“Our goal is for ‘We the People’ to be an educated and informed electorate, involved in our government, and working with and holding our elected representatives accountable to their oath of office to uphold the Constitution.”
— Laurens County (S.C.) Tea Party mission statement
In 2009, Diane Belsom was one of millions of Americans who answered the rallying cry of the Tea Party movement:
“After Obama was elected, I was devastated. And they were calling for Tea Party rallies, and I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing but I’ll figure it out and I’ll do one,’ so I did.”
A homeschooling mom in Laurens, South Carolina, Belsom started a local Tea Party group that held its first rally in April 2009. She became involved in networking with other activists who told her she should incorporate the group and apply for non-profit status. Nearly three years after she filed her application — and after she complied with burdensome, intrusive and, in some cases, redundant requests for additional information — Belsom still has not received word on whether the group’s 501(c)4 status will be approved.
The experience of the Laurens County Tea Party was replicated for dozens of other groups across the country. We now know why.
Lauren Belsom and her fellow patriots were victimized by an Internal Revenue Service that deliberately and systematically targeted President Obama’s political opponents for harassment:
“I think people need to be held accountable,” said Belsom, who has contacted her congressman, Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan, to complain about her group’s problems with the IRS.
“We’re supposed to be living in a republic, not some kind of totalitarian system,” she said. “People need to be sent to jail if they’ve broken laws or, at a minimum, fired.”
Read the whole thing at Viral Read.
RT @smitty_one_each: TOM ‘People Need to Be Sent to Jail’ http://t.co/dHPWBIDGBa #TCOT
@smitty_one_each. His enemy list?Maybe he should throw every American in Jail for being American?
And why does Media Matters qualify for 501(c)4 status???
[…] Hill, Daily Kos, First Read, The Maddow Blog, PostPartisan, The Fix, White House Dossier, The Other McCain, Betsy’s Page, Da Tech Guy On DaRadio Blog, Scared Monkeys,msnbc.com, Obsidian […]
Wondering how I missed this in my own backyard. Didn’t see it in any local papers or news programs.
We`ll beat the bailiffs out of fun,
We`ll make the mayor and sheriffs run
We are the boys no man dares dun
If he regards a whole skin.
Our hearts so stout have got no fame
For soon `tis known from whence we came
Where`er we go they fear the name
Of Garryowen in glory.
Obama’s IRS: Intimidating Republican Supporters…
It’s time for people to go to jail. And by “people,” I mean Barack Hussein Obama….
Because SC media has become nearly as uniformly liberal as the national media. The State is owned by McClatchy.
You could see the disappointment on several of the Charleston TV newspeople’s faces when Sanford beat Busch. They gush over Obama constantly.
Same question for Organizing For America.
Would almost have made it worth the tuning in!
This is a perfect illustration of why you don’t let the government decide who gets to exercise their rights and who doesn’t.
The way it’s supposed to work is that one background check exists for all of us, especially those in government.
The Bill of Rights: the only legal background check
The obama administration can not be allowed to investigate itself in any of these matters. Greg Abbot, the Texas Attorney General, would make a good prosecutor. I’m sure he could free up some time.
You misspelled Snake.
It’s “Organizing for Action” now.
a/k/a The Columbia Rag? Nah, it’s unfair – snakes perform a useful function in nature. McClatchy papers, not so much.
On the bright side, their stock had traded as high as $75 a share just before they bought out Knight-Ridder in 2006, you can buy all you want today at $2.53. Heh.
It’s still “ofay”.