Browsing PBH By Articles

How Absurd Tax-Exempt Status for Political Groups Will Erode Our Democracy

The Article: The Real IRS Scandal That No One Is Talking About by Kurt Eichenwald in Vanity Fair.

The Text: I’m not all that outraged that the I.R.S. held up applications by Tea Party groups for tax-exempt status. I’m outraged that any of them—or their liberal counterparts—qualify for that status at all.

Unfortunately, given the way this I.R.S. scandal slid so easily into ideological definitions, I fear that few non-politicos are recognizing the real disgrace here: that the federal government—Congress, the White House, the tax agency, and the Supreme Court—has created a situation where blatantly political organizations are able to legally break the law by pretending they’re something that they’re not.

The key to this obscene state of affairs is an entity known as a 501(c)(4), named for the section of the tax code that created it. Supposedly, these are civic associations or organizations devoted to social welfare, which can operate tax-free, but whose donors aren’t allowed to deduct their contributions. Fair enough.

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The Film The Christian Right Doesn’t Want You To See

The Article: The Film The Christian Right Doesn’t Want You To See by Frederick Clarkson in Talk2Action.

The Text: The acclaimed documentary God Loves Uganda, which depicts the role of American conservative evangelicals in generating vicious antigay campaigns in Uganda will be screened at Netroots Nation. (Among other venues in the next few months.)
My colleague at Political Research Associates (PRA), Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma, an Episcopal priest from Zambia now living in the U.S. is featured throughout the film discussing the role of U.S. Christian Right leaders in whipping up antigay fervor and pushing for passage of the “kill the gays” bill in the Ugandan parliament. He will also appear on a panel at Netroots Nation Intolerance Abroad: Overcoming Violence and Repression and Moving Toward Global LGBT Solidarity along with other experts including Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin and Pam Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The film draws on Kaoma’s original research and reporting including his PRA reports, the 2012 Colonizing African Values and 2009 Globalizing the Culture Wars. PRA exposed U.S. Christian Right figures Scott Lively and Rick Warren’s role in the creation of the infamous Uganda bill–garnering major media.

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How California Is Debunking The GOP’s Obamacare Talking Points

The Article: How California Is Debunking The GOP’s Obamacare Talking Points by Sy Mukherjee in ThinkProgress.

The Text: On Thursday, California officials revealed insurance companies’ opening bids for the state’s Obamacare marketplace in 2014. The numbers are great for consumers — and terrible for right-wing fear mongering over the health law.

Covered California, the agency tasked with constructing and maintaining the Golden State’s insurance marketplace, announced in a press release that rates submitted by 13 insurers for the 2014 individual marketplace were far lower than initially expected, ranging from a stunning 29 percent below the current average premium for small business health plans to only two percent above them.

For Californians who will gain coverage in the marketplace, that means affordable health plans with a minimum base of ten “essential health benefits,” including prescription drug services, mental health care, and maternity services. And the announced rates are even better for consumers considering that they don’t take Obamacare’s federal insurance subsidies into account. Depending on income, the average middle-aged Californian would pay anywhere from $40 to $300 per month for a mid-level “Silver” health plan on the marketplace. Younger, healthier Americans looking to buy bare-bones “Bronze” health plans would end up paying less than $170 per month — or even nothing at all — if they make less money and receive federal Obamacare subsidies.

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What The IRS Did Right

The Article: What the IRS Did Right by Joan Walsh in Salon.

The Text: Outrage first, facts later. That’s often the way American political “scandals” unfold, and it seems to be the case with the news that the IRS targeted conservative political groups for extra scrutiny before granting them tax-exempt status as social-welfare organizations.

We knew from the beginning of the IRS mess that the only group actually denied tax-exempt status was the Maine chapter of a Democratic women’s group, Emerge America. Now we’re learning about some of the right-wing organizations that came in for extra scrutiny, as reported by the New York Times Monday: a conservative veterans’ group that only backed one candidate, a Republican, for Congress; an Alabama Tea Party group that took part in a “defeat Barack Obama” voter-turnout drive, and the “Ohio Liberty Coalition” led by a Republican activist who sent his members information on Mitt Romney campaign events and recruited them to volunteer for the GOP nominee.

Some former IRS officials are speaking out to defend the agency, and taking issue with parts of the critical inspector general’s report. Inspector General J. Russell George found evidence of inadequate management and supervision, and that the agency incorrectly used keywords like “Tea Party” or “patriots” to scrutinize applications. But the report also concluded that the agency acted inappropriately when it asked groups about their donors, or their leaders’ plans to run for public office – when in fact such questions can be perfectly appropriate when trying to discover if a political group is wrongly seeking “social welfare” status.

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This Is How The NRA Ends

The Article: This Is How the NRA Ends by Alec MacGillis in The New Republic.

The Text: On April 17, the bill to expand background checks on gun buyers failed in the Senate, and the fatalistic shrugs in Washington were so numerous they were nearly audible. The legislation had been a modest bipartisan compromise, supported by 90 percent of the public and lobbied for hard by the president. A group backed by Michael Bloomberg had spent $12 million on ads pressuring senators to vote “yes.” When the bill fell short—by just five votes—it seemed to confirm a Beltway article of faith: There’s no point messing with the National Rifle Association (NRA). And that, many assumed, was the last we’d be hearing about gun reform.

But then something unexpected happened. Some of the senators who’d voted “no” faced furious voters back home. Even before Erica Lafferty, the daughter of murdered Sandy Hook Elementary principal Dawn Hochsprung, confronted New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte at a particularly tense town hall, Ayotte’s disapproval rating in the state had jumped from 35 to 46 percent—half the respondents said her “no” vote made them less likely to support her.1 In Pennsylvania, which has the second-highest concentration of NRA members in the country, the bill’s Republican co-sponsor, Pat Toomey, saw his approval reach a record high. One of the country’s best-known gun-rights advocates, Robert Levy, said the NRA’s “stonewalling of the background-check proposal was a mistake, both politically and substantively.”

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