Obama made promise on TV that he will crackdown on rogue IRS agents but why has he not talked of benghazi yet?

They weren't businesses they were organizations. The law allows for the creation of non profit organizations knows as 501(c)4 organizations (after the section of the tax code that governs them). These groups have two main advantages: 1) they do not pay taxes and 2) they do not have to disclose who their donors are.

Now originally a century ago these groups were supposed to be entirely non political. They were supposed to be "social welfare" organizations which existed to promote the public good (one example someone gave was a group set up to raise money to build a park). Now this was quickly changed so that these groups could not be "primarily" political.

They were still supposed to be "social welfare" organizations but were not supposed to be "primarily political". Now over the years this became defined to mean that you had to spend less than half of your money and/or time on trying to influence the outcomes of elections. In 2010 the Citizens United decision ruled that corporations and other organizations could raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on elections.

But many rich donors didn't want to have their names on such spending for fear of a political backlash (it had always been legal for individuals to independently spend as much money as they wanted but few wealthy individuals did because they didn't want to get identified as backing one particular candidate or cause). Since the 501(c)4 organization doesn't have to disclose its donors it became the perfect vehicle for spending money to influence elections. The run up to the 2012 election saw a dramatic spike in applications for 501(c)4 status and the IRS office in Cleveland, where these applications are processed and adjudicated, was swamped.

During this flood of new applications someone in the office began using keywords to search for groups which might be political groups improperly using the tax code. These included right wing buzz words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" and left win buzz words like "Occupy". This practice spread to others in the office and became widely used there.

Eventually when higher ups in the IRS found out about it they stopped it (although the practice cropped back up). The groups which were targeted did not automatically have their applications denied. Rather they were subjected to an extra level of scrutiny.

Some people, particularly among Tea Party groups on the right, thought that this level of scrutiny was unwarranted. It would involve things like lists of donors, comprehensive transcripts of speeches given by group members and other things that many found to be onerous impositions on them, especially since many of these groups were relatively small and didn't have full time staffers (big groups like Carl Rove's "Crossroads GPS" and President Obama's "Priorities USA" sailed through the application process despite being overtly political). This became a "scandal" because some groups on the right complained, to the media and to their representatives, that they felt they were being subjected to undue scrutiny, possibly because of their political beliefs.

The IRS Inspector General began an investigation into the matter and was told by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee to prepare a report on whether conservative groups were targeted. That last bit is important because when the story broke it was based on the Inspector General's report which was turned over the House Oversight Committee, but the committee had explicitly instructed the IG to focus on conservative groups and not deal with other groups which might also have been targeted. When the story broke it DID seem scandalous.

It seemed that the IRS had purposefully targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny based on their politics. This was certainly the line which Republicans pushed and a number of them felt that the targeting must have been directed from the White House. But subsequent developments revealed that the scandal wasn't much of a scandal.

First, a number of people on the left argued that these groups SHOULD have been targeted. A number of them were clearly violating the law and operating as primarily political organizations. Then investigations by Congress and the IRS failed to turn up any connection to the White House.

Worse yet, the IRS official in direct charge of the program turned out to be, by his own admission, a conservative Republican. This blew holes in the idea that this was politically motivated. Finally, it was revealed that the IG had actually found that groups across the political spectrum had been targeted for scrutiny, including liberal ones.

I agree with you last statement. But the IRS crackdown was orchestrated by officials in Washington DC. Anyone with the name Tea Party or Patriot of the like was given special scrutiny.

They asked things like "list all your donors and all the way you will spend any money raised over the next year." One guy had his application in for a year or something like that. He changed the name to "greenhouse solutions" and it got approved in 3 weeks.

Basically it was an attempt by Washington DC insiders to disenfranchise regular voters that opposed the big government expansion of big government. It would seem Dems benefitted most from it but Boehner and that part of the Repub party (the biggest part of the party) hate conservatives also and so that is why it was allowed to happen. Basically it was the government restricting free political speech.

Hadn't heard anything about lowering IRS budget. Some are calling for doing away with the IRS. But that won't happen.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.