How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call it Public Welfare

[Deny and Shred]

7. The abuse of non-profit status is the real scandal

In the CMO mess, the ratings agencies looked at only a small percentage of the total combined mortgages within a security, 10-20%. In short time, Wall Street handed them that percentage of good mortgages, and filled the rest of the security with known garbage. This is similar. They want to overwhelm the regulatory capacity, so some organizations get no scrutiny. This 'scandal' is an attempt to shame the regulators into less future scrutiny.

When an understaffed regulatory agency gets a unique huge spike in activity, in this case 501(c)(4) applications, it may have to take steps like using keyword identification to narrow the potential field of infractions, because they know they can't investigate all of them.

The real point is that it is the IRS's job to make sure that a non-profit isn't abusing its mandate. If they abuse it, it is their JOB to catch them. The travesty is that the GOP meme is we are not supposed to look, as if the fact that the IRS wanted to look is wrong somehow. In a perfect world, the IRS would check all 501(c)(4)s - last thing the GOP wants.

If the IRS doesn't, who else should? GOP Answer: Nobody, because we have more $$$, and we want to spend it politically, and we want to do so tax-free.