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.
