The IRS scandal - when did tax excemption become a right?

[Logan Darklighter]

Valles wrote:

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For the absence of some sinister conspiracy to suppress Republican political organizations (as opposed to voter populations that happened to be poor, non-white, and predictably Democratic)? Is the New York Times reputable enough?

Sorry. Not even close. I hold the NYT in about as much respect as you hold Fox News. I have learned that you and others on the left will never ever hold reputable any story that originates with Fox, so I do not use those sources. I always attempt to find what I can from a neutral or even left-leaning news site before I cite anything from Fox. I ask you to extend to me the courtesy of doing the same in reverse. 

The less said about the accuracy of Wikipedia as a primary source the better. (now if the article itself has footnotes on original sources and they are confirmable, then that's fine - but cite those original sources.)

[Valles]

So, you're not willing to take the two clicks at the obvious citation superscripts to get to
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/cancom ... +P80003353
and
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/cancom ... +P80003338

...And further dismiss the news organization with the highest rate of Pulitzer prizes.

Uh huh.

Well, the BBC goes into much less detail
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22604039
but it confirms the workload issue. Having been stuck working in corporate bureaucracy at least as arcane as anything the IRS has ever dreamed in the fevered nightmares of its denizens, experience and Occam's Razor alike argue that it's a harried 'we don't have a rule for this, so let's go with this for the time being' situation rather than a Nefarious Conspiracy To Defraud The Right.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Foxboy]

I prefer Hanlon's Razor, myself:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

And man oh man is there stupid a-plenty in Warsh'nun.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Logan Darklighter]

Valles wrote:

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So, you're not willing to take the two clicks at the obvious citation superscripts to get tohttp://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/cancom ... +P80003353
andhttp://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/cancom ... +P80003338

I could have. But the point is - why would you use the Wikipedia article as your primary link? The above is what you should have gone with in the first place. But you did this time. And thanks for that. That's all I'm asking that you do. 
On the other hand, I'd say that the observation of how much money the campaigns brought really kind of proves my point after all. Since the conservative groups were hobbled in their efforts to organize, of course the money flowed more freely to the Obama campaign than it did to the Romney campaign. 

It's not that tax exempt grass roots organizations can give money directly to either campaign. But the more "get out the vote" and publicity that either side can muster, the more money would flow. And if you've got one side that has more organization and more networking because it's NOT hobbled by an IRS that is holding up their application processes, then yes - that campaign is going to see more money. 

As for the bias of the NY Times AND the Pulitzers, well, that's getting a bit off-topic. But trust me, there's enough there to devote an entire thread to it someday. But I don't feel like derailing this one for that purpose. 

-Logan
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But as a tease for the curious,  see what you can find googling the names "Walter Duranty" and "Gareth Jones". 
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[ECSNorway]

Foxboy wrote:

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I prefer Hanlon's Razor, myself:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

And man oh man is there stupid a-plenty in Warsh'nun.

True indeed. Unfortunately there is also malice aplenty.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Valles]

So, recently linked to this: http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditrepo ... 053fr.html

It's pretty dense reading and I'm a long way from done, but the highlights so far seem to be: 1, the call to regard association with the Tea Party movement as a warning sign of political activity bigger than the relevant tax category was designed to allow was made internal to the department, not just the IRS, and without any outside pressure whatsoever. 2, the people who were handling these cases thought that they were supposed to put them on hold while waiting to hear back from another department about what criteria to use, which turned out to be a flat-out misunderstanding. And 3, about seventy percent of the organizations flagged were, in fact, mucking about in politics while pretending to be garden clubs.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[khagler]

Government agency exonerates itself. In other breaking news, the sun rose in the east.

[Valles]

Er, no, it didn't. If I were to boil the entire report down, I'd phrase it as something like, "The IRS wasn't sure how to deal with the new regs Congress had passed that allowed a previously nonpolitical category to do a little political spending and dropped the ball on dealing with them in the mean time."

This is a legitimate problem, for which censure is owed and duly handed out by the report itself.

It just isn't political scandal, except in the eyes of persons and organizations that have been desperately trying to invent one so long as to almost disprove the existence of wolves.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."