Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
May 14, 2013
|
There is a deepening IRS scandal about the government’s
review
of Tea Party groups that sought legal status as tax-exempt charities,
but it’s not what House Republicans and some Democrats including the
President are
spewing into the microphones and TV cameras.
Let
us consider what may be an more accurate assessment of what happened.
The IRS was doing its job. Its staff was overwhelmed by the
thousands
of obvious political groups that sought the cover of being designated
as charities in the 2010 and 2012 elections; so they could raise money
and hide their donors names. Some IRS employees spent far too much time
or were assigned to spend time on lowest-hanging fruit—political amateur
groups from the Tea Party movement—and not enough on the bigtime
players, such as
Karl Rove, who was lawyered up. And the IRS still has not
ruled on the tactics and likes of the Roves (
Crossroads GPS), Koch brothers (
Americans for Prosperity) and the pro-Obama groups (
Organizing for America and
Priorities USA) that put millions into thepresidential election via groups pretending to be charities.
“It
is breathtaking that the IRS seems to be harassing mom and pop Tea
Party organizations while ignoring what appears to be the blatant abuses
of the 501(c)(4) tax status right under its nose by groups pumping tens
of millions of dollars into partisan political advertising,” said Gerald
Hebert, director of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington campaign
finance reform organization that
urged the IRS to reject the ruse. “It must enforce the law rather than turning a blind eye to widespread abuses.”
Sadly,
there’s no shortage of blind eyes in this made-for-DC scandal. The
Republican-controlled House had been hearing complaints in
2011
from Tea Party groups that they were harassed by the IRS—because these
tiny (and sometimes not so tiny) political clubs weren’t getting
rubber-stamped as social welfare organizations.
The New Yorker’s legal correspondent, Jeffrey Toobin,
blogs about that apparent irony, saying, “It might be useful to ask: Did the IRS actually do anything wrong?”
It’s amazing to see who the
Washington Post quotes
today as answering a loud ‘Yes’ to that question, as it reports that
the agency’s DC office apparently was involved in the vetting of the
non-profit applications. The
Post turns to NRA board member and attorney
Cleta Mitchell, who tried to secure non-profit tax status for the GOP’s voter intimidation group,
True the Vote.
This is truly political theatre of the absurd: a group whose purpose is
intimidating black and brown voters is claiming it was unduly
scrutinized by the IRS—because the agency somehow suspects, correctly,
that they might not be a charity?
The Obama White House are hardly
angels in the murky campaign finance world. They were the first
presidential campaign to reject public funds in 2008. For years, Obama’s
team has embraced any tactic that would allow it to raise huge sums of
campaign money, including these same 501(c)(4) groups to win
re-election. Their attitude is typical Washington: there’s no problem if
it helps their side win.
That’s the real scandal here: how
business hums along in the Washington political money circles and the
biggest abusers don’t even get slaps on their wrists.
“Congressional
hearings must serve as a reminder to the IRS that maintaining a ‘see no
evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ stance on illegal political activity
by tax-exempt groups is completely unacceptable,” the Campaign Finance
Center’s Hebert said.
No doubt there will be more congressional
hearings. But as the GOP’s scandal machinery revs up, you can be sure
they will not be looking at the real bottom line—whether anyone who
wants to create a political group can masquerade as a charity, and not
pay taxes on the group’s income and hide donor’s names. Instead, they
will be playing to Fox News, claiming the Obama administration is
trampling on the First Amendment right to lie in political campaigns and
receive government tax breaks for doing it.
Steven Rosenfeld covers
democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A
Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).
No comments:
Post a Comment