Many Americans claim to mistrust the government, but their real focus is not necessarily the government as it is their elected representatives and their practice of pursuing agendas far removed from that which they avow. Republicans are notorious for claiming, for example, their top priority is creating jobs and then giving tax cuts to the rich and eliminating regulations they assert encourages “job creators” to begin hiring. On Thursday House Speaker John Boehner said “Our system requires the bonds of trust between the American people and their government. Those bonds, once broken, are very hard to repair,” and it was a stunning admission from any Republican, but especially a man who has given the American people no reason whatsoever to trust any utterance issuing from his mouth. Boehner was commenting on the alleged scandals Republicans are working to discredit the Obama White House, and particularly the faux outrage over the I.R.S. doing its due diligence in exposing conservative activists’ attempts to circumvent campaign finance laws.
Republicans know there was no impropriety in I.R.S. personnel scrutinizing 501(c)(4) tax exempt applications for “social welfare” organizations, and despite their faux outrage that teabagger and patriot groups were targeted unfairly, their real concern is protecting groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity using “social welfare” designations to influence elections without revealing the source of the dark money being injected into American elections. There is a reason the I.R.S. was deluged with thousands of 501(c)(4) applications prior to the 2010 midterm elections and they can be traced back to the conservative Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that effectively handed the electoral process over to dark money groups that gave corporations unfettered rights to buy candidates and install them in the highest levels of government.
The I.R.S. is beyond reproach for scrutinizing applications for “social welfare” designation, but Republicans are panting to use the phony scandal to neuter the agency’s ability to bifurcate campaign financing organizations from legitimate organizations performing social welfare. Citizens United gave rise to so-called super PACs (Political Action Committees) that are unencumbered by legal limits of funds they can raise from individuals, corporations, and other groups, provided they are operated correctly, including revealing their donors that is maintained for public scrutiny by the Federal Election Commission. It should come as no surprise, then, that two of the largest organizations pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2010 and 2012 elections for conservative candidates are also designated as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations that are allowed to conceal their donors despite their political activism and direct influence on the electoral process.
Republicans could not care less about the I.R.S. giving extra scrutiny to small mom-and-pop teabagger groups and patriot militias posing as social welfare organizations because their contributions are not, in and of themselves, election game-changers in the grand scheme of billion dollar elections. However, they are acutely interested in protecting Karl Rove and the Koch brothers’ dark money being used to influence public opinion against Democratic candidates and issues that protect the American people from conservative predators. Both Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity applied for, and received, 501(c)(4) designation as tax exempt “social welfare” organizations that allows them to conceal their donors’ millions-of-dollars contributions that Super PACs would be charged with revealing. Only a deluded conservative sycophant would ever believe for a second that Rove and the Koch’s organizations remotely resemble social welfare organizations, and it is obvious that after the I.R.S. came to grips with the fact Rove and the Kochs are not social welfare oriented, they shifted their attention to groups that were obviously political activists and not social welfare organizations.
According to IRS regulations, the primary activity of a 501(c)(4) must be social welfare activities, and it is important to note that other IRS regulations are clear that engaging in campaign activity is not a social welfare activity. I.R.S. statutes say, on one hand, that 501(c)(4)’s must engage in “exclusively social welfare activity,” and other IRS regulations that say “social welfare activities must be your primary activity.” There are also court decisions that interpreted “primary activity” to mean that you cannot engage in a substantial amount of non-social welfare activity, and are only allowed to engage in an insubstantial amount of non-social welfare activity. Rove’s Crossroads GPS and Koch’s Americans for Prosperity engage in no social welfare activity and Citizens United was the incentive to apply for “social welfare” designation to conceal their substantial donor list from public and FEC scrutiny, and it is why Republicans are seizing on the phony I.R.S. scandal as an Obama Administration attack on individual Americans. Focusing the public’s attention on poor “little teabagger” and “patriot” groups diverts attention away from the real social injury organizations such as Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity.
Republicans are making the I.R.S. scandal about government persecution of individual Americans and not enforcing campaign finance laws. It is why Republicans are opposed to returning 501(c)(4)s to their original purpose, which did not include campaign activities, and why they are opposed to passing comprehensive disclosure legislation so Americans can fully know who finances campaign expenditures that attempt to influence their votes. Republicans are against passing the DISCLOSE Act that protects against groups like Rove’s Crossroads GPS funding “swift boat-like” ads against Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, and deals with people like the Koch brothers who set up dummy organizations to hide dark money donors’ campaign expenditures. If the I.R.S. had scrutinized Rove’s Crossroads GPS and Koch’s Americans for Prosperity in the same manner as they did the smaller, and no less phony, “social welfare” applicants, in conjunction with the DISCLOSE Act, they could have prevented almost all the efforts of Rove and Koch’s disclosure evasion tactics that enabled them to pour hundreds-of-millions of dark money into campaigns against Democratic candidates and state level propositions such as environmental-protection killing campaigns in California during the 2010 and particularly the 2012 general election.
America is in desperate need of campaign finance reform and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi argued the so-called I.R.S. scandal underscored the immediate necessity for Congress to minimize the role of money in politics. Her point was that because groups like Rove’s and Koch’s do not have to disclose their donors, they have gained inordinate power since the hideous Citizens United decision allowed them to participate directly in elections as candidate advocates and not “social welfare” organizations. Pelosi said, “These actions highlight why we must overturn Citizens United. There is a very thin line … that these so-called ‘social welfare’ organizations must make their priority promoting social welfare, rather than engaging in politics. Clearly, this has not been the case.”
However, it will continue to be the case with impunity because Republicans will hold investigations and hearings and focus on neutering the IRS to shield organizations like Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, because with unlimited donations from anonymous donors, Rove and the Kochs will eventually insert their proxies in the highest office(s) in government and Citizens United will have allowed the Koch brothers’ to buy the government which has been their intent since they bought the Supreme Court in 2010.
Image: Chicago Public Media
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