IRS Faulted for Scrutinizing Right-Wing ‘Nonprofits’

By MARK ANDERSON

We’ve heard a lot about a House report which says IRS employees subverted the tax agency’s “nonpartisan mission” in order to carry out a probe of “conservative” groups.

Some believe that the new GOP report may undercut the administration’s excuse for the agency’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups and other outfits seeking tax-exempt status to financially support or oppose candidates, via political advertising.

The White House maintains its probe of conservative groups was largely limited to the Cincinnati IRS office, and that confusing regulations played a role.

[The report by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee faults senior IRS officials in the mistreatment of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, but could find no link to the White House, according to a report released Dec. 23, according to the Associated Press. Democrats also noted that the IRS also scrutinized progressive groups.]

The 210-page report says there’s a “culture of bias against conservative organizations among certain IRS employees.” The report added: “Evidence shows an IRS [that is] responsive to the partisan policy objectives of the White House and an IRS leadership that coordinates with political appointees of the Obama administration.”

Notably, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chaired the Oversight and Investigations Committee, says that the IRS took cues from Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s early-2010 Citizens United decision—which gave corporations and unions much freer rein to spend money on ads to strongly influence election outcomes.

The House report added that Obama’s rhetoric against Citizens United “led the IRS to hold a deeply skeptical view” of the merits of applications for tax exemption filed by new conservative groups. And that’s where the deception of this whole issue lies. Notice that Issa and company link this issue to criticism of Citizens United—a widely despised court ruling that has enabled corporations to donate to Super PACs and flood the election system with multi millions of dollars. That, in turn, has undermined the influence of all average voters—liberal and conservative.

While Obama was correct in criticizing Citizens United, the White House clearly did nothing substantial to stop the IRS from probing these groups. Yet, many of these groups’ “conservative” credentials support very liberal spending on military welfare, to sustain and extend the “war on terror.”

Besides, what is the military besides a separate society with welfare for all—including pay, housing, food and medical? Often, those in “regular society,” too poor to make it, simply convert to the military side of the “welfare divide.” So let no more be said about the GOP opposing all forms of welfare.

Citizens United deserves unified criticism from liberals, conservatives and independents within, and outside of, the two dominant parties. Yet the scam against the voters comes full circle when one considers that a true-blue conservative would advocate dissolving the IRS, not asking it for tax favors and playing the same tax-exemption game that the “establishment left” has been playing for generations—by leveraging the tax code. That leverage comes when money which otherwise would help the federal government’s paycheck-financed (deferred-wage-supported) obligations like Medicare and Social Security stay solvent instead is parked outside the tax stream in the form of tax-deductible donations to tax-exempt organizations. This setup forces middle-class taxpayers, the working poor and the “sort-of rich” to pay even more taxes to keep the “ship of state” afloat, yet the struggling people in those segments of society constantly hear from establishment liberals and conservatives that their toils—in our uphill-both-ways, debt-based money system—are not forgotten.

Instead of fretting over sundry IRS misdeeds, Congress should review the role tax-exempt foundations and similar outfits play in skimming and scamming the system.

But lasting reform would come from probing the IRS itself, an agency which allows companies like GE to avoid its federal tax obligations and continues operating a tax system where conservative and liberal groups labor to steer billions of additional dollars away from the US Treasury—and into the coffers of special-interest groups.

If that’s the way it’s going to be, then America desperately needs monetary reform. Let’s see the US consider ending the IRS and the federal income tax—and stop renting money from the Federal Reserve at interest. That would put the government in its proper sovereign position to directly create money, as in the days of Abe Lincoln’s “greenbacks.”

Thus, the government would create, rather than borrow, money. And with borrowing eliminated, recalling already-circulating money, via a big tax-take, would become obsolete. The new public money supply, replacing the Fed’s private notes, would be gauged to production data, and existing obligations for Social Security and Medicare would be met unhindered.

The only genuine “special interests” are the American people at large.

Mark Anderson is a veteran journalist. Email him at truthhound2@yahoo.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2015

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