Originally published June 11 2013
Smoking gun evidence? IRS targeting began day after chief met with Obama at White House
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Former Democratic Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder used to call Ronald Reagan the "Teflon president" because he wasn't blamed for anything adverse that happened during his administration. Nothing "stuck" to Reagan, she used to say, because he was the "great communicator."
I wonder what she would say about President Barack Obama, now that several scandals are swirling around his administration and, so far anyway, none of them have "stuck" to him, either.
That is especially true of the scandal involving the improper targeting of conservative and "patriot" groups by the Internal Revenue Service. Though Obama has public rebuked it and has "fired" the acting director of the IRS (though he was leaving the agency anyway), new details indicate that Obama may very well have had a direct hand in the targeting.
Enter Obama and the NTEU
According to National Review Online, which has been focusing on the scandal, Colleen Kelly, the head of the National Treasury Employees Union, an anti-Tea Party entity, visited Obama at the White House the day before IRS employees "set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America," the site reported. The White House log confirms she visited at 12:30 p.m. March 31, 2010 (a searchable form of the log is provided here). NaturalNews entered Kelly's name, the time and date specified, and sure enough, she came up on the searchable database for a 12:30 appointment; but just days later, Kelly's visitor information no longer appeared.
Per National Review:
The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department's Inspector General's Report, IRS employees - the same employees who belong to the NTEU - set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America.
The IG's report described it thusly:
"April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed."
To summarize, the very day after the head of a very openly anti-Tea Party labor union, and the one to which IRS employees belong, met with Obama, the manager of the agency's "Determinations Unit Program agreed" to open a "Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases," the IG's report stated.
The 150,000-member strong NTEU represents IRS employees along with 30 other government agencies. Kelley is a 14-year IRS veteran agent, and the union's political action committee endorsed Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, and gave hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions to anti-Tea Party candidates in 2010 and 2012.
So in essence, anti-tea party union members have been put in charge of deciding the tax-exempt status of tea party-related groups, even as these same IRS employees are in the position of financing the campaigns of anti-tea party candidates. Nice.
Sound far-fetched? Conspiratorial? How's this for "conspiracy" - Kelley has been quoted as saying of her relationship with the Obama White House, "For me, it's all about collaboration."
Here's another "coincidence," per NRO:
On yet another occasion, Kelley's presence at the White House was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive Order 13522...[a] presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party NTEU - the IRS union - a greater role in the day-to-day operation of the IRS than it had already - which was considerable.
Kelley's White House presence tied to implementation of pro-union intervention by Obama
Kelley also attended the White House Christmas party in 2009; six days later, Obama issued Executive Order 13522 (text here), titled, "Creating Labor-Management Forums To Improve Delivery of Government Services," and applying all across the federal bureaucracy (to include the IRS). In short, the directive was designed to "allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters..."
"However else this December 2009 Executive Order can be described, the directive was a serious grant of authority within the IRS to the powerful anti-Tea Party union," NRO reported.
The NTEU was also the same whose IRS members were urged in 2010 by Senate Democrats (Chuck Schumer, Al Franken, Max Baucus, and others) to target the Tea Party and related groups.
Obama's involvement, tacitly or otherwise, is interwoven through all of these recent scandals. And from the looks of it, he may have had direct prior knowledge of the IRS's targeting of political enemies.
Teflon deflects, but it also wears out eventually. We'll see if Obama becomes this generation's "Teflon president."
Sources for this article include:
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=86986
http://dailycaller.com
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