Republicans demand probe of tax scrutiny of conservative groups

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican lawmakers called on Sunday for a broad investigation of the tax agency's acknowledgement that its agents had singled out conservative political groups for more scrutiny, and demanded that President Barack Obama make clear the action was unacceptable.

"This is something we cannot let stand. It needs to have a full investigation," House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, said on "Fox News Sunday."

"I don't care if you're a conservative, a liberal a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine," Rogers added.

In a practice that drew complaints during the 2012 general election campaign, non-profit advocacy groups with the words "Tea Party" or "patriot" in their names were flagged for closer review by the Internal Revenue Service when they applied to the agency for tax-exempt status. Such groups may focus on issues, but may not directly support any candidate.

"This is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound mistrust that the American people have in government," Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said on CNN's "State of the Union." "The president needs to make crystal clear that this is totally unacceptable in America."

Collins said she also doubted the IRS's claim that the groups were targeted as part of an "inappropriate" organizing technique by a few bureaucrats in the agency's tax-exempt section, rather than for political reasons.

"I just don't buy that this was a couple of rogue IRS employees. After all, groups with "progressive" in their names were not targeted similarly," Collins said.

"If it had been just a small group of employees, then you would think that the high-level IRS supervisors would have rushed to make this public, fire the employees involved and apologized to the American people and informed Congress," she said.

NEW HEADACHE FOR OBAMA

An IRS official has apologized for the practice, which has embarrassed the tax-collecting agency and poses another potential headache for the Obama administration at a time when Republicans continue to raise questions about the administration's actions related to the deadly assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, last September.

Lois Lerner, director of the IRS tax-exempt office, said on Friday that revenue agents in Cincinnati targeted the conservative groups "without talking to managers" and that politics had played no role in the screening.

The Cincinnati staffers were trying to deal with a crush of applications for tax-exempt status by using key words to get through the paper work faster, she said.

About 300 applications initially were flagged for closer scrutiny. Of those, 75 were chosen for that treatment based on the presence of the key words in their names. Lerner said none of the applicants was denied tax-exempt status.

The Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration is to release a report on its investigation into the issue within a few days.

White House spokesman Jay Carney has called the closer scrutiny of the conservative groups "inappropriate," and has said he expected the inspector general's investigation to be thorough and lead to changes at the IRS.

Rep. Rogers said an outside investigation was needed to get to the root of the matter, referring to IRS statements last year that no groups had been targeted for additional scrutiny.

"I don't know where it stops or who's involved ... (The investigation) has to be external. It's clearly shown that they can't do it themselves. And I think Congress needs to have that oversight," Rogers said.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, requested the IRS inspector general report last year after accusing the IRS of targeting conservative groups.

He has vowed to investigate, and the House Oversight and Government Reform committee he chairs has the power to issue subpoenas.

At least one other congressional panel intends to hold hearings, giving Republicans multiple opportunities to hammer the agency and the White House over the IRS affair.

(Editing by David Lindsey and David Brunnstrom)

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Georgia Students Demand Racially Integrated Prom Because It's Not 1950

Racial segregation in public schools may have been rendered unconstitutional in 1954, but in Wilcox County, GA, echoes of that ugly tradition are alive and well. End of the year proms are divided into two categories—one designated for white students and the other for non-whites. And attendance by one race at the prom of another has historically resulted in a phone call to local cops.

But those days may be numbered. For the first time in the area’s history, Wilcox County High School seniors are raising money to hold their first-ever racially inclusive prom—yes, its very first…in 2013.

One of the high schoolers spearheading the effort is Keela Bloodworth, who reported to local news station, WSFA, “It’s embarrassing to know I’m from the county that still does this.”

 

 

It's important to note that Wilcox County High School's proms aren't actually sponsored by the school. These dances are privately-funded by parents, and they're held off of school grounds, so they’ve so far escaped any consequence for remaining segregated.

And some residents are invested in keeping it that way. Bloodworth said that while many students have embraced the idea of an integrated prom, there’s also been a good amount of backlash in response to her initiative, including the frequent disappearance of the advertising fliers she and her friends have posted locally.

But resistance isn’t entirely unexpected. Wilcox is a rural county in Georgia, not known for its willingness to embrace change; while Brown v. Board of Education happened in 1954, 41NBC reports the high school itself didn’t integrate its classes until the early 1980s.

But Bloodworth and her friends are determined to speed things up. On the Facebook donation page dedicated to their cause, the students explain that this is about more than a dance, “Well, as a group of adamant high school seniors, we want to make a difference in our community.”

And they’re getting there quickly. The integrated prom is scheduled for April 27, and so far, the students have raised about $1,000 to fund it. Not bad, but that number could increase exponentially—as of this morning, their story went viral and their Facebook donation page quadrupled in “Likes” in just a matter of hours.

Racism is far from dead in this country, but blatant segregation like this is so outrageous a prospect, the idea of teaching it to high school students borders on the surreal. But while it's easy to get angry about the lessons this community is teaching its children, the win is that the students themselves are smart enough not to listen.

Privately-funded or not, how would you respond to a segregated prom in your hometown? Let us know in the Comments.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• These Los Angeles Cops Are Super-Excited About Taffeta and Tiaras

• What Every Parent Should Know: How to Help Your Kids Deal With Peer Conflicts at School

• Could Compassion Be the Key to Reducing Dropout Rates?

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

View the original article here

Georgia Students Demand Racially Integrated Prom Because It's Not 1950

Racial segregation in public schools may have been rendered unconstitutional in 1954, but in Wilcox County, GA, echoes of that ugly tradition are alive and well. End of the year proms are divided into two categories—one designated for white students and the other for non-whites. And attendance by one race at the prom of another has historically resulted in a phone call to local cops.

But those days may be numbered. For the first time in the area’s history, Wilcox County High School seniors are raising money to hold their first-ever racially inclusive prom—yes, its very first…in 2013.

One of the high schoolers spearheading the effort is Keela Bloodworth, who reported to local news station, WSFA, “It’s embarrassing to know I’m from the county that still does this.”

 

 

It's important to note that Wilcox County High School's proms aren't actually sponsored by the school. These dances are privately-funded by parents, and they're held off of school grounds, so they’ve so far escaped any consequence for remaining segregated.

And some residents are invested in keeping it that way. Bloodworth said that while many students have embraced the idea of an integrated prom, there’s also been a good amount of backlash in response to her initiative, including the frequent disappearance of the advertising fliers she and her friends have posted locally.

But resistance isn’t entirely unexpected. Wilcox is a rural county in Georgia, not known for its willingness to embrace change; while Brown v. Board of Education happened in 1954, 41NBC reports the high school itself didn’t integrate its classes until the early 1980s.

But Bloodworth and her friends are determined to speed things up. On the Facebook donation page dedicated to their cause, the students explain that this is about more than a dance, “Well, as a group of adamant high school seniors, we want to make a difference in our community.”

And they’re getting there quickly. The integrated prom is scheduled for April 27, and so far, the students have raised about $1,000 to fund it. Not bad, but that number could increase exponentially—as of this morning, their story went viral and their Facebook donation page quadrupled in “Likes” in just a matter of hours.

Racism is far from dead in this country, but blatant segregation like this is so outrageous a prospect, the idea of teaching it to high school students borders on the surreal. But while it's easy to get angry about the lessons this community is teaching its children, the win is that the students themselves are smart enough not to listen.

Privately-funded or not, how would you respond to a segregated prom in your hometown? Let us know in the Comments.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• These Los Angeles Cops Are Super-Excited About Taffeta and Tiaras

• What Every Parent Should Know: How to Help Your Kids Deal With Peer Conflicts at School

• Could Compassion Be the Key to Reducing Dropout Rates?

---

A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

View the original article here

Governors coming to terms with sequester; demand flexibility from Washington

State Governors after a meeting with President Obama in December. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)WASHINGTON -- Governors frustrated by the prospect of $85 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts set to kick in next week have made the "F-word" their term of choice at the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

That word, of course, is "Flexibility."

"We believe in what we call flexible federalism," said Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, a Democrat who chairs the NGA. "That's a strong cooperative relationship between the states and the federal government that solves problems at all levels."

He added, "We know that cuts are coming, but we also don't want to suffer disproportionally. We want to have some input on what that looks like."

Barring an agreement between Congress and the White House before March 1, the federal government will begin a process known as the "sequester," shaving about $1.2 billion, or 2.5 percent, off the budget over the next decade.

Governors say they accept that they will receive fewer resources from the feds as a result, but they want to soften the blow by having more freedom in choosing how to use the more limited federal dollars. The scope of the struggle for power between the national government and the states is wide, ranging from whether states should be able to use federal transportation dollars on bike paths to how they should implement provisions of  the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

The desire for flexibility is shared among the governors across both party and ideological lines. As a group, they argue that if the federal government were to loosen the mandates and rules controlling federal grants and cooperative programs, events like the sequester wouldn't have nearly as much of a bite.

"It's wreaking havoc upon the states and our state budgets," said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican."Give us some leeway."

The call for breathing room, however, appears to be falling on deaf ears in Washington. Fallin took her concerns directly to the White House during a meeting with President Barack Obama Saturday, she said, but Obama did not express openness to proposals.

"He said that was an area where he was less inclined to work with the governors," Fallin said.

Many state lawmakers are still shaping their budgets for the next year, a complicated process made more difficult by the fiscal uncertainty. Between the "fiscal cliff," the "sequester" and other you-can't-make-this-stuff-up crises coming from the nation's capital, the states are left merely guessing how much they can depend on the government for support.

It also doesn't help that federal government has been running without a traditional budget since the first year of the Obama presidency.

The cycle of governing through last-minute deals has left even staunch supporters of the president frustrated.

"It is literally impossible for us to meet our necessary requirements of balancing our budgets and putting our programs and projects together if we are living under an uncertainty with respect to whether or not our federal dollars are going to be there," said Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat. "We don't have a budget from the United Sates of America!"

It's almost as if they really just want to use the other F-word.

View the original article here