It Wasn’t Conservatives That Were Being Investigated by the IRS; It Was the Koch Brothers’ Front Groups

From:  Wall Street on Parade

By Pam Martens: May 16, 2013 

Attorney General Eric Holder Testifying Before the House Judiciary Committee on May 15, 2013

The President Obama of 2013 who is feigning outrage over the IRS adding extra scrutiny to nonprofit applications being filed with the words Tea Party in their title is not the same man who singled out Americans for Prosperity in a speech in 2010. Americans for Prosperity was founded and funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have funneled money into politics through front groups for over four decades to advance their corporate deregulatory agenda that powers their profits and personal wealth. The Kochs are majority owners of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world. (According to Forbes, the brothers’ wealth has almost doubled in just three years to $34 billion each – while 46 million Americans without lobbyists and clever tax attorneys live below the poverty level, including one in five children.) 

Americans for Prosperity is a front for creating Tea Party groups around the country to project an outpouring of grassroots’ momentum for the Koch agenda. 

The President had this to say in 2010:

“Right now, all across the country, special interests are planning and running millions of dollars of attack ads against Democratic candidates. Because last year there was a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United – they’re allowed to spend as much as they want without ever revealing who’s paying for the ads. That’s exactly what they’re doing. Millions of dollars. And the groups are benign sounding – Americans for Prosperity, who’s against that…None of them will disclose who’s paying for these ads. You don’t know if it’s a Wall Street bank, you don’t know if it’s a big oil company, you don’t know if it’s an insurance company, you don’t even know if it’s a foreign controlled entity. In some races they are spending more money than the candidates…They want to take Congress back and return to the days where lobbyists wrote the laws. It is the most insidious power grab since the monopolies of the gilded age.”

Later in the speech, the President promises that “We are not about to allow a corporate takeover of our democracy.” But at the very moment that the Nation is galvanized around a right-wing fueled media frenzy involving IRS scrutiny of nonprofit applications coming from groups with Tea Party in their name, the President folds like a cheap suit, calling the conduct “outrageous” and throwing the acting Commissioner of the IRS, Steven Miller, under the bus. 

The role of the President to lead and focus the Nation on the overarching issues was left to Congressman Ted Deutch, a Democrat from Florida’s 21^st District, who correctly sized up the real problem in yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.  MORE