Why the handling of the IRS story makes me angry

We see so many wrong things being done on a daily basis that it’s rare anymore when I get angry. But the story of how Tea Party groups received an apology from the IRS for mishandling of their applications for 501(c)4 status has really upset me. In trying to sort out why this and not so many other things, I composed this letter to Jed Lewison of Daily Kos for his take on the story:

Jed, I have been trying to figure out why your post made me angry. Not at you, please understand.

It’s not that I disagree with you that it’s wrong for the IRS to target people over their political beliefs. It is wrong. But this story is part of a much larger story of selective leniency to right-wing groups and of serious harassment of left-wing groups that stretches back to Nixon. It’s the fact that the rest of us are rendered seemingly invisible by the focus on the Tea Party groups that makes me angry.

Yes, in this case, a policy decision was made that imposed an undue burden on an entire class of people. It’s wrong. People who get Food Stamps or Medicaid would have something to say about that… people who have to get drug-tested or suffer insults from talk radio and suspicion from case workers for the crime of being disabled or unemployed could say a lot about undue burdens.

But let’s think a little bit about this. The Tea Party groups had an undue burden being imposed to make it harder for them to receive a subsidy from the federal government–ironically, the same Federal government for which they have no use.

Were these groups audited? Harassed? Put out of business?

No. They just didn’t get tax-exempt status as quickly as they should have.

Indeed, many left-wing groups have suffered genuine targeting. Mother Jones magazine was almost put out of business by the IRS. All Saints Episcopal Church almost lost its tax exempt status over preaching an anti-war sermon from the pulpit. And, while these cases can be dismissed as one-offs if viewed in isolation, they form a pattern of harassment that goes back to Nixon, if not much farther.

Indeed, what makes the Tea Party story notable is that it represents an exception to the undue leniency granted to most right-wing groups. How many right-wing churches run with impunity as political operations, endorsing or smearing candidates? How many examples of Crossroads GPS and ALECs exist, organizations which are really lobbying shops or PR firms? How eager to please was the IRS when it came to Newt Gingrich’s “charitable” organizations?

This is an ideal moment to tell the story of how the reaction to this IRS abuse represents the exorbitant privilege that conservative, white groups get, even as left groups and people of color face undue burdens all the time. To my amazement, not one commentator on the liberal/left seems to have taken the opportunity.

I’m not the one to write this story. But surely someone should. How about you?

Have we Americans become so blind and hypocritical that half of this nation has become completely invisible, even to itself?

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Adding other examples of left-wing groups audited or denied tax benefits:
1. Emerge America.
2. Greenpeace
3. The NAACP
4. United Church of Christ

More on the Aaron Swartz story

We previously covered the tragic story of Aaron Swartz, who was hounded to his death by a prosecution that seemed malicious and disproportionate, charging him with 13 felonies for downloading publicly-accessible files from MIT’s JSTOR account–even though JSTOR refused to say Swartz had stolen data. It is increasingly evident that the prosecution was completely wrong-headed. Scott Horton:

The flaw in Ortiz’s posture has been laid bare by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In United States v. Nosal, he dismissed the theory Ortiz used to go after Swartz, saying it would potentially criminalize “everyone who uses a computer in violation of computer use restrictions — which may well include everyone who uses a computer.” Kozinski was born and raised in Communist Romania, and knows a thing or two about totalitarian states — and he knows that prosecutorial overbreadth is their leitmotif. If conduct can be charged so broadly as to cover virtually everyone, then prosecutorial discretion effectively becomes a license to persecute anyone who stands in the state’s way. Radley Balko and Clive Crook have each focused on this concern about the Swartz case. I share the essence of their analyses.

The Ninth Circuit is California, whereas Boston is First Circuit. So an opinion by Kozinski isn’t binding on whoever would have tried the case in Massachusetts District Court. But Ortiz would have done well to consider what he said, which is (in my layman’s interpretation) computers aren’t somehow special. Just because you do something using a computer does not automatically convert what would otherwise be a civil wrong (tort) or infraction of institutional rules into espionage, treason, or some other arcane crime. If you take confidential information from your employer, it shouldn’t matter whether it was in a filing cabinet or on a computer. It’s wrong, but probably not a felony.

Maybe someday enough prosecutors and judges will understand computers to get this simple idea: there’s nothing special about them.

There’s never enough Bachmania

Via Kaili Joy Gray at DK, Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald:

Over a year after she dropped out, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann has refused to pay five staffers from her failed presidential bid, according to a former top campaign official. Peter Waldron, her controversial former national field coordinator, told Salon the dispute started when former Iowa straw poll staffers refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement that would bar them from discussing any “unethical, immoral, or criminal activity” they witnessed on the campaign with police or reporters.
…
A home-schooling group accused the Bachmann campaign of stealing the [group's e-mail] list, which was contained on a volunteer’s laptop, and then using it to fundraise for the campaign. The home-schooling group has sued the campaign and Waldron said there is also a criminal investigation pending, explaining that he spoke with police about the incident “several times.”

Now, I have as much expectation of the theft being prosecuted as for the Second Coming being at 9 o’clock tonight (which would, presumably, obviate any earthly prosecution). But it is truly amazing that a self-professed Christian has to demand that employees silence themselves over “unethical, immoral, or criminal activity.”

Scott Horton puts names to the dysfunction in Justice

(Photograph of David Margolis from Joe Palazzolo, Main Justice)

(Photograph of Lt. Col. Ronald L. Rodgers from Dafna Linzner, ProPublica)

Everytime there’s a broken system, there are people inside it, breaking it. If they can be named, confronted, and (ideally) ejected, the system can be fixed. Scott Horton took a long step toward naming the dysfunction in DoJ:

The IG’s report focuses on the case of Clarence Aaron, a black athlete who played an indirect role in a minor drug transaction and who became the victim of hyperaggressive prosecution and sentencing. While handling the case, [Lt. Col. Ronald L.] Rodgers misrepresented the views of both the United States attorney who made a pardon recommendation and the judge who seconded it, resulting in the pardon’s being denied. Aaron continues to languish in federal prison.

In the report, the inspector general’s office also flagged manipulations of the pardons process by the DOJ’s senior career staffer, associate deputy attorney general David Margolis. A master political triangulator, Margolis is said by alumni of the pardons office to have intervened routinely to block pardons because he believed they would reflect poorly on the department’s prosecutions record. Margolis is also the man who stood by and allowed the politicization of the appointments and removal process that led to the U.S. attorneys scandal; who blocked efforts to obtain an internal review of the prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (a prosecution that sprang largely from Margolis’s own mistaken judgments); and who reversed recommendations by the DOJ’s professional-responsibility section to discipline the authors of the department’s torture memoranda. (emphasis added)

Injustice in the short run is all too common. But there can’t be injustice in the long run without someone to prevent fair case review. Now, at least, you have two names and two faces.

The wheels of justice

Some of you may know Victor Jara, a Chilean musician who was swept up in the Pinochet mass arrests and executed. The legend is that, while interned at the Chile sports stadium (now Victor Jara Stadium), he encouraged resistance by playing his guitar. When his captors smashed his fingers and told him to play, he continued his defiance by singing until at last they silenced him with machine gun bullets. It probably happened a little differently, but there’s no doubt that he faced death bravely.

Aside from politics, he was just a great guitarist and vocalist.

Via Bohica at DK, his killers have been indicted: Lieutenant Pedro Barrientos, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Sánchez, and six more.

I hope God adds a little to their sentence for their crimes against acoustic guitar.

Hear Arlo sing his story.
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Update: Litho has more.

Hm. Wonder if this happens in the US?

Seumas Milne, The Guardian:

As in the phone-hacking scandal, the evidence of illegality, surveillance and conspiracy is incontrovertible. In both cases, the number of victims already runs into thousands. And household names are deeply tied up in both controversies – though as targets in one and perpetrators in the other.

But when it comes to the blacklisting scandal, the damage can’t only be measured in distress and invasion of privacy. Its impact has already been felt in years of enforced joblessness, millions of pounds in lost income, family and psychological breakdown, emigration and suicides.

It’s now clear that workers across Britain have been systematically and illegally forced into unemployment for trade union activity – often on publicly funded projects and in collusion with the police and security services – by some of the country’s biggest companies, using secret lists drawn up by corporate spying agencies.
…
Of course blacklisting isn’t new. Throughout the cold war, the virulently rightwing Economic League ran a similar corporate espionage outfit, from where Kerr brought his database. And more recently civil servants, police and corporations have been shown to work hand in glove against climate change and other environmental activists.

You know, you can’t have a meritocracy if political reliability is what determines who works and who gets ahead. If you don’t have a meritocracy, then the worst people rise.

Which could explain why there are so many psychopaths among corporate leaders.

China in a bull shop

Once again on my China-is-not-a-benign-continental-power rant….from Jonathan Kaiman, The Guardian:

It took just one little map to create a regional diplomatic dispute.

The map, in China’s newly designed passport, claims ownership of the entire South China Sea – parts of which are also claimed by Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia – as well as disputed areas on the China-India border and two Taiwanese tourist destinations.

The Philippines, Vietnam, India and Taiwan have all vehemently protested against the new microchip-equipped passport, which essentially forces neighbouring countries to validate China’s position on contested regions.

Vietnam and the Philippines lodged formal complaints last week with Chinese embassies in Hanoi and Manila, respectively. India’s external affairs minister, Salman Khursid, called the map “unacceptable”.

It’s as if the US did a map with the Jamaica, Iraq, and, oh, say, France as US territories. Would not make the locals happy. And would suggest that the US is even more arrogant than it actually is.

None of this would be of much moment if the US were stable or if the nations of the South China Sea had developed to the point of being capable of mutual self-defense. But China is behaving recklessly. Evidently the lessons of the generation that suffered in war to achieve national independence have been lost, and a narcissistic generation, grasping for power, has emerged. We should know. We have been there before.

Republicans briefly discover public interest, quickly abandon it

Via Dan Gillmor, The Guardian, staff members of the Republican Study Group discovered that the purpose of copyright law is not the enrichment of copyright owners, but “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts…” as Article I sec. 8 of the Constitution puts it. Sure, if inventors and authors don’t get compensated for their work, they won’t do it. But the motivation for the government to protect their rights is the public interest. New concept!

There’s all kinds of interest points in the brief, such as

* “most legislative discussions on this topic, particularly during the extension of the copyright term, are not premised upon what is in the public good … but rather what the content creators ‘deserve’ or are ‘entitled to’ by virtue of their creation”
* “there are numerous examples of copyright being used … to stifle oversight and hide incriminating information.”
*”Because there is minimal or nearly non-existent punishment for bogus copyright claims today, false takedown requests are common and have a chilling effect upon legitimate speech”
* “Current copyright law does not merely distort some markets – rather it destroys entire markets.”

Needless to say, once these staffers’ bosses discovered that they had used the idea of the public interest in a Republican document, the document was quickly disappeared and the staffers shot and then sent to Siberia.

Walker edges toward indictment

John Nichols, Madison CapTimes:

It is no secret that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker would like very much to have his name added to the long shortlist of 2016 Republican presidential contenders. But the nation’s most militant anti-labor politician has suddenly been thrust into the center of a scandal that is likely to dim his national prospects, and that could yet cost him his state post.
…
At the sentencing hearing for a top Walker aide convicted of felony misconduct in office, the chief prosecutor revealed that when Walker was seeking the governorship in 2010, he was part of an ongoing scheme to use county employees and resources to aid his campaign.
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Wisconsin media exploded late Monday with reports from inside the courtroom, where Walker aide Kelly Rindfleisch was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation.
…
“Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf said the group that met regularly included people from Walker’s campaign such as campaign manager Keith Gilkes and spokeswoman Jill Bader along with county employees such as chief of staff Tom Nardelli, spokeswoman Fran McLaughlin, administration director Cindy Archer and Rindfleisch, according to email correspondence obtained by investigators.”

It is very clear that as county executive, Scott Walker was directing his subordinates to use county resources and time to get him elected government. A more clearcut example of abuse of power could not be imagined. Every politician on earth knows that you can only campaign on your own time and with your own money.

I do not understand why Wisconsin Republicans are not catching the odor rising up from that rotting heap of corruption, Scott Walker. The voters just gave the Republicans absolute power again. Next on the docket: a judicial election that well could determine whether justice is actually done in the Walkergate probe.

In which the Miami Herald endorses communism, fascism, and the Caliphate

Really, the American press continues to discover new levels of stupidity.

You may remember that Republican Congressman David Rivera is under investigation for bribes, false election filings, and other criminal acts. The Miami Herald grudgingly concedes he “carries too much political baggage to be an effective member of Congress.” Yeah, like hopefully a ball and chain in the near future.

But they really don’t want to want to endorse Rivera’s Democratic opponent: “Mr. Garcia, 49, is too much of a verbal bomb thrower, a reflection of his work as a Democratic Party stalwart…. What this district needs most is a consensus-builder”

So, see, criminal or partisan Democrat? The choice is difficult!

What The Herald really wants is a one-party state. They’re the perfect newspaper for Mussolini’s Italy or the USSR. Political officials there worked in perfect harmony!