Chris Hayes here outlines that the Real Scandal underneath the IRS scrutiny of 501(c)(4) organizations, is the fact that Citizen's United allowed groups like Crossroads GPS to do political work under cover of being a "Social Welfare" Organization.
As both Chris and David K Johnston point out, doing extra scrutiny of political organizations that are pretending to be social welfare groups is perfectly appropriate. What everyone objects to is the fact they used this as their criteria for identifying political groups that were doing this.
- "Tea Party," "Patriots" or "9/12 Project" is referenced in the case file
- Issues include government spending, government debt or taxes
- Education of the public by advocacy/lobbying to "make America a better place to live"
- Statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run
Here's the question, since the proof that they weren't being "neutral" is that they had specific keywords that would pickup Conservative Groups, exactly what keywords
could they have used to do the same thing with progressives? Is that all they would've had to do to make this "Neutral". How exactly would they have done that?
Let's be honest for a second, Liberals Criticize How the Country is Being Run Constantly. Even with a Democratic President. (Can you say "Public Option"?) Liberals are also trying to make "America Better". Those actually are Neutral. But let's be honest about why it's bad that they had "Tea Party", "Patriots" and "9/12 Project" on their list. Because that's -- well -- That's Profiling isn't it?
What this really comes down to is that Conservatives are Hoping Mad that they were treated the same way that they think Muslims should be treated, and the same way that Brown Minorities in New York get treated.
They were Stopped and Frisked by the IRS.
I've heard some Republicans complaining about this saying that the problem is that the IRS wasn't checking for groups with "Move On" in their title.
Uh, what?
There like already is a 527 group called MoveOn.Org.
Here's a hint. Liberals Don't Like Super-Pacs. We don't like the fact that they have infected our Political System with the Poison of Dark Money.
We didn't like the fact that the President had his own Super-Pac Priorities USA. We got used to it after we saw some of their ads, but we didn't necessarily like it.
George Soros does not have a Super-Pac.
Bill Maher doesn't have a SuperPac. Both Soros and Maher gave $1 Million to Priorities USA and you know what else, they told everyone they did it.
It's not like Occupy has a SuperPac.
Dailykos does not have a SuperPac.
If You had to Name the Five Top Progressive SuperPacs, could you?
Ok, we have Priorities USA and...
and..
and, uh...
ok.. fuck it I give - Here's the Answer.
- Priorities USA Action (Obama SuperPac)
- AFL-CIO Workers' Voices PAC
- House Majority PAC (House Democrats)
- Majority Pac (Senator Harry Reid)
- American Bridge 21st Century (David Brock of Media Matters)
Looking at OpenSecrets.org there are 146 Liberal SuperPacs and 304 Conservative SuperPacs.
So the bias here was something that actually didn't began with the IRS or their actions, it started with the formation of the PAC themselves, which were heavily biased 2:1 to be Conservative.
If you're looking for someone abusing the system, why not go Fishing where the Fish Swim?
And herein we see the true problem with Profiling.
Those who support the practice like say, Mayor Bloomberg, will justify stopping hundreds of thousands of black and brown people even though they only half as likely to find weapons on them than would would be white people - all because they claim the higher likelihood of violent perpetrators are not white. So, why bother stopping any white people, eh?
Because it only takes one White Guy with a Gun to Shoot Up Wall Street. Don't think he got stopped. Don't think he got frisked. I'm just saying.
And then you have Brian Kilmead who once said, "All Muslims aren't terrorists - but All Terrorists are Muslim", and therefore - y'know - they deserve extra scrutiny. Never mind that 90% of Terrorist attacks on U.S. Soil are by Non-Muslims.
Nobody, but, NOBODY is happy that this happened with the IRS. It should never happen, but the reality is that is does and it can very easily.
It happened when the IRS audited the NAACP because they criticized President Bush.
In 2004, the NAACP was hit with an audit over accusations of improper political activity for criticizing the Bush administration.
"We have received information that during your 2004 convention in Philadelphia, your organization distributed statements in opposition of George W. Bush for the office of presidency," the IRS wrote in an audit notice that the group released to the media at the time.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/...
The IRS threatened to
revoke the Tax Free Status of a Pasadena Church for a Anti-War Sermon.
The Internal Revenue Service threatened to revoke the tax-exempt status of Pasadena's All Saints Episcopal Church because of an antiwar sermon delivered two days before the 2004 presidential election. On June 9, 2005, the church received a letter from the IRS stating that "a reasonable belief exists that you may not be tax-exempt as a church" because 501(c)(3) exempt organizations are prohibited from intervening in political campaigns.
And how loud did Conservatives and so-called Civil Libertarians cry and scream when that happened?
.
.
.
.
Are those crickets I hear?
Yeah, thought so.
Let's be clear, this wasn't political payback using government resources. Auditing the NAACP back in 2004 was Political Payback. The IRS Commissioner when this happened was still a Bush Appointee from 2008 largely because Congress Filibusters Obama's appointees. This case - was just DUMB. It was wrong. It was a Mistake. That's all.
Vyan