Equal Opportunity Tyranny – Partisan Politics Is To Divide The People Not The Power

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – It doesn’t matter who it is that’s applying for these tax-exempt status and who it is that is being demonized or harassed or vilified or whatever the case may be when it comes to acquiring the tax-exempt status.  The fact that it’s happening is injurious enough.  To assign the political or partisan, to try to make it nothing more than a partisan issue does great disservice to the ubiquitous harm that an action like this does.  Regardless of who the campaign is waged against, it still does damage to the reputation and trust the people have in the institutions of government, the IRS namely being one of those institutions.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  We have IRS news.  Apparently the IRS, while they were busy trying to stop Tea Party groups from becoming nonprofits, according to the 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) tax code also prevented some progressive or liberal groups from doing so.  This is from David Nather at Politico.com, “IRS scrutinized some liberal groups.”

[reading]

After a political group in Texas asked the IRS for a tax exemption last year, it got a lengthy, time-consuming list of questions — like a request for the minutes of all the board meetings since the group got started.

And a California-based group got turned down completely in 2011, because the IRS concluded that it was set up “primarily for the benefit of a political party.”

These two stories sound like they’d fit right into the raging IRS scandal over its treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status.

The only difference: these two groups — Progress Texas and Emerge America — were unabashedly liberal. [Mike: But that can’t be. Obama’s IRS only went after righties and red staters, right?]

POLITICO surveyed the liberal groups from an IRS list of advocacy organizations that were approved after the tougher examinations started. The review found some examples of liberal groups facing scrutiny similar to their conservative counterparts — they were asked for copies of web pages, actions alerts, and written materials from all of their events.

But those harsh investigations were more rare than what POLITICO had found when it surveyed conservative groups at the beginning of the scandal. And the questions themselves appear less invasive, overall. [Mike: So they did ask, probably just to say: See, we asked some of these other groups and we even denied one.]

Progress Texas was the only one that came forward during the height of the scandal, releasing its own IRS letter to prove it had been hassled, too. It even had a cover letter from Lois Lerner, the embattled IRS official at the center of the scandal.

But even then, its leaders didn’t really feel hassled.

“If you’re going to ask for exceptional treatment, you should expect to go through exceptional screening,” said Ed Espinoza, the executive director of Progress Texas. “We all play by the same rules, and if they don’t like the rules, they don’t have to play.”

[end reading]

Mike Church Show Transcript – Zimmerman, The Justice Department, And States Rights

Mike:  There’s more information on this.  Folks, basically the bottom line is it doesn’t matter — and I’ve been trying to make this point.  It doesn’t matter who it is that’s applying for these tax-exempt status and who it is that is being demonized or harassed or vilified or whatever the case may be when it comes to acquiring the tax-exempt status.  The fact that it’s happening is injurious enough.  To assign the political or partisan, to try to make it nothing more than a partisan issue does great disservice to the ubiquitous harm that an action like this does.  Regardless of who the campaign is waged against, it still does damage to the reputation and trust the people have in the institutions of government, the IRS namely being one of those institutions….

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[private FP-Yearly|FP-Monthly|FP-Yearly-WLK]

Look, the IRS is not going away anytime soon.  The fact that they’re doing it to anyone ought to anger everyone, regardless of political affiliation.  Try telling that to the anti-Obama zealots.  Folks, there is not a day that goes by — I get so much email.  I have to change email addresses about every six months because I can’t read my email because there’s so much crap in it.  I receive such an unbelievable amount, an unreadable amount.  If I printed it out, I could make my own trillion-note Mount Everest right out back of Studio D.

Of all kinds of political pitches on a daily basis, the concurrent theme — I do receive some from some lefties but mainly from Tea Party and Tea Party-type and groups that call themselves conservatives.  The campaigns are all based around something that President Obama has done.  It’s all Obama’s fault and Obama invented tyranny and Obama invented corruption and Obama invented scurrilous and scandalous government officials and bureaucrats.  Yes, it is true that it is happening on his watch, especially in several instances he should be held at least somewhat accountable for it because they are happening under the aegis of the executive branch.  Yes, he is responsible.  In a couple of those cases, yes, they are impeachable offenses.  If you can’t get to him, you can certainly get to the heads of the agencies.  See Eric Holder, see Fast and Furious, see invasion and military action against Libya without congressional authorization, see takeover privately-held funds of Chrysler during the bailout.  Yes, he is most certainly horrid, an absolutely horrid steward of his oath to the Constitution.  I grant you that.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what party he is affiliated with.  When are you people going to get this through your heads?  If he does damage to the Constitution and it’s not corrected, then the next person that comes in line and is president, who may be of the other party, there’s a very good chance the precedent that this occupant sets, that some will be followed by his successor.  Folks, this has been the history of these United States.  To ignore that or to deny, [mocking] “When the Republicans get in there, they don’t . . ..”  Oh yes they do, and oh yes they did.  President Obama is building on the awful legacy of the presidency of George W. Bush and all the monstrous expansions of executive power that President Bush undertook.

It ought to not matter what party someone is with.  What ought to matter is that the damage is done, and the damage is universal, and the damage affects all of us.  [mocking] “Yeah, but they’re in power.”  Look, what evidence do you have that one party or one orthodoxy, one official orthodoxy, maintains political power for any significant period of time in these United States?  There’s none.  You don’t have any.  Probably the longest period that you could cite would probably be from 1865 till around the turn of the century.  You might even be able to go up till the 1920s until the presidency of Coolidge, although I will tell you that Grover Cleveland was a pretty good steward of his oath of office.  He held the office twice.  There were two episodes in between when the presidency was occupied by someone that took his oath to the Constitution very practically and seriously, and that was Cleveland.  That was probably the longest extended period of time, and that only goes for maybe 35 years.  I don’t believe that the current Obamanation, as some of you call it, is going to last for 35 years.  It will run out of money.  It’s as simple as that.

Liberty Institute – Liberty Exists Without The Government’s Permission

As a matter of fact, if you’re paying attention to what’s going on in your personal lives and talking to people that you know that are in business, you have to know that the recession is on or we’re in the beginning phases of it.  Heaven forefend it should get any worse.  We haven’t even had the market correction yet that is due.  If you ask anyone that’s in business or small business, they’re going to tell you, unless they’re selling some sort of medical service and they may be a bit immune to them, just ask them.  I saw a report yesterday about McDonald’s.  McDonald’s is going to miss its estimates.  It’s going to miss the Wall Street experts’ estimates for its first and second quarter sales.  The CEO of McDonald’s issued a warning: I don’t think the beginning of the year projections are going to hold out.  2013 is going to be a rough year for McD’s.  The point of the exercise or why I bring it up is you ought to dread all infraction, all injury done to the Constitution.  That’s just little old me speaking.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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