{"id":6547,"date":"2014-01-07T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=6547"},"modified":"2014-01-07T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T22:00:00","slug":"counterpunch-cure-irss-perpetual-political-outrages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/counterpunch-cure-irss-perpetual-political-outrages\/","title":{"rendered":"Counterpunch: No Cure for IRS’s Perpetual Political Outrages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tax<\/a>COUNTERPUNCH<\/a><\/strong>, January 7, 2014
\nHow the Tax Code is Used to Suppress Political Opponents<\/p>\n

Is There No Cure for the IRS\u2019s Perpetual Political Outrages?<\/strong><\/p>\n

by JAMES BOVARD<\/p>\n

The power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy one\u2019s political opponents. When the latest IRS politicalization scandal erupted last May, many commentators talked as if the abuses were a novelty in American history. But, as David Burnham noted in his masterful 1990 book, A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power, \u201cIn almost every administration since the IRS\u2019s inception the information and power of the tax agency have been mobilized for explicitly political purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For almost a hundred years, the IRS has diligently sought to ruin the political careers of its critics. In 1925, Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair personally delivered a demand for $10 million in back taxes to Michigan\u2019s Republican Sen. James Couzens\u2014who had launched an investigation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue\u2014as he stepped out of the Senate chamber. Couzens fought the case, and eventually proved that he had actually overpaid his taxes by roughly one million dollars. But the precedent of using threats to deflect oversight was firmly established.<\/p>\n

President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers including William Randolph Hearst and Moses Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer. FDR also dropped the IRS hammer on political rivals such as Huey Long and Father Coughlin and prominent Republicans like former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Perhaps Roosevelt\u2019s most pernicious tax skulduggery occurred in 1944 when he spiked an IRS audit of massive illegal campaign contributions from a government contractor to congressman Lyndon Johnson. LBJ\u2019s career would likely have been destroyed if Texans had learned of his dirty-dealing. Instead, LBJ survived and scores of thousands of Americans and more than a million Vietnamese died as a result.<\/p>\n

President John F. Kennedy raised the political exploitation of the IRS to an art form. Shortly after capturing the presidency, JFK denounced \u201cthe discordant voices of extremism\u201d and, in a passage that could have been lifted from President Obama\u2019s Ohio State University commencement speech last year, derided people \u201cwho would sow the seeds of doubt and hate\u201d and make Americans distrust their leaders.<\/p>\n

At a news conference a few days later, a reporter sought his views on the legality of campaign contributions supporting \u201dright-wing extremist groups.\u201d Kennedy replied: \u201cAs long as they meet the requirements of the tax law, I don\u2019t think that the Federal Government can interfere or should interfere with the right of any individual to take any position he wants. The only thing we should be concerned about is that it does not represent a diversion of funds which might be taxable to \u2013 for nontaxable purposes. But that is another question, and I am sure the Internal Revenue system examines that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, JFK heavily elbowed the IRS to make sure that they targeted the tax-exempt status of conservative organizations that had criticized Kennedy or his agenda. The IRS launched the Ideological Organizations Audit Project which targeted numerous right-leaning groups, including the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade and the American Enterprise Institute. Shortly before his assassination, Kennedy specified that he wanted an \u201caggressive program\u201d against the IRS targets. JFK also used the IRS to bolster compliance with \u201cvoluntary\u201d price controls, targeting steel executives who defied the administration for audits.<\/p>\n

A 1976 Senate report noted, \u201cBy directing tax audits at individuals and groups solely because of their political beliefs, the Ideological Organizations Audit Project established a precedent for a far more elaborate program of targeting \u2018dissidents.\u2019\u201d After Richard Nixon took office, his administration quickly created a Special Services Staff (SSS) to mastermind \u201call IRS activities involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations.\u201d More than 10,000 individuals and groups were targeted because of their political activism or slant between 1969 and 1973, including Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling and the John Birch Society. The IRS was also given a list of Nixon\u2019s official enemies to, in the words of White House counsel John Dean, \u201cuse the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.\u201d Contributors to the Democratic Party were also high on Nixon\u2019s target list as were many left-leaning organizations.<\/p>\n

The Nixon administration also vastly expanded a secret computer database \u2013 the \u201cIntelligence Gathering and Retrieval System\u201d the IRS began in 1963 to sweep up information on individual Americans and groups. By 1975, the IRS had stockpiled data on almost half a million persons and groups; the program was abolished after its existence became known outside of official circles.<\/p>\n

The exposure of Nixon\u2019s IRS abuses profoundly weakened him during the uproar after the Watergate hotel break-in. The second article of his 1974 impeachment charged him with endeavoring to \u201cobtain from the IRS\u2026 confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.\u201d Congress enacted legislation to severely restrict political contacts between the White House and the IRS.<\/p>\n

But the IRS continued its freelance work. After Sen. Joe Montoya of New Mexico announced plans in 1972 to hold hearings on IRS abuses, the agency added his name to a list of tax protestors who were capable of violence against IRS agents. When IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander was challenged on the listing at a 1975 Senate hearing, he replied, \u201cThe only connection that I can think of immediately is that Senator Montoya is, after all, the Chairman of the IRS Appropriations Subcommittee, and some one might have thought that he did violence to our appropriation.\u201d Information from the an IRS investigation of Montoya was leaked to the Washington Post. Partly as a result of the IRS leak, Montoya lost his reelection bid.<\/p>\n

In the following decades, the IRS regularly sparked outrage by abusing innocent taxpayers but there was scant controversy about the agency\u2019s politicalization until Bill Clinton took office. In 1995, the White House and the Democratic National Committee produced a 331-page report entitled \u201cCommunication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce\u201d which attacked magazines, think tanks, and other entities and individuals who had criticized President Clinton. In the subsequent years, many organizations mentioned in the White House report were hit by IRS audits. More than 20 conservative organizations \u2013 including the Heritage Foundation and the American Spectator \u2013 and almost a dozen high-profile Clinton critics were audited.<\/p>\n

The Landmark Legal Foundation sued the IRS after being audited. Its brief quoted an IRS official who declared at an IRS meeting \u201cthat documents identifying the names of members of Congress and their staffers as the source of audit requests had been, or were being, shredded\u2013and then went on to suggest ways to disguise future requests so that they did not appear to be coming from Congressmen.\u201d The IRS claimed that it could not find 114 key files relating to possible political manipulation of audits of tax-exempt organizations. The Clinton administration fought vociferously to prevent Americans from learning how it had abused IRS powers.<\/p>\n

In perhaps the least recognized media bombshell of the Clinton era, the Associated Press reported in late 1999 that \u201cofficials in the Democratic White House and members of both parties in Congress have prompted hundreds of audits of political opponents in the 1990s,\u201d including \u201cpersonal demands for audits from members of Congress.\u201d Audit requests from congressmen were marked \u201cexpedited\u201d or \u201chot politically\u201d and IRS officials were obliged to respond within 15 days. The AP noted, \u201cThe IRS computer tracking system in Washington denotes the name of a politician who refers a matter. The original letter from the White House or lawmaker is forwarded to the case agent.\u201d Permitting congressmen to secretly and effortlessly sic G-men on whoever they pleased epitomized official Washington\u2019s contempt for average Americans and fair play. But because the abuse was bipartisan, it evinced little or no interest on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

After Obama\u2019s first presidential election, conservative groups began mobilizing across the nation to resist what they perceived as his socialist policies and programs. By mid-2010, conservative organizations were complaining of harassment by the IRS. The Obama administration perpetually denied that any such targeting was occurring. However, a May 2013 Inspector General report confirmed that IRS employees had devoted far more scrutiny (sometimes amounting to seeming harassment) to nonprofit applications that used the terms \u201ctea party\u201d or \u201cpatriots\u201d or that criticized government spending or federal deficits. The Inspector General report concluded: \u201cDeveloping and using criteria that focuses on organization names and policy positions instead of the activities .. does not promote public confidence that tax-exempt laws are being adhered to impartially.\u201d Surprise, surprise\u2026.<\/p>\n

Congressional committees are reportedly vigorously investigating the latest scandal, but it remains to be seen how much courage and competence they will show. Thus far, the alleged offenses of the Obama administration are fairly paltry in comparison to the smoking gun abuses of the Kennedy and Nixon eras.<\/p>\n

The latest IRS brouhaha vivifies how the tax code allow presidents of both parties to suppress political opposition. This fundamental truth has burst forth only occasionally over the past century \u2013 perhaps most eloquently in a 1967 federal appeals court decision overturning the conviction of a leftist Oregon lawyer: \u201cThe court will not place its stamp of approval upon a witch-hunt, a crusade to rid society of unorthodox thinkers and actors by using the federal income tax laws\u201d to silence them.<\/p>\n

But as long as the federal tax code is incomprehensible to most Americans, the IRS will continue to have vast power over its targets. And we cannot expect politicians to fix the problem as long as they expect to profit from the IRS\u2019s machinations. As Alexander Hamilton, later the nation\u2019s first Secretary of the Treasury, warned in 1782: \u201cWhatever liberty we may boast in theory, it cannot exist in fact while [arbitrary tax] assessments continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tagline: Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan<\/a> and 9 other books. On Twitter – @jimbovard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COUNTERPUNCH, January 7, 2014 How the Tax Code is Used to Suppress Political Opponents Is There No Cure for the IRS\u2019s Perpetual Political Outrages? by JAMES BOVARD The power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy one\u2019s political opponents. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6548,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6547\/revisions\/6548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}