OBAMA ATTEMPTING TO MAKE TARGETING TEA PARTY LEGAL
Posted 12.13.13 by Greg Campbell, TPNN Political Analyst
After it came to light that the IRS had been harassing Tea Party and conservative groups for years, the Obama Administration shrugged it off as a non-issue despite palpable public outrage. Looking to double-down, Obama’s IRS has formulated new proposed IRS rules and regulations that seem narrowly-tailored to affect Tea Party groups and squash freedom of expression.
Newly proposed IRS regulations are cracking down on tax-exempt nonprofit groups that dare to discuss pressing issues affecting communities today. These rules make it impossible for nonprofits to discuss anything the Obama Administration deems political- that includes speaking of the Constitution, issuing nonpartisan voter guides or mounting nonpartisan drives to register voters.
In order to maintain tax-exempt status, a 501(c)(4), the official designation for nonprofits, must serve as a beacon of social welfare and strive to better society. While some nonprofits better society by running soup kitchens, many look to better their communities by offering information and resources for those who still believe that our government is run by the people.
The Obama Administration, during the lessened media presence surrounding Thanksgiving, slipped in new rules and regulations clarifying what can be called “political activity.” While nonprofits have long been barred from actively campaigning for a candidate in an official capacity, these new regulations would make, essentially, any utterance of anything quasi-political a form of “political activity,” thus enabling the federal government the right to crack down and squash these troublesome Tea Party groups once and for all.
The new regulations attempt to codify what Obama’s IRS had hoped to achieve with mere harassment. For years, Tea Party groups were stifled and forced to fight legal battles. With this anchor dragging them down, these groups were naturally hindered in their ability to effect the needed changes.
Still, the scandal came to light and the fun was over for the crafty suppressors of speech at the Internal Revenue Service. However, instead of adjusting their illegal and unethical behavior, the Obama Administration has doubled-down by not refraining from harassment, but just changing the rules to make their harassment legal.
Kimberly Strassel of The Wall Street Journal notes,
What makes this targeting more obvious is that the Obama Treasury rule only applies to 501(c)(4) groups. The ultra-liberal League of Women Voters Education Fund is registered as a 501(c)(3)—one of those “charities” supposedly held to the strictest IRS standards on politicking. Yet it brags on its website that it holds “candidate debates and forums,” and that its “educational activities” include “understanding candidate views and ballot initiatives.”
The League will continue to be able to do its voter guides and registrations and candidate forums. Yet under this new rule, any conservative social-welfare organization that attempts to do the same will likely lose its tax-exempt status. Nor does the new rule apply the biggest spenders of all in politics—unions, which are registered as 501(c)(5)s. The only category muzzled is the one recently flooded by conservative groups that Democrats fear in the 2014 election.
Strassel also notes the timing of the new regulations that threatens the implementation of these new rules so as to discourage groups from forming or growing. She writes,
Consider the timing. This “proposed guidance”—while technically pending public comment—puts conservative groups on immediate notice that it could be enforced at any moment. It is clearly designed to have a chilling effect on any group gearing up for next year’s midterms, just as the first round of targeting was designed to dampen conservative participation in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Despite promises of “hope” and “change,” the Obama Administration has represented these past five years an unprecedented level of intolerance for dissent. From bullying journalists to the IRS Scandal, President Obama and his administration have ceaselessly barraged Americans’ freedom of expression and, perhaps worse yet, done so with an attitude that says, “So what?”
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