I have been part of a nascent political awakening. It was the liberal response in Philadelphia to George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. The people who opposed the war found each other first online and then in person. From there, we founded blogs and formed organizations. It was completely organic. We had no corporate money. We had no hidden donors. None of us, as far as I know, asked the IRS for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status.
This is not what happened with the Tea Party. The Tea Party arose during the late summer of 2009, ostensibly in reaction to the stimulus but, in reality, more as an effort to defeat ObamaCare. On January 21st, 2010, the Supreme Court made its egregious ruling in the Citizens United case, and the IRS was immediately flooded with requests from Tea Party groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. I am sure that there was a lot of spontaneous and genuine political opposition to what the Obama administration and the Democrats were doing in Congress in 2009, but someone was behind this concerted effort to organize the opposition into tax-exempt groups. That doesn’t happen without resources and guidance. I don’t think it even occurred to any of us that we could pretend to be a social welfare group and raise money without being subject to taxation. That’s because we aren’t criminals.
I am infuriated by these stories about Tea Party groups who are complaining that seeking tax-exempt status was like having a proctology exam. While I acknowledge that the IRS made unreasonable requests and caused unreasonable delays, I am even more outraged that they did not deny tax-exempt status to even one Tea Party group. Not one.
There isn’t a single Tea Party group in the country that isn’t primarily concerned with political matters. None of them should have qualified for tax-exempt status. None.
If they have tax-exempt status then so, too, should Atrios and Chris Bowers and Susie Madrak, and any other Philly bloggers who founded or joined blogs to oppose the war. Opposing disastrous war serves the public welfare even better than opposing historically-low tax rates.
Where’s our refund?
The Sierra Club and other organizations that have obeyed the law on this and declined to be tax exempt should immediately put in their applications.
The real scandal in all of this is that these groups qualified as 501(c)(4). Do you think that part of the reason for the media outrage about all of this is that many of news outlets seemed to fall for the sham that these tea party groups were actually grass roots groups?
I remember when they started because I was very involved in organizing for health care reform. We could have 300 people at a rally and the media would go out of their way to film and interview the two sad dudes from the tea party. It seemed like they got disproportionate attention and positive coverage.
But according to Politico, the media has been soft on Obama.
Right and it is only now that he has lost “the town”.
Perhaps the big scandal is that really large political operations have use of the exemption. According to David Cay Johnston:
The real scandal was that Rove’s appalling organization was granted tax exempt status (as JeffL notes). That was the request that should have been litigated and fought all the way. The law had never been used for this purpose. That the DOJ and IRS allowed Chairman KKKarl Rove to pull this crap without a fight and without making our Cheneyized courts back Rove was craven and weak. American Crossroads is not a “social welfare organization”. If it is, anything is.
The next scandal was that these multiplying teaturd groups were granted status. But after approving Rove, presumably the teaturds had to be approved, as long as they were “genuine” and not obvious frauds. Of course, Obama himself immediately declaring the IRS at fault as soon as the Repubs fake outrage machine began bloviating means that arguments on the actual merits of tax-exempt policy are now DOA.
The more dark corners one looks into in our failing and degenerating nation, the more vermin one finds. There is no solid wood left anywhere in the ship.
The Tea Party arose during the late summer of 2009, ostensibly in reaction to the stimulus but, in reality, more as an effort to defeat ObamaCare.
Quibble: The Tea Party as an astroturf organization was founded in the summer of 2008 (domain names and other registrations occurred then) in anticipation of the Gullible Old Party losing the election.
The semi-official launch of the movement was February 2009 with the Santelli rant, ostensibly ad hoc but in fact planned months in advance. Most Tea Party groups were formally announced in the wake of that. Their first protest day was in April – tax day – you may remember that Fox News was basically the national sponsor and covered it 24×7 in the weeks leading up to it. It got national news coverage, though it must be said that initially the national punditry was very skeptical of the nuts they were interviewing – but soon their masters got them to fall into line and pretend the Teanuts were a real movement that somehow was non-partisan.
In short, this “movement”- always at the core based on racism – decided in advance that any black President was going to give away the treasury to all of his brothas in the ‘hood and protested against him doing that regardless of what his actual policies were. If there is any doubt of that go back and read the text of the Santelli rant – he is pissed off about all the money being given away to mortgagees who didn’t earn it – subtext: dark-skinned people – in fact the HAMP program didn’t help a single damn mortgage owner, it helped the banks.
If Hillary had hired a competent campaign staff instead of Penn & Co and actually won in 2008 there would also have been an astroturf movement but it would have had a fundamentally different character – more based on scandal outrage (a Whitewater re-run) than on race-based spending-on-niggas outrage.
Interesting that after losing in 2012 the wingnut billionaires club seems to have realized that a basically race-based opposition strategy (even if done in subtext and not overtly) actually backfired. Now they’ve returned to the Whitewater strategy of endless ginned-up-scandals, and the lapdog media is happily following along.
I didn’t know about the pre-election domain-name registrations.
I also should have said that it arose ostensibly in opposition to the bank bailout and the stimulus. It wasn’t just the stimulus.
The bank bailout happened in Oct. 2008-so was there a tea party response then? I don’t remember one at all. Most of the tea partiers with whom I have spoken think that TARP happened with the Obama administration. Actually a lot of them think the stock market crash happened in 2009 as well.
When I say “ostensibly,” I am saying “not really.”
It arose in opposition to Obama. The stimulus and Obamacare were just the convenient cover stories.
We all know that if Romney had somehow miraculously won the nomination and election in 2008 and passed a national Romneycare, identical in every way to Obamacare including the deep support of Big Pharma and Big Medical, that the Gullible Old Party would be touting it as their crowning achievement instead of pretending it is the end of liberty-as-we-know-it.
In the spirit of fairness, it is true that there is a lot of political organizing by churches and we really haven’t decided to crack down on that at all. It isn’t just the evangelicals on behalf of Republicans or conservative issues.
CREW is on it. And maybe O’Donnell is right that Baucus and the WH are listening.
In fact, the Tea Party is pretty much eplicitly opposed to social welfare.
But I agree. Of course they should have faced increased scrutiny, and of course they should have been denied. If you just look at the basic complaint here, it’s self-contradictory on its face: The IRS unfairly singled out politically conservative organizations for increased scrutiny. Isn’t that a little like saying the Highway Patrol unfairly singles out people who are driving drunk at 100 mph for increased scrutiny?
Investigating these groups was a prudent action. Americans for Prosperity funds them and the Koch jerks fund Americans for Prosperity. Our IRS should be investigating shady organizations.
While I acknowledge that the IRS made unreasonable requests . . .
If that’s what you truly believe, then you haven’t read the full report. Further, the sacking of a man with 25 years experience smacks of the same folly that led to the firing of Shirley Sherrod, and accomplishes nothing to remedy the alleged problem(s) in the IRS.
Much of the problem comes from the fact that the laws regsrding tax exwmption for such organizations is extremely vague, therefore the IRS doesn’t have clear guidelines as to what is legal and what isn’t. That is probably why they approved all these applications in the end.
The whole thing is a horrible mess and the firing of the IRS acting head is justified as an immediate way of getting control of the situation ONLY if they now go ahead and address all these problems.
The truth is that it is impossible for any social welfare organization, however you define that, NOT to have political interests, just by their very missions. In my connection working for a 501(c)3 organization, we interacted with government representatives (in other words, we lobbied), but the idea of contributing money to campaigns never crossed our minds. And that’s how it should be for all of these organizations. Zero.
I’m an officer of both a (c)4 and a (c)3, one of which has contracts with two separate government entities. It would be dangerous (IMHO) to engage in any kind of partisan politicking by the organizations for no other reason than what if the opponents won? I’m always very careful what hat I wear when doing business for the NFPs.
Obama has pretty much given up on this, publicly acknowledging that it was wrong to question Tea Party groups and firing the IRS Commissioner as penance.
Like you, I vehemently disagree with Obama on this, but there is no use protesting when the White House clearly stands with Fox News and Karl Rove on this.
While everyone is focused on the “tax exempt” status of these 501(c)(3) organizations, none of them would have had taxable profits anyway. Donations aren’t deductible as a charitable contribution by the givers. Plus, “contributions may be subject to gift tax, and income spent on political activities – generally the advocacy of a particular candidate in an election – is taxable.”
It’s all about funneling “dark money” through so many outlets with shoddy accounting that it would be next to impossible for the IRS to impose the taxes required for electioneering and gift taxes.
I caught a bit of Rush yesterday. The theme was that this was a first amendment issue and that it was worse, far worse than claims Republicans tried to suppress the black and woman’s vote. This is suppressing conservatives ability to fund raise and organize.
Laughable is that if these groups are organized for political gain they could not get the tax status they seek.
Nuts.
I agree with this article 100%. The IRS must deny tax exempt status to the Tea Party. Failure to do so would result in favoring conservatives over liberals.