The IRS admission that it assaulted any group with the name “Tea Party” or “Patriot” by political inquisition parallels what Lyndon Johnson did 50 years ago and Richard Nixon refined with his “enemies list” in the early 70s. While President Obama says “If” the IRS did this it will be held accountable,” the “transparent” IRS has already admitted to the crime.

Worse still, the IRS is hiring of 16,000 MORE agents to police Obamacare’s individual mandate. They are doing this despite no experience and a history of mistakes in providing information or even in reviewing tax forms prepared by experts. One in five (20%) of IRS answers to questions is wrong according to audits. And now it wants to expand to prepare tax returns for trusting Americans, for “free.”

This is bad news for everyone, yes, but for Hispanic Americans these IRS actions and new hiring are a forthcoming disaster. Why, because the IRS is on a mission to offer “Free” tax preparation for low-income people which, of course includes many Hispanic Americans and importantly those that are currently the target of legalization efforts in the Congress of the United States.

We must recall that despite private software companies offering up to 16 different software packages to anyone that wants to prepare their individual tax forms and send them to the IRS FOR FREE, if the IRS gets its way, it will enter the private space of everyone it can possibly reach for “Free.”

Nothing, however, is for free. Since when is it not a conflict of interest for the tax collector to prepare tax returns?

We already know that the IRS’ California pilot program of free tax preparation cost over $200,000 for the preparation of 11,000 tax forms. That is $200,000 of our taxpayer money. Assuming that the IRS would reach out to millions, just how many billions of taxpayer dollars will be spent preparing tax forms that are free today from private industry sources?

On top of those potentially wasted billions, what about the local “notarios” (notaries) who prepare tax forms for low-income people today? Low income Hispanics have traditionally received tax preparation in neighborhood offices of people they know whom they trust. Certainly these “notarios” charge small fees but they have the trust of the client who generally is their neighbor. Will the low-income worker be able to trust free tax preparation by his “friendly” tax collector. As “collateral damage” how many people will lose their jobs or small businesses by this expansion of the IRS?

The question is: Who can or will trust an agency that practices illegal inquisitions and investigations of legal entities practicing free speech, free association and petitioning of the government? Which individual can possibly trust this agency to honestly prepare tax forms for little people like you and me? If the agency deliberately violates the legal rights of organizations that disagree with the agency and the President, just where are we going?

Congress must step in and launch massive investigations targeting the IRS’ illegal activities revealed in the past few days, as to who authorized these activities and just exactly where the responsibility lies. Congress must stop or at least hold in abeyance the hiring of more IRS agents, stop its development of Obamacare oversight and stop any expansion of “free tax preparation” for low income people including millions of Hispanic American workers who want to be on the right side of legalization requirements being constructed in Congress at this very moment.

We cannot trust the IRS any longer. Spying on groups and individuals for political reasons by the IRS cannot be countenanced. Nor can the IRS be allowed to expand its activities such as oversight over health care mandates or “free” tax preparation” until Congress discovers who and what is responsible for these egregious crimes.

Let there be no doubt, the IRS has run rampant committing crimes, again. Many thought that this criminal activity belonged to the Lyndon Johnson/Richard Nixon dark years (1963-1974) but they are wrong. The IRS dark years are here again in the year 2013, and have been at least since 2011.

It must stop now before millions of innocent Hispanic Americans and those waiting to apply for legalization are sucked into the IRS Black Hole of criminality.

Editor’s Note: reposted from Cafe Con Leche Republicans with author’s permission – original link.

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Raoul Contreras Lowery

Raoul Lowery Contreras (1941) was born in Mexico, raised in the USA. Former U.S. Marine, athlete, Dean’s List at San Diego State. Professional political consultant and California Republican Party official (1963-65)…Television news commentator, radio talk show host…published Op-Ed writer (1988 to present)…author of 12 books (as of 1-05-12). His books are available on Amazon.com.

The Political Demise of Richard Nixon

Many older Americans remember the Nixon years. Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide, but the groundwork for Nixon’s demise was laid during his first term. The Nixon administration engaged in dirty tricks to aggressively undermine his opposition.

The White House “plumbers” were hired to repair “leaks” of sensitive information that embarrassed Nixon. With no accountability or oversight, the “plumbers” were soon out of control. One night they broke into Democratic National Headquarters (DNC) at the Watergate Hotel, and were arrested.

Nixon didn’t know in advance about the burglary, and was furious. Like most presidents, Nixon’s king-sized ego that would not allow apology, and instead he covered-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall.

Nixon, like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson before him, unleashed the IRS to go after his enemies, which also came to light during the furor over Watergate.

Nixon was able to cover-up scandals during his first term, but during his second term a steady drip-drip-drip of revelations about Nixon’s abuses of power appeared in the news media, and eventually Congress began impeachment proceedings, and when impeachment became apparent he resigned.

Obama’s Abuse of the IRS

Like Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy, the Obama administration used the IRS to intimidate enemies. The latest revelations are truly shocking. Any organization whose name included “tea party” or “patriot” received intense scrutiny from the IRS, which demanded answers to questions about donors, volunteers, Facebook posts, even which legislators they had talked to.

Now Jewish groups who had opposed Obama’s Mideast policies have revealed they were abused by the IRS too, and the Koch brothers revealed in 2010 the White House had information about them which could only have come from the IRS.

If Obama abused the IRS to intimidate and harass his political enemies, that may well lead to an Obama impeachment, just as it did with Nixon.

‘Fast and Furious’ may also lead to Obama impeachment

During Obama’s first term, the Obama administration sold over 2,000 high powered assault weapons to Mexican narco-traffickers, supposedly to track these weapons, but nobody put tracking devices in the guns or tracked them. Border patrol agent Brian Terry was killed with one of these guns, which initiated the scandal.

Basically the guns were allowed to ‘walk.’ The Mexican government was not told and dozens of innocent Mexicans were killed by drug traffickers with these weapons.

When Congress investigated, the Obama DOJ dragged its feet for months, withholding requested information. The eventual subpoena led to a showdown with Obama. With Holder about to be held in contempt of Congress, Obama threw an overreaching blanket of executive privilege over everything related to ‘fast and furious.’ Congress held Eric Holder in contempt, and not surprisingly the DA refused to prosecute his boss. Any day now we can expect a court to order compliance with the subpoena, court appeals, but in the end Obama will lose and the truth about ‘fast and furious’ will be public.

Will the Benghazi cover-up lead to Obama impeachment?

The full story of the tragic loss of four American heroes in Benghazi begs to be told. Benghazi was unmistakably a terror attack from the beginning, but Obama lied for weeks to assure his reelection.

There was nothing criminal about Obama’s actions leading up to Benghazi, but the incompetence will sink Hillary’s career and tarnish Obama’s leadership. Terror attacks on American diplomatic outposts are nothing new. Two U.S. embassies in Africa were destroyed by car bombs during the Clinton years with massive loss of life. Hillary Clinton was first lady, and Susan Rice the Associate Secretary of State for Africa at the time. Amazingly, Hillary Clinton ignored numerous urgent requests for beefed up security.

Obama failed to authorize military support when told about Benghazi, and at least two who died could have been saved with military support in the region. The Obama administration sought to cover up this gross incompetence to get past the election just two months later, and Susan Rice and Obama clearly lied to the American people about a third-rate video and “spontaneous” demonstration, to divert attention from the fact Al Qaeda is as dangerous as ever.

It remains to be seen whether witnesses in Congress were induced to lie and obstruct. There are already serious allegations a recent witness was the victim of retaliation. One thing is already apparent. The “talking points” from the intelligence community, which Jay Kearney said received one minor insignificant edit before release, were edited 12 times and scrubbed of any terror references. The Review Board that reviewed Benghazi didn’t interview key witnesses, who now are testifying in Congress. Apparently, the review board was a whitewash from the start!

Will Congress consider an Obama impeachment?

If an impeachment vote were held today, it would undoubtedly fail. Congress generally won’t impeach a popular president.

Bill Clinton committed impeachable offenses and was impeached, but the Senate balked at removing Clinton from office because he was still popular.

However, as these scandals grow and the wheels fall off of Obamacare next year, Obama’s approval ratings can be expected to sink to rock bottom levels, and we may well see an effort to impeach Obama. The Obama recovery is worse than the Bush recession, and the public is tired of a jobless economy. Bush has been out of office for four years now, and Obama owns the economic morass though he still blames Bush.

In my opinion, Obama is the worst president in modern history, and the only reason he was reelected is that Mitt Romney wasn’t the best candidate, and didn’t run a good campaign against Obama.

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Bob Quasius is the founder and president of Cafe Con Leche Republicans.

There is no question that the lack of proper border security is a threat to our national security and to our national sovereignty. We must secure the border for a great many reasons. Not the least of which is to stop the flow of drugs across our borders that has led to a disastrous war on the southern side of our border. But securing the border is not enough. At the same time, we must address our broken immigration system that has led to lawless behavior by many Americans and foreign nationals.

Many people say “We must secure the border FIRST!” They are unwilling to even talk about the other broken parts of our immigration and employment systems that plague our country today.  Yes, we must secure the border.  But, at the same time, we can and must also address these other critical issues.

INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT

Currently there is little enforcement of our immigration law within the interior of our country. Every day, people who are in this country legally with visas of various types become illegal when their visa expires. Yet, because all of our resources are pointed at the border, little is done to track down these people.  And don’t forget, at least six of the 9-11 hijackers were illegally in this country because of visa overstays.

An article in Arizona Central says, “Visa violators represent nearly half of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country. But they have been largely ignored amid a national clamor to secure the border…”  The article quotes Michael W. Cutler, a former senior agent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which became Immigration and Customs Enforcement as saying, “It’s not that we have too much emphasis on the border. We still need enforcement on the border. The problem is not enough attention to the other issue.”

We don’t need to wait till the border is secured to start enforcing our laws related to visa overstays. We must improve this process so we know who is still here and why.

UNIDENTIFIED IMMIGRANTS

Another problem with the “Secure the border first” mentality is it does nothing about the millions of of unidentified illegal aliens who are already here. We have absolutely no idea who is here, where they are from, or why they are here.  This is as big of a threat to public safety, if not a bigger threat, than the border being left as it is. Every day we wait for the border to be secure before addressing this problem is another day of millions of people with no form of identification can commit crimes and then simply change their names and move somewhere else to start all over again.

We must begin a process of identifying all immigrants who are in this country and issue them a biometric identification card so that, even if they change their name, we will be able to tie them back to prior crimes committed in this country. We must not wait for the border to be secured to begin this process.

EMPLOYMENT ISSUES
Our current immigration system is broken – especially in regards to non-skilled workers. We have great shortages of manual laborers in this country and need to find a legal way for more employers to find the workers they need to grow their business and expand the economy. There are jobs in this country we, as Americans, simply do not want to do. I used to hate it when people said that, but the more I have studied this problem, the more I realize it is the truth.

We need to develop a guest worker program that will meet the economic needs of our country and stop the current abuses of workers by some employers who currently take advantage of our broken system to misclassify employees illegally as subcontractors when they should be employees.

“The Texas Solution“, adopted by the Republican Party of Texas this summer, provides a blueprint for how a legitimate guest worker program might work. It provides for positive identification of foreign workers, a legal process for people to work and hire workers and restricts foreign workers to only work for companies who classify employees properly ensuring the collection of taxes, providing workmen’s compensation and compliance with child support collection processes.

Our current system encourages the lawless behavior that has been occurring in this country for many years. In the past, guest workers would travel back and forth between their home country and ours when work was available to them. It was not necessary for them to bring family with them as they knew they could travel freely when needed.

Our new system inadvertently forces them to bring families with them which increases the burden on our schools, hospitals and taxpayers. This is a negative outcome which needs to be corrected now and not wait until the border is first secured.

SUMMARY

Yes, securing the border is an absolute priority.  But we are a nation of many resources and many talented people. We can do more than one thing at a time. The federal government did not follow through on its promises after the Reagan amnesty. This is, in large part, because we did not stay on their backs to make certain it happened.

In our new Tea Party reality, the people are providing stringent oversight of our government. This is what we should, as citizens and taxpayers, be doing.  We must hold them accountable.

Let’s get the border secured and do it quickly. But let’s also move forward on much needed immigration reform and employment law enforcement. We can do all of these things and we can start now.

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Bob Price is a political commentator for TexasGOPVote.com. He is an expert about issues related to border security and illegal immigration and has expanded to cover stories of local, state and national interest from a Conservative Texas Perspective. He also volunteers with US Border Watch, a civilian volunteer border security organization, as Communications Director. He has been with USBW for over five years.

Recently, Price was invited to become the Texas Director of Cafe Con Leche Republicans. CCLR is an organization established to foster better communication within the Republican party toward immigrants.

Price is also a regular political commentator on Houston’s Fox 26 and KHOU, Houston Channel 11 where he regularly debates on a wide variety of political issues. He is frequently asked to speak to organizations on the topic of border security, immigration reform and 2nd Amendment issues.

He is a US Air Force veteran, having served overseas during the Cold War and is a retired Lt. Col. from the US Air Force Auxiliary, Civil Air Patrol where he served in command, public relations, emergency services and youth education capacities.

In corporate life, Mr. Price serves as vice president of Novum Solutions, Inc; a Houston based manufacturing company best known for its Blue Wonder Gun Care Products and Novum APR Advanced Pain Relief brands. Novum also manufactures private label product for Connecticut Valley Arms, Bass Assassin Fishing Lures and Point Blank Body Armor. He is also an Independent Brand Partner for Nerium Age Defying skin care products.

Follow more of Price’s writing and commentary at BobPrice.com.