IRS Scandal Narrative Still Inspires Passion

This post was originally published on Forbes Oct 10, 2015

As something of an amateur historian, my biggest question about the IRS Scandal, which I sometimes refer to as Teapartygate, is how prominent it will be in our historical memory in a few decades.  There are certain controversies about particular incidents that become vehicles for ideological freight and achieve a long life at least among the culturally literate. Think of the Dreyfus affair (l'affaire Dreyfus) or the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti .  The IRS Scandal certainly has an ideological dimension as it can be portrayed as Washington insiders using the most feared federal agency to intimidate people advocating a return to constitutional values.

Ben Carson

The givenness of the IRS persecution of conservatives in the minds of some is illustrated in Ben Carson's recent call for the IRS to immediately revoke the tax-exempt status of the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR).

The IRS should immediately revoke CAIR’s tax-exempt status. Under the Obama administration, the IRS has systematically targeted conservative nonprofit groups for politically motivated audits and harassment. The agency should now properly do its job and punish the real violators of America’s laws and regulations.

The thing is that the IRS never did anything like that to a conservative organization.  Although other matter has been added. what I call the "core scandal" concerned delays and intrusive questions in the processing of applications for exempt status, not the instant revocation of exempt status for a particular remark.

George Will

At any rate it is not unusual to see complaints about mainstream media ignoring the scandal, sometimes in what is, at least to me, mainstream media.  George Will just called for the impeachment of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen concluding:

If the House votes to impeach, the Senate trial will not produce a two-thirds majority needed for conviction: Democrats are not ingrates. Impeachment would, however, test the mainstream media’s ability to continue ignoring this five-year-old scandal and would demonstrate to dissatisfied Republican voters that control of Congress can have gratifying consequences. (Emphasis added)

The TaxProf

If there is one place where it is clear that the IRS Scandal is still a thing, it is in Paul Caron's series which I call the day by day IRS Scandal as since May 13, 2013, the title to the posts have been in the form of The IRS, Scandal  Day X (May 13 was Day 5).  The initial post (presumably Day 1) was titled IRS Admits Targeting Conservative Groups in 2012 Election.

Earlier this week I wrote that Professor Caron's series may have "jumped the shark".  Although in my first piece, I suggested that it was time to convert it to an archive, after having gone through the whole series, I concluded that what really needed to happen was to have some days, perhaps quite a few, where the entry is nothing to report.

My issue with the series is that many of the entries, like Carson's remarks which made Day 880 have nothing at all to do with the core scandal or any of its reasonable extensions (missing e-mails, Senate and House investigations) or even its less reasonable extensions (initiatives that Lois Lerner could not get anybody else to do anything about, TIGTA reports on IRS meeting expenses, civil forfeitures for structuring).  It is not that items like Hillary's e-mails do not deserve coverage.  It is that characterizing them as part of the core scandal is not really justified.  Included in the nonsequitur group are some posts by me like Day 803, where I wrote about an exempt application turndown of an organization that gives undocumented people tickets home.

Teapartygate. Never Forget!

Professor Caron's response to my critique was very classy. My posts were featured as The IRS Scandal, Day 883.  He also included a polling question "Should I Continue My Daily Posts On The IRS Scandal?".  The results of the poll are The IRS Scandal, Day 884.  Given where the question was asked, it is not at all surprising that the majority was "Yes".  Arguably it was overwhelming 792 to 86.  The passion of some of the comments was what I found most interesting.

My favorite was this one by Porkypine:

Peter J. Reilly's writings on this matter in Forbes have tended to be IRS/Administration apologias, under a thin cloak of reasonableness. Too thin to cover the way he hovers between disingenuousness and mendacity in these efforts, however.  My advice: Ignore him here, it's more of the same.

I fear that the image I now have of myself with rapidly moving insect wings hovering between "disingenuousness and mendacity" will forever be burned in my brain.

There is Jack with a 1984 reference:

This is how the Memory Hole is created. Someone gets tired of the truth and slowly, slowly, the guilty slip away. Eventually, formerly fevered partisans forget they were ever incensed. Anyone on this Comment thread who votes to let this 'slip away' is aiding and abetting a gigantic crime and giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the Republic. The Republic's enemies count on you not being able to endure the distance.To you who are unable to endure I say shame. Shame

David Grove writes:

"Eternal vigilance IS the price of liberty." Thank you, Professor, for your vigilance.

That one really tugs at my heartstrings as when I was a young lad, my number one male role model was my big brother who as a second class petty officer on the USS Randolph recovered Mercury astronauts and hounded Russian submarines with the motto of his task force being "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty".

And then there is Aaron:

Run it every day til the cell door slams shut on Lois, please.

Interestingly, the TaxProf, himself, is not exactly an IRS Scandal true believer. On Day 369, Professor Caron wrote:

Step one should be to give Lois Lerner full immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony . And then let the chips fall where they may.

Scandal skeptics take Issa's refusal to grant Lois Lerner immunity as an indication that his committee was not really interested in finding out the truth.

Another Tax Blogger

The other passionate comment that I took note of was by Joe Kristan on his own blog.

 I worry that the administration will succeed in running out the clock on the outrageous IRS misconduct.

Although it appears that Joe and I have similar interests and attitudes and professional experience, I sometimes get hints that he might be just a tad more to the right than I am.  He and I are working on having some sort of IRS Scandal debate, after October 15 (That's the extended due date for individuals).  Stay tuned.

Will It Ever End?

There have been fairly extensive House and Senate investigations into the core scandal.  The agreed facts that came out of both reports can support narratives of either bureaucratic bumbling or politically biased harassment.  Someone on the left would likely argue that the scandal machine has actually won in that the IRS is neutered, at least for the next election cycle, in enforcing rules that provide some level of transparency in political spending.  On the right, there is still a call for more revelations and somebody being punished.  It looks like you will be able to follow it all on the TaxProf series for the foreseeable future.  It is worth noting that Happy Days continued for many years after Fonzie jumped the shark. (See 2:40)