501(c)(4)? Kiss It Goodbye

No more 'targeting' conservative groups like the TEA Party.

The Regime will simply schmeiss 'em.

...to get or keep tax-exempt status, 501(c)(4) organizations must devote a majority of their work to their “primary” social-welfare purpose. Most tea party groups were set up with a primary purpose of educating Americans on pressing problems—the size of government, the erosion of the Constitution—and did so mainly via nonpartisan voter guides, speakers forums, pamphlets or voter-registration drives.

What the proposed Treasury/IRS regulation would do is to re-categorize all these efforts as “political activity”—thereby making it all but impossible for tea party groups to qualify for 501(c)(4) status. Say an outfit’s primary purpose is educating voters on our unsustainable debt, which it does mainly with a guide explaining the problem and politicians’ voting records. Under the new rule, that guide is now “political activity” (rather than “social welfare”), which likely loses the group tax-exempt status. [...]

What makes this targeting more obvious is that the Obama Treasury rule only applies to 501(c)(4) groups. The ultra-liberal League of Women Voters Education Fund is registered as a 501(c)(3)—one of those “charities” supposedly held to the strictest IRS standards on politicking. Yet it brags on its website that it holds “candidate debates and forums,” and that its “educational activities” include “understanding candidate views and ballot initiatives.”  --PW quoting Strassel

See?  Now it's "legal"!!