New York Times finds IRS office an unprepared, understaffed outpost with no direction

Brett T. | 10:58 PM on May 18, 2013

We’re starting to expect another presidential press conference Monday morning in which Obama changes his mind about being angry about the IRS targeting conservative groups. Maybe he’ll ask acting commissioner Steven Miller to stay on and give him a bonus. And forget about abolishing the IRS — it just needs more money and attention.

The New York Times has decided to have a look at that Cincinnati office where those rogue “low-level employees” were targeting Tea Party groups for harassment and apparently was given the grand tour. (It’s a shame that no one could find a key to let USA Today’s reporter into the public reading room at IRS headquarters.) So what’s going on in there?

NYT on IRS Cincinnati office. Understaffed outpost alienated from broader #IRS culture & given little direction. http://t.co/trkER6iThc

— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) May 18, 2013

Wow, an “understaffed outpost alienated from broader IRS culture and given little direction”? It sounds like Siberia, not Ohio, which “many in the IRS consider a backwater.” Oh, and not only was the office understaffed: “Few if any of the employees were experts on tax law, contributing to waves of questionnaires about groups’ political activity and donors that top officials acknowledge were improper.” Morton Blackwell wasn’t far off when he compared the IRS to Kermit Gosnell’s clinic.

The article goes on and on, and we confess we didn’t get to the part where we’re supposed to feel bad for anyone other than the groups that were targeted. We’re told, though, that the Washington Post also did a profile of that Ohio backwater, and its take is even “grittier.”