Here's a brief item (four paragraphs in total) from the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" column under the heading "Government Ethics," titled "IRS Scrutiny Hooks Left-Leaning Groups." I have annotated it with facts omitted from the piece, and with the larger political context. [1]
Some nonprofit groups received scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service through the use of screening terms that would single out left-leaning groups, according to an inspector general's report released Thursday. [October 5.]
What happened to those groups from 2004 to 2013 [i.e under both Bush the Younger and Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama] was similar to the treatment that tea-party groups received from 2010 to 2012. [Except that the tea-party groups were only targeted by a Democratic regime, and only for no more than three years- and there was a huge political brouhaha over it, and calls for criminal prosecutions of IRS officials, and forced resignations, whereas there was no reaction at all to the persecution of "leftists" for nine to ten years, and just a little article years later in a business paper.] A report from the same inspector general about conservative groups in 2013 led to the resignation of then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. [And of IRS official Lois Lerner, who had to hire criminal defense lawyers to deal with the threat of indictment as Republican politicians and the rightwing media mob were demanding.]
"Democrats should be outraged," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, about the new report. "The IRS targeted Americans based on their political beliefs, both parties."
Some Democrats have said the report shows that there wasn't political bias or targeting at the IRS. They said the problem was poor management and unclear rules about how to define political activity and how much is acceptable for different types of nonprofits. [End.]
Notice the essential unity of the two corporate imperialist parties that form a political cartel, both persecuting "leftists" whether it's a Democratic or Republican regime. Of course, throughout U.S. history, progressives of all stripes have been systematically surveiled, harassed, persecuted, subjected to various "dirty tricks" like thefts and sabotage of every stripe, imprisoned, and murdered by state agents and institutions, while reactionaries have had almost entirely free rein, including to commit thousands of acts of terrorism. (Examples: the Ku Klux Klan, the lynchings of thousands of blacks, the reign of terror against the civil rights movement in the 1950's and '60's, the thousands of attacks on abortion clinics, assassinations of anti-establishment activists by rightwing terrorists the secret police use as cut-outs, and more.)
Whether it's anti-abortion fanatics, Christian fundamentalists, gun fetishists, or people who want to shrink government down small enough to drown it in a bathtub, the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) always obsequiously panders to its base, at least in rhetoric. And it serves most of those groups' interests, passing laws (especially on the state level) making abortions relentlessly more onerous to obtain, loosening gun laws to the point that the Texas state government has forced universities in that state to allow students to carry guns on campus, against the objections of those institutions allegedly dedicated to education and free thought. And in league with the Democrats, passing draconian laws that in practice target blacks and Hispanics for imprisonment, and tax laws that grossly favor the rich and large corporations.
1] Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2017, page A5.
Some nonprofit groups received scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service through the use of screening terms that would single out left-leaning groups, according to an inspector general's report released Thursday. [October 5.]
What happened to those groups from 2004 to 2013 [i.e under both Bush the Younger and Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama] was similar to the treatment that tea-party groups received from 2010 to 2012. [Except that the tea-party groups were only targeted by a Democratic regime, and only for no more than three years- and there was a huge political brouhaha over it, and calls for criminal prosecutions of IRS officials, and forced resignations, whereas there was no reaction at all to the persecution of "leftists" for nine to ten years, and just a little article years later in a business paper.] A report from the same inspector general about conservative groups in 2013 led to the resignation of then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. [And of IRS official Lois Lerner, who had to hire criminal defense lawyers to deal with the threat of indictment as Republican politicians and the rightwing media mob were demanding.]
"Democrats should be outraged," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, about the new report. "The IRS targeted Americans based on their political beliefs, both parties."
Some Democrats have said the report shows that there wasn't political bias or targeting at the IRS. They said the problem was poor management and unclear rules about how to define political activity and how much is acceptable for different types of nonprofits. [End.]
Notice the essential unity of the two corporate imperialist parties that form a political cartel, both persecuting "leftists" whether it's a Democratic or Republican regime. Of course, throughout U.S. history, progressives of all stripes have been systematically surveiled, harassed, persecuted, subjected to various "dirty tricks" like thefts and sabotage of every stripe, imprisoned, and murdered by state agents and institutions, while reactionaries have had almost entirely free rein, including to commit thousands of acts of terrorism. (Examples: the Ku Klux Klan, the lynchings of thousands of blacks, the reign of terror against the civil rights movement in the 1950's and '60's, the thousands of attacks on abortion clinics, assassinations of anti-establishment activists by rightwing terrorists the secret police use as cut-outs, and more.)
Whether it's anti-abortion fanatics, Christian fundamentalists, gun fetishists, or people who want to shrink government down small enough to drown it in a bathtub, the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) always obsequiously panders to its base, at least in rhetoric. And it serves most of those groups' interests, passing laws (especially on the state level) making abortions relentlessly more onerous to obtain, loosening gun laws to the point that the Texas state government has forced universities in that state to allow students to carry guns on campus, against the objections of those institutions allegedly dedicated to education and free thought. And in league with the Democrats, passing draconian laws that in practice target blacks and Hispanics for imprisonment, and tax laws that grossly favor the rich and large corporations.
1] Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2017, page A5.
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