Free Speech vs. Tax Law

For people who are obsessed with other people's "personal responsibility," the wingnut freakazoids sure do have a hard time distinguishing between their own rights and their responsibilities to society.

We saw this in the torture "debate" - though the mere fact that elected officials of the United States of America considered torture a subject of debate is shamefully inexcusable. John McCain and other drooling psychopaths used the hypothetical case of a "ticking time bomb" to justify allowing Americans to torture prisoners.

It wasn't enough that in a such vanishingly rare case, a true patriot would be more than willing to torture illegally to get the information - and then accept the consequences of breaking the law.

No, no, the crazies insisted - we must make torture legal in all circumstances, everywhere at all times for any reason, just to make sure that in that one-in-million case no patriot will have to risk his delicate skin to do the right thing.

Now the freakazoids are insisting that making churches who play politics also pay taxes is an unconstitutional violation of their free speech rights.

(More after the jump.)

No one is restricting your free speech rights, assholes. You can get up in your church and say anything you like about any candidate. You can plead for donations and volunteers to a candidate's campaign. You can turn your church into a giant billboard exhorting people to vote for your candidate.

But if you do, don't expect everybody else to subsidize your political activities. If you make your church an arm of a political party, you have to accept that you forfeit your tax-exempt status. Tax law states that non-profit organizations - not just churches, mosques, temples or other religious organizations, but ALL non-profit organizations - are entitled to tax-exemption ONLY if they refrain from partisan political activity.

That's a tax law that has nothing - nothing - to do with free speech. It has to do with the rules under which your donors can deduct their contributions from their income for tax purposes.

One hundred years ago, there was no such thing as tax-deductible donations. Before the permanent federal income tax in 1913, people gave donations to churches and other charities with no expectation of earthly reward. And charitable organizations, including churches, spoke out on partisan political issues to their heart's content.

Four years later, in 1917, the federal government allowed donors to deduct their contributions from their taxable income. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that to qualify for the deduction, the recipient charity had to refrain from involvement in partisan political activities. This was not a gag order on charities; this was the only way for such tax deductions to be Constitutional under the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. This rule protects charities, including churches.

Churches did not stop speaking out on partisan politics because the federal government told them to shut up. Churches stopped speaking out on partisan politics because they wanted more money.

And now, they want to keep the money and play politics, too. But the latest scheme to challenge the tax law is really just another wingnut freakazoid special pleading disguising a fascist attack on the Constitution.

Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.

At first blush, the ADF argument may sound compelling. If a church wants to endorse a candidate, it's the church's business, right? If congregations don't like it, they can go to another church. If a pastor passes the collection plate for John McCain during Sunday services, church members can contribute or not contribute. This isn't, the argument goes, any of the government's business.

But this falls apart pretty quickly. Tax law doesn't stifle free speech; it applies conditions to tax exemptions.

Non-profit organizations receive a tax exemption because their work is charitable, educational or religious. But the benefit comes with conditions, most notably a requirement that tax-exempt organizations refrain from involvement in partisan politics. Since tax-exempt groups are supposed to work for the public good, not spend their time and money trying to elect or defeat candidates, it's hardly unreasonable.

But what if some ministries believe partisan political work is absolutely necessary? They're in luck -- they have every legal right to give up their tax exemption and create an explicitly partisan organization, such as a PAC. Current law simply limits groups from being both tax-exempt ministries and engaging in partisan politics.

ADF, meanwhile, not only wants to let ministries have it both ways, it also wants these ministries to take a huge risk with no reward -- break the law, help partisan candidates, and risk IRS penalty. Why? Because the Alliance Defense Fund, a multimillion-dollar right-wing legal consortium, has a culture-war experiment it's anxious to try out.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

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Mitch, Money and Manipulating Elections

You will be stunned to learn that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing the Snoopy Happy Dance over the decision by the Bush Judicial Commission (formerly known as the Supreme Court) to overturn the futile attempt by the McCain-Feingold Act to remove the pernicious and destructive influence of corporate money from U.S. elections.

Here's what the Louisville Courier-Journal said this morning:

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement Monday regarding the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission affirming the constitutionally protected right for grassroots lobbying groups to engage in electioneering communications in federal elections:

"Prior to this ruling, citizens were allowed to speak their minds except for just before an election - this ruling corrects that obstacle to free speech. This decision is a victory for free speech and confirmation that grassroots advocacy organizations have the same free speech rights as all Americans.

This is a step toward restoring the rights of citizens of every political affiliation to vigorously engage in political debate, whether the government agrees with them or not.

"Americans have a constitutionally protected right to hold their elected representatives accountable and, I hope, with this important decision, we can begin to undo the stranglehold that campaign finance legislation has placed on political debate."

Background

Wisconsin Right To Life (WRTL) challenged a provision that prevents organizations and corporations from mentioning candidates for federal office during the "blackout" period mandated by Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). WRTL and its supporters contend that the law is unconstitutional as applied to them as it outlaws advocacy on legislative issues during election season.

In an Amicus brief filed with the Court in the case in Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission, McConnell wrote:

"This case presents the exceptionally important question whether BCRA's restrictions on electioneering communications can be constitutionally applied to grassroots lobbying ads that do not serve an electioneering purpose. … The government has not identified a compelling interest sufficient to justify the imposition of BCRA's restrictions on grass-roots lobbying ads during the weeks immediately preceding an election, when constituents are most receptive to political ads."

Leader McConnell has been a defender of free speech rights, particularly as they relate to political debate. His beliefs on the First Amendment led him to challenge the constitutionality of the BCRA following its enactment.

Let's get a couple of things straight. This is NOT, repeat NOT, a free speech case. This is not a victory for the First Amendment. This is a catastrophe for ordinary Americans trying to make their voices heard in election campaigns.

And Mitch McConnell is about as far as anyone can get from being a defender of free speech rights. He is a defender of the ability of corporations to turn American workers into slaves and American voters into sheep.

I once had a conversation with a charming, intelligent, eloquent Libertarian. A real one, not a fake one like Newt Gingrich.

A self-made millionaire, he argued passionately for not just eliminating all limits on campaign contributions, but for establishing "one dollar, one vote." The more money you have, the more votes you get to cast for the candidate of your choice.

Granted, that system would probably not produce results much different from what we get now, but it's hardly what the Founders had in mind.

It is, however, precisely what Mitch McConnell has in mind.

He who has the gold makes the rules.

In case you forgot, Mitch is up for re-election next year, and he's more vulnerable than he's ever been. If you don't agree with Mitch that money equals speech, help defeat him at Ditch Mitch.

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Freedom Isn't Free - Up Off Your Duffs!

If you haven't discovered Glenn Greenwald's blog on Salon, stop reading this post and go there right now this minute.

Greenwald's June 13 post is a brilliant, passionate dissection of this maladministration's destruction of the rule of law.

I won't say more except to read it and send it to everyone you know, but I will repost one wonderful comment.

For you children who don't remember the Free Speech movement at Berkely, a tiny history lesson: Mario Savio was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 when, during a student protest that was being put down by police in Gestapo style, he jumped up on to the roof of a police car (after politely removing his shoes) and delivered a passionate plea for freedom and democracy. He is remembered as the founder of the Free Speech movement.

And no, he was not a communist. He was an American patriot. And he lived Edward Abbey's admonition that "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

Here's Lish's profound comment:

The reality is that it will take the sacrifice of people who are willing to put themselves on the line to block and disrupt the lawless actions of a corrupt and criminal government. It will require many acts of defiant conscience and civil disobediance before the deadly enterprise of war profiteering can no longer proceed with business as usual. It's either that, or resigned and bitter complacency.

We've been up against this wall before, and the words that need to be spoken have been said over and over again. The ones that I recall most vividly are those of Mario Savio from 1964:

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

Amen, Hallelujah, and May the Flying Spaghetti Monster Touch You With His Noodly Appendage.

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