Jesse Jackson's education fund took
in twelve million dollars and only spent forty-seven
THOUSAND of it on education. Maybe he cheated, do
you think?
O'Reilly of Fox Cable News Network's
"O'Reilly Factor" is demanding that Jackson's
tax-deductible groups be investigated.
A tax DEDUCTIBLE organization is very
different from a "tax-exempt organization."
A tax-exempt organization is one that pays no corporate
income tax. General Motors is a taxed corporation
because General Motors is in business, it makes
profits, and it pays corporate taxes on those corporate
earnings.
The Democratic Party is a tax-exempt
organization. The Democratic Party pays no corporate
income taxes.
People often use the word "tax
exempt" when they mean tax deductible. But
if you give money to the Democratic Party, you can't
deduct
that money from your income taxes. A tax-deductible
organization is a church or charity given that status
by the Internal Revenue Service.
If you want people's gifts to your
organization to be tax deductible, you have to jump
through a lot of hoops. The application is complex,
and there are rigid rules about how your money can
be spent.
Unless you're a liberal group, of
course.
As you probably know, Jackson admitted
to fathering a baby with his mistress, who worked
for one of his tax-deductible organizations.
She got over forty thousand dollars
in moving expenses and an undisclosed salary out
of it. O'Reilly says that's a lot of moving expenses.
He says Jackson has had his troubles with IRS before.
Tax-deductible organizations are supposed
to be purely charitable or educational. They are
strictly forbidden from engaging in political advocacy.
Unless they're liberal.
Since part of the money they are spending
is tax money, everything about a tax-deductible
outfit is supposed to be a matter of public record.
O'Reilly can't get any answers out
of Jackson.
What a surprise, eh?
With all this, the IRS has not looked
at Jackson's organizations in twelve years. O'Reilly
says he is shocked by this.
Surely he is not that naïve.
A North Carolina Republican congressman
was invited onto O'Reilley's show because he was
the only congressman with the courage to ask for
an investigation. But he was very frank about the
prospects. He said Congress simply didn't have the
stomach -- the guts -- to do anything of the sort.
We all know what happened to Jim Bakker,
and we all know what would happen to Jerry Falwell
if he did what Jackson has done. You may be sure
the IRS looks at Falwell regularly, and any discrepancy
would have been big news long ago.
Nobody ever demands that the political
left obey any rules insofar as tax deductibility
or even outright government grants is concerned.
All of our publicly financed universities
are openly liberal seminaries, dedicated to propagating
leftist ideology with student fees and in the classrooms.
They are the origin and bulwark of Political Correctness.
National Public Radio and Public Television
are unapologetically dedicated to leftist propaganda.
Propaganda is strictly forbidden for tax deductible
organizations and for organizations receiving public
funds. But absolutely nobody takes that seriously
in the case of liberal propaganda.
Ralph Nader will raise Cain about
the relatively small sums given to Republicans by
corporations. But that money is counted in millions.
Nader will NEVER complain about the billions of
dollars in PUBLIC money that liberals use to push
their agenda and hire more liberals.
Certainly no one will accuse the federally
financed Legal Services Corporation of ever taking
a conservative case, or of ever turning down a fashionable
leftist one.
Like the USSR during the Cold War,
our enemies could not survive without our help.
If it were not for government programs and tax-deductible
organizations, most of the people on the left wouldn't
have jobs.
But it will be a long cold day in
the Bad Place before any conservative legislator
dares raise the slightest protest to any of this.
At universities and in my time on
the House Education and Labor Committee staff, I
became accustomed to the simple fact that leftists
rightly regard public money as their own. They never
hesitate to use it freely to promote their ideology
and to pay for their public jobs. They use public
money to lobby for more public money. That is a
good part of what the left is all about.
There is nothing Jesse Jackson is
doing with millions that is any more flagrant than
what the whole left is doing with billions of dollars
and the special access we give them to our young
people.
Jesse is not as smart about misusing
tax-deductible money and federal grant money as
are the other liberals, but he is no more blatant.
If we went after the leftists who
pick our pockets, the left would collapse. You may
be sure that no respectable conservative will even
mention doing such a thing.
|