From the New York Times yesterday:
When CVFC, a conservative veterans’ group in California, applied for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service, its biggest expenditure that year was several thousand dollars in radio ads backing a Republican candidate for Congress.
The Wetumpka Tea Party, from Alabama, sponsored training for a get-out-the-vote initiative dedicated to the “defeat of President Barack Obama” while the I.R.S. was weighing its application.
And the head of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, whose application languished with the I.R.S. for more than two years, sent out e-mails to members about Mitt Romney campaign events and organized members to distribute Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign literature.
Representatives of these organizations have cried foul in recent weeks about their treatment by the I.R.S., saying they were among dozens of conservative groups unfairly targeted by the agency, harassed with inappropriate questionnaires and put off for months or years as the agency delayed decisions on their applications.
Do those groups sound like "social welfare organizations" to you?But a close examination of these groups and others reveals an array of election activities that tax experts and former I.R.S. officials said would provide a legitimate basis for flagging them for closer review. (our emphasis)
Charles Pierce has a pithy analysis and suggestion which we heartily endorse:
... a lot of what is being called a "scandal" is plainly an attempt to police a scam designed by people who are trained to game any campaign-finance system, and who have made their careers doing precisely that. Maybe it's time for the IRS — and the administration — to come out of a crouch on this.Yeah, we'd like to see the Obama Administration stop being on the defensive about the IRS trying to police these teatard scam outfits' gaming the tax system. Come out of a crouch and take the offensive.
