Missing the Bigger IRS ‘Scandal’

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from Consortium News:


Missing the Bigger IRS ‘Scandal’
May 16, 2013

The Washington press corps is in hot pursuit of “Obama scandals,” stampeding officials into various rushes to judgment while missing the bigger scandals underlying the excitement du jour, such as the systematic abuse of federal tax-exempt status for secret political donations, as William Boardman notes.

By Willliam Boardman


Karl Rove is the real poster boy for the so-called Internal Revenue Service “scandal” of mid-level functionaries taking a closer look at applications by political organizations seeking a 501(c)(4) tax status that makes them not only tax-exempt but protects their donors with anonymity.

That 501(c )(4) is one sweet deal: not only do these organizations get untraceable, tax-free money laundering for their political activities, they get a taxpayer subsidy to do it. It was not always such: some of these activities used to be illegal.

People working for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) – Richard Nixon’s campaign organization in 1972 – were convicted of law-breaking, as were some corporate donors. CREEP was “illegally hauling in many millions of dollars from corporations, many of which felt pressured into making contributions,” wrote Jill Abramson of the New York Times in a 2010 article about the rapidly changing rules on political contributions.

“The fund-raising practices that earned people convictions in Watergate — giving direct corporate money to a campaign and doing so secretly — are back in a different form in 2010. This time around, the corporations are still giving secretly, but legally,” Abramson wrote. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/16/missing-the-bigger-irs-scandal/

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