IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

[lektrode]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

....I'd really like to have some consensus on this moving forward, because I am confused as to what the community wants and if I still have a place here in the conversation.

I don't intend to leave, but I don't want to spend time posting or expressing a perspective on the actualities of the times if it's not going to be perceived as helpful or moving the conversation forward.

that quit threatnin then.

we - or at least eye - dont want anybody to leave/shutdown or shutup - and i - or just for instance - Mr Raz - have mentioned on several separate occasions that YOUR posts are of interest, in that they represent an opposing as well as enlightening POV and are important in the discussion - if for no other reason than you being obviously highly educated (even if that also means 'indoctrinated' due to or evidenced by your comments, background interests and occupation - not that any of that makes you a bad guy...)

but there's quite a few of us here that are BUSINESS-ORIENTED, particularly SELF-employed/entreprenurial types - that tend to notice/object to the constant barrage of lib-left-dem 'social issue' oriented media propaganda that appears continuously in the lamestream media daily (and seems to get far too much attention round here) - that mostly ignores anything unflattering for that side while PUSHING INTO OUR FACES stuff (like race, gender 'identity', 'inequality', 'free' birth control and gun 'control'), that they use mostly to distract but ultimately to DIVIDE the herd on THE REAL/IMPORTANT issues of the day -

and sorry, but NONE of the aforementioned are all that important compared with the ECONOMIC issues - namely the lack of anything even remotely resembling a job creation plan - never mind the documented criminal issues that are being IGNORED by most of them

and as usual, i likely havent done a very good job of expressing my POV here and i'm also sure you can do a very good job of slamming it - but just soz ya know woody - i for one LIKE having you and the others here who support your POV around - else we'd just have an echo chamber

so... in any event - you dont really expect that kind stuff do go unanswered - do ya woody?

[vt]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

One solution is to just post a brief statement of fact without commentary or source. Certainly the use of the IRS and the NSA in a manner outside their charter is disturbing, and BOTH parties have used them for this purpose. So this is not a partisan issue. These are also important issues that need not be colored in a political vein.

The problem we face with facts is that a journalistic publication that have a will not print them, while another on the opposite side of the spectrum will. Leaving out the source might lessen controversy.

[shiny!]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

One solution is to just post a brief statement of fact without commentary or source. Certainly the use of the IRS and the NSA in a manner outside their charter is disturbing, and BOTH parties have used them for this purpose. So this is not a partisan issue. These are also important issues that need not be colored in a political vein.

The problem we face with facts is that a journalistic publication that have a will not print them, while another on the opposite side of the spectrum will. Leaving out the source might lessen controversy.

Agreed. Removing the hooks for emotional biases that prevent clear thinking helps people to think for themselves.

True story:

In another forum I frequent, someone asserted something about an Obama policy that was factually incorrect, along with how Obama was all good and Bush was all bad. It was pure propaganda. I found an article that contradicted their assertion with actual facts, posted a snippet of it with a source link. It showed how Obama was perpetuating Bush policy to the letter.

Got attacked by "progressives" in the forum who wouldn't even read the article because the website it came from was "conservative." How did they know that? Because they saw that Pat Buchanan had an editorial there. They'd never even read Buchanan; they simply "knew" he was a mean conservative. One woman said she wouldn't read the article because she didn't want her mind contaminated with conservatism. Instead of debating facts, these people made slurs against my character for being "a conservative."

I calmly pointed out that I'm a libertarian not a conservative, and that ad hominem attacks are illogical and do nothing to change the facts about Obama's policy. It did no good.

So I waited a few months. The next time someone posted similar propaganda as fact, I copied and pasted a contradicting article by Pat Buchanan, but left off his name and the source link. They LOVED it!

I'm not saying liberals are wrong and conservatives are right. This kind of nonsense is a two way street. I'm just saying that it's harder to problem-solve when thoughts are influenced by emotional biases.

[Woodsman]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

I believe I might have been unclear. I'm not asking the tribal council to decide if I stay on the island. I am trying to decide for myself if I have a place here in the conversation. That does not mean running off, but rather likely becoming more of an observer rather than an active participant.

EJ seemed to suggest that the community try and limit talk of politics to those questions that help us answer "what's going to happen and how can we prepare ourselves." I'm happy to get behind that and it seems like a good approach to manage contention and keep us focused on the iTulip thesis. As always, EJ is even handed and seems genuinely concerned to help us all as a community. So I imagined myself and others reading our daily news and commentary with that very thought in mind, posting only those items we could reasonably argue met this criterion.

But few of the regular posters seem concerned about it. And so daily we are exposed to political arguments from the right without qualification or identification. These are presented as mere "statements of facts" and objective news. Characterizing an author or organization as liberal/left (itself something of a curse word here) leaves us nonplussed. Those describing a writer or a publication as right wing are suspected of being deliberately provocative. Views outside the mainstream GOP/Neocon/Libertarian/Tea Party continuum are considered the provenance of circus barkers like Alex Jones or merely "lib-left-dem" propaganda.

And now with the terms of debate seemingly narrower, I'm struggling to see the value in the Public Forums. The Select Forums are a different animal and pay for themselves. But on the Public side I consider my effort to develop and write content a form of consideration. Only I can't see exerting effort with no meaningful outcome for myself and others. And even less so if it just comes off as pushing someone’s face into areas they rather not consider or even acknowledge.

I also admit to being concerned as to where the line is drawn and where it may be drawn in the future. I say this because there were times when I found myself agreeing with some of the points offered by the Paul Roberts' of the world. And I remember other men of accomplishment and character whose views we’re compelling and heterodox; men like Anthony Sutton, Kevin Phillips, Ron Paul and even Pat Buchanan. I sometimes agreed with those gentlemen too, only to see them drummed out of the corps.

So I wonder when will my ideas cross the line of acceptable discourse? If formerly esteemed men like Anthony Sutton and Paul Roberts aren’t safe, what are my chances? If Kevin Phillips and Pat Buchanan can be tossed out despite a lifetime of faithful service to their party and cause, what can any of us expect?

The last thing I want is to find myself alone, isolated and reviled as a nutcase. I don’t want to be made into a pariah who people avoid as a threat to their livelihood and status. I don’t want my life and the work I’ve done to be dismissed at the end because I failed to toe the line and so must accommodate myself to this reality.

Still, it's hard not to chafe at what is effectively a warning to watch your mouth.

[vt]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-r...rty-targeting/

Judicial Watch: New Documents Show IRS HQ Control of Tea Party Targeting
MAY 14, 2014

Documents also Reveal Unusual Pressure from Key Democrat Senator to Target Conservatives

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released a new batch of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents revealing that its handling of Tea Party applications was directed out of the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC. The documents also show extensive pressure on the IRS by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to shut down conservative-leaning tax-exempt organizations. The IRS’ emails by Lois Lerner detail her misleading explanations to investigators about the targeting of Tea Party organizations.
The documents came in response to an October 2013 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the agency refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013 (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)).
One key email string from July 2012 confirms that IRS Tea Party scrutiny was directed from Washington, DC. On July 6, 2010, Holly Paz (the former Director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements Division and current Manager of Exempt Organizations Guidance) asks IRS lawyer Steven Grodnitzky “to let Cindy and Sharon know how we have been handling Tea Party applications in the last few months.” Cindy Thomas is the former director of the IRS Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati and Sharon Camarillo was a Senior Manager in their Los Angeles office. Grodnitzky, a top lawyer in the Exempt Organization Technical unit (EOT) in Washington, DC, responds:
EOT is working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy. We are developing a few applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent to use as examples in the development of their cases. Chip Hull [another lawyer in IRS headquarters] is working these cases in EOT and working with the agent in Cincy, so any communication should include him as well. Because the Tea party applications are the subject of an SCR [Sensitive Case Report], we cannot resolve any of the cases without coordinating with Rob.
The reference to Rob is believed to be Rob Choi, then-Director of Rulings and Agreements in IRS’s Washington, DC, headquarters.
Another email string from February – March 2010 includes a message from a California EO Determinations manager discussing a Tea Party application “currently being held in the Screening group.” The manager urges, “Please let ‘Washington’ know about this potentially embarrassing political case involving a ‘Tea Party’ organization. Recent media attention to this type of organization indicates to me that this is a ‘high profile’ case.” A co-worker responds: “I think sending it up here [DC] is a good idea given the potential for media interest.” As with Ben Rhodes’ Benghazi-related talking points email, Judicial Watch obtained a more complete version of this IRS email chain than was provided to a congressional committee.
The Judicial Watch documents also contain email correspondence to internal IRS investigators from Lerner, dated April 2, 2013, that tries to explain the “Be on the Lookout” (BOLO) criteria used to select organizations for screening and scrutiny:
Because the BOLO only contained a brief reference to “Organizations involved with the Tea Party movement applying for exemption under 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4)” in June 2011, the EO Determinations manager asked the manager of the screening group, John Shafer [IRS Cincinnati field office manager], what criteria were being used to label cases as “tea party ” cases. (“Do the applications specify/state ‘ tea party’? If not, how do we know applicant is involved with the tea party movement?”) The screening group manager asked his employees how they were applying the BOLO’s short –hand reference to “tea party.” His employees responded that they were including organizations meeting any of the following criteria as falling within the BOLO’s reference to “tea party” organizations: “1. ‘Tea Party’, ‘Patriots’ or ’9/12 Project’ is referenced in the case file. 2. Issues include government spending, government debt and taxes. 3. Educate the public through advocacy/legislative activities to make America a better place to live. 4. Statements in the case file that are critical of the how the country is being run. . . “
So, we believe we have provided information that shows that no one in EO “developed” the criteria. Rather, staff used their own interpretations of the brief reference to “organizations involved with the Tea Party movement,” which was what was on the BOLO list.
Lerner omits that her office was “developing” the applications for all Tea Party groups.
The IRS documents also include a presentation entitled “Heightened Awareness Issues” with a red and orange “Alert” symbol identifying the “emerging issues” that trigger scrutiny for organizations seeking tax-exempt status. Page six of the presentation focuses on the Tea Party organizations due, in part, to the fact that these groups had become a “Relevant Subject in Today’s Media.”
A series of letters between Senator Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations, and top IRS officials throughout 2012 discuss how to target conservative groups the senator claimed were “engaged in political activities.” In response to a Levin March 30 letter citing the “urgency of the issue,” then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller assured the senator that IRS regulations were flexible enough to allow IRS agents to “prepare individualized questions and requests” for select 501(c)(4) organizations.
The newly released IRS documents contain several letters and emails revealing an intense effort by Levin and IRS officials to determine what, if any, existing IRS policies could be used to revoke the nonprofit exemptions of active conservative groups and deny exemptions to new applicants. In a July 30, 2012, letter, Levin singles out 12 groups he wants investigated for “political activity.” Of the groups – which include the Club for Growth, Americans for Tax Reform, the 60 Plus Association, and the Susan B. Anthony List – only one, Priorities USA, is notably left-leaning.
As the 2012 presidential election drew nearer, Levin sent a series of letters to the IRS intensifying his campaign against predominantly conservative nonprofit groups:

• September 27, 2012: Levin asks for copies of the answers to IRS exemption application question 15 – a question about planned political expenditures – from four specific groups: Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, Priorities USA, Americans for Prosperity, and Patriot Majority USA.

• October 17, 2012: Miller informs Levin, “As discussed in our previous responses dated June 4, 2012, and August 24, 2012, the IRS cannot legally disclose whether the organizations on your list have applied for tax exemptions unless and until such application is approved.” Miller, however, then informs Levin that Americans for Prosperity and Patriot Majority have been approved, but the IRS has no records for Crossroads and Priorities USA.

• October 23, 2012: Levin writes to again express his dissatisfaction with the IRS handling of “social welfare” (501(c)(4) organizations insisting that IRS guidance “misinterprets the law” by allowing any political activity. He again demands an answer as to whether the four organizations he listed in his previous letter were primarily engaged in the promotion of social welfare. He also seeks copies of tax exempt revocation letters sent due to c4 political activities, as well as statistics on how many c4s have been notified that they may be in violation due to political activities.

In perhaps the most revealing letter from the IRS to Levin, Miller on June 4, 2012, takes 16 pages to explain to the senator what IRS regulations and policies may and may not be used to evaluate political groups and assures him that the agency has considerable leeway in picking and choosing which groups would be subject to additional scrutiny:
There is no standard questionnaire used to obtain information about political activities. Although there is a template development letter that describes the general information on the case development process, the letter does not specify the information to be requested from any particular organization … Consequently, revenue agents prepare individualized questions and requests for documents relevant to the application. . .
A May 14, 2013, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report revealed that the IRS had singled out groups with conservative-sounding terms such as “patriot” and “Tea Party” in their titles when applying for tax-exempt status. The TIGTA probe determined that “Early in Calendar Year 2010, the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status (e.g., lists of past and future donors).” The illegal IRS reviews continued for more than 18 months and “delayed processing of targeted groups applications” preparing for the 2012 presidential election.
“These new documents show that officials in the IRS headquarters were responsible for the illegal delays of Tea Party applications,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is disturbing to see Lois Lerner mislead the IRS’ internal investigators about her office’s Tea Party targeting. These documents also confirm the unprecedented pressure from congressional Democrats to go after President Obama’s political opponents. The IRS scandal has now ensnared Congress.”
In mid-April, Judicial Watch released a batch of IRS documents (produced earlier in this litigation) revealing that Lerner had communicated with the Department of Justice about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities.

[vt]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

IRS "claims" it LOST two years of Lois Lerner emails!? Right.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ats-again.html

They must have some way to find them:

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/bay_a...c9452a976.html

http://www.nationaljournal.com/white...-them-20140613

[shiny!]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

IRS "claims" it LOST two years of Lois Lerner emails!? Right.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ats-again.html

They must have some way to find them:

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/bay_a...c9452a976.html

http://www.nationaljournal.com/white...-them-20140613

A cat must have stepped on the keyboard at the IRS. It happens!

[vt]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

Is this Richard Nixon and the Watergate crowd all over again This IRS mess is criminal.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...eliana-johnson

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/201...ory-in-itself/

We've got to find a way to replace both political parties with an independent, less political one.

[touhy]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

This seals it....the White House was involved.

[Raz]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

June 15, 2014 6:45 PM


The Dog Ate My E-Mails, for Two Years!

IT experts and the IRS’s own manual note that backups of Lerner’s e-mails must exist.

By John Fund


Who knew that the Obama administration had a penchant for black humor? Earlier this year, in February, President Obama told Bill O’Reilly during an interview on Fox News that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS scandal involving the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups. In July 2103, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew foreshadowed his boss’s nonchalance by insisting that there was “no evidence” that any political appointee had been involved in the scandal.


Now we may know why. After months of delay in responding to congressional inquiries, the IRS now claims that, for the period of January 2009 to April 2011, all e-mails between Lois Lerner — the IRS official at the center of the scandal — and anyone outside the IRS were wiped out by a “computer crash.” As House Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp wrote in a statement, this loss means that “we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone.” After all, there isn’t a “smidgen” of e-mail evidence to suggest otherwise.


A growing number of computer professionals are stepping forward to say that none of this makes sense. Norman Cillo, a former program manager at Microsoft, told The Blaze: “I don’t know of any e-mail administrator [who] doesn’t have at least three ways of getting that mail back. It’s either on the disks or it’s on a TAPE backup someplace on an archive server.” Bruce Webster, an IT expert with 30 years of experience consulting with dozens of private companies, seconds this opinion: “It would take a catastrophic mechanical failure for Lerner’s drive to suffer actual physical damage, but in any case, the FBI should be able to recover something. And the FBI and the Justice Department know it.”


In March of this year, John Koskinen, the new IRS commissioner, testified before Congress that all the e-mails of IRS employees are “stored in servers.” The agency’s own manual specifies that it “provides for backup and recovery of records to protect against information loss or corruption.” The reason is simple. It is well known in legal and IT circles that failure to preserve e-mails can lead to a court ruling of “spoliation of evidence.” That means a judge or jury is then instructed to treat deletions as if they were deliberate destruction of incriminating evidence.


Why is the loss of the Lerner e-mails particularly important? Last year’s report by the IRS inspector general set out a timeline of the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. A full 16 of the 26 non-redacted events in the inspector general’s timeline took place during the period for which all of Lerner’s e-mails were “lost,” and these 16 instances refer to “e-mail” as the source for information on that event. As tax expert Alan Joel points out, much of the context about how the IRS scandal developed and who may have known about it is now “lost” in the black hole the Lerner e-mails are supposed to have been sucked into.


Since the IG report, we have learned that Lerner was engaged in highly suspect activity. As the Wall Street Journal editorial page noted on Saturday:

She shipped a database of 12,000 nonprofit tax returns to the FBI, the investigating agency for Justice’s Criminal Division. The IRS, in other words, was inviting Justice to engage in a fishing expedition, and inviting people not even licensed to fish in that pond. The Criminal Division (rather than the Tax Division) investigates and prosecutes under the Internal Revenue Code only when the crimes involve IRS personnel.

If there is an ongoing cover-up of the IRS scandal, it’s obvious why some folks would be desperate to continue it. Last year, Time magazine’s liberal columnist Joe Klein wrote that the IRS scandal placed President Obama “on the same page as Richard Nixon.” Article II of the Articles of Impeachment by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 included a charge that Nixon had caused, “in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

The Judiciary Committee was also deeply disturbed by the Nixon administration’s apparent efforts to conceal evidence. When investigators found a crucial “18-and-a-half-minute gap” from a Watergate break-in conversation involving Nixon and his aides, the administration implausibly claimed that Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s longtime secretary, had accidentally erased that portion of the tape. Later, Woods herself said she could have been responsible for no more than five minutes of the gap.


Now we have the “IRS server ate the e-mails” excuse. “Barack Obama has brought us Jimmy Carter’s economy and Richard Nixon’s excuses,” Steve Stockman (R., Texas) waggishly observed Friday. At a minimum, the House committees investigating the IRS scandal should demand that everyone involved in the search for the Lerner e-mails appear before them and testify under oath. I strongly suspect that if anything is amiss, one or more employees will not want to commit perjury to protect political higher-ups.


Normally, an independent prosecutor would be appointed to get to the bottom of all this. But don’t expect such a move from Attorney General Eric Holder. When he was the No. 2 official at Justice during President Clinton’s second term, he was instrumental in blocking the appointment of any new special prosecutors for various Clinton scandals.
Holder himself has mastered the art of withholding documents from Congress. In 2012, the House of Representatives (including 17 Democrats) voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt for ignoring a subpoena for documents in the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal.


As yet more evidence of this administration’s seeming tendency toward black humor, the current Justice Department investigation of the IRS scandal is being headed by Barbara Bosserman, a trial attorney who was a large donor to both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, with her first donation dating all the way back to the primary season in 2008.

But, of course, Justice says there’s no conflict of interest. Not even a smidgen.


— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO and co-author of the recently released Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

Even if Lerner's computer was destroyed and copies of her e-mail folders on the server were deleted, investigators could still analyze the inboxes of all people she might have sent e-mail to. I'm quite certain this would turn up enough evidence if there was any wrongdoing. Furthermore, this could be done without any concerns of violation of privacy since the e-mail system is government property and should be only be used for work.

[shiny!]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

Thanks for posting this, Raz.

I keep wondering if there will ever be a tax revolt but who am I kidding? Withholding ensures that wage taxes are paid without people having to send in a cheque. The IRS has the power to harass citizens, freeze and sieze assets without a trial. This power over the purse strings of the citizenry is the main reason why the income tax and it's enforcer, the IRS, will never be abolished and replaced with a national sales tax.

I've lost track of all the high-level scandals for which there have been no arrests, no prosecutions, no convictions. With a police state now firmly in place, their total disregard for the Rule of Law has reached the point that they don't even try hide it anymore. How long before weary, increasingly cynical citizens look around and decide there is no more benefit to be had by being law-abiding?

IIRC, EJ has mentioned that the breakdown of the Rule of Law is one of the final stages in the collapse of the world financial order. Wish I could find that quote...

[flintlock]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

Lets face it, the country is run by a bunch of criminals. Tony Soprano couldn't think of better schemes to intimidate opponents. It did not start with the Obama administration but he has allowed it to bust into the open with his Royal decrees(executive orders) and the near breakdown of the rule of law. Don't like a law? Just ignore it. Use your jack booted thugs to harass and intimidate in the name of "public safety". Spy on your citizens. Bypass the legislative branch at every opportunity. EJ is correct about the breakdown of the rule of law. It used to be what made the US special. Without it just sit back and watch things fall apart.

[lektrode]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

Lets face it, the country is run by a bunch of criminals. Tony Soprano couldn't think of better schemes to intimidate opponents. It did not start with the Obama administration but he has allowed it to bust into the open with his Royal decrees(executive orders) and the near breakdown of the rule of law. Don't like a law? Just ignore it. Use your jack booted thugs to harass and intimidate in the name of "public safety". Spy on your citizens. Bypass the legislative branch at every opportunity. EJ is correct about the breakdown of the rule of law. It used to be what made the US special. Without it just sit back and watch things fall apart.

+1
altho i'd put more along the lines of his having INSTITUTIONALIZED & LEGALIZED IT

the worst aspect of all this - and i do mean THE ABSOLUTE WORST - is the failure of the 4th estate (or the lamestream media, take yer pick) to focus much on any of it, esp since the now infamous and mostly forgotten 60minutes show back in dec2011 - mostly since if they do, it mostly makes THEIR TEAM look bad...

i mean, seriously - could you just imagine the uproar there would've been, had a Republican said those same words

"...can tell you, just from 40,000 feet, that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, in some cases, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn't illegal..."

its getting more difficult by the day for this to be ignored, doncha tink?

its also getting harder (and harder) to disagree with THIS POV:

Yet, as NewsBusters reported, Kroft and 60 Minutes withheld some politically sensitive details:

Despite accurately calling credit default swaps "The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street," CBS didn't properly inform viewers that George W. Bush had absolutely nothing to do with the Clinton-signed legislation that deregulated them, and that frequent campaign statements by Barack Obama and Joe Biden blaming the current financial crisis on Bush economic policies are therefore completely false.


The producers also chose not to expose the key Democrats -- most notably House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) -- that voted in favor of this legislation back in 2000 but have in recent weeks dishonestly blamed President Bush for the current crisis.


So, nine days before Obama was elected president, Kroft and 60 Minutes intentionally withheld information from viewers about CFMA that might have been embarrassing to the Democrat presidential candidate and his Party while discrediting their campaign claims that Bush and Republicans were completely to blame for the financial and economic meltdown.


Now, a little over three years later, with the President in the middle of a reelection campaign and admitting on national television "that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, in some cases, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn't illegal," Kroft, despite being totally familiar with CFMA, once again chose not to bring up anything that might interfere with Obama's ability to blame all the nation's economic problems on George W. Bush and Republicans.


How do these people continue to get away with such blatant bias?

because with the exception of certain "non-news" outfits and a few other "rightwing" voices with the mean$ to make sure their views/opinions get heard (read: them bad ole conservatives and the koch mob agin...)
We, The People are BEING ROBBED/SCAMMED BY THE LAMESTREAM MEDIA

and is precisely why....

[vt]

Re: IRS's Lerner, Treasury Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

Unfortunately the press and thought police don't believe in freedom of speech or exploring both sides of issues.
You see this especially on college campuses.

http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2014...tive-websites/