In the Last Year IRS Has Approved Tea Party Groups 400% More Than Liberal Groups

    The GOP's move to the Left has been as sharp as it has been fast.

    This is a party that has never thought there was anything wrong with profiling before. For years they have argued that liberal criticism of profiling either Blacks in inner cities or Muslims at airports was just political correctness run amok.

    Now all of a sudden they're outraged at the idea that the IRS at least in an Ohio office may have used a profiling method to target groups that abuse tax exempt status. The idea offends their pristine sensibilities. The fact that Tea Party groups have been very aggressive in applying for 401(c)(4) status over the last few years-coinciding with Citizens United which has led to an overall more than doubling of such applications-is no cause for them to receive higher scrutiny.

   Meanwhile, just a few weeks ago conservatives were demanding that we profile Muslims in various ways in light of the Boston bombing. However, that was before a conservative group was allegedly the victim of profiling. Now they see it as a mortal crime.

   Whatever conservatism is supposed to be about it's never been about the need to have an  intellectually consistent and coherent position over time. They are now suddenly even bothered by the DOJ looking at the AP's phone records-and they are demanding that it did just that last year after there was concern that there was a security leak after the CIA successfully foiled a terrorist attack in Yemen.

    What this very opportunistic lurch to the Left is likely to do is increase Tea Party groups like the Koch Brothers' ability to abuse the tax exempt laws. In fact, an analysis by Nate Silver suggests this is already happening.

    According to the I.R.S. records, 54 organizations were granted 501(c)(4) status since 2010 with “Tea Party,” “patriot” or “9/12″ in their names. Five of those groups were approved in the first three months of 2010. Approvals then slowed considerably, I.R.S. data shows.

   "The Indiana Armstrong Patriots was the only Tea Party organization approved during all of 2011, and it was one of just four groups with “Tea Party,” “patriot” or “9/12″ in their names that were approved from April 2010 through April 2012."

    "The I.R.S. then approved 45 Tea Party groups in just 11 months, from May 2012 to March 2013. About half of those approvals — 23 — came in June, July and August, the first three full months after the final revision of the search criteria."

    "As a point of comparison, we tried to identify liberal groups approved for 501(c)(4) status since 2010. A search for “progress,” “progressive,” “liberal” and “equality” finds 32 groups. (This might not be a representative sample — identifying left-leaning groups is more difficult, as there are is no clearly defined nomenclature on the left equivalent to the Tea Party.) The I.R.S. approved these groups at a fairly steady rate from 2010 through 2012. The I.R.S. approved 13 in 2010, nine in 2011 and 10 in 2012.

     http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/i-r-s-approved-dozens-of-tea-party-groups-following-congressional-scrutiny/

     This sudden surge in approval coincided with the Republican House putting pressure on the IRS 

    " Public data from the Internal Revenue Service, which recently acknowledged that agency officials singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny, shows that dozens of Tea Party groups were approved for tax exempt status beginning in May 2012. That was the same month that Representative Dave Camp of Michigan wrote to the I.R.S. asking for information about all “social welfare” groups that had applied for tax-exempt status in 2010 and 2011, to determine whether the I.R.S. was targeting conservative groups."

    "The flurry of approvals that came in the next few months was a sharp break from the previous two years, during which the agency approved just a handful of 501(c)(4) applications from Tea Party groups."

     So were these Tea Party groups grossly underrepresented prior to Camp's latter or grossly overrepresented after? What do you suppose will be the patterns of future such data? 

     Isn't it quite inevitable that the IRS will be even more timid in teh future in rejecting Tea Party tax exempt applications after broadsides like this?

      “I would hope that this new information about the politicization of the IRS should put the brakes on any sort of disclosure of donors who wish to remain anonymous,” said Charlie Spies, who helps raise money for several conservative organizations and previously led the super political action committee that raised more than $140 million to benefit Mitt Romney’s presidential bid. “We’re now seeing exactly what the risk is for donors to be disclosed.”

At least some tea party groups are unwilling to trust the agency with more enforcement power in the wake of such damaging revelations.

“The IRS’ integrity is shattered,” said Jenny Beth Martin, chairman of the Tea Party Patriots, which was among the largest nonprofit conservative groups the IRS targeted. She said that now, more than ever, donors need freedom to give money anonymously “without fear of retribution” from a politicized IRS. In the meantime, she says her organization’s influence is growing, fueled by anonymous unlimited donations.

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-solution-for-irs-scandal.html

      Dan Pfieffer, the White House's Senior Adviser got it right today: the White House is going to urge strict and proper oversight of this process at the IRS but resist the attempts by the GOP to make this an open-ended partisan fishing expedition. 

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/when-scandal-dust-clears-gop-is-still.html

     However, the real oversight for the IRS tax exempt process is not what the GOP action is about. They want to further grease the skids for more Tea Party groups to get 401(c)(4) illegitimately. 

     How much news coverage have you seen about the fact that since Camp's hectoring letter Tea Party groups have been approved by a 4 to 1 margin over liberal groups? Will this point be acknowledged by the GOP investigation?

    A real solution probably means that there should be fewer 401(c)(4) approvals rather than more.