News, Community, Action
Mon May 13, 2013 at 04:37 PM PDT
Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon
suggests:
After an election in which hundreds of millions of dollars
were funneled through “dark money” nonprofit groups by people like Karl
Rove, campaign finance advocates fear the nascent IRS scandal involving
these very organizations will make the already difficult task of
regulating them nearly impossible.
Organized under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, organizations like
Rove’s Crossroads GPS are social welfare organizations that are legally
barred from making politics their “primary purpose” — at least in
theory. In practice, many of these groups are plainly political, but the
IRS has never defined what differentiates an improper political group
from a bona fide social welfare group, so they’ve been able to flout the
intent of the law with impunity. With growing public awareness after
the 2012 election, campaign finance reform advocates thought they may be
able to finally get the IRS or Congress to impose some new rules. But
scandal may blow all of that up.
“The IRS is not really in a position right now to rewrite the rules
that apply to social welfare organizations. And it’s not going to be the
right time for that for at least a little while,” Lisa Rosenberg, a
government affairs lobbyist at the Sunlight Foundation, told Salon.
“Everything they do now, at least in the near future, is going to be
glossed with this taint of impropriety.”
It didn't bother the right wingers when the IRS
investigated the NAACP after it criticized the Bush administration. And it didn't bother them when the IRS
investigated a Pasadena, California, church for criticizing Bush. But now that it's been revealed that the IRS has gored
their ox, they're up in arms about it.
It's early yet to have any idea where this story will go. We know, of
course, that the Republicans will push it and the other fresh
scandal—on wiretapping journalists—at least as hard as they have pushed
the faux scandal of Benghazi® for the past seven months.
This time, however, many Democrats, including some who have not
heretofore been critics of the administration, will surely be asking
some tough questions of their own. As well they should. What's
intolerable when done under a Republican administration is not just as
intolerable under a Democratic administration. It's worse. We have a
right to expect better behavior. We have plenty of past and recent
examples to the contrary and this cannot be allowed to be written off as
mere partisanship on the part of Republicans. They will certainly use
it to partisan advantage. But that doesn't make it a non-issue.
The best that can come out of both these scandals are
quick-and-thorough, get-to-the-bottom-of-it probes into what happened,
why it happened and who made it happen. Followed by some personnel
departures no matter how high they reach.
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