Originally published on Forbes.com.
Update
In one of those great ironies this two post series has provided the content for – The IRS Scandal Day 883, which I consider a very classy response by Professor Caron. Professor Caron has included a survey on whether the series should continue.
This is the second part of a piece on Paul Caron’s IRS Scandal series. (Part one is here.) I fear that the series which serves as a great resource is in danger of having its quality diluted. I think that the Day 880 post in which we read about Ben Carson demanding that the IRS immediately revoke the exempt status of an Islamic group that called for him to step out of the Presidential race is the tax blogging equivalent of jumping the shark.
Jumping the shark is an idiom popularized by Jon Hein that was used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality, signaled by a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of gimmick in an attempt to keep viewers’ interest, which is taken as a sign of desperation, and is seen by viewers to be the point at which the show strayed irretrievably from its original premise.
If the IRS actually did what Carson is requesting, that would be a scandal so including it as part of the scandal narrative, which has its roots in the handling of Tea Party exempt applications, is a straying from the original premise.
I thought that as part of making the case, a review of the entire series was in order. When I left off yesterday, we were on Day 516 (October 7, 2014) leaving another year to go.
Poor Lois
Day 517 has Lois Lerner seeking shelter from reporters and a neighbor turning her away. Talk about chivalry being dead. Day 528 could be a shark jumping moment as with a review of the “documentary” Unfair:Exposing the IRS we move from the scandal to a film making a case for an entirely different tax system by using elements of the scandal, most of which could happen under the proposed system. Day 530 perhaps is the point at which the compulsion to have something every day might have been relaxed. It is a Wall Street Journal story about VA employees resigning rather than being fired. The tenuous connection is that WSJ compares the VA employees to Lois Lerner.
I’m back on Day 535 with a report on the National Organization for Marriage being denied attorneys fees in their suit against the IRS. The National Organization for Marriage had been melded into the scandal narrative on Day 163. Day 537 (October 28, 2014) being the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation featured Bob Woodward reminiscing about Watergate. Ahhh, you youngsters, we knew how to have scandals back in the day.
On Day 538 we have Rick Ungar onto A New IRS Story That Makes Past Scandals Pale In Comparison. The topic of civil asset forfeiture for structuring had already been broached by George Will, but this was laying it on heavier.
Those Missing E-mails
Day 547 has Judicial Watch fighting about IRS not looking hard enough for e-mails. I’m back on Day 548reacting to a flurry of election emails by asking – What If Lois Lerner Was Right About The Tea Party? The comment section got a little heated in that one. Day 557 focused on the IRS not looking for emails hard enough. On Day 562 we learn that another 30,000 Lois Lerner e-mails have been recovered.
Day 580 added another element to the scandal as it gets into Lois Lerner meeting with DOJ in 2010 to spark criminal prosecutions. This to me is another example of the overzealous Lerner, promoted by Republicans, unable to get any traction for her projects with the Obama administration.
Day 594 , Christmas Eve, was a big one with the release of the Committee on Oversight’s report. The New York Times noted that there were no links to White House and the Wall Street Journal focused on the gift tax issue, another IRS initiative that went nowhere.
Shrinking Budget And Declining Service
At Day 620 we have the Wall Street Journal complaining about Commissioner Koskinen complaining about budget problems hurting service. WSJ thinks that the budget cuts are a reasonable punishment for the IRS stonewalling. The New York Times strikes back on Day 622 with – The Dangerous Erosion of Taxation I.R.S., Already Hobbled, Likely To Be Further Damaged. I would argue that the conflict over the IRS budget and the effect of cuts on service is really not part of the scandal. It is more collateral damage.
Day 637 (February 5, 2015) could well be viewed as the end of the core scandal with the forces of transparency surrendering to dark money as Commissioner Koskinen indicated that rules that would limit not-for-profit involvement in politics would not be enforced in the next election cycle.
“It’s not clear when we’re going to be able to get to it,” Koskinen told reporters after testifying at the Senate Finance Committee. “My only focus on 2016 is to make sure that whatever we do, it doesn’t look like we’re trying to influence the 2016 election.”
More On E-mails
Much of the action in February 2015 was about missing e-mails and who knew what about them when, so that it is not surprising that March came in line a lion with another Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit on Day 661. The ominous Day 666 features – Hillary Clinton Is the Republicans’ Newer, Bigger Lois Lerner noting that they both had problems with mysteriously missing e-mails.
The Other Investigation
Day 686 foreshadows the next big event with a National Journal article – There’s an IRS Investigation That’s Bipartisan and Leak-Free Really on the Senate Finance Committee investigation.
No Orange Jumpsuit For Lois
Day 693 we learn that there will be no prosecution of Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress. So, perhaps in 2015, March did go out like a lamb.
And Then The Churches
Day 712 added something new. The IRS entered into an agreement with Freedom From Religion Foundation to do something – not clear what – about pastors making political statements from the pulpit. FFRF being atheists and all can more or less only scold the IRS for not enforcing the law which is being deliberately flouted on Pulpit Freedom Sunday. Churches presumably can damn them. So the IRS is in a damned if you do, scolded if you don’t situation with this one.
End Of The Beginning
I’m back on Day 723 with a Winston Churchill quote reporting on TIGTA indicating that IRS has pretty well cleaned up its act with respect to the core aspects of the scandal – handling of exempt applications. On Day 725 we have Robert Woods working on a scandal extension theme that only seems logical – IRS Approved Clinton Foundation And Scientology But Targeted Tea Party
Will there be an IRS investigation of the Clinton Foundation? Even suggesting it sounds laughable, for few can stand up to the Clintons, let alone to a Democratic administration. Besides, the IRS Exempt Organizations Division used to be run by Lois Lerner, and it isn’t clear how much has changed. In fact, we may never get to the bottom of the Tea Party targeting scandal. It almost looks as though the IRS will attack conservative groups but is silent on the Clinton Foundation. Heck, even Scientology got its IRS church status.
Even if you accept that Teapartygate was motivated by anti-conservative animus, it was more a matter of the IRS not doing something – i.e. approving or denying applications – rather than being proactive. In the end the zealous Lois Lerner was only able to impact conservative groups who wanted something from the IRS not existing ones that would just as soon be left alone. And Scientology is really old news. It was granted church status decades ago after a grueling battle with the IRS.
Day 726 is an another non-sequitur from the core scandal. Judicial Watch is suing the IRS in order to get more details from the IRS on how it managed to convince an atheist organization that it might actually be doing some enforcement on churches. Pulpit Freedom Sunday has actually been taunting the IRS to do something and it has not taken the bait. So Freedom From Religion Foundation sued. IRS managed to get them to back off. The whole matter does not jibe well with the notion that IRS is just aching to persecute conservatives.
Another Milestone
Rather than a day number we got –The IRS Scandal, Two Years And Counting – on May 9, 2015. Featured was an American Spectator piece – Making Sense of the IRS Scandal: Is Sympathy for the Devil Still Possible?–
The IRS deserves more than its fair share of rebuke for targeting groups with views it didn’t like, for beingdishonest about its activities, and for responding to criticism by proposing even more restrictive regulations. But whether its errors were committed in good faith or not, whether they were catastrophic or mere blunders, the IRS simply should never have been put in position to make them.
On the two-year anniversary of revelations of the IRS scandal, perhaps it is time to leave behind the search for a villain and instead solve the problem. Until advocacy nonprofits have their First Amendment rights secured, the threat of future targeting lingers, no matter who is in charge
It is probably good idea, but the problem is that villain hunts are a lot more entertaining than figuring out what to do.
Who’s Ox Is Being Gored?
Day 736 is rather amusing and something of a precursor to Ben Carson’s recent call to the IRS.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is circulating a letter among her colleagues asking IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to review the tax-exempt status of the Clinton Foundation. In the letter, a draft of which was obtained by Chief Congressional Correspondent Mike Emanuel, Blackburn says, “recent media reports have revealed that the Foundation failed to report millions of dollars in grants from foreign governments that it accepted while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and that it facilitated private business transactions between foreign entities” and as such, “given the substantial public interest involved, we feel a prompt review of the Foundation’s tax-exempt status is appropriate to determine whether it is acting within the scope of its charitable mission.”
Of course when Democrats were bugging the IRS to look into conservative groups that was criminal -see Day 739. Go figure.
Ben Carson Appears Again
Ben Carson shows up on Day 748 with Dishonesty and Cowardice in High Places
The IRS scandal, in which a feared government agency was used to harass and persecute political enemies of the administration, should horrify any American who loves freedom and the principles for which our ancestors died.
A Muslim group lashing out at Ben Carson is a different story, I guess. Off with their exempt status, right away.
The Bandwagon
On Day 780, I show up with an account of a discussion with Joan Farr who believes that the denial of exempt status to her Association For Honest Attorneys is an example of Christian persecution by the IRS. And again on Day 803 as I discuss an unnamed group that helped undocumented people who want to go home, go home.
And The Emails
Many of the days in July, which I passed over, were focused on more Lois Lerner email coming. Day 811 (July 29, 2015) is when they finally came out – 906 pages. What could be better for some summer reading?
If You Are Only Going To Read One Thing
Day 819 gives us the Senate report with the pithy title – Bipartisan Investigative Report on the IRS Processing of 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) Applications for Tax-Exempt Status Submitted by “Political Advocacy” Organizations From 2010-2013. This report is truly bipartisan and breaks down into three sections. The facts that everybody agrees on and then a Democratic and a Republican narrative drawn from the facts. The Democratic narrative emphasizes no evidence of White House involvement. The Republican narrative emphasizes the anti-conservative animus of Lois Lerner and the tone at the top set by statements by the President on money in politics.
In case you don’t want to read the report yourself links to commentary are on Day 824. Among Lener’s remarks is the idea that Lincoln should have let the South go. Funny my friend Georg from Bavaria reached the same conclusion. I did not note a groundswell of support for Lois Lerner among Neo-Confederates. Go figure. On Day 825, I’m back with something on the e-mail in which Lois Lerner mused about investigating Bristol Palin.
Woof!
Day 839 moves us into the “You can’t make this stuff up realm” as Lois Lerner’s dog enters the scandal It turns out that there are even more e-mails under a personal account named after Lerner’s dog Toby.
And In The End
TaxProf Blog’s IRS Scandal day by day has run for over two years and it took me about two days to go through it running over into Day 881 which is a piece on the dangers of democracy. The connection to the IRS scandal escapes me. Joe Kristan commented on the first installment of this piece this morning.
Sometimes I think the TaxProf has to reach deep to have something to run every day, but his continued focus on the outrageous IRS behavior is a public service. I’m not sure Peter thinks there is a scandal in the first place.
I think his first sentence sums up my concern with the series. What is “The IRS Scandal”? The original scandal is the problems with processing Tea Party exemption applications. I’m sorry I didn’t count as I was going through, but a pretty good percentage of the series is pretty closely related to that matter.
The rather exhaustive investigations yielded no evidence that there was White House direction, but in one view the “tone at the top” influenced the agency to ride hard on conservatives. So the IRS having targetted conservatives has become something of an article of faith that will constantly be referred to. Since there has to be something every day articles get posted like the one somehow connecting “The IRS Scandal” to Hillary Clinton’s e-mail.
And the IRS forced to carry on its work with actual human beings and being subject to scrutiny by a pretty tough Inspector General will always be getting reports that it is not doing things quite right. All the other federal agencies get reports like that, which you could look up if you would like. Adding those report to the scandal narrative when they are unrelated does not seem quite right.
Of course the problems with the e-mails, which can be evidence of a cover-up are part and parcel of the core scandal, but it is questionable whether all the things that Lois Lerner got nowhere with really are.
As I noted in Part I, I consider Paul Caron the dean of the tax blogosphere, so it seems rather arrogant of me to make suggestions about how he should run his blog, but as it happens, my blogging persona is kind of on the arrogant side. What I would like to see happen with the day by day IRS Scandal is some sort of boundary around what the scandal is which would result in quite a few days where there is nothing to report. We will continue to see flurries of activity for at least the next year or two as various pieces of litigation play out, but there might be more and more days with nothing to report. I think a policy like that would prevent the high quality of the series from being diluted. And of course, if Professor Caron were to do something like Day 900 All Quiet on The IRS Scandal Front, the commenters would be sure to point out anything he missed.
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