Well Lookie Here: 3/28/2012: Judge rules tea party group a PAC, not a nonprofit

[kpete]

Judge rules tea party group a PAC, not a nonprofit
By Joe Holley | March 28, 2012
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A Travis County district court judge ruled this week that a Houston-based tea party group is not a nonprofit corporation as it claims, but an unregistered political action committee that illegally aided the Republican Party through its poll-watching efforts during the 2010 elections.

The summary judgment by Judge John Dietz upheld several Texas campaign finance laws that had been challenged on constitutional grounds by King Street Patriots, a tea party organization known for its "True the Vote" effort to uncover voter fraud.

The ruling grew out of a 2010 lawsuit filed by the Texas Democratic Party against the King Street Patriots. The Democrats charged that the organization made unlawful political contributions to the Texas Republican Party and various Republican candidates by training poll watchers in cooperation with the party and its candidates and by holding candidate forums only for GOP candidates.


more:
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Judge-rules-tea-party-group-a-PAC-not-a-nonprofit-3442532.php#src=fb

[MADem]

1. Ooooops! nt

[hfojvt]

2. and on my 50th birthday too

Happy birthday to meeee

Doubtless just some librul judge who will eventually be set "right" by the mighty SCOTUS.

[DCKit]

4. "Librul Activist Judge". nt

[madokie]

10. My 62th bday

mar 28, 1948. Aries rule

[hfojvt]

13. I had forgotten about that

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2578961

[Anansi1171]

3. Kick this. Note irony of American Enterprise Institute...

...Advertisement gracing the page of this progessive site, and understand why we are losing the struggle.

[SidDithers]

5. Google Ads place ads based on keywords...

If, in some small way, DU is causing he AEI to waste it's advertising dollars, by advertising on a site that will simply laugh at the AEI ads, then I'm OK with that.

Sid

[zerosumgame0005]

12. I have the complete collection

of SCTV

[SidDithers]

15. Great stuff...

Sid Dithers in Taxi Driver is my fave...

Sid

[freshwest]

24. Hehehe!

[The Magistrate]

6. The Hell You Say, Ma'am....

[robinlynne]

7. duh. (not to kpete, or the writer of the op. to the President.)

[TexasTowelie]

8. I remember this court decision.

I posted a thread on it last year at http://www.democraticunderground.com/10782100 .

[amerciti001]

22. And it took over a year for it to resurface...

I reviewed your thread of Thu Mar 29, 2012, 04:51 AM, and now it's back, great.

[caledesi]

9. Thanks for posting this. nt

[John2]

11. Yeah, how ironic

when you have members of Congress, the Press and even the White House expressing outrage over the IRS doing their jobs to police these groups for violating the Tax exempt Laws. Thjey are still pushing this theme the IRS only singled out conservative groups. It was reported out of 300 groups examined by the IRS, 70 were conservative. How do you get from 70 out of 300 to only conservative groups were examined?

[lastlib]

16. Simple. Republikkkan Math......

Just like Alice In Wonderland--it adds up to what they WANT it to add up to...!

[lame54]

17. Like the plus million people at Beck's rally...

repug math

[KansDem]

39. Don't forget the "voter-fraud epidemic"

No one's going to argue that voter fraud isn't harmful and illegal, but finding evidence of its "long history" is like hunting for jackalopes. As Mother Jones put it, between 2000 and 2010, there were 47,000 UFO sightings, 441 Americans killed by lightning — and only 13 cases of in-person voter impersonation.

"Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare," the Brennan Center finds in its in-depth investigation. "By throwing all sorts of election anomalies under the "voter fraud" umbrella, however, advocates for such laws artificially inflate the apparent need for these restrictions."

--more--
http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/230345/the-gops-make-believe-voter-fraud-epidemic

But voters need to show I.D., dammit!

[Initech]

20. The Republican party: where logic takes a holiday and laws of nature are meaningless!

[WillyT]

14. K & R !!!

[silvershadow]

18. Whaat? In KKKarl's, George Bush's, George W. Bush's "home" state? nt

[freshwest]

25. Quotation marks very appropriate. Just like 'I have a TX homestead exemption' but vote in WY Dick..

Crooks one and all.

[silvershadow]

30. Oh, then you vote in Dick Cheney's "home" state. He never even heard of Texas before he selected

himself as W's "running mate". Wink wink.

[freshwest]

31. Sadly, the lawsuit regarding Tricky Dick 2 was tossed out by a GOP judge...

Just a quick plane trip to WY to take advantage of their drive-thru motor voter law at the time. They had the convention before either of them read the Constitution. The man was clearly ineligible to run as VP, and not a resident of Wyoming, since he was taking every tax break that the State of Texas offers. That homestead tax break requires that the house be one's primary residence and he'd taken the tax break for years. GOP, party of grifters!!

[silvershadow]

36. So, other than the grifting and the clear ineligibility, that only leaves self-selection as

their only issue(s). What a trip down unpleasant memory lane. I shudder.

[freshwest]

37. Oh, no, there's plenty more. Thank Tricky Dick the First for the horror that never ends. EOM. n/t

[Rain Mcloud]

19. From Poll Watch to Perp Walk

The WH culture of intimidation.

[DallasNE]

21. I Still See Loopholes

Even if the Tea Party is required to set up a PAC for its political activity I still don't see where there will be meaningful disclosure if given 501(c)(4) status. They use the c4 as the vehicle to collect donations without disclosure then pass those donations to the PAC where the PAC lists a single donor - the Tea Party organization.

The IRS needs to go back to the language of the law that says the organization must engage exclusively in social welfare activities. That language is clear. The 1959 rewrite is improper at best. As it is, we have the "fog of IRS".

In this case political wars rather than hot wars. Faced with a mountain of work some workers at the IRS devised a way to cut corners to speed up the process. Internal reviews uncovered these shortcuts and they were ordered to end but the review did not understand the underlying cause (a perceived notion that the workload demanded some kind of shortcuts). So the problem came back with a different, more vague set of keywords. They too were struck down but with the passage of time the IRS began backtracking on the questionnaires then threw up their hands and simply approved all of the applications. Well, two wrongs do not make a right.

A strict reading of the law (not the 1959 interpretation) says that to be tax exempt the organization must be exclusively engaged in social welfare activities -- in other words no political activity whatsoever, not even issue ads. It is time to enforce the law as it is written. That doesn't mean that these organizations engaging in political activity are illegal - only that they must apply as the Super-Pac's that they really are. The difference is not in the tax status - both are tax exempt - but reporting requirements. Large donors names must be listed. In the court of law you are allowed to me your accuser and the same should apply with political campaigns. Without transparency you have corruption -- it is that simple. And none of that would have happened by applying the law as written and that says "exclusively" for social welfare purposes. If anyone manipulated the IRS it is President Eisenhower with that 1959 ruling that gutted the intent of the law.

[amerciti001]

27. This is what Karl Rove was smirking about with his Crossroads GPS...

501(c)4 outfit. He knew this was a loophole that was not about to be plugged, because no one was aware of a change in the law from 1959, that really did make present day 501(c)4's actually illegal.

To further exacerbate this loophole, Mr. Rove states that a 501(c)4 can have 49.9% of it activities as political, by his interpretation of the tax code.
Also, I surmised as well about if these 501(c)4's was required to have a 527 PAC, that they'll gladly comply, because they'll still have their 501(c)4 to get these donations and simply pass them to their 527 listing the name of the 501(c)4 org as the donor, hiding the actual donors from all disclosure, slick.

[DallasNE]

29. Actually, The Law Still Says "Exclusive"

In 1959 an internal IRS document was written to provide clarification on the meaning of "exclusive" to mean "primarily" and while that "clarification" still stands even that meaning has been further watered down to "over half". Not only that but new language segregates political activities between partisan and issue ads. Issue ads don't count towards the "over half" so today exclusive really means nominal. The only issue here is disclosure. These groups that function like PAC's could easily gain tax exempt status as PAC's and operate just as they do but that would require that they disclose large donors (I believe $4,000 and more).

[meow2u3]

34. The strict reading of the law is still on the books

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501

(c) List of exempt organizations
The following organizations are referred to in subsection (a):

(4)
(A) Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, or local associations of employees, the membership of which is limited to the employees of a designated person or persons in a particular municipality, and the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes.
(B) Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to an entity unless no part of the net earnings of such entity inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.

[freshwest]

23. Woo hoo! Molly is smiling!

[silvershadow]

38. I sure miss her. nt

[Rosa Luxemburg]

26. The GOP are using this scandal to clear the path for illegal funds

it's obvious

[MerryBlooms]

28. As far as I'm concerned, the only scandal in all this

is the IRS's blatant disregard of law regarding what constitutes a 501 (C) 4, then rubber stamping these scam organizations and our tax dollars subsidizing these goddamn grifters. Grrr

[W T F]

32. Tea Party reminds me of a spoiled rich brat who claims that his parents are abusing him because they

won't buy him a pony.

[jmowreader]

35. More like...

they're a spoiled rich brat who claims his parents are abusing him because he wanted a black pony and they got him a brown one instead.

[okaawhatever]

33. the King Street Patriots are aka True the Voite, they were mentioned in an article in Mother Jones

titled "Actually, Tea Party Groups the IRS lots of good reasons to be examined.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-tax-problems


True the Vote were the dbags who lined up at polls to make sure there wasn't any voter fraud. Of course they only did so in heavy democratic districts and were basically there for intimidation.

[dragonlady]

40. They were also active against the Scott Walker recall

They took it upon themselves to examine all of the more than 1 million signatures on the recall petitions and oddly enough found many, many thousands that were "fraudulent" (missing zip codes that weren't required anyway, extremely strict standards for legibility of signature, which didn't have to be legibile either, etc. etc.) Then they put all the scans of the petitions online with a searchable database so anyone can look up people to see if they signed. (At least one judge lost reelection because he had signed.) What a nice group.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

41. Karl Rove

At the end of each of his op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal., he is described like this: "Mr. Rove, a former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, helped organize the political action committee American Crossroads."

See, for one example, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324266904578456652913658748.html or any copy of the print edition in which the column runs.

American Crossroads is a PAC. It is not a social welfare organization. Period.

If it's good enough for The Wall Street Journal., it's good enough for me.