David French reports at Patheos that the IRS has been targeting families who adopt children for audits.
Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the 2012 filing season were selected for audit.
Congress created the tax incentives for adoption in order to make it possible for more families to be able to afford the process. The IRS, an organization that has all the appearance of corruption, needs to be abolished and replaced.
… anything you say may be used in court against you.
That’s the way a Miranda warning goes. Didn’t Lois Lerner’s lawyer tell her?
UPDATE—Smitty waxes poetical.
UPDATE 2—Da Tech Guy waxes suspicious.
The tax gatherers and their facilitators among our betters in the Congress are bent out of shape because for-profit entities such as Apple don’t voluntarily pay more taxes than they owe under the tax code. Charles C. W. Cooke explains their reasoning thus:
Along with “loophole,” “gimmick” is the voracious Left’s newest way of describing “compliance with our rules.”
BTW, Apple is the largest single tax payer to the U. S. Treasury, paying around $16,000,000 per day. The government manages to spend its daily collection from Apple by 12:03 am.
These are the folks who want to run your health care.
An IRS executive took the Fifth today. You know, I wish the IRS would take only a fifth of my income.
… bringing facts into it. Clayton Cramer takes a look at the actual results of Universal Background Checks for gun buyers in the states that have them.
It is not enough to feel that this will make a difference; we need to make evidence-based decisions about what laws to pass. Those who refuse to do math are doomed to talk nonsense.
If they’re looking for a YouTube video to blame, …
I remember hearing an argument years ago against the government running health care—we’d get the efficiency of the Post Office and the bedside manner of the IRS.
That’s starting look like a best case scenario with Obamacare.
No, really. Brad Friedman wrote that on his blog, The Brad Blog (No, I won’t link to it). (H/T, @rsmccain) Here’s his headline:
IRS ‘Scandal’ Appears Nearly as Phony as Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, ACORN ‘Scandals’
BTW, Friedman also says that there’s no scandal about Benghazi either.
Of course, Mr. Friedman, who is a cofounder with Brett Kimberlin of Velvet Revolution US and who is listed in VRUS’s most recent IRS Form 990 as a Director of that organization, probably has no objection to strict analysis of right wing nut job outfits by the IRS. How would he feel about an audit of VRUS?
Stacy McCain has further comments on the broader issues of 501(c)4 tax exempt organizations here.
UPDATE—At 9 am ET, 19 May, The Brad Blog was unavailable.
UPDATE 2—At noon ET, 19 May, The Brad Blog was back up.
The IRS executive who ran the enhanced scrutiny of Tea Party organizations is now in charge of the IRS’s Obamacare operations.
Everybody look what’s goin’ down.
… then, the Jews, and now, Billy Graham.
UPDATE—and a St. Louis local news anchor who asked the wrong questions.
The same agency that abused its regulatory power with Tea Party and Jewish tax exempt organizations will have access to your health records under Obamacare.
I’m beginning to hear rumblings of “just like Watergate” in discussions of both the Benghazi and IRS v. Tea Party stories.
Really? Watergate, after all, was only a third-rate burglary according the administration in the White House at the time.
I suppose that having a body count has kept the White House from pooh-poohing the attack on the consulate as merely a “third-world mugging,” but the IRS story is already being pitched as overzealous low-level workers exceeding their authority.
Ah, what difference, at this point, does it make?
Not long after the attack on the consulate, the President answered a Denver newsman’s question about Benghazi with these words:
I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure we are securing our personnel and that we are doing whatever we need to. Number two, we are going to investigate exactly what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice.
We know from Greg Hick’s testimony that special forces were ordered to stand down rather than provide assistance. Why wasn’t the President’s order (number one above) carried out? If it was, in fact, given?
The IRS has admitted that they have subjected right wing organizations seeking tax exempt status to additional scrutiny. Inappropriately. That’s not to say that it would be always inappropriate to examine a 501(c)4 organization’s compliance with the tax code.
For example, when the records of Velvet Revolution US were sought as a part a civil suit, Brett Kimberlin responded by invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination.
I can only see a couple of explanations for such a claim. One is that the claim was a pure BS attempt to dodge discovery. The other is that there was incriminating evidence in those records.
If the IRS wants to audit a tax exempt organization, I have a nominee for them.
We’ll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.
—Dave Barry
… the Administration is in a heap of trouble. Here’s what Mark Mardell, the Beeb‘s North American Editor says:
The new documents contain two rationales for the changes in language. The first is that it would prejudice the FBI investigation. Perhaps, but I am not at all persuaded.
The other reason given – old-fashioned butt-guarding – is more credible. However you read the motives, the state department and apparently the White House did get the CIA to change its story.
This is now very serious, and I suspect heads will roll. The White House will be on the defensive for a while.
This is, as one former President put it, deep doo-doo.
Is this the latest one?
There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.
—Antonin Scalia
Stacy McCain has a post up analyzing the Democrats “How Dare You?” defense of the Benghazi fiasco.
It seems to me that the Democrats’ positions is best summed up by the remark made by Rep. Simpson (D-Springfield)—
Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.
UPDATE—Roger L. Simon reflects on Hillary de Medici.
Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
—Bertrand Russell
I listened to the Benghazi hearing today via C-Span Radio. Here are some random thoughts—
Someone near the top of the food chain clearly was willing to put diplomats unnecessarily in harm’s way for political and/or personal career purposes.
Gregory Hicks wondered about the what we would be doing placing diplomats in a situation where they needed .50 machine guns for protection. OTOH, Glenn Reynolds’s campaign promise (Reynolds 2016) about flame throwers for embassy guards speaks to a tough resolve that is missing from our conduct of foreign affairs.
The administration was simply lying with the talking points used by Susan Rice and others.
The Democrats on the committee seem more interested in covering for the administration and, especially, Secretary Clinton than uncovering the truth.
Elijah Cummings is an embarrassment to the state of Maryland.
UPDATE—Was Elijah Cummings channeling Dr. Gosnell with his “Death is a part of life” comment?
WaPo, the newspaper that broke the Watergate story wide open, noted that the supposedly average person tweet about #Benghazi was a rich, middle-aged male who liked Chick-fil-A. Most of the other main stream media just took a nothing-to-see-here-move-along approach.
UPDATE 2—The Other McCain notices that the main stream media didn’t give the hearings much emphasis and wonders, “What difference does it make?”
Do you remember the commercial Hillary Clinton ran during the 2008 primaries about who should get that 3 am phone call? The implication was that Barack Obama wasn’t the right person, and that has turned out to be true all too often.
Reading this piece by Paul Mirengoff over at Powerline, it seems that Mrs. Clinton would have been (and still probably is) a poor choice too.
BTW, the first shots were fired in Benghazi around 4 pm Washington time when folks were supposed to be awake.
Mayor Bloomberg was denied a second slice of pizza at a Brooklyn eatery.
I’m sorry sir, there’s nothing I can do. Maybe you could go to several restaurants and get one slice at each. At least that way you’re walking. You know, burning calories.
Hizzoner had to walk down the street for his second slice.
I wonder … how soon the restaurant will have its next round of inspections?
UPDATE–If it were only true …
Carroll County, where I live in Maryland, doesn’t seem to happy about Gov. O’Malley’s new Rain Tax. The Rain Tax law requires 10 jurisdictions in the state to collect a tax based on the amount of paved or roofed area on each piece of property.
The Legislature neglected to set a required rate, so one of our County Commissioners is proposing a one cent surcharge for all property tax bills. Not one percent. A penny.
I may vote for the guy next election.
Peggy Noonan thinks that the President isn’t a lame duck. Yet.
OTOH, consider the first 100 days of the second term. If it quacks like a duck and limps like a duck, it’s a lame duck.
