Political Theater

As a person who follows politics, I always like a good show.  And boy, have we been getting them lately, as the Republicans pursue their three "scandals".  

Scandal number one sort of petered out, as it was determined that all of the dirt on Benghazi had already been dug and flung, and none of it stuck on the President.

Scandal number two, the Justice Department's collecting the phone and email records of journalists in order to determine the source of a security leak, was just not very sexy for most Americans, and is mostly just a liberal journalist's issue now.  Conservatives kind of don't mind going after the media.

That leaves scandal number three, the IRS "targeting" of political groups that applied for tax free status under the 501 (c )(4)) provision of the tax code.  To qualify for this exemption, an organization is supposed to be engaged in "social welfare", be a non-profit, and not have more that 50% of its funding go to political activities.  To get around this political provision, there is language about not directly supporting specific candidates.

One of the largest such organizations, Crossroads GPS, Karl Rove's political action group, which spent millions in the last federal election, qualified by carefully parsing the clouded language of the provision.

As a run up to the election, there was a plethora of organizations making 501(c) (4) applications.  The IRS office charged with handling them was swamped.  They instituted some short cuts to screen out what appeared to be political organizations by using target words such as Tea Party.  There were progressive filters too, but the overwhelming number of applications were from small conservative groups.

When the practice became known internally, an attempt to stop it was made.  Many applications were on hold, awaiting further review from another administrative office, which did not deal with them in a timely manner.  The Cincinnati Office was left holding the bag.  One of the IRS's own administrators  leaked the situation, and it was investigated.  The report came out recently, and it was show time.

Since then every attempt has been made to link the ill conceived practices to the White House and the President.  Another set of hearing is going on this week.  

I can't listen to most of it without getting riled up.  Thankfully we have a Representative from Seattle who doesn't mind speaking his piece when he hears crap.  Hurrah for Rep. Jim McDermott!  You will hear him quoted, and condemned in the media.  But to me he speaks common sense.

His words, as quoted by the Huffington Press:

"The mistake here was that the staff organizing the organizations used the names of the organizations rather than the work they do and asked improper questions to figure that out," McDermott said. "It's clearly wrong. It was inept, stupid and a whole lot of other things. But let's not get lost. During the Bush administration, liberal groups were targeted without any concern by Mr. Issa or anyone else on this committee. The Republicans were looking for a conspiracy where there isn't one. Mr. Issa says 'he can feel it in his gut' that someone's broken the law."

"Just ask yourself which is more likely," McDermott continued. "That mid-level employees overwhelmed by four-times as many applications as before made stupid, irresponsible shortcuts? Or that there is an administration-wide plot to take down community organizers. Let's not forget that this happened under an IRS commissioner appointed by George Bush and was investigated by a Republican inspector general."

McDermott went on to say that while what happened was an "unfair" and "incredibly inconvenient" mistake, he reaffirmed that he had not "heard a single word" about which questions should be asked regarding tax-exempt requests.

"Anything else like the circus that's happening in the Oversight committee or here is simply political theater," McDermott said. "It is diverting attention from what we ought to be doing on this committee is re-writing the law if it's wrong."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And the law is wrong. Remember, none of these organizations was prevented from organizing, none were silenced.  They were after tax free status for financial purposes, but mostly the IRS provision protects them from divulging the names of their members and how much they contribute.  This amounts to hidden money influencing our elections.  Tax exempt groups are supposed to limit their political involvement, but most of these targeted groups are purely political, and they are getting their exempt status anyway.  

I have given money to political organizations.  I don't care if my name is known, or if how much I gave is public.  Frankly, I have the courage of my convictions.

And today Rep. McDermott had the courage too.