How IRS scandal could help Karl Rove and dark money

[brentspeak]

While all this was going on, the I.R.S. completely ignored all repeated requests to look into the tax-exempt status of the Rove-type Crossroads groups, the real players who have turned our democratic process upside-down.

And if Bush appointee Douglass Shulman was falling down on his job or even sabotaging things as head of the I.R.S, why didn't Obama fire him? While Obama may not have known about the bit-player Tea Party scrutiny conducted by low-level I.R.S. employees, he couldn't have possibly been unaware that his I.R.S department head wasn't scrutinizing Crossroads, etc., and wasn't issuing rules to clarify once-and-for all the granting of 501(c)(4) status.

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/13/how_irs_scandal_could_help_karl_rove_and_dark_money/singleton/

Advocates had hoped IRS would clarify its rules on Rove style groups, but now that may be politically impossible

By Alex Seitz-Wald

snip

“The IRS is not really in a position right now to rewrite the rules that apply to social welfare organizations. And it’s not going to be the right time for that for at least a little while,” Lisa Rosenberg, a government affairs lobbyist at the Sunlight Foundation, told Salon. “Everything they do now, at least in the near future, is going to be glossed with this taint of impropriety.”

Already, the scandal’s impact on campaign finance reform is apparent. This afternoon, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, who in March vowed “to go after” these groups, delayed indefinitely a hearing planned for June. Outside of the IRS itself, Levin’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was the best hope in town for regulating these groups, which enjoy tax-exempt status and don’t have to disclose their donors.

“I think it makes it really hard to go after these groups,” said Adam Smith, a spokesperson for the Public Campaign, in an email to Salon. “Conservatives will immediately claim bias at anything, even if there is plenty of evidence.”

Indeed, House Republicans have already introduced a bill that would “make it a crime for an IRS employee to discriminate against an individual or group” on the basis of their political views, putting a chilling effect on any rules.

[railsback]

1. This seems to be the underlying strategy

The media is making this out to be a deliberate attack on conservative groups, but liberal groups were also denied tax exempt status. Again, our media is being reactionary without looking at the full context of how this all happened. Disgusting. Karl Rove knows this all too well. With an attack on the IRS, they'll shy away from scrutinizing applications the way they should, and apparently were. Watch the 501(c)(4) applications triple now. Citizens United is a cancer growing out of control and MUST be destroyed. The only way to do that is to take back the House and grow Harry Reid a pair of balls so he'll FINALLY move forward on filibuster reform.