Pages

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

To All Those Who Got Their Undies in a Bunch Over the IRS Targeting of the Tea Party and others

In Bill Moyer’s blog, Kim Barker and Justine Elliot of Pro Publica, point out 6 facts that are overlooked in the IRS scandal. The report has mainly to do with dark money groups parading as social welfare non profits.

1.     “Social welfare nonprofits are supposed to have social welfare, and not politics, as their ‘primary’ purpose.” This should be obvious and is a tax exemption created a century ago. The language may be vague but it isn’t that vague. Some say they should be spending 51% of social welfare; what a load of horse pucky. Yes, the IRS could be more clear but the intent is clear but folk work around it.
2.   “Donors to social welfare nonprofits are anonymous for a reason.” Of course, if their purpose is clear. But some use that as just a method to hide. There is a difference between giving to the NAACP and some super PAC where the big bucks guys can hide.
3.   “The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision meant that corporations could pay for political ads, anonymously, use social welfare nonprofits.” That decision may go down as the most boneheaded decision of the court in all time and does exactly what number two was about; that makes it seem like number 2 to me. PACs are one thing, this is just blarney and should have stones thrown at it.
4.   “Social welfare nonprofits do not actually have to apply to the IRS for recognition as tax-exempt organizations.” Weird, charities have to do that but not non-profits. Seems stupid to me. If we had the same requirements many of these issues would not have been issues and could have been caught in a timely manner rather than after elections.
5.   “Most of the money spent on elections by social welfare nonprofits  supports Republicans.” They point out that more than $256 million special by social welfare nonprofits on ads in the 2012 elections, at least 80% came from conservative groups. Do you suppose that might have had something to do with the “targeting?” This did not include the Tea Party. Plus there are tens of millions spent by groups on ads months before the election that are not reported to the FEC.
6.   “Some social welfare groups promised in their applications, under penalty of perjury, that they wouldn’t get involved in elections. Then they did just that.” An example here is the American Future Fund a conservative nonprofit that spend millions is campaign ads after they checked the “no” response in 2008. One went on their YouTube account the same day they answered, “no.” Another is Alliance for America’s Future, one more the Government Integrity Fund; does that seem a bit ironic? Such great sounding names blatantly lacking integrity.

To me, all of this is just another sign of the corruption of our campaign laws and methods in this country. I don’t care if the Republicans are the biggest abusers of this system, Democrats are right there with them on a smaller scale. We need to fix the system so these abuses cannot take place.

In the book, One Way Forward, I blogged about earlier, the author proposes a pledge for members of congress: “I hereby pledge to do whatever it takes to end corrupting influence of money in our government.” He then goes on to list three principles to fulfill that commitment: 1) To provide that public elections are publicly funded; 2) To limit, and make transparent, contributions and independent political expenditures; and 3) To reaffirm that when the Declaration of Independence spoke of entities “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Right,” it was speaking of natural persons only.

We get email pledges for members of congress all the time, some which are a bit lopsided, but this one really makes sense and works for both parties for the citizens of the country. Here is something we can be for rather than against. And, if followed it would eradicate all that which we began this article with.

We could all take this pledge; go here.   

No comments:

Post a Comment