Political use of the IRS by past presidents was much more problematic than any current use by the Obama administration. In many cases, Democrats and Republicans use the IRS against targets more personal and with a lot less moral justification.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s frequent use of the IRS as a weapon of political retribution is well-documented. He reportedly had the IRS scrutinize tax returns of his harshest critics, including Senator Huey Long of Louisiana and Hoover Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon.

President Richard Nixon targeted those on his “enemies list” with tax audits and was caught on Watergate tapes boasting of it to aides in the Oval Office. Nixon directed an investigation into the financial dealings of businessman Henry Kinnelman, a major backer of Nixon’s opponent in 1972, Senator George McGovern.

But conservatives are much better at “outrage” as a political weapon than progressives. Very little was heard from either group when the George W. Bush White House was using the IRS, his State Department, and the Secret Service to target its considered enemies and opponents to the war in Iraq.

In 2005, Bush’s IRS began a two-year investigation into a Pasadena church after an orator dared to speak out against Bush’s Iraq War. The church targeted had one of Southern California’s largest and most liberal congregations. The church’s IRS audit came a year after an IRS attack on the NAACP after it criticized various Bush administration policies.

In addition, Bush used the Secret Service to physically block suspected antiwar activists from attending public presidential events. Activists holding up small handwritten protests sign even in a “designated free speech” zone were arrested. After a man was arrested for telling Vice Present Dick Cheney that his “policies on Iraq are disgusting,” his arrest was upheld by the Republican-dominated Supreme Court.

After 9/11, the FBI often investigated some left-leaning US advocacy groups, putting activists in terrorist watch lists, even though they were planning nonviolent civil disobedience. The Obama administration still does some of that.

Conservative groups never protested such happenings during the misadventures of the Bush administration.

Accordingly, the real scandal will not be handled. Bellowing by Republicans always tends to quiet wimpish Democrats about too many critical issues affecting the American majority. This specifically deals with paying no income taxes on funds donated for political attacks, rather than social welfare projects that help the community. In effect, it constitutes a subsidy that other taxpayers provide to these organizations and their attack ads.

There is blatant abuse of 501(c) rules by dozens of lobbyists and operatives who have set up these so-called tax-exempt organizations only as political slush funds to conceal money in political campaigns. It is rampant since the Citizens United decision. As Super PACs, they raise and spend tens of millions in corporate funds—without disclosing a dime of their contributors.

IRS rules state that the primary activity of such groups cannot relate to political advocacy, yet most conservative groups spend well over 50 percent of their funds on attack ads, political action committees and other clearly political expenses, though the remaining funds usually go to political consulting. The violations of the law have gone on for several years now. Such loud Republican noise will certainly halt all investigations, whether conservative or liberal, though the bulk of them are conservative.

The IRS should never be used for political purposes, but the pity here is that because of the bellicose bravado of Republicans, no organization will be rejected as a 501 social welfare organization. We the taxpayers will suffer again, as we subsidize the cheaters.
Sound familiar?

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