[EL] Fwd: FW: News Analysis: Substantial Minority of Scrutinized EOs Were Not Conservative
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Fri Jun 7 07:10:44 PDT 2013
Message from David Keating:
-------- Original Message --------
From: David Keating
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 11:13 PM
To: 'Michael P McDonald'; law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] News Analysis: Substantial Minority of Scrutinized EOs Were Not Conservative
Please read the report. The extended review rate (it was not an audit) was 100% for such groups.
From page 8 of TIGTA's report, which the IRS does not deny:
"we determined during our reviews of statistical samples of I.R.C. § 501(c)(4) tax-exempt applications that all cases with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were forwarded to the team of specialists."
Note it says ALL CASES.
And as Bill points out, these cases essentially sat, unapproved.
Page 11 of the report says "As of December 17, 2012, many organizations had not received an approval or denial letter for more than two years after they submitted their applications. Some cases have been open during two election cycles (2010 and 2012)."
I don't get why some people think there is any equivalence. It is not even close.
Do some IRS agents wrongly subject liberal groups for scrutiny? Of course. But nothing has come to light of criteria developed on other issues to screen 100% of other applications.
David
_________________________________________________
David Keating | President | Center for Competitive Politics
124 S. West Street, Suite 201 | Alexandria, VA 22314
703-894-6799 (direct) | 703-894-6800 | 703-894-6811 Fax www.campaignfreedom.org
-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Michael P McDonald
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 7:07 PM
To: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] News Analysis: Substantial Minority of Scrutinized EOs Were Not Conservative
Since there is a wide range of claims about what the IRS did, it would be worthwhile to contribute to a discussion worthy of a former member of the FEC and a distinguished law professor, to know what Brad thinks the IRS has admitted to rather than try to divine it from one sentence snark.
I have been clear that I think the IRS was stupid to use a politically charged search term to flag applications, but that this does not mean that conservative groups were unfairly flagged by the IRS. This is what I believe the IRS has admitted to, and the linked story has a number of quotes to this effect. The evidence that has been brought to light supports the IRS. Bloomberg reported that while no conservative groups were denied their applications, liberal groups were given the same questionnaire and were even denied status. And now we have a clearer picture that a number of liberal groups were given heightened scrutiny along with conservative groups.
Still, this is insufficient evidence that the IRS was just stupid. We need to know the "audit" rate of liberal groups and conservative groups to know if conservative groups were unfairly flagged for attention. And since I cannot prove a negative, it is always possible that there was true politically motivated malfeasance. But no such evidence has come to light yet.
============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
phone: 703-993-4191 (office)
e-mail: mmcdon at gmu.edu
web: http://elections.gmu.edu
twitter: @ElectProject
-----Original Message-----
From: Smith, Brad [mailto:BSmith at law.capital.edu]
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 6:32 PM
To: Trevor Potter
Cc: Michael P McDonald; law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] News Analysis: Substantial Minority of Scrutinized EOs Were Not Conservative
Admission against interest. Thanks for playing.
Bradley A. Smith
Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
303 E. Broad St.
Columbus, OH 43215
614.236.6317
http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx
________________________________________
From: Trevor Potter [tpotter at capdale.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 5:35 PM
To: Smith, Brad
Cc: Michael P McDonald; law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] News Analysis: Substantial Minority of Scrutinized EOs Were Not Conservative
Brad
I thought you did not trust what the IRS says, and would therefore support an outside more in depth analysis, no matter where the chips fall?
Trevor Potter
Sent from my iPad
On Jun 6, 2013, at 4:39 PM, "Smith, Brad" <BSmith at law.capital.edu> wrote:
> Meanwhile, some people continue to deny that the IRS did what the IRS has already admitted.
>
> Bradley A. Smith
>
> Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault
>
> Professor of Law
>
> Capital University Law School
>
> 303 E. Broad St.
>
> Columbus, OH 43215
>
> 614.236.6317
>
> http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx
>
> ________________________________________
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Michael P
> McDonald [mmcdon at gmu.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 1:22 PM
> To: law-election at UCI.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] News Analysis: Substantial Minority of Scrutinized
> EOs Were Not Conservative
>
> Correction, I read this too hastily, this analysis just shows that a good number of left groups were scrutinized. We know from previous posts that no right group was denied status, but left groups were.
>
> And to also be fair to the author, the report also notes that we need more data on all the applications.
>
> ============
> Dr. Michael P. McDonald
> Associate Professor
> George Mason University
> 4400 University Drive - 3F4
> Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
>
> phone: 703-993-4191 (office)
> e-mail: mmcdon at gmu.edu
> web: http://elections.gmu.edu
> twitter: @ElectProject
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of
> Michael P McDonald
> Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 1:11 PM
> To: law-election at UCI.edu
> Subject: [EL] News Analysis: Substantial Minority of Scrutinized EOs
> Were Not Conservative
>
> Martin Sullivan's analysis shows that more liberal groups were denied 501c4 tax exempt status by the IRS than conservative groups.
>
> http://www.taxanalysts.com/www/features.nsf/Articles/D2A6C735EAFA7A908
> 5257B7B004C0D90
>
> This is an important part of the puzzle that demonstrates conservative organizations were not unfairly targeted by the IRS. But, we still do not know from this analysis if the audit rate for conservative groups was higher than liberal groups. We have to look at all ~60,000 applications for that information.
>
> ============
> Dr. Michael P. McDonald
> Associate Professor
> George Mason University
> 4400 University Drive - 3F4
> Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
>
> phone: 703-993-4191 (office)
> e-mail: mmcdon at gmu.edu
> web: http://elections.gmu.edu
> twitter: @ElectProject
>
>
>
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