Moderators: LawBeefaroni, $iljanus
They do provide full financial disclosure. Something the Clinton Foundation struggles with.hepcat wrote:I love it when sites like that try to make themselves appear unbiased by giving themselves names like "Judicial Watch".
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room ... er-lerner/Judicial Watch announced that U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan today threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.
During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.” He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.” Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to detain him for contempt. Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt.”
When in Rome as they say.Zarathud wrote:Isn't it refreshing that Rip likes activist judges who pursue agendas he agrees with?
The Judge issued a production order days before a federal holiday and then throws a fit at the next monthly status hearing? Maybe that's not the whole story. Perhaps Judicial Watch has an interest ignoring the 900 pages of e-mails disclosed this last month. It's not like Congress hasn't already looked multiple times through this haystack for needles.
This is pleasing to me in a way I can't really discuss, but it has very positive implications for a case we are involved in.Rip wrote:http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room ... er-lerner/Judicial Watch announced that U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan today threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.
During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.” He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.” Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to detain him for contempt. Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt.”
IRS lawyer Geoffrey J. Klimas told the court that as the agency was putting together a set of documents to turn over to Judicial Watch, it realized Ms. Lerner had used yet another email account, in addition to her official one and another personal one already known to the agency.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... l-account/“In addition to emails to or from an email account denominated ‘Lois G. Lerner‘ or ‘Lois Home,’ some emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated ‘Toby Miles,’” Mr. Klimas told Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is hearing the case.
It is unclear who Toby Miles is, but Mr. Klimas said the IRS has concluded that was “a personal email account used by Lerner.”
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said it was stunning the agency was just now admitting the existence of the address.
"The protection of freedom of religion in America is a fundamental principle of our country so whether you are Christian, you are Jewish, you are Muslim, you are Catholic, you are black, you are brown, you are white — if you are born in this country, if you uphold Constitution, if you have the vision, if you are fit to lead, you can lead irrespective of your faith tradition."
Wait, did he go back in time?Zarathud wrote:Republican candidate Ben Carson has been so bold as to call for the IRS to revoke the exempt status of Muslim advocacy group CAIR on the campaign trail.
What did this 501(c)(3) have the audacity to say?
"The protection of freedom of religion in America is a fundamental principle of our country so whether you are Christian, you are Jewish, you are Muslim, you are Catholic, you are black, you are brown, you are white — if you are born in this country, if you uphold Constitution, if you have the vision, if you are fit to lead, you can lead irrespective of your faith tradition."
I wasn't trying to push a position. Just confused by the entire controversy. Thanks for clarifying, I hadn't noticed that in the link.Zarathud wrote:That's explained in my link.
In one of those last-minute Bush tax cuts, the Republican Congress snuck in a rule that starting in 2006 charities with less than $50,000 in revenue had to start filing a postcard with the IRS or automatically lose their 501(c)(3) status. These charities had been told for years that they were too small to need accountants, and that extra bureaucracy would have been wasteful. The IRS wanted authority to send out notices or have some discretion in the process, but Congress refused to act because it was too busy fighting over the budget to care.
The Obama administration acted on its own to authorize the IRS to expedite those charities to get reinstated. CAIR was among tens of thousands who reapplied, and the backlog set the stage for the "conservative groups" to complain they were specifically targeted. Some of them were, but most of them weren't.
I didn't expect you to pay attention to a 3 year thread history or the irony, Rip. But I did expect you to pay more attention to Carson's talking points.
ustice Department officials announced Friday that they would not seek criminal charges in a long-running inquiry into whether the IRS and former official Lois Lerner targeted conservative groups, including the Tea Party, for increased scrutiny in applications for tax-exempt status.
"Our investigation uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints,'' Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said Friday in a notification letter to Congress.
"But poor management is not a crime. We found no evidence that that any IRS official acted based on political discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.''
Excellent. I just hope they remember that should my tax problems ever end up in court.Isgrimnur wrote:Poor management is not a crime.
ustice Department officials announced Friday that they would not seek criminal charges in a long-running inquiry into whether the IRS and former official Lois Lerner targeted conservative groups, including the Tea Party, for increased scrutiny in applications for tax-exempt status.
"Our investigation uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints,'' Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said Friday in a notification letter to Congress.
"But poor management is not a crime. We found no evidence that that any IRS official acted based on political discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.''
Isgrimnur wrote:Poor management is not a crime.
ustice Department officials announced Friday that they would not seek criminal charges in a long-running inquiry into whether the IRS and former official Lois Lerner targeted conservative groups, including the Tea Party, for increased scrutiny in applications for tax-exempt status.
"Our investigation uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints,'' Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said Friday in a notification letter to Congress.
"But poor management is not a crime. We found no evidence that that any IRS official acted based on political discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.''
Best of luck!Rip wrote:Yea, just wishful thinking. They are already working a tax lien against me. Knee deep in trying to figure out how to keep them from attempting to get blood from a turnip.
I feel your pain. I almost had an issue with the tax man due to an error on their part a couple of years ago, which led me to make an overcontribution to my RRSP. I only squeaked through because there is an arbitrary limit on how much you can overcontribute before you get hit with penalties (up to that point, the overcontribution simply eats into your contribution limit for the next year). I ended up a couple of hundred dollars on the happy side of trouble, but I had to wait a full year to see how it was going to turn out.Rip wrote:Yea, just wishful thinking. They are already working a tax lien against me. Knee deep in trying to figure out how to keep them from attempting to get blood from a turnip.
Shortly before Koskinen left office, the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration released the (presumably) final report on the scandal. Like a previous Inspector General report, it tried to soothe Republican feelings – the IRS really, really should’ve handled things differently -- while utterly refuting Republican charges about what had transpired...
...Contrary to the Republican story, the IRS never targeted conservatives. The IRS targeted politics, which was pretty much what it was supposed to do.
Thanks citizens united!Zarathud wrote:And now you have Cambridge America admitting to using those outside organizations to illegally coordinate campaign messaging.
The IRS was right, and the Republican dark money operations were the first crack in our wall of democracy.
The Trump administration will end a longstanding requirement that certain nonprofit organizations disclose the names of their large donors to the Internal Revenue Service, a move that will allow some political groups to shield their sources of funding from government scrutiny.
The change, which has been long sought by conservatives and Republicans in Congress, will affect labor unions, social clubs and, most notably, many political groups like the National Rifle Association and the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity, which collect what is known as “dark money.”
Treasury officials said the reporting change would protect privacy and reduce compliance costs for nonprofits, and that the I.R.S. could still request donor information from groups in the rare event that it was needed for tax scrutiny.
“Americans shouldn’t be required to send the I.R.S. information that it doesn’t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the I.R.S. simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,” Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in a statement on Monday evening.
But critics denounced the measure, saying it increases the likelihood of illegal donations from both domestic and foreign contributors.
...
Political nonprofits will still have to collect the information, but will not be required to turn it over to the government unless they are audited.
...
Officials with the Treasury Department said the move was driven in part by the I.R.S.’s inappropriate targeting of political groups during the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The I.R.S. inspector general found that both conservative and progressive groups were targeted and that I.R.S. officials inappropriately sought information on donors to Tea Party groups as well as to liberal groups.
But conservative groups have also expressed concern that the donor information could fall into the wrong hands and be released for partisan reasons.
Sooo...how is this going to reduce compliance costs for nonprofits? They still need to collect and maintain the records. Transmitting it to the IRS doesn't seem materially more burdensome.Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Jul 17, 2018 2:07 pm
Treasury officials said the reporting change would protect privacy and reduce compliance costs for nonprofits, and that the I.R.S. could still request donor information from groups in the rare event that it was needed for tax scrutiny.
...
Political nonprofits will still have to collect the information, but will not be required to turn it over to the government unless they are audited.
I despise the NRA as much as the next guy, but I have trouble getting worked up about them getting $2,500 in donations from people who may or may not be connected to Russia.LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:58 am Do you suppose this is all coincidental?
https://www.newsweek.com/nra-admits-acc ... ors-882310
Citizens United, the decision that keeps on giving.LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:50 am I'm hearing first amendment as a defense for this decision. Since when is is money speech and even if it is, since when does the first amendment guarantee anonymity of that "speech"?
Is my broker violating my first amendment rights by reporting my "speech" when I show or withdraw support for corporations?
Political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections. While corporations or unions may not give money directly to campaigns, they may seek to persuade the voting public through other means, including ads, especially where these ads were not broadcast.
PoliticoIsgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Jul 17, 2018 2:07 pm NYT
The Trump administration will end a longstanding requirement that certain nonprofit organizations disclose the names of their large donors to the Internal Revenue Service, a move that will allow some political groups to shield their sources of funding from government scrutiny.
The change, which has been long sought by conservatives and Republicans in Congress, will affect labor unions, social clubs and, most notably, many political groups like the National Rifle Association and the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity, which collect what is known as “dark money.”
A U.S. District Court judge on Friday issued a ruling invalidating a Federal Election Commission regulation that has allowed donors to so-called dark-money groups to remain anonymous, the latest development in a years-long legal battle that could have major implications for campaign finance.
Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled the FEC's current regulation of such groups, including 501(c) 4 non-profits, fails to uphold the standard Congress intended when it required the disclosure of politically related spending.
"The challenged regulation facilitates such financial 'routing,' blatantly undercuts the congressional goal of fully disclosing the sources of money flowing into federal political campaigns, and thereby suppresses the benefits intended to accrue from disclosure ... ," wrote Howell, an Obama appointee to the D.C district court. The decision is likely to be appealed.
...
The FEC now has 45 days to issue interim regulations that uphold the broader disclosure standards and 30 days to reconsider its original decision to dismiss a complaint about the Crossroads GPS' spending in the Ohio race.
The FEC could appeal the decision, but an appeal would require a unanimous vote from all of the remaining commissioners, since two seats remain vacant. Crossroads could also file an appeal.
