Remember When the IRS Targeted Liberals?
by Linda Beale
Remember When the IRS Targeted Liberals?
Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald has a story that provides additional context on the difficulty the IRS has in determining appropriate filters for political activity. See “When the IRS targeted liberals: Under George W. Bush, it went after the NAACP, Greenpeace, and even a liberal church,” Salon.com (May 14, 2013).
While few are defending the Internal Revenue Service for targeting some 300 conservative groups, there are two critical pieces of context missing from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, at least from what we know so far, the groups were not targeted in a political vendetta — but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, from bona fide social welfare organizations. Employees are given almost zero official guidance on how to do that, so they went after Tea Party groups because those seemed like they might be political. Keep in mind, the commissioner of the IRS at the time was a Bush appointee.
The second is that while this is the first time this kind of thing has become a national scandal, it’s not the first time such activity has occurred.
The article goes on to list the IRS varied record on successful filtering and investigation of political activities, including:
- The investigation of All Saints Episcopal, a large (liberal) church in Pasadena, because of an anti-war sermon the Sunday before the 2004 election, about Bush’s preemptive war doctrine–a case that was not closed until 2007, when the IRS concluded that the church had violated rules but did not revoke its tax-exempt status;
- The failure to investigate two large (conservative) churches in Ohio that were apparently engaged in direct political campaigning for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, who even benefited from flights on church planes, inspite of the complaint from a group of religious leaders about the violations;
- The quick closing of an audit, without any action, of The Living Word Christian Center, a (conservative) church in Minnesota, after its pastor endorsed Michele Bachmann from the pulpit in 2006;
- The 2004 audit targeting the (liberal) NAACP for criticising Bush for being the first sitting president to fail to address the organization at its annual meeting;
- The ability of a right-wing group called “Public Interest Watch“, funded almost entirely by Exxon Mobile in one year, to get the IRS to instigate an examination of Greenpeace, an organization critical of Exxon Mobile for its failure to address climate change, in 2006.
Perhaps more interesting–The Senate held a hearing on nonprofits’ political activity under the REPUBLICAN chair of the Finance Committee, who wanted the IRS to come down harder on enforcement of the rules and noted the need to provide legislative clarity about drawing the line between politics and social welfare, the same issue that the right-wing press is accusing the IRS of failing on today.
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To say that IRS “targeted” Tea Party groups or conservative groups is to adopt the framing of the scandal mongers. As Linda has pointed out in several posts, liberal groups were all flagged for the same kind of political scrutiny as the conservative “targets” got. What apparently were “targeted” were all groups that on their faces looked as though they were likely engaging in partisan political activities. IRS was perhaps inefficient about it, and if inefficiency is a scandal, so be it. But giving careful scrutiny to groups likely to be engaging in partisan political activities is precisely what this IRS Determinations unit was legally required to do and was not imho any kind of “scandal.”
The pigs squeal loudest when they are pulled away from the feed trough. Even more so than when they are being led to slaughter. In the first case they know what they are about to lose and in the second they don’t understand what’s going on around them. One can’t “target” a political organization for their political activities. The activity defines the organization’s purpose. Rather let the organization establish its social and educational purpose exclusive of the political proselytizing. They’re screaming and squealing because they know they’ll be caught with their grubby, sticky fingers in the tax revenue jar. The media may not be proselytizing, but it certainly is prostituting itself.
I confess to being curious whether this form of profiling was statistically valid.
Gee, it’s not like the label/name “tea party” was not being presented all over the news as a politically active general organization principle. Or did I miss understand the cry: I want my country back?
well, i can’t even imagine what “statistically valid” would mean in such cases.
nor can i understand how religious organizations are expected not to have political opinions.
so,while i am not happy that Peter Peterson funds the most serious attack on America, certainly a political project, thought his “charitable” education foundation
i am quite at a loss as to how to define the difference, and therefore maybe i’d just give up trying to tax political organizations?
apparently my brain thinks “through” is spelled “thought”
sorry about that.
One would have thought that putting “Party” in the organization’s name would automatically elicit an investigation by the IRS. If they didn’t want to be thought of as a political “party” they might have considered using something else, like “institute,” “association,” or “foundation.” They arrogantly volunteered for the scrutiny and then complained. What happened to their courage?
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/irs-targeted-tea-party-groups-did-liberal-groups-172738397.html
This piece gets appropriately specific.
It’s Bush’s fault AGAIN? When in heavens will it be Obama’s responsibility for ANYTHING?
Notice the date on the link: May 14, 2013. So 6-9 years later you are retroactively outraged?
BTW, Linda, you are defending someone who has already admitted wrong doing. I guess this is Angry Bear’s way of covering an Obama scandal.
What the exclusive purpose of the organization may be is not the operative factor in the law unless that organization is seeking a tax exclusion. Peter Peterson or the Koch brothers are entitled to fund as many educational organizations they can afford to do. What they or anyone else is not entitled to do is to seek a tax preference for an organization that collects funds and then spends those funds in an effort to promote a political ideology. Educational efforts usually present multiple sides of an issue so that the target group can examine the details of that issue and form an educated opinion. Political organizations don’t make that effort. They focus their efforts on spreading the concepts of a particular ideology. That is the point at which the organization fails to qualify for the tax exemption. The only scandal is that the IG’s report failed to focus attention on the letter of the law and take that difference into account when determining that the IRS agents were using politically charged words to identify political organizations that may improperly take advantage of the 501C4 categorization. Too bad so few “experts” in DC seem to understand the laws as they are written and would rather understand the law as they deem fit.
Jack
I guess that would explain why Peterson is always careful to say “bipartisan” and even give “time” to “other views”… carefully selected and distorted to reinforce his agenda of destroying Social Security and restoring the gilded age.
Dale
That’s the point. Peterson organizations make an effort to stay within the letter of the law. The Institute does not to my knowledge make endorsements, nor directly champion an ideology. Their resident “scholars” may shade the facts and lend undo weight to one side of the argument. That is at least within the letter of the law.
Karl Rove’s political organization is not. The Tea Party organizations were specifically set up to promote neo-conservative political points of view. They are not within the letter of the law. Possibly this so called scandal will focus attention on the on going violations of the 501C4 category as described in the law.
“i can’t even imagine what “statistically valid” would mean in such cases”
The IRS employs audit criteria to determine where to put their time. If th criteria help the auditor to select applications to audit which are of more than average likelihood to be invalid, then the criteria are (evidently) statistally valid.
In amnufacturing we do nt just employ random criteria for auditing. New material lots, tool startup, etc are valid audit criteria.
“Profiling” is auditing with socially distasteful audit criteria.
Given that “Tea Party” is a political term, I think that having it in an organization’s name would be a reasonable flag for an audit criterion. Nonetheless, I can see why people would see it in the same light as profiling. Even so, I am still curious whether it was an effective audit criterion.
Arne
thanks for trying to explain it to me. I grew up where statistics was the place researchers go to bury their mistakes. also lazy surveyors.
Jack
I guess I also grew up where “letter of the law” was the mark of the most dangerous criminals.
The bulk of my statistics training and usage is in determining how to control manufacturing processes. It is defintiely a case of not knowing the answer until you do the analysis, as compared to figuring out how to do the analysis to give the answer you want.
Arne
i believe statistics is quite useful in controlling manufacturing processes.
I remain unconvinced it has any use in comparing small samples from a small universe of unrepeatable events.
[modify “any” to “much” or even “as much”. there are probably cases i just can’t think of right now.]