May 16, 2013

IRS Scandal: The Union Connection

Thomas Lifson

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Jeffrey Lord of the American Spectator has done us a great favor by investigating the left wing union that represents IRS and other Treasury employees - 150,000 of them in 31 separate government agencies including the IRS. The union has signed on to the left wing agenda, and has funneled 94% of its political contributions in 2012 to Democrats.

The report is long and informative, and should be read in its entirety. Some key excerpts:

If you are working in the IRS, and you are an NTEU member, and you know your union leadership is funneling your union dues to anti-Tea Party candidates, and your union has so much raw power within the IRS that they even control whether you, an IRS employee, can get even such mundane tech gear as a Blackberry - what attitude are you going to display as you review Tea Party applications that must, by law, come in to the IRS for approval?

You already know what to do. And inside the IRS, that's exactly what was done. The Tea Party, in the vernacular, was screwed. By IRS bureaucrats whose union money is being used to attack the Tea Party. Of course these IRS employees know what to do - most probably without even being asked. There is no need to ask. And if they don't follow the union program - and want a Blackberry - tough luck.

The union power, in the hands of committed leftists, is substantial:

The President of the NTEU - a union that has gone out of its way to use IRS employee money to defeat the Tea Party - has a "vital role in recommending raises for most federal employees" - which includes, of course, IRS employees.

And the best is yet to come (if you are acommitted leftist):

With the IRS assuming serious police powers of Obamacare, in effect the members of one left-wing labor union will have access to the private health care records of every single American.

Lord documents the sordid history of IRS employees leaking confidential information - as happened in the 2012 elections.

If Americans depend in the IRS to be fair and neutral, then the unionization of employees and the confiscation of part of their paychecks to fund union dues laundered into contributions to the Democrats is very problematic. Left wingers love to discuss "root causes" when it comes to excusing criminality and social pathology. Well, let's apply that same analytical framework to the IRS. OIt is clear at this moment that permitting federal employees to unionize was a huge blunder. Even FDR understood that.

I do hope that the House committee investigating the IRS scandals will subpoena union officials and ask them how they imagine IRS employees that influence can be fair when the union itself is so trabidly anti-Tea Party.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/irs_scandal_the_union_connection.html at May 16, 2013 - 10:37:32 AM CDT