A friend and I started a 501(c)(3) nonprofit a little over a year ago.  True to our charter, no profits whatsoever have been made.  Any money we do one day raise, over $25,000, I think, requires us to file what I’ve heard is literally sixty pages of paperwork with the IRS to show that we have complied with the complex laws that govern charities.

Part of the application for nonprofit status with the IRS was promising that we would undertake no political advocacy of any kind in connection with our educational activities.  Fair enough, I thought, I don’t support any of these political candidates anyway.   Obama’s voice has become as foul and disturbing to me as Dubya’s, as Rumsfeld’s.  My only political aim is a much broader one— let children think, voice their opinions, teach themselves how to learn what they need to know.  Don’t be sheep jerking your knee in a Rockettes like chorus line of high stepping party line robots.

That’s what 501(c)(4), the Social Welfare Nonprofit, is for– political activity disguised as charity.  Why they put it into law is probably the same reason a dog licks its privates.  Check it out.  You can raise millions for political “education”, even spend tens of millions on direct political advertising (as was done in the last election), as long as you are coy and couch your activities as educational.  For example, Karl Rove raised and spent tens of millions on political TV commercials with his 501(c)(4) Crossroads GPS or whatever the non-profit 501(c)(4) analogue to his for-profit political money machine is.  Those commercials were for educational and social welfare purposes first, influencing the outcome of elections second.  And that urine running down your leg is really rain, pure mountain rain.

Was it wrong for the IRS to target right-wing sounding 501(c)(4) groups for extra scrutiny?  Yes, it was wrong.  Heads rolled, apologies were made.  Calls for prison time for the authors of the nasty questionnaires the IRS sent out were made by the man with the strange orange suntan.   It’s not time to compare the crimes of the two criminal conspiracies, Democratic and Republican, that vie for control of our great nation.   One reason is that I don’t have ten hours to spend listing the most recent ones.  Another is that it’s like arguing about who is worse, Mao or Stalin.

But here’s my question– why are the targeted 501(c)(4) groups so outraged that the IRS sought lists of donors?   Transparency is desired by everyone but the criminals opacity protects.   If you give money to a nonprofit, why is that a secret protected activity in an arena where money supposedly equals speech?  I have no idea.  But I do have another idea.

Get rid of 501(c)(4), it’s complete bullshit.   If you want to teach your children that God created the world in six days, rested on the seventh and that all this was 5,000 years ago, go right ahead, God bless you.  If you want to teach your children that homosexuals should be put to death in a hail of fist sized rocks, it’s your right as a free citizen.  Just don’t demand the right to raise millions in tax-exempt money from secret donors to influence the outcome of elections and call it Social Welfare.