Tea Party members from Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana converged in Cincinnati yesterday to protest the recent IRS scandal. Tana Weingartner of Ohio Public Radio station WVXU was there and has this report.
Several hundred people gathered on Cincinnati’s Fountain Square before marching to the John Weld Peck Federal Building. That’s where employees with the Cincinnati IRS office admittedly applied extra scrutiny to conservative and other groups applying for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. Dee Cohen from Cincinnati calls the IRS and White House administration’s actions abusive.
“How could you not be angry? I mean, we’re going to try to suppress the press. Let’s get those reporters, we want to know who their contacts are. Let’s check their emails. Let’s make sure we don’t have free press anymore. Let’s get them (Tea Party groups) money-wise with the IRS. It’s all this intimidation. It’s outrageous. This is the US not Venezuela.”
Dave Kern of Liberty Township says he came to protest the “outrageous actions” of the IRS across the board.
“(It’s) not some so-called low-level worker at the IRS here in Cincinnati. It’s impossible that this originated from them. But the person who authorized this from the top. That’s where it should end up and they should be rightfully prosecuted and jailed. It’s outrageous.”
Tea Party organizers say an apology isn’t enough. They want the Obama administration to quote “make concrete and transparent steps” to ensure this never happens again. The IRS meanwhile says while its employees acted inappropriately they were not driven by political bias.
For Ohio Public Radio, I’m Tana Weingartner in Cincinnati.
