At the same time the Internal Revenue Service was targeting Tea Party groups last year to help boost Barack Obama’s reelection chances, the Congressional Black Caucus, Attorney General Eric Holder and Valerie Jarrett were assisting hundreds of black pastors and churches on how best to participate in the 2012 election. The Congressional Black Caucus hosted a training session at the U.S. Capitol which was attended by black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches, Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman and Peter Lorenzetti, who was a senior official in the agency’s exempt organizations division, which was at the heart of the IRS scandal. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, (D-MO), chairman of the CBC said, “We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS. In fact, we’re going to have the IRS administrator there. We’re going to have Attorney General Eric Holder there…the ACLU.”
Around this same time, Holder gave a speech to the Council of Black Churches and spoke about its history of fighting for equal voting rights for minorities. He told them his office is “aggressively” taking on the task of protecting their voting rights by challenging several state lawsuits that would overturn parts of the Voting Rights Act involving redistricting and new voter ID laws. And Valerie Jarrett went to Atlanta to speak at Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. A CBS Atlanta reporter said it sounded like a political rally at times.
“Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress–well let me be specific–because the Republicans in Congress,” Jarrett told the crowd. According to the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, at this point, “Before she could finish her sentence, people in the congregation were laughing, and applauding.”
I’d be willing to wager the Ebenezer Baptist Church was never in danger of losing its 501(c)(3) status.
All this and more like it coming from the same administration that developed a highly secret plan to infiltrate Christian churches in order to snoop on them and target members for their political beliefs. The Examiner has the story about this and it details the efforts to seek anti-government sentiments in conservative, evangelical churches. As one pastor was quoted in the article, “You have to be careful what you say and who you talk to.”
Clearly, the Obama administration uses the Internal Revenue Service as a political weapon. Not only targeting non-profit organizations such as the Tea Party, but also churches whose congregations are mostly conservative. Assisting black churches with campaign strategies sends the signal to them that they have the support of the Justice Department. At the same time, conservative churches are targeted for intimidation and sent the not so subtle message to be silent or face the IRS. Breitbart has just one of many available examples.
Just ask Billy Graham. Last fall, the famed Christian evangelist publicly advocated on behalf of a ballot measure in his home state of North Carolina, taking a position that the President and other high government officials publicly opposed. The tax man was knocking at the door almost immediately. And while the expensive, time-consuming audit eventually ended without any finding of wrongdoing by Graham, a message was sent to every other religious group that might oppose government policy: the IRS can use its audit powers to harass you or shut you down simply for saying what you believe. That kind of intimidation is wrong–and unconstitutional.
What I’m leading up to with all this is about Obamacare. The very organization used as a tool to intimidate conservative churches is the same organization tasked with the responsibility for running Obamacare. An administration that would use the IRS to target conservatives for their own political gain would certainly use the IRS to target the health care of conservatives for their own political gain. I recall years ago when Clarence Thomas had been appointed to the Supreme Court the vile hatred which he had to endure. Included in that was Julianne Malveaux, a USA Today columnist and president of Bennett College for Women. Of Justice Thomas she said, “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease….He is an absolutely reprehensible person.” Malveaux may not hold a position in the government but the animosity she spews is certainly shared by the leftists in charge of our country.
While it may seem a stretch to think the Democrats would use the Internal Revenue service to target the health of conservatives, I don’t think it is much of one at all. Clearly, the Democrats will use any means possible to defeat the opposition, including dispatching our own government agencies to harass and target us. Putting one of those agencies in charge of our health care and allowing them to make life or death medical decisions about the health care we will receive should send chills down our spines. People have joked about it but the day may come when your political activities and beliefs just might play a role in the decisions made about your health care. Enjoy your eggs.
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