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yep. I'm not holding my breath,
IRS abuses power in targeting tea party
(CNN) -- The extraordinary revelation this week that the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party groups for more aggressive enforcement highlights exactly why caution is needed in any response to the much-vilified Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC.
It also shows how all Americans, from the most liberal to the most conservative, should closely guard their First Amendment rights, and why giving the government too much power to limit political speech will inevitably result in selective enforcement against unpopular groups.
To the agency's credit, Lois Lerner, a senior official at the IRS, apologized on Friday for these uncons utional practices, which are as unseemly as the Bush administration's targeting of the NAACP and the House of Representatives' defunding of Planned Parenthood on purely political grounds.
Michael Macleod-Ball
Gabe RottmanLerner said that career IRS staff who were reviewing applicants for tax-exempt status took a harder look at applications with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. She stressed that the added scrutiny was done as a "shortcut," not out of "political bias." But her admission calls into question earlier claims by the agency that IRS scrutiny wasn't politically motivated, and it comes in the face of repeated complaints by right-wing groups that they have been treated unfairly.
Collins says IRS revelations will fuel distrust in government
Before addressing the obvious cons utional concerns with the selective use of the tax code against political opponents, here's some background.
Certain public interest groups, like charities and nonprofit athletic organizations, do not have to pay federal income tax on their donations or dues. These tax-exempt groups include 501(c)(4) organizations (named for the relevant section of the code). To qualify, a group must be "operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare." The definition of "social welfare" is broad, and applies to all points of view. The ACLU's lobbying arm, for which we work, is a 501(c)(4). So is the National Right to Life Committee.
IRS targeted conservative groups
Taxing day for the IRS These social welfare groups are forbidden from engaging in too much partisan political activity. How much is too much, however, is controversial and remains uncertain. An organization that crosses over the fuzzy line will be denied tax-exempt status.
Crucially, 501(c)(4) organizations, in most cases, need not publicly disclose their donors. That policy is driven by the same concerns that prompted the Supreme Court in a civil rights-era case, NAACP v. Alabama, to prohibit that state from forcing the NAACP to out its members as a condition of operating. The court reasoned, rightly, that such disclosure could lead to violence against existing members and would dissuade potential members from joining at all.
Now, during the past couple of elections there has been a surge in applications for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. Some argue that these new groups are being created specifically to help elect or defeat candidates, which would otherwise prompt full donor disclosure to the Federal Election Commission.
Opponents claim these groups are abusively claiming tax-exempt status to keep their donor lists secret. Some further claim that these groups then allow wealthy individuals, corporations, and unions to anonymously funnel large amounts of money into ads supporting or attacking political candidates.
As a consequence, the IRS has been under enormous pressure to speed up and aggressively investigate applications for tax-exempt status -- both reasonable demands, if carried out impartially. But much of this outside pressure has come from the left and has been directed at conservative groups, who have an advantage in this "dark" political money.
It sounds as though the events surrounding the IRS announcement can be partly attributed to this growth in applications and the pressure to uncover "sham" 501(c)(4) groups.
Although the IRS claims this was an honest mistake, these revelations are troubling on many levels. For instance, there are several proposals circulating in Washington right now that would make it much easier for the IRS and other regulators to force political groups to disclose their donors. These disclosure requirements would apply even when the group is advocating purely on an issue of public interest, from clean air to abortion, and would apply to groups of all political persuasions and not just to groups supporting or opposing candidates for office.
The ACLU has expressed concern with these disclosure requirements precisely because they open the door to selective enforcement. Such concerns are often dismissed as speculative and overly pessimistic, but the IRS apology shows that concerns over selective enforcement are prescient. Those in power will always be tempted to use political speech restrictions against opposing candidates or causes.
The IRS announcement demonstrates that we should carefully consider any new policy that allows the government to restrict or chill political speech, including broader donor disclosure requirements. Congress and the administration should also act immediately to create ironclad checks on the IRS to prevent this from ever happening again.
It shouldn't need to be said: Even the tea party deserves First Amendment protection.
I am all for investigating the so called 501c 3 statuses of these fringe political groups...but you can't single out one political side... completely unacceptable.
Needs to be investigated to see who ok'd and promoted the practice.
yep. I'm not holding my breath,
Barry wants this story to hide the cover up.
+1
I agree, you beat me to posting a thread on it.
look at the history. These groups exploded after Citizens United. Anybody think they are all non-political, don't engage in spending money on campaigns and politics?
the "social welfare" group is a total fraud, they lied to IRS about what they would/would not be doing. Nobody went after them.
IRS Scandal Is Much Ado About Small Stuff While Karl Rove Gets Off Scott Free
Republicans, as usual, are in a tizzy over what they say is a big scandal brewing at the Internal Revenue Service, because on Friday, Lois Lerner, the lawyer in charge of the department that reviews applications for tax-exempt organizations, said that the IRS had improperly flagged and scrutinized applications by ‘Tea Party’ and ‘Patriot’ groups.
The problem with this latest dust-up is that GOP outrage over the small but obvious stuff misses the real issues and bigger points. First, Lerner’s testimony— read it—says that her office discovered and tried to correct this. Moreover, does anybody really think that Tea Party chapters were not overt political creatures? They weren’t created to sell cookies.
The real scandal is that Lerner’s disclosure and apology, conveyed at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing Friday, ignores that the agency has not taken any meaningful decisions on the big political fish who hide behind this tax non-profit ruse and hide their donor’s names, notably Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS.
Rove’s group spent more than $70 million on political ads in 2012. Its application to be a social-welfare organization is pending before the IRS—more than two years after it was filed. There are many forms of non-profits, but those at issue here, so-called C-4s, don’t pay taxes or disclose donor names.
The Tea Partiers are political little leaguers. Perhaps their best-known brethren in 2012, “TrueTheVote,” tried to recruit and train volunteers to challenge the credentials of black and brown voters in Democratic strongholds in swing states. They were so sloppy and offensive that election officials in Ohio and Wisconsin barred them from going near voting sites during the November 2012 presidential vote.
http://www.alternet.org/gop-paranoic...ets-scott-free
It's only bad when I think it is.
lol alternet.
lol boutons.
Why don't I ever see you complain about the countless leftist political groups?
TB
Where did I say I'm NOT complaining about these fraudulent "social welfare" PACs?
The IRS was correct to vet the 100 new tea bagger PACs, incited by Rove and his own fraudulent social welfare PAC, while erring in not going after ALL such dark-money frauds.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 05-14-2013 at 09:40 AM.
essentially, boutons is cool with selective enforcement when the other party is the target.
Absolutely.
"going after ALL such dark-money frauds" GFY
TB
boutons
boutons must be a john edwards backer.
You Lie
It's not an abuse of power for the IRS to vet a wave of applications for new groups/"social welfare". It's their job.
You're right. It's the fact that the IRS targeted the tee potty that's problematic. As you said upstream, they should have targeted all new 501c applicants regardless of political affiliation.
Jon Stewart even called them out last night
JS is Fair and Balanced, it's just that the Repugs' and their fellow travelers' antics, nuttines, bull supply him so much more to pillory
A bit more nuanced understanding, for those who care:
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-e...182512181.html
In a nuts :
The rules over what the organizations can or can't do are vague and badly written (by Congress). Even the IRS who is responsible for policing this has issued unclear guidelines as to how much politicking can take place.
There was a rush into the 504(c) bandwagon, and a crush of new organizations asking for permits. The IRS smelled a potential tax fraud and unevenly applied scrutiny to the conservative orgs, but not the liberal ones.
Badly written laws, clumsily enforced by some mid-level manager, in a way that invited rancor.
Cue manaufactured outrage machine going into epiplectic fits. (sigh)
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