Bill Moyers website, Moyers & Company, is well worth regular visits. Lots of good stuff here.
Here’s an informative one from a couple of weeks ago: “Slideshow: Six Whistleblowers Charged Under the Espionage Act.” This adds important substance to criticisms of the Obama administration’s aggressive pursuit of “leaks,” up to and including the secret surveillance of Associated Press phone lines.
There’s also a good overview article on the IRS scandalmongering, “The Taxman and the Tea Party.” It draws heavily on a widely cited New Yorker column by Jeffrey Toobin, “The Real I.R.S. Scandal.”
Toobin writes:
It’s important to review why the Tea Party groups were petitioning the I.R.S. anyway. They were seeking approval to operate under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. This would require them to be “social welfare,” not political, operations. There are significant advantages to being a 501(c)(4). These groups don’t pay taxes; they don’t have to disclose their donors—unlike traditional political organizations, such as political-action committees. In return for the tax advantage and the secrecy, the 501(c)(4) organizations must refrain from traditional partisan political activity, like endorsing candidates.
If that definition sounds murky—that is, if it’s unclear what 501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to do—that’s because it is murky. Particularly leading up to the 2012 elections, many conservative organizations, nominally 501(c)(4)s, were all but explicitly political in their work. For example, Americans for Prosperity, which was funded in part by the Koch Brothers, was an instrumental force in helping the Republicans hold the House of Representatives. In every meaningful sense, groups like Americans for Prosperity were operating as units of the Republican Party. Democrats organized similar operations, but on a much smaller scale. (They undoubtedly would have done more, but they lacked the Republican base for funding such efforts.)
So the scandal—the real scandal—is that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way.
Both cite the comments of former Common Cause President Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21, which focuses on campaign finance issues.
The Washington Post’s Wonkblog published the transcript of a good interview with Wertheimer, also worth reading for additional perspective on this issue.
What is clear, in my view, is that the IRS got this wrong twice. They got it wrong in targeting conservative groups for review based on their names and their identified interests, and they got it wrong in not investigating and acting against groups that in our view were blatantly abusing the tax laws by improperly claiming to be 501(c)(4) groups so they could keep the donors paying for their campaign activities secret from the American people.
Happy reading.
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How about we force the IRS to reinstate the “EXCLUSIVELY” (“organization must not be organized for profit and must be operated EXCLUSIVELY to promote social welfare.”) part of the law.
You think Moyers is impartial or neutral? The fact that PBS gives Moyers 60 minutes on national TV every week makes we wonder whether PBS should qualify for tax exempt contributions. You think NPR/PBS are impartial or neutral? Ask Juan Williams.
The issue in the IRS scandal is not whether the IRS has a right to check on whether a group qualifies for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. Of course the IRS has the right to ask applicants questions to ensure they spend less than 50% of their time/resources on political advocacy. The issue is whether the IRS asks the same questions of all applicants. Is the IRS fair, impartial, and even-handed, treating leftwing applicants the same way? And who was it in the IRS, Treasury, or White House who gave the marching orders to delay applications and ask intrusive intimidating questions only for groups like the Tea Party? Speaker Boehner got it right when he said the question is not whether heads will roll but who will be going to prison.
PBS is not a (c)(4). Apples and Oranges.
Old Driver nailed this. The IRS reg’s interpret “exclusively” as “primarily” thus the boarders are like a line in the sand on a windy day.
The irs will be in charge of enforcement of obamacare. Their power will be amazing. Watch out
A solution to the (c)(4) problem: Get rid of them
http://www.lawprofessors.typepad.com/nonprofit/
Organizing for America, Obama’s adjunct campaign org, and Media Matters are 501 c4 entities. It’s hardly just the right doing this.
The real scandal is the use of government to target and harass political enemies. Progressives are against that, right? Or does the issue become so much more complicated when the groups targeted are ones YOU don’t like.
The woman who was in charge of this scandal is promoted to chief of irs affordable health care implementation with broad unproven powers at her disposal.
She also got $100 grand in bonuses for 2010-2012, coincidentally (again!) the years where she was harassing the administration’s political enemies. Just another innocent mistake, no doubt, without any political motives.
One thing is certain: the IRS scandal has nothing to do with Obama, and certainly nothing at all to do with Obma’s demonization of the Tea Party and conservative 501 (c) 4 organizations, or with Senate Democrats specifically asking the IRS to look into those groups. The targeting comes as a complete shock to all of them. How could the IRS interpret calls that these groups needed to be looked into and investigated as some kind of license to target those groups? That’s the mystery. I guess we’ll never know.
It appears the investigation was started under a Bush appointee. It also appears they purposely exposed this to the press by planting a question to an IRS official during a conference. Republican conspiracy? Maybe?
Those darn Republicans, eh? They cleverly waited to reveal the plot until seven months after the election?