Putting Stock in Penny "Scandal"

Madame:

The reactions (and non-reactions) to the latest are interesting to observe.  My thoughts:

While the government would have preferred that “our enemies” didn’t know that we were data mining for patterns and indications across a broad spectrum, they didn’t need to have a conniption fit when it came out.  After all, the law renewal it was based on was not exactly precisely secret, and any enemy worth their salt should at least have suspected it.

Now that it is well known, I agree (for about, well, once) with Feinstein, Graham, and the rest who say it is a necessary and powerful tool to keep us safe.  I don’t know anywhere near the extent what the FISA court (judicial oversight) or the congressional intelligence committees (legislative oversight) know, but it’s evident the data mining provides very valuable intelligence against our enemies—enemies who are reliant on modern communication.  The question in my mind instead becomes: how protective of our civil liberties and privacy concerns is the government being while it protects us from our enemies?  From the government’s arrogant remarks, not very, it would seem. Not exactly comforting considering Big Brother’s justification—in Orwell’s novel and real life—comes from a perpetual state of “war.”

Perhaps finishing up (for the moment) Scandalmania, let us turn to the IRS brouhaha.  Peggy Noonan, the conservative columnist for the now Murdochized Wall Street Journal, supposedly lent her analytical credentials to a review of what the IRS did.

Unfortunately, not so.  Her piece in the weekend May 18-19 edition of the Journal is like so much of what passes for analysis these days—carefully crafted slantings to steer the unwary or time pressed.  Some of it is even incorrect on the facts, let alone the interpretation.

In the wake of the floodgates following Citizens United, there was a rush of conservative groups to presumably give anonymous money to run “issue” ads.   In irony of ironies, many of these were lower taxes/eliminate taxes/abolish the IRS groups, yet they were applying to the IRS for 501(c) (4) tax exempt status.  A status which is supposed to be granted only for planned charitable or ostensible social welfare work.

That the IRS field division might have been assumed to want to delay and obstruct (something a number of politicians in Washington know a thing or two about) the nonprofit status of anti-tax/abolish the IRS groups is understandable.  Given what groups were applying—and the stated goals of those groups—one might have  expected behavior consistent with the IRS’s presumed preferences.  And the Obama administration was presumably no friend of these organizations, and could have been interpreted by its statements to have appeared to give signals. 

Administrations target their foes for discrimination where they can—“Voter Fraud” DoJ investigations, and the various investigations under the Patriot Act, are just two examples that happened in a different administration.

And that’s how the corporate media got to painting it, that the IRS was “targeting.”  There’s not much fact checking in the corporate media herd anymore.  Given the ownership of most corporate media these days, THAT’S predictable.   The corporate media even obtained bipartisan condemnation, and a knee-jerk reaction “outrage and fire” from a hapless administration that tries to coopt or pre-empt things without information.

And even though no one was individually targeted, or subjected to fraudulent assessments, or restricted in rights, the outrage squeal was everywhere.

To borrow John Adams’ famous phrase, here’s some inconvenient facts:

According to all credible released information, the IRS division in question—a low prestige division at that—acted independently.  Bureaucracies move slowly.  And remember, the division is supposed to develop methodologies or strategies to flag groups that appear outright political.

Of the 60,000 to 70,000 nonprofit (to ostensibly work for “the social welfare”) 501(c) (4)s in existence, and the vastly increased numbers of newly applied, the IRS decided to audit the statements of 300.  Of those 300, 22% were Republican-allied, and given that 85% of 501(c) (4) money went to help Republicans, a case can be made that preferential treatment was given to someone, but not, as the USA Today headline said, “to liberals.”   To show how weak and miserably stupid the Democrats are, they went along with the Republican “outrage” about the above.   

No conservative groups were denied or lost nonprofit status during the period in question, although three liberal ones did.  And operations were often not impacted, for groups are allowed to operate as if they have that status while they wait for a decision.   What was the effect on the individuals of these supposedly “oppressed” groups?  Next to nothing, other than the inconvenience of submitting materials to ostensibly show they were what they represented themselves to be.

The IRS commissioner during the period in question was a Bush appointee.

The inspector general report which supposedly touched off the outrage said that even many groups which were granted or retained status showed indications they were political.  Remember, it’s the IRS division in question’s JOB to determine whether the groups are political, and to deny or strip status if they are.  One can presume from the above that they largely failed in their ostensible endeavor.  And this was AFTER handlers at IRS headquarters tried to stop the supposed “profiling.”

Scandal? This isn’t Nixon calling up the IRS to investigate individual political enemies and the IRS following orders from the top.  Peggy Noonan’s laughable attempts to show “targeted auditing” of “political activists” finds fishy the audit of a wealthy Idaho businessman who is audited for the first time in 30 years.   He’s wealthy and he hasn’t been audited in 30 years?  Something’s been fishy all right.

We are supposed to believe that the feeble “threat” of denial of tax-advantaged status for anonymous money political groups operating under fictional cover of promoting “social welfare” is so serious that the republic’s heart is at stake.

The republic’s heart is at stake all right.  But a big sharp plutocratic stake, not the hyperbolic fiction of this so-called “scandal.”  The real scandal is that corporations and wealthy have a tax code and preferences that give them almost all of the advantages and serve them obscenely and yet often effectively punish the ordinary individual.