Sandbox 3

Today's Congressional Daily Summary

What I saw is that they admitted to flagging for additional screening groups they suspected of potential abuse of the 501(c)4 tax exemption by using terms like "Tea Party" and "patriot". I realize it's a fine point, but believe it or not fine points matter in reality. Not everything is good and evil, right and wrong, black and white.

They used these terms because groups with such terms in their names very likely had a strong political agenda. The nature of the agenda is meaningless in this context; the fact that 501(c)4 organizations are supposed to be social welfare organizations that do not spend the majority of their money on political activities should absolutely open up such groups for additional scrutiny.

Liberal groups suspected of engaging political activity were investigated as well. However, such sweeping search terms to identify them did not exist.

The actions of the IRS had no bearing on these groups' ability to perform their function. The IRS did nothing to impede their ability to spend their money. The best that can be argued is that by having only provisional tax-exempt status, some donors may have been reluctant to provide funds.

The irony here is that these groups do everything in their power to make sure the government is improperly funded, then complain to high Heaven when the ONE person available to process a backlog of 12,000 applications takes 18 months to get around to one submitted today. You want your government paperwork processed in a proper, timely fashion? Fund the God damned government.