Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer comments on the Internal Revenue Service’s move to change how it enforces the Johnson Amendment, which for more than 70 years has restricted charities from endorsing political candidates.
By contracting the surveillance firm to agglomerate the U.S. population’s personal data across government agencies, the White House has turbo-charged the company’s value, Kit Klarenberg reports.
The term “scandal” used to mean something, a serious abuse of power or some truly outrageous conduct Watergate, Iran-Contra, lying a nation into war but the word has grown almost meaningless, just one more partisan insult, as ex-CIA analyst Paul…
If U.S. budget gridlock had not ground rational thought to a standstill, creative options for revising the tax code might be possible, such as a tax on stock transactions to raise money and discourage micro-second trades. Another option would be…
The anger of Tea Partiers, as they precipitate a federal government shutdown, still burns from the IRS “scandal” of earlier this year, even though the supposed singling out of conservative groups proved to be a myth. But the furor disrupted IRS policing…
Despite the Tea Party wallowing in its “victimhood,” the evidence now shows no “targeting” of right-wing groups. The IRS also used word searches for “progressive” and “occupy” to weed out political groups seeking tax-exempt status, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R.…
The IRS “scandal” stampeded Official Washington, including much of the mainstream press which portrayed the Tea Party as the “victim” of partisan abuse. But the dust has finally cleared and it appears there never was a “scandal,” just a clunky…
The flap over a few IRS bureaucrats clumsily trying to identify the many right-wing groups abusing a tax-exempt status remains the “big story.” But the news media continues to miss the bigger scandal, the tricks used to create vast pools of “dark money”…
If Occupy Wall Street had a national plan to flood the IRS with illegal claims for tax-exempt status and some IRS clerks had run a search for “occupy,” they would probably get a bonus and the story would be Occupy’s “criminal conspiracy.”…
For decades now, it’s been fashionable to demonize government. After all, that’s what billions of dollars invested in right-wing think tanks and media outlets will buy you. There also are genuine abuses by bureaucrats. But lax government oversight can be a…