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IRS Admits Targeting Conservative Groups During 2012 Election
An anonymous reader writes "A recurring theme in comments on Slashdot since the 9/11 attacks has been concern about the use of government power to monitor or suppress political activity unassociated with terrorism but rather based on ideology. It has just been revealed that the IRS has in fact done that. From the story: "The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election . . . Organizations were singled out because they included the words 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
'That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review,' Lerner said . . . 'The IRS would like to apologize for that,' she added. . . . Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. . . . she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. Tea Party groups were livid on Friday. ... In all, about 300 groups were singled out for additional review. . . Tea Party groups weren't buying the idea that the decision to target them was solely the responsibility of low-level IRS workers. ... During the conference call it was stated that no disciplinary action had been taken by those who engaged in this activity. President Obama has previously joked about using the IRS to target people." So it's not how they choose cases for review (except when it is), and was not motivated by political bias (except that it was). Also at National Review, with more bite.
irs.gov 127.0.0.0
Surely they had no issue with the enhanced audits if they had nothing to hide.
Sounds good in theory... and yet groups like Organizing for America and MoveOn.org remain unmolested... funny that?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
What is so evil that this needs to be on every news feed in the world?
So you see no problem with an executive branch agency targeting the political opposition to the incumbent administration in a direct, focused way, apparently calculated to hinder their participation in the election process? You are unbothered by government officials illegitimately, and perhaps illegally, demanding membership lists? You have no sense that this sort of thing might undermine free and fair elections? You have no worries about government officials maintaining enemies lists? It strikes me that you have no useful comment to give on this matter.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The idea that protesting a law makes you an automatic violator of said law doesn't stand. (e.g. Protesting weed laws doesn't make you a drug dealer.)
Only on
I have a question...
Maybe more than one..
Under Bush, lotta crying, moaning, and bleeting from the people. Seems now the same people who did this are or have been involved in;
Cold blodded murder of enemy combatants (Bin Laden could have been taken. He was simply assasinated..) - remember the pictures of a soldier doing this under Bush? all hell let loose. Wot, now its ok cos the pres says so?
Illegal bombardment of other nations land, and illegal operations and flights over other nations airspaces. Drone use today is at an all time high..
Gitmo still seems to be open..
Still in Afganistan, and ever more so in Afpak.
Seems to me that the President and friends is getting a very big free pass on a lot of activities.
And some stuff is new, like drones over the US and further assassinations of unwanted or disliked individuals.
Whatever the background, the IRS should be politically independant and not a tool to be aimed at opponents.
I'm not American. But I have to say that in recent years it seems a lot of mud gets thrown. The republicans and tea party folks are accused of living in their own bubble. And I think thats true. But have to say, the other side is in its own bubble, and its not getting better. In fact, its getting really quite bad.
The President is murdering civilians. And he's issuing orders to kill people. And he seems to have no check or balance. Seems dem press are giving free rides. Doing so isn't proving loyaltly to their beliefs or so called values.
When 3000 Pakistani's die from drone strikes, will it turn to a Pearl Harbour for Pakistan?
More than anything else, put aside the politics, these policies and ideas are not more effective than Bush, or better than Bush. The current work isn't effective in even the medium term. Short term, maybe the US gets some people. But whole villages are being turned. Its winning hearts and minds, but not for the US. This is not going well. It may seem like it is on the surface, but thats all.
We`re all equal
You're half right.
It's not because Tea Party groups are fringe elements. It's because the average American is only outraged when they are told to be by the mainstream media. The same media that gives Obama the glory-hole treatment every week isn't going to direct people to be upset about the unfair treatment of the opposition.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well said!
It is rather sad when many leftists simply write off opponents to the President as racists of some sort... as it does indicate what kind of issues they themselves have with race if that is the first thing that comes to mind.
MLK said:
And yet to the left... it is the color of ones skin, what sort of genitals one has, or what kind of genitals they prefer on the person they are with that is more important than the content of their character.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
If your groups is named after the most famous tax revoult in the history of the country I would expect the tax man to pay special interest to it.
That tax revolt was against the previous regime (the British Empire), not the current government (United States of America). The Tea Party advocates for legislative reform of the tax code and containing spending, not revolts against the government. This is clearly a case of abuse of authority by a government agency intervening in the political process for the benefit of the current administration. You've got a pretty big evidentiary burden if you want to try to justify that.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
First off, I do think it was politically motivated, at least in the extent that someone decided to do something that would be looked favorably on the higher-ups. That's not OK, and people should get fired for it.
However, do note that what they are discussing here is auditing 503(c).4 organizations, to make sure they were complying with the regulations.
That is, these organizations are supposed to be engaging in NON-POLITICAL activities, for which we give them the benefit of being non-profit (and, making donations to them tax deductible).
There's been an explosion of 503(c).4 organizations over the past 4 years (after the Citizen's United decision), and a large number of them have been funded from "right-wing" sources. These organizations have been very lax about filing the proper paperwork about their donors, and in fact, have been downright secretive. And many of them are engaging in activities that very much skirt the line (if not cross it entirely) of political advocacy. The quantity of money (and number of organizations) engaged in this kind of shadowy advocacy/political support is very seriously tilted towards right-wing sources.
The fact is this: if you want to engage in political activity, then fine. Government can and should not have any say about your content. But if you want to get tax-free benefits, then there's a certain set of rules that you MUST play by, and claiming that this is suppressing Free Speech because we won't give you the benefit while you violate the rules is sophistry.
All 503(c).4 organizations need more scrutiny. I'm pretty sure that the IRS was engaging in the equivalent of racial profiling here, with the added notion of pleasing some political higher-ups. But at the end of the day, if those 503(c).4 organizations were breaking the law, then it's hard to say the IRS wasn't doing it's job by auditing them.
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
MoveOn.org isn't solely a 503(c).4 organization. They're very explicitly split into two branches: the main site, which engages in all the permissible organizational and democratic (small 'd') stuff, and the MoveOn PAC, which explicitly is a registered PAC and does promote candidates and specific issues. Their books are separate, and open, and the sections of the web site where PAC vs 503 stuff goes on is clearly demarked. Donations are also clearly marked as to whether you're giving to the PAC or the 503.
The problem with many of the newer 503(c).4 organizations is that they:
(a) don't file the appropriate paperwork, so it's hard to see if they're complying with the reporting and transparency requirements
(b) Engage in activities that are, at best, grey advocacy, and at worst, outright political support of individuals and issues.
I do agree that we need more auditing, and that the selection of who to target was wrong. But that doesn't mean there isn't a serious problem on the Right around this, particularly since there's been a whole lot more money poured into Right Wing 503(c).4 orgs in the past 4 years, and also because the vast majority of these organizations seem to be very heavily politicized, and much less socially-oriented.
FYI - laws say it's fine for a 503(c).4 to advocate certain general positions (i.e. "Clean Water", "Less Coal, more Wind", and do what used to be called "Community Organizing"), so long as they did not promote specific candidates or parties or legislation/initiatives. The problem has been that may 503(c).4 orgs aren't obeying those restrictions. That is, you see a lot of Left-Wing 503(c) doing general voter registration and promoting Big Causes. Recent Right Wing stuff has heavily been oriented around "Defeat taxation" and "Stop Immigration" and the like, which leads (or is intended) to be mostly legislative lobbying, which is NOT OK for a 503(c).4
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
You know what, as an outsider, I think the real problem is that the US has completely lost sight of what "Left wing" and "Right wing" or "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean. Hell, you're applying political labels to a non-political sporting event: how is that rational?
People need to stop screaming at each other and tossing labels around like "Tea bagger" and "Libtard", because you're helping no one.
You find a lot of tribalism in political life, particularly these days. People tend to view their group as the good guys, the other group as the bad guys. So because the "good guys" are doing it to the "bad guys" that makes it good. It is ok, it needed to be done because those bad guys are so bad!
Of course if the situation were reversed they'd howl and scream.
And this illustrates what I was trying to tell "US" - when the W. Bush administration was grasping for more power for the Executive branch, I warned, "All powers they get and abuse will be abused by the other guy."
And here we are.
And the next President will have even more power.
That's true. However, organizations with those kinds of names are likely to be engaged in political activity which should render them ineligible for tax exempt status.
The fact that the IRS has permitted the LDS and Catholics to get away with using tax exempt resources to campaign does not mean that the IRS should be required to let everybody do it. It means that the IRS needs to do a better job of enforcing the code.
There do appear to be some abuses of power here, but keeping an eye on organizations likely to be engaged in political activity isn't wrong.
do you mean just like teachers unions?
mike
The IRS was right to apologize, but they apologized for the wrong thing. They should have put EVERY political group seeking tax-exempt status through this kind of scrutiny. The fact that these groups (both left and right) get to avoid taxes while manipulating elections is embarassing. Of course, the real problem is that they have so much power and so little transparency to start with, but if the only victory we can get right now is to make them pay taxes, let's start with that.
Mike, you can engage in political activity and still be a 501c3 or 4, but it can't be your primary activity.
An organization whose primary activity is political cannot be a non-profit according to those statutes. I'm sure even you would admit that the various teachers' unions are not primarily political organizations. Not as long as they are negotiating contracts, representing members, etc. There are a LOT of teachers in the US and the teachers' unions are very busy even in non-election years. You might be surprised to learn that there are lots of parts of the country where the locals do absolutely no political work at all.
Try this exercise: look up a few organizations that have the name "tea party" and/or "patriot" in their name and see how many of them meet the same criteria.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You seem to be implying that the tea party groups investigated were not doing so. Care to cite some specific evidence of both?
Michelle Bachmann's own staff is testifying against her about spending irregularities. Sharon Angle (from right here in the great state of Nevada) has already paid $25,000 in fines for spending her campaign funds illegally.
Those are the only 2 Tea Partiers I can name.
I'm a conservative who was once very hopeful that the Tea Party might help turn around the Republican Party (which is more about expanding the government and the debt than anything else). Then I went to a Tea Party rally, where I got to hear all about how it's the duty of all Americans to NOT pay taxes, and how the niggers are taking over.
So yeah, audit them. All of them.
However, organizations with those kinds of names are likely to be engaged in political activity which should render them ineligible for tax exempt status.
I see. So you want government officials to make judgments based on the name of the organization instead of what is on the application? Instead of what they actually do? Interesting. Probably not a good idea though.
The fact that the IRS has permitted the LDS and Catholics to get away with using tax exempt resources to campaign does not mean that the IRS should be required to let everybody do it.
Under the law you can advocate for policy. If you don't like that, you try to change the law, not use the government to disadvantage your political opposition.
There do appear to be some abuses of power here,
That seems remarkably restrained. I think your eyesight is likely diminished by the targets of this being political groups you oppose . . . what what's a little overstep by the government if the outcome is agreeable, eh?.
But allow me to correct you - the IRS has admitted that it was wrong, over the line. They aren't hedging, why are you?
You find nothing truly troubling in the following?
The IRS’s Tea-Party Targeting
. . . perhaps most troubling, those tea-party organizations were sent letters of inquiry demanding information that would seldom if ever be demanded of any other applicant in the process. The IRS demanded lists of donors, names of spouses and family members, detailed information about political views and associations — all of that “under penalties of perjury.” Many applicants dropped out of the process. The questions were remarkably invasive: For example, the IRS demanded to know not only whether political candidates participated in public forums conducted by the groups, but which issues were discussed, along with copies of any literature distributed at the forum and material published on websites. (The IRS has been less forthcoming with its own materials related to this investigation.) If the organizations collected dues, the IRS demanded to know how much they were. It demanded everything down to the résumés of employees. The inquiry was not limited to members of the organization, its executives, or its directors, but included even their family members: The IRS demanded to know — again, under penalty of perjury — whether any of their family members might be thinking about running for office. Its demand for the names of all donors — and all recipients of grants — is in violation of IRS policy. . . more
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but keeping an eye on organizations likely to be engaged in political activity isn't wrong.
That wasn't the job of the people at IRS involved in this, so yes, it was worng. Or do you want random government officials "volunteering" to keep the voters in line? You know, just until after the election is over? Or, hey, if it works, why stop? (You won't complain if the shoe is on the other foot, will you?)
If you still just can't quite bring yourself to identify this as a big problem, I'm tempted to suggest some supplementary reading material.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Mike, you can engage in political activity and still be a 501c3 or 4, but it can't be your primary activity.
If only those two were the only ways of being tax exempt. A political organization can be tax exempt if its primary activity is a tax exempt activity. Here:
I'd say the Tea Party meets that requirement.
You're condemning all the people at the rallies by referring to some forum posts as evidence?
If people made that kind of sweeping generalization using comments here, imagine what they'd be saying about the computing industry.
You didn't read the article. By definition, the IRS couldn't have gone after their political rivals because political groups are not allowed to have non-profit status. That's the entire cause of this kerfuffle. The law forbids non-profits from having a political goal. The IRS saw "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in the names and just assumed those groups were political in nature. That's stupid and lazy, but not necessarily evil or criminal. BUT if you think that "Tea Party" and "Patriot" groups are inherently political, and therefore discriminated against by the IRS on that basis, then you're actually agreeing that the IRS did the right thing by targeting them as political groups!
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The IRS requesting donor lists was illegal, yet they did it and the mainstream media ignored the complaints because...because...why?
Really? This is something that a low-level employee can do on their own, without any of their superiors being aware of it? Then again, it was low-level employees that decided to initiate a gun-running operation into Mexico and low-level employees that denied the Consulate in Benghazi additional security in the face ot increased threats, so why not? The press has accepted this pitiful excuse before, why not this time?
Ken