I'd like to hear this one.
BTW, that's what the IRS REQUIRES for 501(c)4 status, which is what this made up scandal is all about.
See:
Social Welfare Organizations
Exactly.
The IRS is supposed to review applications where there is a genuine question as to the the applicability of a given exemption.
This particular exemption stipulates "Social Welfare".
And in 2010 the GOP filed over 300 applications for this "Social Welfare" exemption, whereas the Left had under 50 applications because it was a "Republican Year" (as the midterms usually are), and... the Left has always had trouble getting corporations to
consistently invest into a party that wants to raise their taxes (so corporations tend only to give the Dems cash when it's a "Democratic Year" for the presidency and there is no reason to invest in the GOP).
Let's be clear: the IRS can't exhaustively review every application, so they use "red flag" terms in hopes of being able to review the greatest number of applications with potential issues.
Why is the "Tea Party" a "red flag" term? For starters, the Tea Party wants to abolish the IRS, so yeah, they're the most likely group to scam the IRS ergo they should expect extra scrutiny. C'mon people, this is not complicated. But also, the 300+ Tea Party applications were competing against Liberal groups that wanted to do actual Welfare, like extend food to poor school children, many from Red States. The bulk of these liberal groups fit the textbook definition of Social Welfare, which targets the poor and marginalized groups. I understand if the Right has an issue with the exemption (because they hate welfare), but the exemption is what it is. If you don't like it, than change the law. No big deal. The Right has changed the tax code way more than the Left since Reagan, so they shouldn't be complaining that this one exemption does not fit into their typical modus.
Irony of Ironies. The Tea Party is a purely political organization designed to crush Social Welfare for the purpose of lowering the tax burden on the wealthy. The Tea Party is the antithesis of this particular exemption. Does the Left have similar organizations that are purely political and not designed for social welfare. Of course they do, and those Lefty organizations should have been denied too. But, the number of Lefty groups
who applied in 2010 for this exemption does not hold a candle to the quantity of Tea Party groups who applied, which represented the greatest Tsunami of "Citizens United" cash the IRS has ever seen. So for many reasons, the IRS needed search tools to efficiently process the greatest number of potentially bogus applications.
Meaning: this is another manufactured scandal.
As long as the FOX News viewer gets angry at this "scandal"... More specifically, as long as the heavily manipulated xenophobic racist Revanchist god-fearing patriot shrugs his shoulders and says "it's always something with the government", than it doesn't matter if the scandal is false. The point of movement conservatism is to plant anti-government sentiments in the limbic and lizardly part of the unconscious brain. The facts don't matter.
