The IRS Scandal...Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

It says a great deal about the degenerate nature of our media that the above exchange, between Rep. Mike Kelly and outgoing IRS head Steve Miller is being aired on CSPAN and not on every network in America.

Note the respinse of the spectators once Rep. Kelly stopped speaking.

We now know that the IRS specifically targeted conservative groups seeking 501 C3 and 501c4 tax exemptions for invasive questioning and administrative delays in an attempt to deny them the same privileges many Left wing and Democrat advocacy groups have.

We now know that the top levels of the IRS (and almost certainly beyond the Agency) were fully aware of what was going on but made a calculated decision not to touch this until after President Obama's re-election:

The IRS commissioner "has known for at least a year that this was going on," said Myers, "and that this had happened. And did he share any of that information with the White House? But even more importantly, Congress is going to ask him, why did you mislead us for an entire year? Members of Congress were saying conservatives are being targeted. What's going on here? The IRS denied it. Then when -- after these officials are briefed by the IG that this is going on, they don't disclose it. In fact, the commissioner sent a letter to Congress in September on this subject and did not reveal this. Imagine if we -- if you can -- what would have happened if this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different."

We now know that donors to Mitt Romney and to conservative cause like Frank VanderSloot, Hal Scherz and a host of others were audited, many for the first time once it became known they were backing conservative of Republican causes. In Frank VanderSloot's case, he hadn't been audited in over thirty years...until he donated almost a million dollars to conservative causes and to Mitt Romney.

We know that Lois Lerner, who was overseeing tax-exempt groups for the IRS, finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing...and unsuccessfully tried palming it off on what she described as a few low level employees in Cincinnati, Ohio. And we now know that she outright lie, because as Reuters reported, high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting. And the entire corrupt operation reached its peak around May of 2012, in the midst of President Obama's re-election campaign.

In a particularly outrageous insult to our intelligence, President Obama made made some obviously ingenuous remarks of how shocking this all was to him, and the director of the agency, Steve Miller 'resigned'...except, as Miller himself revealed, he was scheduled to leave in June anyway!

We know, too, that the IRS outright lied about  the existence of  a large number of documents related to the policy of targeting, Pro Israel, Conservative, Republican and Tea Party organizations in response to a 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, even though the documents were later discovered by the IRS inspector general.

And we also know that Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive (and registered Democrat) in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 the targeting of conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment got bonuses and a raise during her tenure for a job well done:

Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year, for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.

Bonuses as large as those awarded to Ingram normally require presidential approval, according to the Office of Personnel official regulations.

Not only that, but Ingraham is being rewarded with a promotion. Thanks to her outstanding work in violating the rights of her fellow Americans, she's been promoted to - wait for it - head the IRS division enforcing ObamaCare.

Lois Lerner's bonus last year, by the way? a whopping $42,531 in 2012. Not bad for someone who works for the IRS but by her own admission 'isn't good at math'.

That's what we know so far.

What we don't know is how far up this goes.

It's obvious that the word was out from upstairs - 'get the Tea Party, get the Republicans, go after the opponents of the Democrats'.

Outgoing head Steve Miller says he used to know who was responsible for initiating these policies but he, um, forgot.

I think we're going to find out, and the question isn't going to go away...what did David Axelrod, Jim Messina and David Plouffe whop ran Obama's re-election campaign know? What did President Obama know? And when did he know it?