Each of our political parties is under attack. The Republicans are besieged by ever growing numbers of voters of all hues, but most frighteningly, for them, those of a brownish hue. They have responded to the attack in a most simple and direct fashion: by depriving those voters of the right to vote. They have done this without shame and have done it aggressively. They have taken effective action against voters, shutting them out of polling places in red states and those blue tinged states in which they gained temporary power. They have been particularly effective and aggressive in those states, such as Texas, in which they fear the oncoming demographic brown tide the most.
The Democrats are under attack by the forces of reaction, led by rich folks such as the Kochs, backed by frightened, ignorant aging whites. What they lack in numbers they make up in money, and their chosen instrument for gaining power is the 501(c)(4) non-profit supposedly devoted to “social welfare” but which really devote themselves to partisan politics pure and simple. The administration, you may recall, beat a hasty and craven retreat when it was discovered that the IRS was slow walking requests from such groups for certification that they were in fact legitimate. The right claimed that it was being targeted because the IRS looked for words like “tea party” in an organization's name when deciding who needed special attention. It turned out that they were searching for liberal buzzwords too. No matter, the people responsible for this eminently reasonable course of conduct were obliged to resign.
So what, you may ask, is the good news? It looks like business as usual; Republicans using power to maintain power; Democrats cringing and allowing their opposition to run roughshod over them.
Except, maybe, the Democrats, at least some in the Obama administration, are growing a spine:
New rules proposed by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service would clarify both how the I.R.S. defines political activity and how much nonprofits are allowed to spend on it. The proposal covers not just television advertising, but bread-and-butter political work like candidate forums and get-out-the-vote drives.
Long demanded by government watchdogs and Democrats who say the flow of money through tax-exempt groups is corrupting the political system, the changes would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity by nonprofits.
The move follows years of legal and regulatory shifts, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, that have steadily loosened the rules governing political spending, particularly by those with the biggest bank accounts: corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.
…
Under current rules, promoting social welfare can include some political activity, along with unlimited amounts of lobbying. Some of the largest political nonprofits — like Americans for Prosperity, backed by the conservative philanthropists Charles and David Koch — have used that provision to justify significant expenditures on political ads.
But under the new proposal, a broad swath of political work would be classified as “candidate-related political activity” and explicitly excluded from the agency’s definition of social welfare. Those activities include advertisements that mention a candidate within 60 days of an election as well as grants to other organizations making candidate-related expenditures.
“Depending on the details, this could be dramatic,” said Marcus S. Owens, a former chief of the I.R.S.’s exempt organizations division.
via New York Times
Of course, Republicans are already counterattacking, but my guess is that the Administration will stick to its guns. If the Democrats had any sense, they'd mount a propaganda campaign in support of this as noisy as the Republican’s incessant claims that we must eliminate voter fraud by eliminating voters. Once again, as is so often the case, the Democratic argument would have the virture of truth. These organizations are polluting our political system. There are ways to make that point take hold with voters. It is necessary in the first instance to be loud and proud about what you're doing. I’d be happy to see the odd progressive 501(c)(4) disappear if we can also get rid of, or at least hamstring, the Koch Brothers and ALEC. So here's hoping they won't back down, and that's the good news for this week.
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