The GOP is having a tantrum over supposed illegality of investigating their "Social Welfare" groups in Ohio. But Social Welfare groups are actually classified as "charities". That is why they are to be given a tax exempt status and protection from donor disclosure.
Now charities for say feeding poor women and children, might want to stretch their effectiveness by working to get the local, state, or federal government to kick in to feed the downtrodden folks as well, and therefore maximize their efforts to actually get a decent diet for such citizens. God knows it's needed and it has been done for many decades, in fact since FDR. Before that, we got by by letting many of the poor get weak and succumb to diseases or die of starvation outright.
So, to increase fairness the Eisenhower administration changed the 501(c)4 groups to be "primarily" social welfare (charity) groups.
Later political pressure from big money people brought that down to 51% of work of the 501(c)4 needing to be charitable. That's hardly a good definition of primarily, but it still had some control.
But the political groups that created copious right wing 501(c)4 groups in Ohio and then did little but political actions, and
no charity at all, are now having tantrums about not being able to have donor masking and tax exemptions, and much of the news system is refusing to explain why they are wrong to do so.
This is an extreme example of the he said/she said wimpiness of "The Press".
But lets examine what one group, the one who worked to defeat an mandate for new and fair redistricting in the state of Ohio, caused to not happen. The above picure shows the results of the 2012 election for US House representatives form Ohio.
Excerpt USA Today report (which is linked near bottom of this report):
Protect Your Vote Ohio was never incorporated in the state, according to
the Ohio Secretary of State's website. Yet it was a big contributor in
the campaign to defeat Issue 2, the 2012 ballot initiative that would
have given a citizen's panel the ability to draw congressional districts
in Ohio.
Let's compare the results of the 2012 House elections in the state with the 2012 presidential election which isn't cut up into districts.
Of the 16 districts 12 went to GOP candidates 4 went to Democrats.
That means people voting for Democrats for House seats won 25% of the districts. But comparing that number with the presidential election (because 2 House votes were for 1 candidate elections and for ease) Obama and Romney each won nearly 50% of the state vote. So suddenly a Democratic vote for a US House Representative becomes half as valuable as a 1 to 1 comparison.
Your vote for in state representation is likely to be no more fairly treated than that for US House races. I don't have the numbers on that right now though.
To compare your voting status in Ohio it to a slave's status before the civil war, if slaves were worth 3/5ths of a person and a full citizen is worth 5/5ths of a person. A Democratic vote in Ohio US House races is worth 2.5/5ths of a person. Less than an antebellum slave.
Republicans' votes are worth
no more than Democrats' though because if you can't change your mind without losing half your rights, you don't have those rights to begin with.
Everyone in Ohio is worth less than a slave.
That's why an initiative was started to break that gambit of enslaving Ohioans by allowing the citizens of the state to vote for better representation in November 2012.
I'm guessing the money flowed though to the group in question which paid for ads and media exposure to confuse the people of Ohio, and now this political group wants it's donors to be able to give tax free non-disclosed donations as if it is a social welfare group ie a charity.
2.5/5ths of a person, Ohio. Does that sound good to you? I'd hate it. I like being a full person, and am happy that I live in California where we passed citizen enabled redistricting.
You should work on your own state passing such a proposition in the next election cycle, if you don't want to be worth less than slaves to the Koch brothers and other wealthy individuals who are reaping the rewards of Gerrymandering out of your hard work.
The leader of the US House Investigations and Government reform committee is GOP Congressman Darrell Issa who represents CA49 North San Diego and South Orange Counties including Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, etc. He has been adamant in defending such groups as I have written about in this article who are pretending they are charities, but are political activism groups without any charitable activities.
Above picture of slave memorial in Africa used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user "Son of Groucho" who has no connection to this blog or blogger.
Info on GOP group that helped stop fair redistricting found at USA Today:
Ohio groups targeted by IRS spin web of connections
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