Stephanie
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2004
- 70,230
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wow, from the Latimes..right or left people should be OUTRAGED over this abuse of POWER by this agency...but sadly we see they all are not.
SNIP:
Discrimination by the agency was consistent with 40 years of institutionalized hostility by the federal government to unorthodox political voices.
By Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane
May 29, 2013
Should you need a license from the government to exercise free speech? The real scandal at the Internal Revenue Service should be seen not as a left-versus-right issue but instead as infringement on the 1st Amendment. The people targeted were political entrepreneurs with unorthodox political voices. More to the point, IRS discrimination was consistent with 40 years of institutionalized hostility by the federal government to such views.
Elections in a free country are not truly free unless all voices are allowed to enter the marketplace of ideas. That was the principle behind the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, which lifted limits on campaign spending by political entrepreneurs organized as nonprofit corporations. It found that such discrimination originating in a 1972 lawsuit against an independent group that had called for Richard Nixon's impeachment was not only wrong but unconstitutional.
The public sector, like the private sector, needs entrepreneurs to challenge incumbent monopolists and thereby advance innovation. If the discriminatory IRS attitude revealed in this scandal had prevailed in the tech sector since 1970, there would be no Apple iPhones or Facebook apps, just bigger IBM mainframes and faster AT&T land lines. Likewise, if such rules had been in place in 1856, the dominant Whig and Democrat parties, which favored slavery, would have maintained their duopoly power and squelched entrepreneurial Republicans such as Abe Lincoln.
Now those who favor a two-party duopoly are blaming the Citizens United ruling for the IRS scandal. Let's review the facts.
all of it here
The real IRS scandal - latimes.com
SNIP:
Discrimination by the agency was consistent with 40 years of institutionalized hostility by the federal government to unorthodox political voices.
By Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane
May 29, 2013
Should you need a license from the government to exercise free speech? The real scandal at the Internal Revenue Service should be seen not as a left-versus-right issue but instead as infringement on the 1st Amendment. The people targeted were political entrepreneurs with unorthodox political voices. More to the point, IRS discrimination was consistent with 40 years of institutionalized hostility by the federal government to such views.
Elections in a free country are not truly free unless all voices are allowed to enter the marketplace of ideas. That was the principle behind the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, which lifted limits on campaign spending by political entrepreneurs organized as nonprofit corporations. It found that such discrimination originating in a 1972 lawsuit against an independent group that had called for Richard Nixon's impeachment was not only wrong but unconstitutional.
The public sector, like the private sector, needs entrepreneurs to challenge incumbent monopolists and thereby advance innovation. If the discriminatory IRS attitude revealed in this scandal had prevailed in the tech sector since 1970, there would be no Apple iPhones or Facebook apps, just bigger IBM mainframes and faster AT&T land lines. Likewise, if such rules had been in place in 1856, the dominant Whig and Democrat parties, which favored slavery, would have maintained their duopoly power and squelched entrepreneurial Republicans such as Abe Lincoln.
Now those who favor a two-party duopoly are blaming the Citizens United ruling for the IRS scandal. Let's review the facts.
all of it here
The real IRS scandal - latimes.com
