Michael Gaynor
The "War" the liberal media establishment ignores: Obama Administration v. "Nice Woman" Catherine Engelbrecht
By Michael Gaynor
It is very important to ascertain how high up in the IRS the scandal reached, but it is even more important to learn who is responsible for the IRS, FBI, BATF and OSHA all investigating Engelbrecht after she sought tax exempt status for True the Vote and King Street Patriots.
The Obama administration is at war with True the Vote and King Street Patriots founder and president Catherine Engelbrecht as well as those organizations, and the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan was just targeted by Esquire for daring to report on that war and to describe Engelbrecht as "a nice woman."
The snide Esquire hit piece, titled "Our Lady Noonan Presses On" (www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/La_Noonan_Is_On_The_Case), quickly followed a follow up article by Noonan on the IRS scandal – "Case Closed? Far From It" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577904578557903396922628.html? mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop) that refuted House Oversight Committee ranking member Elijah Cumming's campaign to declare the question of who created the scandal solved and end the investigation.
In her follow up Noonan reported this pertinent information on the misprocessing of the True the Vote tax exemption application:
"Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, which sought tax-exempt status, recently came into possession of a copy of a 20-month-old letter from the IRS's Taxpayer Advocate Service in Houston, acknowledging that her case had been assigned to an agent in Cincinnati. 'He is waiting for a determination from their office in Washington,' the advocate said. The agent was 'unable to give us a timeframe' on when determination would be made."
Esquire blogger Charles P. Pierce raved: "True The Vote is a national voter-suppression organization that, among its other 'social-welfare' activities, got hip-deep in the fight against the recall of Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. It filed to become a 501(c) (3) organization, and not a 501(c) (4), which is the status sought by many of the groups that got tangled in the dumbassery. This is a distinction that matters because the former is expressly forbidden from engaging in political activities. Period. True The Vote is going long on a scam and it deserves tax-exempt status in this regard about as much as your average drug ring does. Our Lady would know this if the canaries knew what they were talking about."
Unsurprisingly, Pierce faithfully preached the Gospel of President Obama attorney Robert Bauer – True the Vote is a voter suppression organization – and never mentioned that in addition to the IRS indefinitely delaying the True the Vote application, FOUR federal government agencies (IRS, FBI, BATF and OSHA) from THREE departments of the federal government (Treasury, Justice and Labor) suddenly chose to investigate Engelbrecht and her family business when none of them had ever done so before she filed tax exemption applications for True the Vote and King Street Patriots in July 2010.
Last month Noonan called attention to Engelbrecht's utterly unwarranted (and personally expensive) ordeal and astutely observed in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278873234753 04578501581991103070.html) that "the most important IRS story came not from the hearings but from Mike Huckabee's program on Fox News Channel. He interviewed and told the story of Catherine Engelbrecht – a nice woman, a citizen, an American. She and her husband live in Richmond, Texas. They have a small manufacturing business. In the past few years she became interested in public policy and founded two groups, King Street Patriots and True the Vote.
"In July 2010 she sent applications to the IRS for tax-exempt status. What followed was not the harassment, intrusiveness and delay we're now used to hearing of. The U.S. government came down on her with full force."
It is very important to ascertain how high up in the IRS the scandal reached, but it is even more important to learn who is responsible for the IRS, FBI, BATF and OSHA all investigating Engelbrecht after she sought tax exempt status for True the Vote and King Street Patriots.
Curiously, the liberal media establishment incessantly promoted the Democrats' Republican War on Woman pitch during the 2012 election season, but when it comes to the Obama administration "war" on a "nice woman" – Catherine Engelbrecht – silence is the general rule.
People who only get their news from the liberal media establishment don't know Catherine Engelbrecht's story, and that's the way the liberal media establishment and the Obama administration like it.
Engelbrecht could have been the darling of the Left if she had chosen to demand and promote free birth control, but instead she dared to demand and promote free elections.
Engelbrecht believes in election integrity, citizens-only voting, voter identification and cleaning the voter rolls to discourage vote fraud.
That isn't partisan, but some partisans feel very threatened by the concept of one legally qualified voter, one vote.
In this the Age of Obama, the Obama administration must think that Engelbrecht brought what Noonan called the "full force" of the federal government down on herself, but that's not what President Obama's well-intentioned supporters had in mind when they voted for fundamental transformation.
It's disgusting that applications by "conservatives" were discriminated against by the Obama IRS, but what happened to Engelbrecht personally is far worse and highlighting it is critically important to enlightening the American people.
Engelbrecht's True the Vote and King Street Patriots are still waiting after nearly three years for their tax exemption applications to the IRS to be approved and the application process was made unduly onerous and expensive as well as time-consuming.
Notably, Bob Bauer, former White House counsel and counsel to Obama Biden and the Democratic National Committee, fears True the Vote and defamed it as a voter suppression group during the 2012 election campaign. Bauer was appointed as President Obama's general counsel on January 3, 2010. He stayed until June 30, 2011, and then returned to private practice to again represent President Obama's election team and the Democratic National Committee. President Obama publicly described Bauer as "a critical member of the White House team" who would "continue to be one of [his] close advisers."
In an October 2012 Obama Biden memorandum to Interested Parties available online at http://secure.assets.bostatic.com/pdfs/BauerMemo/BauerMemo.pdf, Bauer charged that there was a "Republican assault on voting rights....with deep roots in the party's history and politics" led by the Republican National Committee "aided by organizations closely associated with the party and its goals, such as True the Vote."
True the Vote is demonized in the six-page, single-spaced memorandum. According to Bauer, it was "assisting the effort [to disrupt] the voter registration process" by purporting to train and deploy to polling places around the country 'poll watchers' on the watch for 'fraud'...." Section IV of the memorandum, devoted to True the Vote, begins, "Since the 2010-midterm elections, Texas-based True the Vote (TTV) has been an outspoken member of the voter fraud community and is the social group focused on ending 'vote fraud.' It is the first group since the Karl Rove inspired American Center for Voting Rights was discovered to be a Republican front in 2007."
Does it shock you that the Engelbrechts, whose previous contact with the IRS consisted of paying taxes and filing tax returns for about 20 years without being audited, suddenly were audited by the IRS after those tax exemption applications were submitted?
Does it shock you that the FBI Domestic Terrorism unit suddenly went looking for terrorists at the King Street Patriots office?
Does it shock you that OSHA opted to audit the Engelbrecht family business when it never had done so before?
Does it shock you that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms suddenly decided to investigate the small Engelbrecht manufacturing business. (It had a license to manufacture firearms, but did not manufacture any, as the BATF agent learned upon investigation.)
If that doesn't shock you, does it shock you that BATF conducted a second investigation about a year later, soon AFTER True the Vote filed a federal lawsuit against the St. Lucie County, Florida Supervisor of Elections over the mishandling of the Allen West recount?
See http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/02/04/true-the-vote-files-lawsuit-against-supervisor-of-elections-over-mishandling-of-allen-west- recount-n1504559:
"The lawsuit provides an extensive timeline of events and documented non-cooperation from election officials after information requests were filed.
"'This dramatic recount was an extraordinary example of how our elections can suffer systematic failure,' True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said. 'We run the risk seeing episodes like this becoming ordinary if citizens do not demand answers and hold election officials accountable. The American people own the voting system – we have the right to ask tough questions when we witness the failure of one of America's core functions. The clock is ticking on the opportunity for a comprehensive, outside audit of this recount...each passing day heightens the risk of critical documents being disposed of. If you thought voter fraud could erode America's confidence in elections, unchecked incompetence in the vote tabulation process will destroy all faith remaining in our systems."
A couple of months after the filing, back came the BATF for another investigation of a business that doesn't manufacture guns. How often does BATF waste time and taxpayer money like that?
Let the truth prevail and the vote be true.
© Michael Gaynor
June 23, 2013
It is very important to ascertain how high up in the IRS the scandal reached, but it is even more important to learn who is responsible for the IRS, FBI, BATF and OSHA all investigating Engelbrecht after she sought tax exempt status for True the Vote and King Street Patriots.
The Obama administration is at war with True the Vote and King Street Patriots founder and president Catherine Engelbrecht as well as those organizations, and the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan was just targeted by Esquire for daring to report on that war and to describe Engelbrecht as "a nice woman."
The snide Esquire hit piece, titled "Our Lady Noonan Presses On" (www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/La_Noonan_Is_On_The_Case), quickly followed a follow up article by Noonan on the IRS scandal – "Case Closed? Far From It" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577904578557903396922628.html? mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop) that refuted House Oversight Committee ranking member Elijah Cumming's campaign to declare the question of who created the scandal solved and end the investigation.
In her follow up Noonan reported this pertinent information on the misprocessing of the True the Vote tax exemption application:
"Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, which sought tax-exempt status, recently came into possession of a copy of a 20-month-old letter from the IRS's Taxpayer Advocate Service in Houston, acknowledging that her case had been assigned to an agent in Cincinnati. 'He is waiting for a determination from their office in Washington,' the advocate said. The agent was 'unable to give us a timeframe' on when determination would be made."
Esquire blogger Charles P. Pierce raved: "True The Vote is a national voter-suppression organization that, among its other 'social-welfare' activities, got hip-deep in the fight against the recall of Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. It filed to become a 501(c) (3) organization, and not a 501(c) (4), which is the status sought by many of the groups that got tangled in the dumbassery. This is a distinction that matters because the former is expressly forbidden from engaging in political activities. Period. True The Vote is going long on a scam and it deserves tax-exempt status in this regard about as much as your average drug ring does. Our Lady would know this if the canaries knew what they were talking about."
Unsurprisingly, Pierce faithfully preached the Gospel of President Obama attorney Robert Bauer – True the Vote is a voter suppression organization – and never mentioned that in addition to the IRS indefinitely delaying the True the Vote application, FOUR federal government agencies (IRS, FBI, BATF and OSHA) from THREE departments of the federal government (Treasury, Justice and Labor) suddenly chose to investigate Engelbrecht and her family business when none of them had ever done so before she filed tax exemption applications for True the Vote and King Street Patriots in July 2010.
Last month Noonan called attention to Engelbrecht's utterly unwarranted (and personally expensive) ordeal and astutely observed in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278873234753 04578501581991103070.html) that "the most important IRS story came not from the hearings but from Mike Huckabee's program on Fox News Channel. He interviewed and told the story of Catherine Engelbrecht – a nice woman, a citizen, an American. She and her husband live in Richmond, Texas. They have a small manufacturing business. In the past few years she became interested in public policy and founded two groups, King Street Patriots and True the Vote.
"In July 2010 she sent applications to the IRS for tax-exempt status. What followed was not the harassment, intrusiveness and delay we're now used to hearing of. The U.S. government came down on her with full force."
It is very important to ascertain how high up in the IRS the scandal reached, but it is even more important to learn who is responsible for the IRS, FBI, BATF and OSHA all investigating Engelbrecht after she sought tax exempt status for True the Vote and King Street Patriots.
Curiously, the liberal media establishment incessantly promoted the Democrats' Republican War on Woman pitch during the 2012 election season, but when it comes to the Obama administration "war" on a "nice woman" – Catherine Engelbrecht – silence is the general rule.
People who only get their news from the liberal media establishment don't know Catherine Engelbrecht's story, and that's the way the liberal media establishment and the Obama administration like it.
Engelbrecht could have been the darling of the Left if she had chosen to demand and promote free birth control, but instead she dared to demand and promote free elections.
Engelbrecht believes in election integrity, citizens-only voting, voter identification and cleaning the voter rolls to discourage vote fraud.
That isn't partisan, but some partisans feel very threatened by the concept of one legally qualified voter, one vote.
In this the Age of Obama, the Obama administration must think that Engelbrecht brought what Noonan called the "full force" of the federal government down on herself, but that's not what President Obama's well-intentioned supporters had in mind when they voted for fundamental transformation.
It's disgusting that applications by "conservatives" were discriminated against by the Obama IRS, but what happened to Engelbrecht personally is far worse and highlighting it is critically important to enlightening the American people.
Engelbrecht's True the Vote and King Street Patriots are still waiting after nearly three years for their tax exemption applications to the IRS to be approved and the application process was made unduly onerous and expensive as well as time-consuming.
Notably, Bob Bauer, former White House counsel and counsel to Obama Biden and the Democratic National Committee, fears True the Vote and defamed it as a voter suppression group during the 2012 election campaign. Bauer was appointed as President Obama's general counsel on January 3, 2010. He stayed until June 30, 2011, and then returned to private practice to again represent President Obama's election team and the Democratic National Committee. President Obama publicly described Bauer as "a critical member of the White House team" who would "continue to be one of [his] close advisers."
In an October 2012 Obama Biden memorandum to Interested Parties available online at http://secure.assets.bostatic.com/pdfs/BauerMemo/BauerMemo.pdf, Bauer charged that there was a "Republican assault on voting rights....with deep roots in the party's history and politics" led by the Republican National Committee "aided by organizations closely associated with the party and its goals, such as True the Vote."
True the Vote is demonized in the six-page, single-spaced memorandum. According to Bauer, it was "assisting the effort [to disrupt] the voter registration process" by purporting to train and deploy to polling places around the country 'poll watchers' on the watch for 'fraud'...." Section IV of the memorandum, devoted to True the Vote, begins, "Since the 2010-midterm elections, Texas-based True the Vote (TTV) has been an outspoken member of the voter fraud community and is the social group focused on ending 'vote fraud.' It is the first group since the Karl Rove inspired American Center for Voting Rights was discovered to be a Republican front in 2007."
Does it shock you that the Engelbrechts, whose previous contact with the IRS consisted of paying taxes and filing tax returns for about 20 years without being audited, suddenly were audited by the IRS after those tax exemption applications were submitted?
Does it shock you that the FBI Domestic Terrorism unit suddenly went looking for terrorists at the King Street Patriots office?
Does it shock you that OSHA opted to audit the Engelbrecht family business when it never had done so before?
Does it shock you that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms suddenly decided to investigate the small Engelbrecht manufacturing business. (It had a license to manufacture firearms, but did not manufacture any, as the BATF agent learned upon investigation.)
If that doesn't shock you, does it shock you that BATF conducted a second investigation about a year later, soon AFTER True the Vote filed a federal lawsuit against the St. Lucie County, Florida Supervisor of Elections over the mishandling of the Allen West recount?
See http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/02/04/true-the-vote-files-lawsuit-against-supervisor-of-elections-over-mishandling-of-allen-west- recount-n1504559:
"The lawsuit provides an extensive timeline of events and documented non-cooperation from election officials after information requests were filed.
"'This dramatic recount was an extraordinary example of how our elections can suffer systematic failure,' True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said. 'We run the risk seeing episodes like this becoming ordinary if citizens do not demand answers and hold election officials accountable. The American people own the voting system – we have the right to ask tough questions when we witness the failure of one of America's core functions. The clock is ticking on the opportunity for a comprehensive, outside audit of this recount...each passing day heightens the risk of critical documents being disposed of. If you thought voter fraud could erode America's confidence in elections, unchecked incompetence in the vote tabulation process will destroy all faith remaining in our systems."
A couple of months after the filing, back came the BATF for another investigation of a business that doesn't manufacture guns. How often does BATF waste time and taxpayer money like that?
Let the truth prevail and the vote be true.
© Michael Gaynor
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
