Tea Party Groups Suing The IRS Never Suffered Any Harm

The more we learn about the IRS allegedly targeting Tea Party organizations for political purposes, the more it appears to be a thinly disguised scam by conservatives to whip up phony scandals in order to tarnish President Obama and his administration.

Never mind the fact that every named IRS employee connected to the alleged targeting just happens to be a Republican, today, Mother Jones Magazine has done the journalistic legwork of examining the pending lawsuits filed by the various Tea Party groups and has found that they are mostly frauds with little chance of success in the courtroom. The Mother Jones article goes into detail about why these cases are unlikely to prevail, but one of the key revelations sheds light on how suspect their motives really are.

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The most high profile of the cases is the one brought by uber-rightist legal publicity hound Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. He has assembled 25 Tea Party groups into an action seeking both administrative and financial relief. The problem is that he is suing under a provision that addresses cases where applicants were seeking tax-exempt status for donations (501c3), but whose applications were denied or delayed. However, 23 of the 25 plaintiffs were not seeking tax-exempt status at all. They were merely applying for non-profit status (501c4). Therefore, the delays (there were no denials) would not have harmed the organizations fundraising ability because they were never structured to give donors a tax break.

That is a significant discovery because these hoaxters have been whining for weeks that their efforts to raise money were hampered by the IRS actions. As it turns out, there was nothing stopping them raising funds other than the fact that most Americans were repulsed by their extremist, right-wing agenda.

In addition, the complaints of the Teabaggers reveal that the IRS had good cause to subject them to extra scrutiny. They openly admit their belief that the IRS actions contributed to the electoral losses of Mitt Romney and other Republicans who may have won if these groups were not hamstrung by bureaucracy. But not only was there nothing preventing them from engaging in their work, their admissions show that they were, in fact, political operatives and not entitled to preferential tax treatment.

So once again, reality has encroached on the designs of the Tea Party to position themselves as “social welfare” organizations with no political motives. From the start they were deeply entangled with the Republican Party and their mission was always to advance GOP candidates and policies. And now we see that they are abusing the legal system for undeserved relief and for, of course, publicity. Expect these cases to be dismissed in short order, after which the Teabaggers will bellow some nonsense about the liberal courts denying them justice.

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14 thoughts on “Tea Party Groups Suing The IRS Never Suffered Any Harm

  1. Every so often, I think it’s good to try and bloody up the nose of the federal government – someone needs to do it as they would certainly do it to you or me if our positions were reversed. If it is frivolous, then you’re probably right, it will be dismissed. If something else, then it will go on and hopefully embarrass any and all involved. In the end, maybe – just maybe, we’ll have a lot more information and hopefully a fully vetted process going forward. Stop sticking up for Goliath, David needs support too sometimes.

    • See? Was that so hard? To post a comment void of hyperbole and what could be described as mostly lucid and reasonable while not shitting all over everything? That’s all I’m talkin about man, I like reasonable discussion with the other side, but sometimes I feel like you really, really, REALLY like to take some Glenn beck laxatives and then come here and call everybody ‘statists’.

      • My tone is generally set in response to the tone in the article – I have very little desire to be ignorant when Mark isn’t making ignorant comments (although “teabagger” is somewhat ignorant).
        And why do you use such horribly language?

        • Cause I’m a fuckin adult. I swear like a sailor with blue balls, I know. Just the way I talk I guess. I do it for fucking emphasis too.

          Ever see the Tourette’s episode of south park? Swearing can be SUPER funny too.

          ‘AWW SHIIIT!!!’

    • I’m all for standing with David. However, I think the Goliaths are the trillion-dollar, multinational corporations that have allegiance to no country. They are far more powerful than any single state or leader.

      I’m also happy to concede that targeting Tea Party groups was wrong, and I’ve said so. However, while the targeting was wrong, the action was right. They are not social welfare groups. They are political and they should not have tax-exempt status. By the way, neither should the liberal groups doing the same thing. The IRS was right to challenge them, but they were wrong to do so in a narrow way that didn’t also include other (i.e. liberal) groups.

      • You note the difference in our thinking – to me, the ultimate Goliath is the state, but I’ll concede some corporate behavior is not good and their influence can be damaging – (see monsanto protection legislation this past spring).
        But you must acknowledge the state holds the power to do what it wants – so any power you perceive as being owned by the corporations is granted willingly by the feds. You and I get the short end of the stick, no doubt.

  2. Conservatives and especially evangelical conservatives claim they are being persecuted(i.e., war on Christmas, etc.) all the time by the big old meanies who point out facts and reality to them. This whole IRS thing is a scam perpetrated by these groups and it is becoming more obvious by the day. The IRS needs to do its job and deny all these political groups this status. They are not social welfare groups as required by the law. End of story. The first judge who looks at this suit needs to slap these aholes down immediately. They are nothing but bomb throwers.

    • The IRS overstepped its bounds. You don’t target groups in this fashion. Period. End of story. The fact that Mark is cheering what the IRS did in this case points out the hypocrisy of the radical left.

      And linking to a partisan rag like Mother Jones? Seriously? What a joke.

      • Did you read what Mark said in the post above? Probably not.

        As for Mother Jones, do you dispute the findings listed here that the claims made by the Tea Party Groups were mostly fraudulent and baseless? (I’m assuming again you didn’t read the article properly, it says that most of the applicants were applying for non-profit status, not tax exempt status, and that the delays (not denials) would not have affected in any way, their fundraising)

        • “…the delays (not denials)…”

          The delays were sometimes alomst 3 years. Some of these groups lost out on grants because of that. These delays are unconscionable.

          • Except that they should have been denied. They are poltical groups who do not (should not) meet the requirements for tax exempt status. THAT’s the scandal. They had “party” in their name, and they’re denying they’re political entities?

            • NO, they should not have been denied. You don’t know the particulars of any of these groups, other than the fact that they claim to be connected to the overall arch of the Tea Party. Treat everybody with equal scrutiny, or don’t scrutinize them.

          • Scott, I take it you have never dealt with any non-profit groups. Cause it took nearly 3 years for some of even those “liberal” groups to get their C4 status. There is major paperwork, and many stages. You don’t get it overnight, or 30 days. It does usually take couple of years or more depending on what is needed. Most of the C4 groups I know of are more community based not political based like the Tea Party groups that wants “super secret squirrel” status C3 which by its guidelines the group is not to be political. Which from lots of statements and actions of these Tea Party groups seem to be political in nature. Bottom line the IRS WAS DOING THEIR JOB, period. If you know a group is political and you see a bunch of new C3 apps sitting in line for approval, would you not red flag and investigate them regardless of which side they are on? Even “liberal” groups have been delayed and denied C3 status in the past, but you don’t see them yelling and screaming about it. And it is not the C4 groups place to sue for the C3 groups. Oh, and before you go blaming the “liberals” on all this, it is Bush appointed Republicans that are stepping down from the IRS, because it was they who were doing the investigating.

            • Folks, there are so many untrue statements in these posts I don’t know where to start. Tax-exempt and non-profit are indeed different yet you keep using them interchangeably. Each state can also write laws granting donors tax deductions for whatever type of group one may qualify for so the delays could have cost a lot of people a lot of money. It does indeed take only 30 days to achieve non-profit status because a local group here in Eugene, OR did so. Of course they were leftist, and political, (or doesn’t the “occupy” group qualify as such in your definitions?)

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