Tag Archives: IRS

News

Treasury Dept. IG: IRS targeted 292 Tea Party groups but only 6 progressive groups

1 Comment

Tim M. sent me this article from the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

Refuting Democratic suggestions that progressive groups were also swept up in the IRS probe of the tax status of Tea Party organizations, the Treasury Department’s inspector general has revealed that just six progressive groups were targeted compared to 292 conservative groups.

In a letter to congressional Democrats, the inspector general also said that 100 percent of Tea Party groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS review, while only 30 percent of the progressive groups felt the same pressure.

The Wednesday letter to the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee punched a huge hole in Democratic claims that progressive groups were targeted as much as the Tea Party groups from May 2010-May 2012, the height of the Tea Party movement.

The letter from the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that there just weren’t many progressive groups who even sought special tax exempt status. A total of 20 sought it, and six were probed. All 292 Tea Party groups, meanwhile, were part of the IRS witchhunt.

“At this point, the evidence shows us that conservative groups were not only flagged, but targeted and abused by the IRS,” said Sarah Swinehart spokeswoman for the Ways and Means Committee.

This article was useful to me because one of my co-workers tried to tell me that progressives were targeted just as much as conservatives by the IRS. So I showed him this article. If you know any leftists who need correction, be sure and send the article along to them, too.

News

New poll: 26% of Obama supporters think Tea Party is top terrorist threat

3 Comments

Nile Gardiner writes about it in the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Rasmussen has just published an extraordinary poll which highlights the deep-seated prejudice against the Tea Party among both US government workers and supporters of President Obama. According to the poll:

Half of all voters consider radical Muslims the bigger terrorist threat facing the nation, but supporters of President Obama consider the Tea Party to be as big a danger.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters consider radical Muslims to be the bigger threat to the United States today. Thirteen percent (13%) view the Tea Party that way, and another 13% consider other political and religious extremists to be the larger danger. Six percent (6%) point to local militia groups. Two percent (2%) see the Occupy Wall Street movement as the bigger terrorist threat.

However, among those who approve of the president’s job performance, just 29% see radical Muslims as the bigger threat. Twenty-six percent (26%) say it’s the Tea Party that concerns them most. Among those who Strongly Approve of the president, more fear the Tea Party than radical Muslims.

As for those who disapprove of Obama’s performance, 75% consider radical Muslims to be the bigger terrorist threat. Just one percent (1%) name the Tea Party.

… Conservatives overwhelmingly see radical Muslims as the greater terror threat. Liberals are fairly evenly divided between radical Muslims and the Tea Party.

Twenty percent (20%) of government workers see the Tea Party as the nation’s bigger terror threat. Twelve percent (12%) of private sector workers hold that view.

[…]The extraordinary success of the Tea Party has led to it being demonised by the Left, culminating in an unprecedented campaign by the IRS against it, which has prompted a resurgence in public support for the movement – up 14 points since January, to 44 percent among likely US voters. Today’s Rasmussen poll illustrates the sheer depth of animosity towards the Tea Party within sections of the federal government and among President Obama’s strongest supporters (the two are usually interchangeable).

Some liberals have become so blinded by their hatred that they ludicrously see grassroots conservative groups defending the American Constitution as more dangerous than Islamist militants seeking to destroy the United States. Anyone opposed to their cause is a threat. This is irrational and deeply disturbing in a free society that has always cherished the cause of political freedom and open debate. It amply demonstrates just how extreme the American Left has become, and how out of touch it is with reality.

For a liberal in government, the problem is not adding a trillion plus to the national debt every year. That’s fine, and nothing to be concerned about. The trouble is that some people oppose running up these trillion dollar deficits – that’s terrorism. The Democrats believe that they are doing a good thing by using government to target Tea Party conservatives, because you would have to be a terrorist in order to oppose adding $8 trillion to the national debt. It’s not just the IRS that targeted the Tea Party, either. It’s the Department of Homeland Security, as well. Democrats aren’t serious about national security.

News

New study: IRS targeting of Tea Party conservatives had significant effect on 2012 election

5 Comments

From the American Enterprise Institute.

Excerpt:

In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. We compared areas with high levels of Tea Party activity to otherwise similar areas with low levels of Tea Party activity, using data from the Census Bureau, the FEC, news reports, and a variety of other sources. We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3 million-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party’s newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement’s momentum.

The Tea Party movement’s huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 – 8.5 million votes compared to Obama’s victory margin of 5 million.

How far was Barack Obama willing to go to win the 2012 election?