Democrats say they want fairness.
One idea is to force residents of blue states to pay their fair share by capping or eliminating federal deductions for property taxes and state income taxes.
But if we must appease the Democrats’ demand for higher revenue, we also should target the activist institutions which currently enjoy tax exempt status but which serve implicitly political purposes.
Christian Adams in a 2011 post (via Instapundit), listed some of the institutions which have created a permanent structure on the left in the area of election law unmatched by anything on the right:
Leftist foundations, litigators and organizations have established permanent structures designed to alter election outcomes through policy advocacy and strategic litigation. Project Vote, DEMOS, the Asian American Legal Defense Fund (AALDF), the Brennan Center for Justice, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Advancement Project, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), League of Women Voters, Asian Pacific American Legal Center and Common Cause are some of the groups that push election law in a direction hostile to conservatives, and the rule of law. Not surprisingly, money tainted by George Soros also flows downstream through various groups and institutes to the cause….What do conservative groups have to oppose this coordinated leftist strategy of lies and litigation? Virtually nothing. The best effort is an ad hoc group of Republican lawyers. Other embryonic efforts have sprung out of the Tea Party movement, such as True the Vote in Texas or the Election Integrity Project in California. Like so many other things, conservatives are justifiably too busy making money or raising families to commit to a cause.
Dramatically scale back the dizzying array of institutions which qualify for tax-exempt status. Eliminate the 501c3 exemption for groups with implicitly political activities like Demos, and make groups like Demos and its donors pay taxes like the rest of us.
Scaling back tax-exempt status will negatively affect some conservative institutions and groups. Too bad.
We have think tanks, they have activists.
We face structural problems which have left us so far behind there’s almost no hope of catching up, and we’re subsidizing our own destruction.
They want fairness? Give it to them.
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