Trump threatens to withhold federal funding from universities that allow protests (1 Viewer)

[superchuck500]

Apart from this being a blatant First Amendment violation and highly fascist - the craziest thing about this whole "the president can cut off all federal funding for anything at any time" is that its going to come back around - and the next president will have a different agenda and do the same thing. It's illegal and just a terrible way to run a country.

 

[TampaJoe]

You've already ignored the facts but to get right down to it, this is your claim, provide your own facts with actual, authoritative sources - no, your vague memory of partisan content does not qualify - or, to be as blunt (but probably more polite) as you deserve at this point, shut up.

I’ll post as I please Rob. You are free to ignore. Matters not to me.

 

[MT15]

I know people who were audited because they were on a donor list. Further their businesses were audited. So it’s not just a theory.

So I get why you are worried that liberals might be treated in the same fashion. The difference is I can condemn all such behavior. You appear to want to defend it as long as it is directed at the other party. And you wonder why conservatives don’t trust liberals administrations anymore than you trust conservative administrations.

Okay. This is it. Your bs has reached the end with me. You can spew your crap til the cows come home because I won’t see it.

Ridiculous insults based on your own hurt feelings indeed.

 

[TampaJoe]

Okay. This is it. Your bs has reached the end with me. You can spew your crap til the cows come home because I won’t see it.

Ridiculous insults based on your own hurt feelings indeed.

That’s up to you.

 

[zztop]

Wake me up when a (D) convicted of 34 felonies and sexual assault gets elected president. Otherwise fork off with that both sides bullshirt

 

[RobF]

I’ll post as I please Rob. You are free to ignore. Matters not to me.

It's not "shut up because I say so" Joe, it's "shut up because you've failed repeatedly to put up and consequently your posts have no value whatsoever and are objectively just a waste of time."

As here, where you've fallen back yet again to "I'll post as I please" instead of providing any actual content whatsoever.

 

[MT15]

It's not "shut up because I say so" Joe, it's "shut up because you've failed repeatedly to put up and consequently your posts have no value whatsoever and are objectively just a waste of time."

As here, where you've fallen back yet again to "I'll post as I please" instead of providing any actual content whatsoever.

And relying on anecdotal stories about an audit of an individual because they appeared on a donor list. I’m pretty sure nobody from the IRS gave them that reason for being audited.

I guess when my husband’s business was audited under Reagan’s admin we really missed our chance to scream “weaponization” and sue the IRS. No, we simply complied and said - crap, well I guess it was our turn. And paid the stuff they found, which wasn’t much.

It never occurred to us to try to blame some conspiracy and play victim. Silly us!

 

[TampaJoe]

It's not "shut up because I say so" Joe, it's "shut up because you've failed repeatedly to put up and consequently your posts have no value whatsoever and are objectively just a waste of time."

As here, where you've fallen back yet again to "I'll post as I please" instead of providing any actual content whatsoever.

You are free to ignore Rob. Nobody says we have to agree. It certainly won’t hurt my feelings.

 

[Sendai]

“Based on the information you flagged regarding the existence of a "Progressives" entry on BOLO lists, TIGTA performed additional research which determined that six tax-exempt applications filed between May 2010 and May 2012 having the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were included in the 298 cases the IRS identified as potential political cases. We also determined that 14 tax-exempt applications filed between May 2010 and May 2012 using the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were not referred for added scrutiny as potential political cases. In total, 30 percent of the organizations we identified with the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were processed as potential political cases. In2 comparison, our audit found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt applications with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were processed as potential political cases duringthe timeframe of our audit.”

https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/TIGTAFinalResponseToRepLevin06262013.pdf

“

1. Conservative groups were more likely to be flagged overall: According to a Ways and Means Committee analysis, 248 of the 298 groups flagged in this period were conservative-leaning, 29 were liberal-leaning, and the rest had no clear political slant. Analyses from news organizations have found similar results. Now, the full list of terms and topics IRS specialists were told to look out for was broader — it included groups that were "progressive," were "successors to ACORN," or that dealt with "medical marijuana," along with other liberal keywords. But unlike the "Tea Party" keyword, these keywords didn't mean immediate flagging — according to the Treasury Department inspector general, only six out of 20 groups with "progress" or "progressive" in their name were flagged, and all were eventually approved.”

The scandal over IRS scrutiny of conservative groups, explained

Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money...

www.vox.com

Seems a bit unbalanced.

 

[RobF]

You are free to ignore Rob. Nobody says we have to agree. It certainly won’t hurt my feelings.

So, to summarise, in an attempt to draw an equivalence with Donald Trump's first amendment violating fascist behaviour, you've put forward... the IRS's using particular keywords for scrutiny from 2004 - when Bush was President - to 2013, attempted to redesignate this as "Obama", assumed that a greater number of right-wing organisations being flagged can only be due to a deliberate partisan abuse of the system and not related to anything else like a non-partisan process combined with the number and nature of applications, ignored Democratic organisations having their tax status revoked, ignored every attempt by anyone to get you to substantiate your claims beyond your own vague memory of partisan hearings, and are instead, at this point, are just posting, "You can ignore me" and "I'll post how I like", which is apparently "with no substance or even relevant content whatsoever."

Yeah, not your finest moment. And it was a low bar.

 

[wardorican]

“Based on the information you flagged regarding the existence of a "Progressives" entry on BOLO lists, TIGTA performed additional research which determined that six tax-exempt applications filed between May 2010 and May 2012 having the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were included in the 298 cases the IRS identified as potential political cases. We also determined that 14 tax-exempt applications filed between May 2010 and May 2012 using the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were not referred for added scrutiny as potential political cases. In total, 30 percent of the organizations we identified with the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were processed as potential political cases. In2 comparison, our audit found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt applications with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were processed as potential political cases duringthe timeframe of our audit.”

https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/TIGTAFinalResponseToRepLevin06262013.pdf

“

1. Conservative groups were more likely to be flagged overall: According to a Ways and Means Committee analysis, 248 of the 298 groups flagged in this period were conservative-leaning, 29 were liberal-leaning, and the rest had no clear political slant. Analyses from news organizations have found similar results. Now, the full list of terms and topics IRS specialists were told to look out for was broader — it included groups that were "progressive," were "successors to ACORN," or that dealt with "medical marijuana," along with other liberal keywords. But unlike the "Tea Party" keyword, these keywords didn't mean immediate flagging — according to the Treasury Department inspector general, only six out of 20 groups with "progress" or "progressive" in their name were flagged, and all were eventually approved.”

The scandal over IRS scrutiny of conservative groups, explained

Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money...

www.vox.com

Seems a bit unbalanced.

I get that it was a scandle, because the flagging was lopsided and they didn't seem to have a good answer for that. But it seems like most of the flagged applications turned out to correctly need the higher scrutiny.

It should be noted that, according to the inspector general, most of the flagged applications did in fact have “indications of significant political campaign intervention” (the IRS argues that all flagged groups had these indications). So, again, it was the IRS’s job to make sure that those groups were not primarily created to spend on elections.

 

[Lapaz]

It makes we want to throw up in my mouth when people say that Trump and Musk are good because "they're going to run the government like a business" - they don't know what they're doing. They're running the government like a really poorly run business.

I put them in different categories. Trump is a terrible businessman. He has bankrupted more businesses than practically anyone, and he has grifted, scammed and defrauded lots of people out of their money. What money he has would've been the same if he had put it in a bank collecting minimal interest. What Trump is good at is persuasion of the weak minded.

On the other hand, Musk is a great technological businessman, but that has led to hubris that is causing great damage. Besides that, his more recent venture with X has been terrible, and he is taking that same approach with the government. More importantly, it is a fallacy that government can operate like a business. One has a goal to profit and the other has a goal to serve. One has to serve in situations that can't be profitable, such as in rural areas, or where the profits wouldn't be seen for decades, such as in basic research. One steps in to profit once the government has borne the cost to create the opportunities. Musk is innovative at identifying and taking advantage of those opportunities, but that is fundamentally a different mindset than is required for good governance. It seems to me that his mindset doesn't suit good governance.

 

[RobF]

I get that it was a scandle, because the flagging was lopsided and they didn't seem to have a good answer for that. But it seems like most of the flagged applications turned out to correctly need the higher scrutiny.

Indeed. Additionally, as the Vox article also states, "As of early 2015, no evidence had emerged to indicate any White House involvement in these IRS actions," all of which makes attempts to make this somehow equivalent to Donald Trump's threat to withhold federal funding to Universities that allow protests - i.e. the subject of this thread - a non-starter.

There's also more recent information on this, since in 2017 the Treasury IG for tax matters released another report on the criteria used - https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...90c7ec-a9f7-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html - but that also, obviously, lends itself to the, "No, this isn't even remotely equivalent," conclusion.

So I think we can stop entertaining this and focus on the massive and blatant overreach of the Trump administration that's happening right now?

 

[TampaJoe]

I get that it was a scandle, because the flagging was lopsided and they didn't seem to have a good answer for that. But it seems like most of the flagged applications turned out to correctly need the higher scrutiny.

That’s fine wardorican. They should then have gone thru all the existing 501c3 organizations and applied the same standards to them that applied in denying 501c3 status to the conservative organizations. But they didn’t do that. So the application of this higher standard was not applied equally.

They should have asked all the existing 501c3 orgs for their donor lists. But they didn’t. That might be seen as excessive. Maybe it was.

 

[MT15]

So I think we can stop entertaining this and focus on the massive and blatant overreach of the Trump administration that's happening right now?

Ha! They’d rather talk about anything other than that.

 

[MT15]

Seems a bit unbalanced.

Ignoring the obvious - which is that the Tea Party orgs were more numerous, and were breaking the tax laws at a higher rate. They were overtly political, and were flagged for good reason, along with such progressive orgs who were doing the same.

I mean, come on, you are actually going to contend that the Bush Admin started targeting these groups? And the Trump Admin just let it slide, even though they had proof of targeting? Remember the Trump DOJ declined to indict anyone at the IRS or anywhere else.

The victim mentality is real, guys. It’s so destructive to the country as well.