The IRS' Inconvenient Facts

By Robert Knight

As part of his powerful screeds against English rule, founding father Thomas Paine had this to say about the King’s appetite for his subjects’ tax money:

“There is scarcely a necessary of life that you can eat, drink, wear, or enjoy, that is not there loaded with a tax. Even the light from heaven is only permitted to shine into their dwellings by paying eighteen pence sterling per window annually.”

The late author John Armor, who compiled Paine’s best writings into a remarkable book entitled These Are the Times that Try Men’s Souls, noted that Americans might wonder today whether our situation more closely conforms to that of Britain’s hapless taxpayers under George than to the freedoms won by America’s revolutionaries.

King George’s enforcers might even be envious of the powers acquired by today’s Internal Revenue Service, which has been abusing President Obama’s political opponents with Chicago-style muscle.

Insisting that everyone does it, Maryland Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings has declared the IRS scandal “solved,” and has urged us to “move on.”

Let’s connect some dots to a few things that Mr. Cummings thinks are not newsworthy.

About 300 organizations between May 2010 and May 2102 were targeted by the IRS for special scrutiny, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General.

Of these, only six had the word “progressive,” and all six had their applications approved. A foundation run by Barack Obama’s brother got quick approval and retroactive tax exemption status. Another 14 groups with “progressive” in their names received no extra scrutiny.

By contrast, 100 percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriot” or “9/12” in their names received special scrutiny and endless information requests.  True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and her husband were subjected to 17 investigations by federal agencies.

In February 2010, according to USA Today, “the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked. … There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months. In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups…”

And it’s not over. 

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Posted on Tea Party Unity on July 9, 2013 

Living in a Devil of a Time

By Robert Knight

Given the sheer volume of bizarre cultural shifts just in the last few weeks, it’s time for another “if I were the devil” column.

If I were Beelzebub, I’d work to destroy Western civilization because its chief religions, Christianity and Judaism, have a timeless book that reminds people of my existence. I’m most effective when working in the dark.

To this end, I’m working to do away with institutions that are in the way of my goal to destroy humanity. These pesky confederations include churches, observant temples, private groups and governments that support so-called traditional values such as honor, fidelity in marriage, strong families, personal responsibility, civic pride, charity and patriotism.

When these things are compromised, I move on to the game board’s next square – economic freedom, which I cannot abide and which cannot thrive without the virtues imparted by those irritating groups just mentioned. For a look at one of my greatest successes, take a walk through what used to be Detroit.

Once free enterprise is broken to the saddle of the state, I can throttle freedom of speech, religion and association, using some of the giant corporations spawned in the unprecedented liberty created by America’s system of constitutional rights, including private property.

In fact, I used some of those firms just the other day to induce the Boy Scouts of America to commit suicide, one of my prized outcomes.  Under corporate donor pressure, the Scout leadership threw aside the common-sense rule preventing open expression of homosexuality. This pretty much did the trick in Canada. 

It may take a few years, but the Scouts in the U.S. are finished, believe me. If you like what you see in the inner cities among fatherless boys, you’ll thank me later.

For a look at where else I want to take the United States, let’s go to Great Britain, where much of America’s loathsome attachment to Christianity and individual liberty was birthed. Once-proud England is, thanks to my touch, a sea of churning resentments, entitlements, ethnic upheaval, crime and moral depravity. I hate to brag, but this is some of my best work.

 
Take the Girl Guides. ...

Read more.  Posted at TeaPartyUnity.org  June 25, 2013

Glenn Beck at Tea Party Rally: ‘Stare Down the Bullies’

Tea Party Rally attenders respond to Glenn Beck.      photo by Robert Knight

By Robert Knight

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 19, 2013) – At an “Audit the IRS” rally staged today in front of the U.S. Capitol, Glenn Beck told a crowd of about 10,000 to draw on their faith for courage in opposing tyrannical government.

My wife and I attended the event, which was held under cloudy skies on the lawn facing the mall.

“Stare down the bullies with the full armor of God,” Beck said to enthusiastic applause at the event, which was sponsored by Tea Party Patriots and emceed by Jenny Beth Martin.

"The Constitution is designed to constrain the government," Martin told the crowd, as reported by CBN. "This knowledge in the hands of free people is a threat to those who lust for power and authority."

Rejecting media myths about the Tea Party as hateful toward minorities and immigrants, Beck quoted Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass and other civil rights leaders in proclaiming that the Tea Party is the natural outgrowth of the civil rights movement, not the left-wing groups that have hijacked it to create dependency on government.

The crowd, which occupied nearly all of the lawn directly in front of the Capitol, was festooned with yellow Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and signs such as “Abolish the IRS – Now” and a photo of President Obama touched up to make him look like Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. (“What? Me Worry?”) Neuman. The sign said, “IRS? It’s the Chicago Way.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who had delivered a 13-hour, old-fashioned filibuster on March 6 demanding that the Obama Administration vow they won’t use drones in the United States to kill noncombatants, got a thunderous welcome.

Mr. Paul joked that he had borrowed a cell phone from Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and that the National Security Agency, which is at the heart of the scandal involving government agencies obtaining information on more than 100 million Americans, was probably surprised when they saw it turn up – at a Tea Party rally.  Mr. Reid at one time had famously referred to Tea Party members as “evil mongers.”

Mr. Paul drew applause when he declared, "Anybody want to fire some IRS agents? Why don't we start with the 16,000 IRS agents that are going to implement Obamacare?"

CNN reported that, “Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) gained big applause when he declared that the IRS needs to be abolished. ‘And I've got a second idea: We need to take every one of those IRS agents and put them on our southern border,’ he said, drawing laughs.

‘Now that's mostly a joke,’ he continued. ‘But I got to admit that if you were coming over illegally and you crossed the river and saw an army of IRS agents, you'd turn around and go home.’"

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), referring to the establishment of the income tax in 1913, said, "Don't you think that a century of oppression is enough?"

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), another Tea Party favorite who released a book this week, Why John Roberts Was Wrong about Healthcare: A Conservative Critique of the Supreme Court’s Ruling, predicted that Americans “won’t tolerate” what is about to happen to them under the Affordable Care Act.  He criticized Congress for passing a law that they “didn’t read,” and the Supreme Court for “rewriting the law twice” to make it constitutional.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) warned about the net effect of the government’s unprecedented information gathering.

“And if this broad federal government can track every phone call, if they can track every Internet activity you have, if they can track your credit card, if they can track your cell phone, and if the IRS can then have a software package to focus their enforcement on the enemies of the president of the United States, this big brother has gotten a lot creepier than George Orwell ever thought it would get,” King said to applause.

Other speakers included Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell III, who led the crowd in chanting, “Fire Eric Holder!”

U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) got a laugh when he said that IRS stands for “It’s Really Sickening.”

Robert Knight is a Senior Fellow with the American Civil Rights Union, a columnist for The Washington Times, and a Steering Committee member of the Tea Party Unity Project.

Obamacare and Mrs. Powell

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Congressional leaders in both parties and the White House have quietly negotiated legislative tweaks to exempt themselves from Obamacare so as to keep the nation’s “best and brightest” in Washington.

According to POLITICO, an unnamed source confided, “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done … unless [House Speaker John] Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) give Democrats cover by backing it.”

That Republican leaders attend such “extraordinarily sensitive” negotiations should prove to faithful Republican voters that long-tenured Washington Republicans are participants in transforming the American Republic into an authoritarian state administered by elites untouched by the draconian measures they foist upon “We the People.”

Read more at Tea Party Tribune

Posted on TeaPartyUnity.org on June 17, 2013

The GOP Temptation to Fix the Unfixable

By Robert Knight

It doesn’t matter whether the Republican-led House passes good, workable immigration legislation.

The bill would have to go to a House-Senate conference committee, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would almost certainly trash border enforcement and ensure mass amnesty for an estimated 11 million illegal aliens, also known as “unregistered Democrats.”

This would be followed quickly by a mass influx of more illegals through family ties and midnight border crossings, and the beginning of the drive for yet more immigration “reform.”

A selling point of the Senate version is that it creates hoops for illegals to jump through that would mean waiting years to get on the path to citizenship, behind those already in line legally. The moment such a bill was signed, however, Democrats would introduce a new bill to speed up the process. Anyone opposed will be branded a heartless bigot.

Knowing all this, it’s astonishing to watch the Republican leadership buy into the idea that they can “fix” the bill. This is despite clear evidence that the Democrats are mainly interested in stoking resentment for political purposes.

Read more.

Posted at TeaPartyUnity June 17, 2013

Why Big Government Is the Goliath to Fear

By Robert Knight

A 10-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis has given us a snapshot into the brave new world of big government and why we should fear it.

The parents of Sarah Murnaghan asked to put her on an adult waiting list for a lung transplant, but health authorities said she wasn’t 12, the minimum age.   It took a court order amid public outrage to reverse what amounted to a death sentence.

Contrast this with the government’s waiving all rules when a major Democratic donor with cancer wanted access to a new drug that the Federal Drug Administration was years away from approving.

Discrepancies happen when power is concentrated, especially the power over life and death.

Last year, Catholic bishops were shocked that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s gargantuan agency ordered faith-based hospitals and other institutions under Obamacare to violate their conscience and provide abortifacients, contraceptives and sterilizations. Perhaps the bishops thought their crucial support for passage of the Affordable Care Act would buy them consideration.

George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The following is drawn from William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  It’s meant only as a cautionary tale with some disturbing parallels. I am well aware of the latter-day maxim that the first person to bring up Nazis loses the argument. But I’ll risk that.  

On July 20, 1933, the Vatican signed a deal with the newly elected Nazi government in Germany that guaranteed the “right of the church to regulate her own affairs.”  Article 24 of the party’s platform had promised “liberty for all religious denominations in the State so far as they are not a danger to … the moral feelings of the German race.” But “moral feelings” can change.

Only five days later, Adolf Hitler’s government enacted a sterilization law that the church expressly opposed. Hospitals began killing the weak and defenseless. Five days after that, as related by Mr. Shirer, “the first steps were taken to dissolve the Catholic Youth League.”  Young people would no longer be instructed in views that might clash with those of the government.   

Read more.

Posted June 10, 2013 on TeaPartyUnity.org 

Picking on the Wrong Victim

By Robert Knight

As a long-time, ink-stained wretch, I’m actually glad that some of the Obama Administration’s bombs targeting our essential liberties found their way out of the Tea Party kill zone and were dropped instead on the Fourth Estate.

Most of the media are the Obama Administration’s most loyal constituents.  In fact, they may be the most loyal constituents after the reliable voters in Chicago’s cemeteries.

A liberal administration targeting the media? It’s like giving the dog that’s been biting your opponents a swift kick in the head. The dog doesn’t like it.

By seizing the phone records on 20 lines used by as many as 100 Associated Press reporters, and by treating Fox News reporter James Rosen like a criminal defendant, the Justice Department has managed to get much of the media sore at them.  Even the leftist Huffington Post has a May 30 column by Jonathan Turley calling for Mr. Holder to be fired.

The harassment of Mr. Rosen was so nosy and personal that you’d think it was the IRS running amok instead of the Justice Department.  The Administration probably thought they could get away with it because Fox is disliked by the rest of the so-called mainstream media. Although not perfect, Fox has more balanced coverage and is whaling the tar out of its competition in ratings.

In any case, a line was crossed and the media have taken notice.  Mr. Rosen, who had been breaking stories on North Korea’s nuclear threats, had his personal e-mails seized and was named as a possible “criminal co-conspirator” simply because he, like any good reporter, had elicited information from a government official. It’s no crime, unless you’re spying for a foreign country.

This past week, it was revealed that the government obtained records for several Fox bureau phone numbers and even a line that matches that of Mr. Rosen’s parents.

Spy novelist Mary Louise Kelly writes in The Atlantic that if you tried to peddle this scandal as fiction, book editors would dismiss it as too far-fetched.

“It takes an unusually egregious misstep by an administration to unite journalists from Fox News and Mother Jones in outrage,” she writes. “But that's what the Rosen affair has accomplished.”

 
Last week, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson said her computer has been “compromised” for more than two years. She doesn’t know who is responsible but doesn’t rule out the Justice Department. 

Read more.  

Posted on June 4, 2013 at TeaPartyUnity.org