Tea Parties around the nation have launched loud and frequent complaints about "targeting" by the IRS. Sadly, many reports on radio, TV and in newspapers accept the assertion by using the word.

But these groups were not targeted--they petitioned the IRS for a very special status under the tax code. They wanted to be tax-exempt and to keep the identiies of their donors secret, under section 501 (c)4 of the tax code. This section requires the work of a qualifying organization to be primarily in the public interest, and not political. (Hard to separate the concepts of policies for the common good and politics, but hey, Congress wrote the language.)

The groups' complaint is that among all the filings, a couple of years ago, theirs were singled out for special scrutiny. Which may be true--if your name is "Tea Party something" and you want to be treated as an educational and not political entity, and you want the rest of us to underwrite your activities you ought to be scrutinized closely. Damn closely.

To ice the cake, there were 296 applications in the special scrutiny pile. Not one was denied not-for-profit, charitable-educational-secret-donor status.

Our local Tea Party joined the complaint yesterday in Charlottesville, demonstrating against the IRS targeting, led by their president, Carol Thorpe. They had never filed for (c)4 status themselves, understand, but they're damn mad and not gonna take it anymore. In the account in today's Daily Progress,

Thorpe and others argued that the IRS's actions constituted a violation of the movement's rights to free speech and peaceful dissent.

"A lot of people think tyranny is something we're still waiting for here. A lot of people think tyranny is terrorism, like people getting dragged down the streets by the SS," said protester Russ Seltzer. "Here's the definition of tyranny out of a dictionary: arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power, despotic abuse of authority."

I wonder what part of Nazi history would be assigned to me if I tried to get the Tea Party to underwrite my educational activities?

Dave Sagarin (May 22, 2013)

Update July 12, 2013: Review of 5,500 IRS E-Mails Found No Political Targeting