably every private citizen) in the country is spending their money on? Interesting. Probably not a good idea though.

That's right. It isn't a good idea. And that isn't what I suggested. I'm not sure how you came up with that silly nonsense. On the other hand, it effectively describes what the IRS was subjecting those organizations to. And it somewhat foreshadows the coming implementation of Obamacare, of which the IRS is the key enforcer.

Targeting organizations that are explicitly linked with anti-tax groups such as the Tea Party is common sense. It's like questioning a guy with an empty gas can that was walking away from a burning building.

There is a little problem with your understanding. Burning down a building - arson - is illegal. Advocating that congress change the tax laws and control spending, which is what the Tea Party does, is completely legal. Your "common sense" idea of targeting the Tea Party for the abuses perpetrated by IRS employees is ridiculous. Even the IRS says it was over the line, wrong. What you call "common sense" is in fact stupid and abusive.

Here is a question for you - is it OK to do the same thing to the causes you support? You do realize that the government will change hands eventually, right?

Re:If your group is

[dcollins]

"After all, they've actually tried to blow up bridges(Ohio)..."

You mean that totally made-up thing where an FBI plant persuaded people to do this ridiculous thing, gave them fake material, directed them where to put it, and then arrested them? Like they do routinely to convince people their doing anti-terror stuff? Looks like you fell for it.

Re:If your group is

[kenh]

There do appear to be some abuses of power here, but keeping an eye on organizations likely to be engaged in political activity isn't wrong.

The IRS requesting donor lists was illegal, yet they did it and the mainstream media ignored the complaints because...because...why?

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. . . . she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice..

Really? This is something that a low-level employee can do on their own, without any of their superiors being aware of it? Then again, it was low-level employees that decided to initiate a gun-running operation into Mexico and low-level employees that denied the Consulate in Benghazi additional security in the face ot increased threats, so why not? The press has accepted this pitiful excuse before, why not this time?

Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there no accountability for government workers?

Someone broke the law, even criminally so I might add. People should get fired over this, and criminal charges filed. At the very least this is a serious breach of privacy and trust.

Well, of course not.

[techno-vampire]

...it was stated that no disciplinary action had been taken by those who engaged in this activity.

What else would you expect? Did you really think that the people who did this were going to discipline themselves? What I would have expected was that disciplinary action had been taken against the people responsible. And, I'll add, I'm sure that whoever did this would have ended up in hot water if they'd targeted groups that supported President Obama.

It's hard to believe

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

It's hard to believe.

Not that the IRS would do this, that's a gimmie. Or that they'd lie to cover it up, throw some small-time employees under the bus and try to wash their hands of it, we expect that. What's hard to believe is that there will be any real changes past the initial scandal.

The righty groups are already so marginalized in public opinion that most people will look at this article and rather than actually have any issue with the actions of the IRS, they'll feel horrified that the Tea Party was right on something that was already discarded as conspiracy theory. Like a crazy uncle that will never shut up about the time he called it.

Case in point: If this happened to anyone else the outrage would be unquantifiable. But because the systemic harassment of political affiliations only targeted conservatives we will see a whole lot of rationalizing, and IRS apologists. That's the real story.

Re:It's hard to believe

[Lord Kano]

You're half right.

It's not because Tea Party groups are fringe elements. It's because the average American is only outraged when they are told to be by the mainstream media. The same media that gives Obama the glory-hole treatment every week isn't going to direct people to be upset about the unfair treatment of the opposition.

LK

Re:It's hard to believe

[hondo77]

Most tea party members tend to lean libertarian, who are generally more socially liberal than Democrats on planet Zontar.

FTFY.

Not trutly bias, not punitive. More like profiling

[jbeach]

This doesn't seem to be politically motivated, it just seems like common sense. If one group of people tend to hate taxes and think they're unconstitutional and evil, wouldn't it make sense to profile them as more likely to try to dodge taxes? Is it really that crazy for the IRS to look at people who claim to hate taxes, as having a higher likelihood of being tax dodgers?

Re:Very un-PC

[DaHat]

Organizations filing for tax-exempt status that are engaged in political work SHOULD receive the kind of scrutiny they got.

Sounds good in theory... and yet groups like Organizing for America and MoveOn.org remain unmolested... funny that?

Insensitive?

[Intropy]

It was insensitive? Does the IRS think that the issue is that they insulted a particular group by singling them out? That's what it would have been if you'd just called them mean names. Actually using your authority as part of the government to target them is bit worse than "insensitive."

Re:Very un-PC

[cold fjord]

What is so evil that this needs to be on every news feed in the world?

So you see no problem with an executive branch agency targeting the political opposition to the incumbent administration in a direct, focused way, apparently calculated to hinder their participation in the election process? You are unbothered by government officials illegitimately, and perhaps illegally, demanding membership lists? You have no sense that this sort of thing might undermine free and fair elections? You have no worries about government officials maintaining enemies lists? It strikes me that you have no useful comment to give on this matter.

Re:Not trutly bias, not punitive. More like profil

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

The idea that protesting a law makes you an automatic violator of said law doesn't stand. (e.g. Protesting weed laws doesn't make you a drug dealer.)

Re:Very un-PC

[Bartles]

I would expect this rationalization from someone who perhaps asks, "what is so evil about fascism that it needs to be on every news feed in the world?". Of course, modern day fascists don't see themselves as fascist, much like insane people see themselves as perfectly rational.

Re: Very un-PC

[Lord Kano]

Yes but they arent trying to throw the country under the bus just because the president is black.

No, they were willing to throw the country under the bus just to get a black president.

LK

Re:Very un-PC

[Bartles]

Not to mention that Media Matters still has it's tax-exempt status unquestioned.

Re: Very un-PC

[DaHat]

Well said!

It is rather sad when many leftists simply write off opponents to the President as racists of some sort... as it does indicate what kind of issues they themselves have with race if that is the first thing that comes to mind.

MLK said:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character

And yet to the left... it is the color of ones skin, what sort of genitals one has, or what kind of genitals they prefer on the person they are with that is more important than the content of their character.

It's NOT suppressing Free Speech

[trims]

First off, I do think it was politically motivated, at least in the extent that someone decided to do something that would be looked favorably on the higher-ups. That's not OK, and people should get fired for it.

However, do note that what they are discussing here is auditing 503(c).4 organizations, to make sure they were complying with the regulations.

That is, these organizations are supposed to be engaging in NON-POLITICAL activities, for which we give them the benefit of being non-profit (and, making donations to them tax deductible).

There's been an explosion of 503(c).4 organizations over the past 4 years (after the Citizen's United decision), and a large number of them have been funded from "right-wing" sources. These organizations have been very lax about filing the proper paperwork about their donors, and in fact, have been downright secretive. And many of them are engaging in activities that very much skirt the line (if not cross it entirely) of political advocacy. The quantity of money (and number of organizations) engaged in this kind of shadowy advocacy/political support is very seriously tilted towards right-wing sources.

The fact is this: if you want to engage in political activity, then fine. Government can and should not have any say about your content. But if you want to get tax-free benefits, then there's a certain set of rules that you MUST play by, and claiming that this is suppressing Free Speech because we won't give you the benefit while you violate the rules is sophistry.

All 503(c).4 organizations need more scrutiny. I'm pretty sure that the IRS was engaging in the equivalent of racial profiling here, with the added notion of pleasing some political higher-ups. But at the end of the day, if those 503(c).4 organizations were breaking the law, then it's hard to say the IRS wasn't doing it's job by auditing them.

Re:It's NOT suppressing Free Speech

[clonehappy]

But at the end of the day, if those 503(c).4 organizations were breaking the law, then it's hard to say the IRS wasn't doing it's job by auditing them.

I agree for the most part, except for the fact that they weren't breaking the law!

From the following link, the IRS investigator Lerner had to say: "150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked..."

They "apologized". Well isn't that sweet?

Re:Very un-PC

[DaHat]

Maybe because groups like MoveOn.Org and co are *gasp* actually following the rules!

You seem to be implying that the tea party groups investigated were not doing so.

Care to cite some specific evidence of both?

Oh right... the fact that the police haven't come knocking at the door of MoveOn.Org proves they've done nothing wrong... and obviously every Tea Party group is guilty as sin because they got an angry letter from the IRS... even requesting information in violation of IRS policy.

Riiight.

Re:Not trutly bias, not punitive. More like profil

[dfenstrate]

This doesn't seem to be politically motivated, it just seems like common sense. If one group of people tend to hate taxes and think they're unconstitutional and evil, wouldn't it make sense to profile them as more likely to try to dodge taxes? Is it really that crazy for the IRS to look at people who claim to hate taxes, as having a higher likelihood of being tax dodgers?

Yeah, those tax-evading tea partiers like Timothy Geitner and a good portion of the white house staff. It's about power, and exercising power to the detriment of your enemies and the benefit of your friends. The Rule of Law is not the point. It's Chicago style politics writ large. There will always be people, like you, who will rationalize and defend the behavior as a method of servicing their ideological tribesmen. In generating excuses and furthering the degrade of the rule of law, you are a retrograde, who pushes humanity towards baser tribal behavior, and away from enlightenment values. But f*ck it, they're on your team, so it's all good, right?

Re:Not trutly bias, not punitive. More like profil

[jbeach]

Certainly. But if police pull over cars with "Weed is awesome!" stickers more often than "DARE to keep kids of drugs stickers", would you really be surprised?

That's the essence of profiling. I'm somewhat divided on the idea of profiling, I don't like it and I'm sure it's overly applied. But profiling isn't necessarily wilful persecution, that's all I'm saying.

Re: Very un-PC

[Dishevel]

Yup.
You either agree with the Presidents agenda or you are a racist.
Either you want the government to spend even more or you want black children to starve.
You are for more government or you are an anarchist.

The left has it all tied up in a neat little package.

Re:Very un-PC

[DaHat]

They didn't target a political organization

Correct... they didn't explicitly target the Tea Party Patriots of Golden Valley, MN (to make up a name off the top of my head)... they did something far more sinister, as you say:

they did a keyword search to find anything with the words, "tea party" or related and audited that

They targeted specific words of their target group they sought to punish.

Try that another way... would you still be saying "the IRS didn't target a specific race!" if the tax guy doing keyword searches for people named Juan, Jose, Jesus, Javier, Maria, or Consuelo?

Regardless of your political background

[Karmashock]

This should seriously worry you. Remember that anything used against one side can be used against the other.

Want liberal groups harassed by the IRS? Or should we do something about protecting political speech and preventing federal agencies from being used partisan chess pieces.

How can we trust the FBI or the CIA if we assume they're loyal to a political party and not the American people and the law?

This is non-functional.

You cannot have it both ways.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say the right wing is the ruling class you ingore the fact nearly every actor in Hollywood backed Obama. Warren Buffet is a liberal. Steve Job was a liberal. Bill Gates, George Soros, I could go on.

And Soros has funded many PACs out of his spare change.

NASCAR is marginalized as white trash and blue collar and... right wing.

The wealth in this country exists in Blue States. The Red States are considered "flyover country".

Re:You cannot have it both ways.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what, as an outsider, I think the real problem is that the US has completely lost sight of what "Left wing" and "Right wing" or "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean. Hell, you're applying political labels to a non-political sporting event: how is that rational?

People need to stop screaming at each other and tossing labels around like "Tea bagger" and "Libtard", because you're helping no one.

People are usually ok with it if it isn't them

[Sycraft-fu]

You find a lot of tribalism in political life, particularly these days. People tend to view their group as the good guys, the other group as the bad guys. So because the "good guys" are doing it to the "bad guys" that makes it good. It is ok, it needed to be done because those bad guys are so bad!

Of course if the situation were reversed they'd howl and scream.

Re:And to echo the tea partiers

[atriusofbricia]

Surely they had no issue with the enhanced audits if they had nothing to hide.

Not sure if funny or insightful.

Neither given the implication that Tea Party members would somehow be in favor of intrusive government action in other areas, which they are not in general.

Doubly so if the allusion was towards TSA 'enhanced' stuff, support of which would seem to be nigh incompatible with Tea Party philosophy.

Re:seems reasonable to me

[ttucker]

that a bunch of people who spend a lot of time whinging about taxes and telling each other stories about being tax protestors and evading or even avoiding tax, may actually be good targets for tax audits.

i.e. if you're doing your job of loooking for people avoiding tax, then starting with people who are ideologically inclined to avoid tax would be sensible and, likely, productive.

I have a news flash for you, people in the Tea Party complain about paying taxes because they actually do.

Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

And this illustrates what I was trying to tell "US" - when the W. Bush administration was grasping for more power for the Executive branch, I warned, "All powers they get and abuse will be abused by the other guy."

And here we are.

And the next President will have even more power.

Re:What the h-e double hockey are you talking abou

[ebno-10db]

Right wingers represent the ruling class. The 1%. The ones with money.

The right wing represents some of the ruling class (e.g. oil interests) but the "left wing" (actually Democratic party) does a pretty good job of sucking up to other parts of it. You realize that Wall Street heavily backed Obama in 2008, right? Obama's AG wouldn't see a financial crime if it jumped up and down in front of him. Obama's former SecTreas, Turbo Timmy, would sell his grandmother if he thought it would help the banks. Also, tech mostly supports Dems. Remember you're a xenophobe if you oppose the H-1B cheap guest worker program.

This sucks. The Dems tried playing a little hardball

A little hardball? This is downright Nixonian. And if it matters, there are many ways that I lean pretty far to the left. There is no excuse for suppression of political speech.

about how the police and FBI worked together to shut down OWS and the anti-1% movement

But the country was threatened by a bunch of people camping out in a park. Yeah, the FBI and police coordination, as though there were some national threat instead of a few local differences, was pretty disgusting. NYC Mayor-for-Life Bloomberg sending in SWAT teams at 2AM as though the protesters were some sort of incredibly dangerous characters that could only be taken by military force. They also did everything they could to keep the press away from that, undoubtedly for their own protection.

However, the FBI that helped with that was in the executive branch run by Obama. Don't forget that. And regardless of who was responsible for it, political suppression of your team doesn't justify political suppression of the other team. If we start thinking like that we might as well burn the Constitution.

Re: Very un-PC

[Concerned Onlooker]

The last time around you either agreed with Bush or you were a US-hating liberal.

Re:What the h-e double hockey are you talking abou

[the eric conspiracy]

It's not Nixonian until you come up with the tape of Obama telling his aides to sic the IRS on the people on his enemies list.

Tax Exempt Status Should not be Misused

[litehacksaur111]

The purpose of filing for tax exempt status is if the organization is only operating for general public welfare and not political action or private interests. For example, MoveON is divided into 2 sections. The small local level organization part and the 503(c) 4 part. The NRA operates as a 501(c)4. By the way America Crossroads (Karl Rove), Americans for Prosperity (Koch Brothers), American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), are all right wing groups and they operate as non-profits. Please tell me in what way does a tea-party group promote the general welfare that gives them non-profit status. Rather is seems the only purpose that a tea-party group has is political. I think all political groups regardless of ideology should be forced to pay taxes. They are not benefiting the public welfare in any way.

Re:Very un-PC

[SuperAlgae]

The IRS was right to apologize, but they apologized for the wrong thing. They should have put EVERY political group seeking tax-exempt status through this kind of scrutiny. The fact that these groups (both left and right) get to avoid taxes while manipulating elections is embarassing. Of course, the real problem is that they have so much power and so little transparency to start with, but if the only victory we can get right now is to make them pay taxes, let's start with that.

Re: Very un-PC

[wierd_w]

Two wrongs do not make a right. (Please, no "make a left" jokes.)

Instead of going full on asshole against the conservatives, the left should have made it painfully clear that they didn't care about obama's race at all, and was inconsequential to his candidacy.

Instead, they said that if you didn't like him, for any reason, you were inherently racist.

Again, simply because your oposition are a bunch of drooling dumbfucks, does not mean that degrading yourselves to their level is called for, appropriate, nor desirable.

It just shows that you are drooling dumbfucks too, and should be ignored for exactly the same reasons.--being drooling opinionated dumbfucks.

Re:Very un-PC

[uniquename72]

You seem to be implying that the tea party groups investigated were not doing so. Care to cite some specific evidence of both?

Michelle Bachmann's own staff is testifying against her about spending irregularities. Sharon Angle (from right here in the great state of Nevada) has already paid $25,000 in fines for spending her campaign funds illegally.

Those are the only 2 Tea Partiers I can name.

I'm a conservative who was once very hopeful that the Tea Party might help turn around the Republican Party (which is more about expanding the government and the debt than anything else). Then I went to a Tea Party rally, where I got to hear all about how it's the duty of all Americans to NOT pay taxes, and how the niggers are taking over.

So yeah, audit them. All of them.

However that line is impossible to believe

[dbIII]

Most tea party members tend to lean libertarian, who are generally more socially liberal than Democrats.

Oh really? Ask a hard core libertarian what they think of a minimum wage or government provided social services, then go through all the steps that led up to the recent factory collapse in Bangladesh with them and see if they object to it. That building owner was living the libertarian dream where his government couldn't stop him doing anything he wanted by enforcing pesky regulations.
That's not saying that libertarians are evil, instead it's just pointing out that they are far too naive to understand what evil would rise unopposed in the sort of society they are advocating.

Re:However that line is impossible to believe

[SuperKendall]

Ask a hard core libertarian what they think of a minimum wage

That's a fiscal, not social, issue. Why would a libertarian want to be against hiring teenagers, which is the real-world effect of a high minimum wage? Not everyone needs to live on what they are paid, high minimum wages ignore this fact.

or government provided social services

Again a fiscal, not social, issue. Why can you not be fully for abortion without wanting the government to fund them?

Private groups have proven they can do a far better job of providing social services than the government.

go through all the steps that led up to the recent factory collapse in Bangladesh

Corruption is the base of that more than anything else. Libertarians are not "for" corruption thank you very much, and also "thanks" for using 600 dead factory workers as leverage for your arguments.

instead it's just pointing out that they are far too naive to understand what evil

It seems we are far less naive than you.

Re:However that line is impossible to believe

[vux984]

That's a fiscal, not social, issue.

Actually its both.

Not everyone needs to live on what they are paid, high minimum wages ignore this fact.

And advocates of no minimum wage ignores the fact that MILLIONS of people ARE living on those jobs in the real actual world.

Again a fiscal, not social, issue.

Depends which government provided social service one looks at. Medicare, Unemployment, Welfare... these are fiscal issues yes, but also social issues.

Gay marriage is a pretty pure social issue though, and Tea Party folks aren't lining up to support it, so your argument that tea partiers are socially liberal comes through pretty thin.

Private groups have proven they can do a far better job of providing social services than the government.

No, they haven't. That's a very controversial claim you've just made. That you can state it as if it was a settled fact is just silly.

Corruption is the base of that more than anything else.

Corruption is how it got past the regulations. Regulations that many libertarians argue shouldn't exist in the first place. Eliminating the corruption won't solve the problem if you eliminate it by eliminating the regulations too.

It seems we are far less naive than you.

I sometimes wish libertarians could have the world they wish for. As long as I don't have to live in it. They could use the wake up call.

Re:Very un-PC

[Bartles]

By the IRS?