Some conservatives and libertarians long suspected that the IRS may be targeting Tea Party and limited government groups. The conservative news outlet The Blaze questioned whether the Obama administration was using the IRS to silence liberty-minded groups due to their outrageous demands and scrutiny over a year ago.  According toThe Blaze, The Ohio Liberty Council’s (OLC) President Tom Zawistokowski wrote that the IRS had been demanding very detailed information on the OLC’s activities back in early 2012. The liberty group had to almost stop their activities just to find time to comply with the IRS.  In the letter, Tom states:  My own Portage County TEA Party has been waiting for over a year just to get a response from the IRS so we can file our 2010 tax return! In the attached PDF … Read entire article »

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and urge him or her to vote YES on H.R. 45, a bill to fully repeal ObamaCare. Introduced by Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), it would repeal both the full Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the additional health care provisions that were added in the Health Care Reconciliation Act later. It is critical that ObamaCare be fully repealed as the first step to implementing real, patient-centered reforms that will let the market drive health care prices down. With full implementation coming in just over seven short months, it is more urgent than ever to repeal ObamaCare. It will kill jobs, bankrupt the government, drive up everyone’s health insurance costs, put bureaucrats in charge of … Read entire article »

In nearly every state across the country, legislators are looking for ways to maintain vital services to the neediest among us. Education, police, fire and health services have been cut in efforts to trim government budgets, so what does it say about a state’s priorities when the top paid public employees are athletic coaches? A recent study shows that, in all but ten states, the highest paid employee is an athletic coach. Usually this is a football coach, although a few states reserve the top-paying spot for basketball and, in one state, it’s the hockey coach. In the ten states in which there are state employees which make more than a coach, the position is held by another college or university position. In most cases, this is a department chair or … Read entire article »

In the wake of allegations that the Internal Revenue Service has been extensively used as a weapon by the Obama Administration against political foes, many have reflected on the frightening notion that the IRS will soon be in charge of your health care and what services you are provided under Obamacare. It is worth remembering that it has been proposed to nationalize the tax preparation process under the IRS – you know, because nationalizing health care, the student loan industry and large swaths of the automotive industry has worked out so well already. Recent articles by the American Enterprise Institute and Americans for Tax Reform point out that this idea has been floated recently inside the beltway. As AEI put it, Today, the majority of individual tax returns are filed electronically, rather … Read entire article »

The American Heritage Medical Dictionary defines ‘superiority complex’ as an exaggerated feeling of being superior to others.  McGraw-Hill defines it as any number of behaviors, including self-aggrandization.  What better defines feelings of superiority and self-aggrandizement than the claim of former vice-President Al Gore, who once famously proclaimed to have taken the “initiative in creating the internet”. Perhaps the Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful from Massachusetts, Ed Markey, is trying to channel Gore’s self-aggrandizing approach, taking some level of credit for every technology-based invention under the sun – from satellite dishes, to Skype, to Facebook, and even Google.   In a newly released ad, Markey, who is running against Republican Gabriel Gomez to replace John Kerry in the U.S. Senate, takes legislative credit for having brought the world these technological advances. The ad opens by running through … Read entire article »

Paul Krugman is at it again. The Nobel Prize-winning, devoutly Keynesian economist argued in a recent column that the thing needed to cure the sluggish American economy is, wait for it, more inflation. This is the classic Keynesian view that the Federal Reserve can stimulate the economy by inflating the currency. Krugman is doubtless basing his reasoning at least partially on the well known, but now outdated Phillips Curve, which demonstrated a historical inverse correlation between inflation and unemployment. What the Phillips Curve fails to demonstrate, however, is any causal relation between rising inflation and lower unemployment. No doubt, prices tend to rise during periods of robust economic activity due to increased demand resulting from increased wealth, and prices fall during contractions simply because people have less money to spend. It … Read entire article »

Washington, DC- Following new discoveries of the IRS’s targeting of small-government groups applying for tax-exempt status, FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe released the following statement: “This is not a political issue, this is a First Amendment issue. Mom and Pop citizen groups critical of the federal government and/or engaged in educating their fellow citizens on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were specifically targeted by IRS agents. This ominous stifling of free speech can never happen again in America, and there needs to be a full accounting of who knew what, when did they know it, and who is responsible. The IRS used its power to discourage and intimidate Americans from speaking out against bad policies, stifling the First Amendment right of every citizen to hold government accountable. This is the stuff of … Read entire article »

Washington, DC- The Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act, S. 743 on Monday evening, a piece of legislation that would force online stores to collect sales taxes on behalf of other states, regardless of the web company’s physical location. FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe commented, “The Internet sales tax bill was passed in the name of ‘fairness for small business,’ but championed by Washington insiders, big box retail lobbyists and tax collectors. With friends like that for struggling entrepreneurs, who needs enemies?” “No honest Senator can support the Marketplace Fairness Act and claim to stand for free markets at the same time. Every Senator who voted to pass the Internet sales tax bill–including Republicans- made a clear choice to support taxing without representation, picking winners and losers in the market at the expense … Read entire article »

The IRS has been sharing confidential applications and documents from conservative organizations to such news sources as Pro-Publica – funded by George Soros. Hopefully the image below is helpful in sharing and letting people know about the corruption going on over at the IRS. If you or someone you know has been targeted by the IRS due to your political beliefs – please share your story with us at IRS Target. Read more for graphic. Read more CompleteA Guide to how the IRS uses Confidential Information … Read entire article »

Washington, DC- FreedomWorks congratulates Mark Sanford on his Congressional special election victory in South Carolina’s 1st District. FreedomWorks PAC endorsed Mark Sanford one week prior to the special election, when Sanford stood 9 points behind his opponent in the polls. FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe commented, “Mark Sanford’s victory tonight is further evidence that the political power balance in Washington has shifted. A strong fiscally conservative candidate, backed by a tenacious community of issue-driven grassroots activists, can prevail without the traditional power brokers of the Beltway.” FreedomWorks activists across the District acted quickly, organizing a last-chance “Get out the Vote” effort in the final week before the special election to educate voters on Sanford’s consistent record of fiscally responsible economic policy. On the windy and rainy Saturday leading into Election Week, grassroots activists knocked … Read entire article »

Dear FreedomWorks Member, On behalf of our more than 4 million members nationwide, I urge you to contact your Senators and Representatives in Congress and tell them to support the Coal Jobs Protection Act: S. 861 in the Senate and H.R. 1829 in the House of Representatives. In accordance with the Clean Water Act, coal mining companies are currently required to apply for 402 and/or 404 permits through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which regulate the potential discharge of pollutants, dredge and fill material from mining operations. However, the EPA has recently been delaying the review and approval process for these permits, hampering the American coal industry. As a result, thousands of coal jobs have been lost across the country and untold capital investment has been either misallocated or paralyzed. Coal is here, … Read entire article »

The IRS has for several years been targeting fiscally conservative and freedom-oriented grassroots organizations with highly detailed and burdensome demands. The effect has been to delay approval of tax exempt status, causing some organizations to abandon the effort, harming their ability to participate in the public debate. FreedomWorks has obtained the IRS letter listing questions to TheTeaparty.Net. The letter contains several pages of detailed and invasive questions, going far beyond any reasonable effort to determine whether the targeted groups are focused on public service and education rather than on candidate advocacy or electioneering. Among the details the IRS asked for are List all activities, rallies, advertising to be explained “in detail” Lists of industry conventions at which the organization had a presence and any materials distributed to the public there copies of current web pages. “If … Read entire article »

The Obama administration has gone beyond the limits of Obamacare and has further raised taxes without approval from Congress.  This move forces more low income Americans and struggling businesses to pay the mandate taxes. A lawsuit led by the Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to force the IRS to obey the law as it is written. CEI is not party to the suit, but is advising the plaintiffs. The action stems from the IRS deliberately misinterpreting the Obamacare law, humorously and ironically named the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or ACA. The action by the IRS will force more people to pay the individual mandate tax, and exposes businesses in health care freedom states to the employer mandate to provide insurance to their employees, which will cost jobs and force many out of business … Read entire article »

Adding to this week’s Scandalpalooza is a lesser known, but incredibly disturbing tidbit. According to Legal Insurrection, the federal government mandated speech codes on all college campuses.  Free speech issues on college campuses usually center around student groups’ rights to protest, but this latest first amendment assault creates such a subjective vacuum, it renders every college student a potential criminal: In a letter sent yesterday to the University of Montana that explicitly states that it is intended as “a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country,” the Departments of Justice and Education have mandated a breathtakingly broad definition of sexual harassment that makes virtually every student in the United States a harasser while ignoring the First Amendment. The mandate applies to every college receiving federal funding—virtually every American institution of higher education nationwide, public … Read entire article »

School choice received a blow in Louisiana today when the Supreme Court deemed funding for vouchers unconstitutional. Last April, Governor Bobby Jindal expanded school choice, including scholarships offered for up to 5,600 students for the current school year. More than 10,000 students applied for 5,600 spots in private and religious schools this year, and were selected by a lottery. The program was set to be expanded next year with nearly 8,000 students approved for vouchers with more scholarships expected to be approved in June. These are all students from low to moderate-income families who would otherwise attend poorly performing public schools.  The plaintiffs in the case included the Louisiana Association of Educators and the Louisiana School Boards Association, and the vote was 6-1. Justice John Weimer, one of the majority votes, … Read entire article »

This year’s Banned Books List included a few surprises. The American Library Association’s annual report highlights those books saddled with censorious complaints from parents, educators and assorted bureaucrats. Mom and Dad understandably would be horrified to find Fifty Shades of Grey in the elementary school stacks, but some administrators objected to Dav Pilkey’s popular Captain Underpants kid-lit series. It appears some paper-shufflers found the silly superhero too disrespectful of their efforts. “I don’t see these books as encouraging disrespect for authority. Perhaps they demonstrate the value of questioning authority,” Pilkey said. “Some of the authority figures in the Captain Underpants books are villains. They are bullies and they do vicious things.” We learned over the weekend that school office bullies aren’t restricted to the K-12 world. Two California university professors seem to be … Read entire article »