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Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Tea Party Group Suing IRS
The NorCal Tea Party Patriots is one of many right-wing groups to which the Internal Revenues Service seems to have paid undo attention in dealing with the group's request for tax-exempt status. The group is suing, and it hopes to achieve class status for other such groups, meaning a huge political headache for the White House and the IRS. This journal has no time for the Tea Party reactionaries, but this is more important than mere politics. At some level, IRS staffers abused their power.
One cannot condemn hardly enough any government action that treats one group differently than another. Any policy that encourages that is un-American, and any bureaucrat who acts with partiality has no business being in government. Singling out anyone for his or her political beliefs is appalling in the extreme. Resignations, firings and if appropriate, prosecutions are the order of the day.
The NorCal Tea Party Patriots have what appears to be a pretty solid case. In its complaint, the groups wrote:
The IRS engaged in a tactic of suffocating NorCal Tea Party Patriots and other similarly situated groups with requests that were so searching and extensive that they would have presented a serious challenge even for sophisticated businesses,
Politico.com notes, "The group alleges it applied for tax-exempt status in March 2010 but didn’t receive approval until Aug. 2 of last year."
If the group didn't get all its paperwork in order, it should not have received tax-exempt status. However, the question is whether the IRS raised the bar for the group. If the reactionaries couldn't fill in the usual forms correctly and completely, they have no case. However, if the IRS demanded more that the usual, as seems to be the case, then the delay in granting tax-exempt status constitutes genuine harm. Ironically, this is the very kind of governmental abuse about which the Tea Party is most worried. The IRS has helped prove the Tea Party's point.
The legal case here is pretty simple. Staffers at the IRS abused their position, and it should be rather easy for the NorCal Tea Party Patriots to prove this if that is, indeed, what happened. The political dimension to this case, however, will ensure that it continues to run for several months. In a normal legal situation, this kind of case screams for a settlement. As this is a political case, the injured party has no interest in settling. The saga will continue through the mid-term elections.
© Copyright 2013 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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