Let’s hope the brouhaha over Benghazi does not prevent another story from getting the notice it deserves. An Internal Revenue Service official admitted yesterday that tea party and other conservative organizations were specifically singled out by the IRS for extra scrutiny of their tax exemptions. The IRS said that groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their names were singled out for review.
According to the IRS, this targeting was done by lower-level employees in an IRS office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it was not a result of political bias. The former may be true, though there obviously needs to be an independent investigation to make sure, but the latter is not plausible. Whether the bias was deliberate or subconscious, it was political bias. Period.
Obviously, such political targeting by the IRS brings back thoughts of prior administrations, where the targeting was directed by higher ups.
And so the question is this: Assuming the political targeting in this case really was just done by local employees, which of these is the worst: (i) Targeting of people with particular political beliefs for extra tax scrutiny by high level government officials? (ii) An IRS so out of control that lower level employees can go around targeting certain groups because of their political beliefs without being stopped? (iii) A political atmosphere so corrosive against certain groups that lower level IRS employees think it is appropriate to single out those groups for extra scrutiny just because their names?
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