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March 17, 2005
Time To Drop The Big Legal Hammer
Why is this not surprising? Kathleen Rhodes at CNSNews.com has a piece up in which she explores the funding sources for some of the most extreme of the far-left activist groups:
Anti-Bush groups like the International Action Center boast of their support for the "courageous Iraqi resistance that has derailed the U.S. Empire."
Those activities [such as "convicting" President Bush of "war crimes"] are significantly bankrolled by a non-profit group called the People's Rights Fund, whose tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service precludes it from engaging in "substantial use of inflammatory and disparaging terms."
Rhodes examines the relationship between organizations governed IRS's 501(c)(3) provisions (the governing rules for thousands of non-profits across the US) and groups operating under 501(c)(4) rules, which allow more political leeway:
[The IRS provisions] also warn groups involved not to "express conclusions on the basis of strong emotional feelings" at the expense of "objective evaluations." [...]
"Whenever you have a relationship between a (c)(3) and a (c)(4)," as in the case with the People's Rights Fund and the International Action Center, [chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center Ken] Boehm said, "the rule is, (c)(3)'s can give to (c)(4)'s, but they have to be for the types of activities that are (c)(3) activities."
Rhodes goes on to explore the morass of interconnecting funding relationships between various (c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations, and how several will oftentimes share the same physical address:
In a January 28 interview with the Cybercast News Service, Bob Huberty, executive vice president of the Capital Research Center, expressed concern about the fact that the IAC, the People's Rights Fund, and a number of other groups "are all at the same address in New York, all different groups."
Boehm agreed that the concept of a 501(c)(3) sharing an address with one of its sponsored projects was a cause for concern. The address, 39 West 14th Street in New York City, is also listed by the Troops Out Now coalition, People Judge Bush.org, Vote No War.org, Vote To Impeach.org, No Draft No Way.org, and others. [...]
There are also several connections between International ANSWER and IAC, both of which share office space in New York City and show a cross-pollination of leadership.
We can talk all day about McCain-Feingold and the law of unintended consequences; and we can discuss how that law allowed the rise of both MoveOn.org and the SwiftVets. But this is clearly outside of that debate--it looks like we have a situation that is crying out for a little law enforcement. Where are those IRS auditors when you need them?
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A non-profit, tax-exempt organization that praises Iraqi terrorists and wants to convict Bush of war crimes? Maybe we've found a new home for Ward Churchill... [Read More]
Tracked on March 17, 2005 07:56 PM
