So who's exploiting the 501(c)(4) loophole the most?

[Andrew D]

This thread exists to replace the thread whose title I screwed up. It contains everything that was in that thread.

Right-wing organizations, that's who:

Four [sec.] 501(c)(4) organizations dominated outside spending in the 2012 election cycle: Crossroads GPS, founded by Karl Rove; Americans for prosperity, founded by the Koch brothers; Americans for Tax Reform, founded by Grover Norquist; and the American Future Fund, founded by Nick Ryan, a longtime political advisor to former Republican Congressman Jim Nussle. Together with the Chamber of Commerce, a [sec.] 501(c)(6) organization, these groups spent $295 million on political activities since the beginning of 2011.

Crossroads GPS spent $70,968,744 in independent expenditures; American for Prosperity spent $33,542,051 in independing expenditures; American Future Fund spent $24,499,533 in independent expenditures; and Americans for Tax Reform spent $15,794,552 in independent expenditures.

(Footnotes omitted.)

Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, and Grover Norquist. If one wanted a short list of America's most dangerous domestic enemies, they'd be right up there.

There is a Petition for Rulemaking (from which the foregoing quotations are taken) pending before the IRS right now. It is well worth reading in its entirety.

[Andrew D]

Andrew - as I hope you've noticed by now, in the title of this thread it should read "501(c)(4)" rather than "501(c)(3)".

Lord Jim - if you are again ignoring all of Andrew's posts, you should at least take a look at the link he posted: http://www.citizensforethics.org/page/- ... df?nocdn=1

[Andrew D]

Andrew - as I hope you've noticed by now, in the title of this thread it should read "501(c)(4)" rather than "501(c)(3)".

Thanks; I've fixed it.

Well, I thought that I had fixed it. In Preview, my edited subject line reads "501(c)(4)," but on the Politics page, the subject has not changed. I don't know how to fix that.

[Crackpot]

You know you can retitle a thread even after you post it

[rubato]

Why don't we eliminate all tax exemptions for groups who engage in politics at all? My contribution to the ACLU is not tax-exempt nor are our contributions to Planned Parenthood which are specifically used for lobbying.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

How about this? Andrew, do you have a problem with Democrats buying votes with taxpayer funds? The amounts of which render the numbers mentioned above little more than chump change.

Does GENERAL fucking MOTORS ring a bell? The examples are literally too numerous to count.

And you want to talk about republican ethics?

Jesus.

[dales]

Does GENERAL fucking MOTORS ring a bell?

And their UAW was "seviced" with a blow job by the US taxpayer.

LOL

[Sue U]

Does GENERAL fucking MOTORS ring a bell?

And their UAW was "seviced" with a blow job by the US taxpayer.

Whatever you might think about the social and economic policies behind bailing out General Motors or Wall Street bankers, or funding public works programs or invading a foreign country, the essential purpose of government is to decide how to spend tax money. Are spending decisions political? Of course -- they can't not be: Spending on this rather than that is always going to benefit someone more than somebody else. But these decisions are the result of a process controlled by elected legislators who have to answer to their constituents every other year in order to keep their jobs. And the decisions about how much to spend and what to spend it on are carried out publicly.

There is obviously no such public purpose nor input --- nor virtually any other limitation -- on private actors seeking to influence legislation or election outcomes as tax-exempt organizations under Internal Revenue Code ss 501(c)(4) or 527, which are formed for the express purpose of directly telling people how to vote and spending as much money as they have doing so -- without disclosing the source of that money.

The exercise of governmental functions through legislated public expenditures is not even remotely comparable to secretly financed propaganda campaigns intended to further the private agendas of unnamed contributors.

[Long Run]

Why don't we eliminate all tax exemptions for groups who engage in politics at all? My contribution to the ACLU is not tax-exempt nor are our contributions to Planned Parenthood which are specifically used for lobbying.

yrs,
rubato

Actually, your contribution may not be tax deductible to you (only if the organization is a (c)(3)). It is not taxable to the ACLU or Planned Parenthood -- thus, it is tax exempt income to them.

[dgs49]

It is not a legitimate function of the United States government to intervene in the bankruptcy disposition of a private corporation. It is not a form of "regulating interstate commerce" or anything even remotely akin to it. Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever that the result is any better for anyone other than UAW members and selected GM and Chrysler employees, than if the process had taken its usual, legal course through Chapter 11.

When the Democrat-led Congress and Administration intervene in the LEGAL bankruptcy process to pick and choose which stakeholders are the winners and losers, and when they use tens of billions of borrowed taxpayer dollars to do it, blatantly favoring those who spent millions (not billions) of dollars faithfully in each election cycle to elect DEMOCRATS, we have a situation that, I totally agree, is "not even remotely comparable" to private citizens spending their own money to try to bring about political results that they support - which is what the First Amendment protects.

But then your copy of the Constitution is obviously much different from mine.

[Andrew D]

Well, dgs49:

(1) I have repeatedly said that the 501(c)(4) loophole should be closed for all 501(c)(4) entities;

(2) Republicans -- even more than Democrats, but Democrats certainly also do it -- use the military budget as an employment program, to the point of foisting onto the Pentagon things which the Pentagon neither needs nor wants; and

(3) The net loss to the government from the GM bailout is less than 2% of the grossly bloated military budget for a single year.

1

I wrote that "organizations such as Organizing for Action should not be exempt [from federal taxation] either." Does that answer your question?

It remains a fact that the biggest exploiters of the 501(c)(4) loophole -- a loophole which, yet again, should be closed for all 501(c)(4) entities -- are right-wing organizations.

2

And if you want to talk about buying votes with taxpayer money, have a look at the military budget. Why do you think that military contractors carefully spread their projects over numerous States? They are simply buying legislative votes, thereby buying the votes of voters who elect those legislators.

And that is why Congress has the insane habit of inflicting upon the military weapons systems and other equipment which the Pentagon says that it does not need and does not want: Congress uses the grossly bloated military budget as an enormously inefficient employment program.

3

And if you want to talk about numbers that are "chump change," consider this. As of 1 April 2013, the government had recovered $30.4 billion of the $49.5 billion it injected into GM. If that were the end of the story, that would be a net loss to the government of $19.1 billion.

But that is not the end of the story. On the contrary, as of 1 April 2013, the government still owned 241.7 million shares in GM. And the price of GM stock has been rising. This past Friday, GM closed at $33.42. So the government still owns $8.1 billion of GM stock. Subtract that from $19.1 billion, and the result is $11 billion. (And, of course, if GN stock keeps rising, the net loss to the government will be even less.)

In FY 2013, the government spent $622.2 billion on the military. (Actually, a bit more, because that figure comprises only the Department of Defense and Overseas Contingency Operations budgets.)

So the government spends $611.2 billion more on the military in a single year than it lost by bailing out GM. In other words, the government spends 56.6 times as much on the military in a single year than it lost by bailing out GM. In still other words, what the government lost by bailing out GM is 1.8% of what the government spends on the military in a single year.

(For the relevant evidence, see here, here, and here.)