Tax-Exempt Terrorism

$71 Billion. That's how much the taxpayers lose every year to freakazoids. $71 Billion spent not on  infrastructure and teachers and health care, but on urging people to kill abortion doctors.

Brett Barroquere at AP:

A federal judge in Kentucky has dismissed a lawsuit brought by an atheist group challenging tax exemptions for churches and religious groups in the federal tax code.

 

U.S. District Judge William O. Bertelsman ruled Monday that American Atheists Inc. was speculating about being potentially injured by the tax code or treated differently from other organizations.

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(American Atheist President Dave) Silverman said religious organizations and churches are treated differently from secular organizations. Silverman said the exemptions are applied in a way that discriminates solely on the basis of whether an entity's members express beliefs and practices accepted as religious.

"The IRS treats your organization better if you profess belief in a supernatural deity," Silverman said.

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Silverman said the organization will likely appeal.

"We're going to keep fighting," Silverman said. "The court has upheld a prejudiced government practice. This isn't just about atheists; this is about blatant discrimination on behalf of all taxpayers and all Americans. Make no mistake. This is not over."

The Scandal of Government Working Effectively

Via wonkette, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle on the IRS doing its job:

I’d like to remind everyone what we are talking about here. None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We are talking about whether or not the American taxpayers would subsidize your work. We are talking about a tax break…I get the feeling that many of you and my Republican colleagues don’t just believe you should be free from political targeting, but that you should be free from scrutiny of any kind.

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If there was an organization promoting taxpayer funding for abortions, wouldn’t you want to be sure they weren’t using their tax-free money to campaign for a candidate? What about a group that wanted to promote voting without I.D.’s? What if, in the midst of an increase of Communist candidates, new Communist clubs wanted tax-free status? Wouldn’t you want to be sure that the self-declared tax-free classifications of those groups were correct?

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Our job is to make sure this never happens again. Anything else, like the circus happening at the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is political theatre.

Or as Wonkette commenter shypixel nailed it:

This is the worst scandal we have faced since employers actually started calling references listed on job applications.