By Peter Galuszka
News that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has targeted Tea party groups, including one in Virginia, along with other right wing organizations is deeply disturbing and conjures up ghosts of other government witchhunts.
President Barack Obama has chastized the IRS for singling out the Tea Party and other groups that say they want to educate Americans about their constitution. One group that got “dozens and dozens” of questions about its application for a non-profit status was the Richmond Tea Party, according to leader Laurence Nordvig.
A government report traces the IRS activity to its Cincinnati field office that was charged with reviewing applications for non-profit status.
True, there are any number of groups seeking non-profit status for flimsy reasons, but being part of the Tea Party sure isn’t one of them.
And, using taxes as a weapon is hardly new and has been used by all sides of the political spectrum. Richard Nixon was famous for sicking the IRS on his “enemies” list in the 1970s. In Russia, Vladimir Putin used the Russian tax authorities to imprison potential political rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky who remains incarcerated.
Throughout the Civil Rights and Vietnam War era, the FBI had its COUNTELPRO to gather information about and disrupt groups on both left and right, including the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Cuban and Irish nationalist organizations.
Some groups merited watching such as some of the Weathermen and the Ku Klux Klan who practiced violence.
But it is wrong for the federal government to harass peaceful, law-abiding political groups. I may not agree with the Tea Party, but they do meet this description.
