Bill Maher’s Real Time mid-show bit can be hit or miss, yet this week’s captured the feelings I have on the IRS “Scandal” to the T.
Unfortunately, I cannot embed it due to another three letter agencies stringent rules, HBO, so you will have to see it here. You will also have to log in to Facebook.
They made me fill out a form!
When I first learned that the IRS was picking on right-wing Tea Party groups, I was outraged. I am no fan of the bureaucracy picking on any side today, because it could be me tomorrow, and I saw the full power of the executive branch first hand during the Bush years, so I was doubly alarmed.
Then I learned what the IRS scandal was all about.
The Supreme Court of the United States, packed with conservatives during Reagan, Bush and Bush II, passed a decision, called Citizens United (if it isn’t infamous by now in your mind, it should be) that allowed political groups to spend unlimited amounts of money and some how, get some kind of TAX-EXEMPT status too if they spent a lion-share of their “donations” on “social-welfare”, yes, that’s “social” and “welfare” combined and radical right conservative groups could avoid paying taxes because of their enormous contributions to it.
So this isn’t a group of patriots standing up for American values, getting picked on by the dreaded IRS, it’s really just a bunch of far-right political wackos spending other people’s money (billionaires) to advance a billionaire’s agenda of lowering taxes and deregulating business, so they can pay lower wages, destroy unions and move their fortunes to tax free shelters without penalty.
An office of 200 in Cincinnati was forced to handle 70,000 of these groups requests (why were there so many of them?). Low level idiots decided it would be expedient to sort the new flood of Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny, without realizing how this would reflect up the ladder. A Bush appointee, Douglas Shulman, the Commissioner of the IRS (head honcho) led the agency until November 2012 (after the election). Would he really conspire to help Obama punish Tea Party groups?
Every one of these groups was able to avoid paying taxes, and yet they bitched and moaned to Congress when it took an extra month to get it.
This is the Tea Party “Nightmare”, in their words.
As I’ve said before, any nightmare that ends with me paying no taxes, is a nightmare I would sign up for, willingly, any ol’ time of the week!
In the end it comes down to common sense. A poster on Bill Maher’s Facebook page, Steve Carver, captured it perfectly, “The teabaggers are always hollering about not wanting to pay taxes. No shit you’re gonna get audited.”
Right on the money!