CSotD: Shouting “UFO!” in a crowded looney bin
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But the thing is, I don't mind when the lunatic fringe responds to something in a lunatic manner. That comes with the territory.
I object, however, to sloppy, incomplete reporting feeding into their delusions of persecution. They've got people within their own organizations to do that, thank you.
Yet we keep hearing on supposedly responsible newscasts that "the IRS was targeting conservative groups," which implies a philosophical/political motivation that nobody has established.
What we (at least think we) know is that a group of IRS investigators targeted 501c4 applicants who used the words "Tea Party" and/or "Patriot" in their names. (Of 300 files pulled, 70 used "Tea Party," according to the IRS.)
Even "targeted" is a loaded term. What we know is that they pulled those applications for review, which isn't quite the same thing.
In the interests of never attributing to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, consider this:
501c3's are not supposed to mess around in politics at all, but 501c4's may, as long as their goal is the betterment of society and not partisan politics. So, for instance, a group of dog lovers that wanted to form a dog park could form a 501c4 to raise funds for the park (also okay for a 501c3), but also to lobby against breed-specific bans (not okay for a 501c3).
That would be acceptable, because the bans might be proposed by Democrats or Republicans or Independents and the group would take the same stance and pursue the same actions regardless. Moreover, freedom of dog-choice is clearly within the scope of their stated purpose of serving the community and its many dog owners.
And, given the number of communities that consider breed bans from time to time, it's not inconceivable that you could have many groups springing up to defend stereotyped breeds and responsible ownership.
But let's say that the Organization for Inbred Untrained Poodles decided to get involved in defeating any Republican who mentioned dogs in any legislation, and they fanned out across the country, forming local 501c4's that were quite specific that their main focus is on defeating Republicans because Republicans all hate dogs and insist on dog licenses, which is the first step to dog confiscation.
And let's assume that these groups, which often use the words "Bite Me!" in their names, are a good share of applications, mixed in among the more moderate, compliant groups that oppose breed bans.
And let's assume you've got 200 people charged with going through tens of thousands of 501c4 applications, the bulk of which have nothing to do with dogs at all.
If you did a search in that haystack using the terms "Poodle" and "Bite Me," you could get a lot of potentially problematic applications to rise to the top.
Regardless of how you feel about poodles.
Regardless of how you feel about biting me.
They're just search terms. It's not about poodles or breed bans or dogs at all. It's about finding non-compliant applications.
Point is, if I'm looking at that pile of paper (we're back to real life now) and I have a way to pull out a large number of potentially problematic applications, I'm likely to try it. And if I notice that a large number of potentially problematic applications include the words "Tea Party" and "Patriot," well, those would become attractive search terms.
But I hope I'd be bright enough to realize that, if word got out, it would, indeed, look as though I were picking on a group of people whose defining characteristics include a severe persecution complex, a massive dose of paranoia and a deep hatred of the IRS.
I also hope I'd realize that, while wonderfully efficient at identifying problematic applications, it's clearly unfair.
Even if the Tea Party and Patriot groups outnumber other potentially noncompliant organizations, you can't spend all your time on one sector. You just can't.
But here's where Matt's cartoon comes in (I do try to sometimes loop back to the actual cartoon):
There were also a number of 501c4's organized under the umbrella term "Emerge America," a group formed to prepare and assist Democratic women candidates. But the IRS revoked their status a year ago, based on the partisan nature of their work and the fact that they were serving individuals rather than the community as a whole.
Had they been backing pro-choice women, they might have argued that they would accept a pro-choice Republican woman into their program, and that their goal was to serve the wider community by protecting choice and by helping address the gender imbalance in Congress.
And if frogs had wings they wouldn't bump their asses on the ground.
What "Emerge America" did, however, was not to lie on the ground screaming and kicking their feet, or to run to Uncle Rush in tears or to double the amount of tin foil in their hats.
Instead, they simply reformed as a 527 group, which is not tax-exempt — partisan political organizations are not — but is allowed to be politically partisan — which tax-exempt organizations are not.
Oh, and it has to disclose its donors. A 501c4 doesn't have to do that.
So maybe Matt is ascribing a motivation to the right wing that he can't prove, but there are a whole lot of people ascribing motivations to the IRS that they can't prove, and the fact is, the Tea Party groups have a very simple solution available to them: Reform as a 527.
You should probably double the tin foil anyway, though.
And now, a quick trip down f***ing Memory Lane:
This Kirk Walters cartoon — based on this study — reminds me of something that I was just thinking of last week, due to a Facebook conversation involving the Ohio State alum Derf Backderf, which had brought to mind an obscenity case from 1970 that arose when a tOSU football fan was busted by a Columbus cop for a bumpersticker that read "Fuck Michigan."
The judge ruled that the sticker was not obscene because it could not possibly be interpreted within the sexual connotation of the word — one cannot actually have sexual intercourse with the state of Michigan — and added that, in any case, he felt most residents of central Ohio would feel the bumpersticker had redeeming social value.
People were a lot more intelligent in 1970.
Then we all got cable and then they invented the Internet and it's been downhill ever since.
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