With the IRS targeting Tea Party groups, as well as any group that wanted to educate people about, the contrast with left leaning groups is indeed stark. The putative reason the IRS targeted these Tea Party groups was allegedly because such groups were thought to engage in politics… which the IRS investigated by harassing people and demanding to know the content of their prayers.
The “Getting Gay With Kids” knock-off Earth Guardians, have already been mentioned as a 501(c)(3) that openly engages in political activism with impunity. James Taranto, of the Wall Street Journal, takes note of a much larger 501(c)(3) that engages in political shenanigans: The California Endowment.
The California Endowment has openly touting Obamacare and encourage additional measures be taken to include illegal aliens, with endorsements from politicians included. That they don’t openly identify specific legislation is probably why they are getting away with it… though there is no news of the IRS asking them the type of invasive questions the IRS plagued the Endowment’s political opposites with. Unlike the relatively small time Earth Guardians, the California Endowment had $3,660,548,295 in assets and investment income of $160 Million… yet only had to pay a 1% excise tax.
These are tax benefits, by the way, that the Boy Scouts will no longer have.
What makes the California Endowment such a pernicious example, is that they were the creation of a for-profit corporation:
“Where did all that money come from? ‘The California Endowment was established in 1996 as a result of Blue Cross of California’s creation of its for-profit subsidiary, WellPoint Health Networks,’ the website explains. In other words, it’s a tax-free arm of the health-insurance industry. Although the endowment is, according to its website, ‘independently governed and operated,’ it’s not hard to see how WellPoint and other private insurers have an interest in promoting more government insurance subsidies.”
While one would think that the left would be going crazy over “evil” corporations exercising such power, this is not the case because the corporations are doing the bidding of the left and are brought into the governments protection in return for doing so. In other words, this is just another case of Corporatism, properly understood.
And thus the double standard: One for those with the left; one for those against the left.
