ataxingmatter

Torture--It's the Economy, Stupid.....

Naked Capitalism ran a "guest post" by "George Washington" yesterday on Cheney's role in furthering the Bush Administration's torture agenda: Cheney Admits to Being a War Criminal, Naked Capitalism (Feb. 16, 2010).  

Washington notes that the mainstream media's approach to Cheney--letting him argue for torture without ever challenging him with tough questions--is "no different than interviewing Charles Manson and letting him argue--without challenge--that murder is a great thing." And we are all guilty.  "By failing to demand that torture stop and those who ordered it--like Cheney--be held to account, Americans are complicit in war crimes, just like the Germans who failed to stand up to Hitler were complicit in crimes against humanity." 

The preface argues that "torture is bad for the economy", with a link to Washington's own blog post on January 9 noting that "The Military-Industrial Complex is Ruining the Economy." 

The impact of militarization is huge, and the long-term wars we are engaged in currently, and their high costs, surely impact our economy.   Surely the military-industrial complex and its demands on the tax system (and its potential threats to our democratic institutions) are viable topics at ataxingmatter, as part of the discussion of tax policy and institutional sustainability.  The military-industrial complex gobbles up huge portions of the tax revenues that our system brings in.  At the same time, our income tax provisions are extraordinarily vulnerable to the intensive lobbying of members of the military-industrial complex--from provision of multiple tax breaks to soldiers in the military front line to enormous subsidies for the natural resources extractive industries that feed barrels of oil into the pipeline of energy inefficient ships, planes, drones, trucks, and other energy gobblers in the military supply network. Taxing and spending go hand in hand--even when their relationship has been warped by the kinds of tax cuts passed in the Bush Administration that built in huge shortfalls of revenues in order to benefit the owner/manager class while at the same time treating war expenditures (and the future expenditures for replacement equipment and care of wounded necessitated by today's war) as after-thoughts that could be added as supplemental budget items that are slipped through the legislative process without the kind of in-depth discussion and understanding that is required.  As a result, we have followed a "make war now, figure out how to pay later" mentality.   Put together with the huge, multiple Bush tax cuts--especially those for big corporations and their owners/managers--and the enormous financial commitment that was required to bailout the financial system because of its one-way-casino mentality (gamble the house's money and if you lose, the house makes it up to you; if you win, you eat it all yourself and leave no crumbs for the house), we are left with an economic system that requires deep and thoughtful intervention to right itself--tax reforms to undo at least a portion of the disastrous Bush policies, financial institution reforms to break up the Big Banks and return them to quasi-public utility status where the public interest counters their private greed in the types of decisions they can make, and military reforms  that include long-term thinking about the relationship between military decisions and the sustainability of democracy are at the very top of the list .

So how does torture--and the question of holding Bush administration officials accountable for using torture and advocating its use as a cornerstone of their approach to terrorism--relate to the economic/tax issues connected with the military-industrial complex?   The following offers a sketch of considerations that support considering torture a tool of war that has particularly bad connotations in connection with the over-militarization of the economy.

First, torture was, under Bush, a key factor of war policy.  It was openly advocated for by Cheney, and lawyers like Yoo in the administration pushed the boundaries (I would argue even "went beyond" the boundaries) of ethical requirements and competent representation to create some semblance of a legal foundation supporting the policy (and protecting the state actors who were embarking on it).  Torture was thus demonstrably a key factor in the way the Bush Adminsitration fought its wars.  

Second, torture as a practice weakens democratic institutions, since it can only be furthered through methods that run counter to our constitutional protections for due process--it demands that the executive powers be permitted to treat harshly those that are considered "other" without ordinary processes for first determining guilt before meting out punishment.  In the Bush case, there was an affirmative decision to torture stemming from the undemocratic (and unsupported in our constitutional history) notion of a president with unilateral powers to do anything domestically or internationally, even actions contrary to domestic law and international treaties, under the presidential powers to conduct wars that Congress has declared--the absurdly undemocratic, fascist, militaristic, and anti-constitutional concept of a "unitary executive" pushed by the neo-cons to support the accretion of incredible powers to Bush because of his role as "commander in chief" of the armed forces. 

Third, the use of torture invites a cycle of non-diplomatic and non-democratic responses.  In a world context where even Democrats and Republicans have lost the art of reasonable compromise in pursuit of the greater good, it is not surprising that cultures that are as deeply opposed in values as (a) open democracies that strive for equal rights for women and men and freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion and (b) male-dominated theocracies where religion is imposed will find it hard to find avenues for working together for the common good.  Add bias and assumptions about violence to the mix, add torture of those who perhaps are most prone to violent jihad to the mix, and the mixture becomes explose.  As noted, torture represents a decision to deal brutally with those who are considered "other" than the governed people but for whom there have been no public processes to determine guilt or innocence.   That lack of due process and lack of transparency breeds contempt for the government that embraces it--especially by those who bear the brunt of it.  The widely disseminated photos of torture in the Abu Ghrab prison firmly fixed the image of "America as a torturing state" for those who were already prone to view the nation as biased against Islam and as a brutal state pursuing capitalism at any expense.  Just as news of the Nazi concentration camps spread from one group of potential targets to another, the news of American use of torture and the intentionally anti-Islamic techniques (menstruating women, dogs, nakedness) must clearly have spread from one fervent Islamic group to another, reinforcing any hate and buttressing militant responses.  Torture, in other words, breeds contempt, and contempt breeds war in a vicious cycle of brutal torture-hate-brutal response. 

Thus, when torture and war crimes are furthered by  top officials, the military economy is benefited and both democratic institutions and ordinary Americans are the losers.  As one commentator on the Naked Capitalism post noted:

The only people who are intelligent, informed, AND support torture are the ones who WANT the US to have a lot of enemies, because they are in the pay of the military industrial complex. ...They want a forever war. ...[I]n the end, the neocons and the jihadis need each other for [their] own self-interests.  Unfortunately, it's the rest of us that end up paying. -Comment by "Skepticus Maximus"

So adding to the human rights and international treaty and domestic law arguments about holding the Bush Administration accountable is this economic/democratic institution argument .  People like Cheney who advocated torture and legal advocates like John Yoo who facilitated it ought to be be held responsible not only because their actions violated the Geneva Convention and  human rights agreements (we hanged Japanese prisoners for waterboarding) but because the advocacy and use of torture continue to threaten the foundations of the democratic institutions that we hold dear by underpinning an "above the law" military-industrial complex that is extraordinarily powerful and able to garner spending and tax provisions to its favor with apparent ease, with long-term deteriorative impact on the economy.

Sklar case decided by Ninth Circuit

The Ninth Circuit has decided Sklar v. Commissioner, No. 06-72961 (9th Cir. Dec. 12, 2008), involving the question of whether payments to an Orthodox Jewish day school for Michael and Marla Sklar's children in 1995 could be deducted as a charitable contribution. The answer is no.  The court affirmed the Tax Court's decision that this type of payment is for the educational benefit rather than a charitable contribution, as it has traditionally been treated in a long line of cases.  The court noted that the arguments made by the Sklar's were "virtually identical" to the arguments made in an earlier case that sought to use the Scientology closing agreement to claim similar rights, and came to the same conclusions it had come to earlier.

For background, see

105 TC No. 14 (2005) (the tax court case affirmed by the December 12 decision) 

282 F.3d 610 (9th Cir. 2002) (the Ninth Circuit's earlier decision regarding the Sklar's claim in respect of the 1994 returns and the IRS closing agreement with the Church of Scientology)

Legal archive on Church of Scientology's battle with the IRS.

Religion, Tax and Senator DeMint: abortion, Proposition 8, and the Visitor Center

I often commented here on my views of the importance of maintaining strict separation of Church and State.  I deplore the practice--now wholeheartedly endorsed, it seems, by mainstream media--of treating a politician's religious views as of critical importance to their ability to perform as adequate fiduciaries of the public interest.  Religion--whether type of or existence of or practice of--should, at least in my book, be private and mostly irrelevant to the public duties of any aspirant for office.  (I'll admit some exceptions, if the aspirant is a religious fanatic in a religion that burns witches at the stake, for example, or a religion that believes that all government officials must rule in the name of the religion, like the Taliban, etc.) 

I particularly dislike the practice of using government funds collected from taxpayers of every religious stripe (including none at all) to support religious organizations' projects--we shouldn't be giving tax money to "faith based" organizations for anything that smacks of furthering religious objectives in any way whatsoever.  (As I recall, something more than 85% of the "faith-based" monies go to fundamentalist Christian groups, and much of the activities sponsored by those monies are proselytizing, and even if they aren't directly proselytizing, they free up other monies the church has collected tax free for use in proselytizing and they create venues that lend themselves to distribution of information that facilitates proselytizing.)

And I strongly object to the recent pattern of intervention of organized religious groups in political campaigns.  Let religious groups do what they will (as long as they aren't violating laws), including forbidding church marriages between gays or abortions by church members.  But don't let them use their tax-exempt status to force their views on others.  A prime example is the Catholic Church's sometimes explicitly stated support of Republican candidates based on its anti-abortion views--getting a tax exemption from the State, and using that tax exemption to try to get people elected who will likely not enforce, or even try to overturn, the State's law permitting women to have abortions is not okay.

As far as that goes, I also object to the kind of campaigning done when the Mormon Church used of its vast resources to campaign in favor of "proposition 8" in California to ban gay marriages--letting a church get a tax exemption that permits it to acquire vast resources with no corresponding obligation to the State, and then use those vast resources in political advocacy to propagate misleading advertisements (your young children will be forced to endure lessons on the virtues of gay marriage) to get laws passed intended to subject non-Mormons to the Mormon Church's views of appropriate marriage, is an outrage.  The federal tax law on this may be on the Mormon Church's side, since the Code makes a distinction between intervention in political campaigns on behalf of particular candidates and political advocacy or "lobbying", which is merely subject to a substantiality cap.  See John Colombo's discussion of this issue on the NonProfit Tax Prof blog.  I personally think it would be good practice to find that $5 million spent on a single issue for a single campaign is per se "substantial" and beyond what should be permitted to any religious organization.

So what about politicians who constantly harp on the need for government to propagandize about the role of religion in the Nation's growth?  Salon's Alex Koppelman notes Senator DeMint's "outrage" at the new federal government visitor center's portrayal of American history without "appropriately honor[ing] our religious heritage that has been critical to America’s success."  See War Room: DeMint Protest's Capital Visitor Center's 'Left-leaning' Ways, Salon, Dec. 4, 2008.  DeMint finds it objectionable that the Visitor Center's "most prominent display proclaims faith not in God, but in government."   Clearly, something weird is going on here.  The Visitor Center is the first step for Americans who are explicitly embarking on a tour of their government facilities--it is a portal to our government.  Should it not be an informative portal, that talks about government positively and shows the citizens who are the backbone of the government how the government works?  DeMint's objections come across as misguided from the get-go, as my father used to say.  This is an anti-government, pro-religious theme that the fundamentalist Christian right in this country has been pushing for a long time (well, since Reagan) in a strange coalition between the wealthy (who are the ones that ultimately benefit from it all), the neo-con fascists and the right-wing fundamentalist Church-as-Staters.

But is it a correct perspective on history?  I don't think so.  The country was founded with basic views about the separation of tax dollars from church dollars,  State action from Church action, by many who held views that might be described as spiritual but would very seldom be described as fundamentalist Christian or even as overtly religious in today's terms. 

Some of the comments on the Salon entry are exceptionally good.  One commenter notes the role of the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... (cont,)

Wow. It simply could not be stated any clearer than that. There is no gray area, no ambiguity or anything to parse over in it. DeMint is a moron if he thinks otherwise.

It says: You leave my religion alone, I will leave yours alone, including your right to not believe a thing. Leading off with these words quite clearly says no matter how anyone believes, for all questions concerning how this country will be run, we will refer solely to the document we are now creating.  Id.

The Visitor Center could, of course, accommodate DeMint's desire for more mention of the role of religion in the Founding Father's thinking--but it is likely that the accommodation I would support wouldn't please DeMint and his religious fundamentalist supporters at all!   A commenter, for example, suggests very apt quotations from two Thomases who played extraordinarily important roles in the intellectual foundations of the country--Paine and Jefferson. 

“The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.” - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, 1824

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

The commenter goes on to note another religious contribution to the country's underpinnings that might be mentioned--the establishment of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845 with the avowed purpose of defending white supremacy and slavery. Id.

Or it could even mention a number of other important religious milestones in the history of the Nation.  Those would include the Quaker support for abolition (a positive), but they would also include the Mormon massacre of non-Mormons (Mountain Meadows Massacre, 1857), the earlier murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith by non-Mormons, the Salem Witch Trials, or the recent Catholic coverup of pedophile priests.  See this comment.

Pulpit Defiance of Law Banning Tax Exempts from Campaigning

Yesterday (Sunday, September 28) various ministers around the country, organized by a tax-exempt organization called Alliance Defense Fund, joined together to defy the law.   See Slevin, 33 Pastors Flout Tax Law with Political Sermons, Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2008; Sataline et al, Partisan Sunday Sermons Test IRS Tax Laws, Wall St. Journal, Sept. 29, 2008. The law says that tax-exempt organizations cannot actively campaign on behalf of a political candidate, and that includes a ban on endorsing particular political candidates from the pulpit.  The ministers, and the group promoting their lawbreaking act, claim they have free speech rights to say whatever they want from the pulpit.  See Alliance Defense Fund's description of the "freedom Sunday" project on its website.

By the way, the Post article above notes that Rev. Johnson condemned voting for Barack Obama as evidence of "severe moral schizophrenia" but didn't explicitly endorse John McCain.  How's that for trying to have your pie and eat it, too?  If you condemn one of two candidates from the pulpit, that is effectively endorsement of the other, and should be treated as such.  Fran Pulto, of Calvary Chapel in Philadelphia, went further, saying that John McCain is the only candidate a Christian can vote for.  See Wall Street Journal article, above.  (Hasn't it ever seemed incongruous to those in the pews for these sermons that the person their pastor is so fervently supporting in the name of Christiandom has taken positions that amount to trigger-happy warmongering--singing "bomb, bomb Iran" and arguing for huge defense increases to be protected from economic woes while freezing all of the many ways that the government lends a helping hand to the poor and down-and-out?) 

Many other ministers, and groups opposed to that defiance of the law, note that churches can endorse candidates if they choose to forego the benefit of tax exemption (and it is a HUGE benefit for churches that run mini-villages on their complex with claims that all of the various shopping opportunities are in furtherance of their ministries and thus not subject to UBIT -- the tax on unrelative business income).  If they want taxpayers to subsidize their ministries (which we do now through tax exemption and deductions for charitable contributions), they have to accept taxpayers' desire not to support a tax exemption for churches that will intervene in elections  on behalf of candidates.  See, e.g., the NY Times editorial prior to the pulpit endorsements: I'm Your Paster, and I Approved This Ad, NY Times, Sept. 26, 2008;  Robert King, Indianapolis Pastor to Take Part in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, IndyStar.com, Sept. 28, 2008 (noting that Indianapolis Baptist Temple gave up its tax exemption years ago and thus has every right to say whatever it wants from the pulpit).  David Cobb, a First Christian Church pastor in Lynchburg, Virginia, noted that endorsing candidates also "undermines a church's ability to speak prophetically."  Ray Reed, Pastors Weighing Whether to Endorse Candidates or Not, Lynchburg News & Advance, Sept. 20, 2008.

The IRS and the courts should apply the law.  Churches whose pastors openly violated the ban on campaign intervention should lose their tax exemption.  If the Supreme Court, dominated now by appointees of right-wing presidents, gets this case, it should not take an activist position in support of the majority's right-wing ideologies but rather it should make a clear statement about tax exemption:  Tax exemption is a grant of Congress;  if you defy the terms, you lose the exemption.  It has nothing to do with free speech--except to the extent that ordinary American taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay for intervention in campaigns in favor of particular candidates.  Paying for speech you don't agree with is bad, but paying for groups to campaign for candidates you oppose is terrible.

Alliance Defense Fund Stages Political Campaign Intervention

Our fellow blogger, David Brennan, reports on NonProfit Law Prof Blog about the staged political campaign intervention by churches sponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund, at this link.

Alliance Defense Fund describes its purpose as "to aggressively defend religious liberty."  What the organization means by that is described in "Defending Our First Liberty", a pdf pamphlet available on the site. It notes that the organization was founded by "35 evangelical Christian ministers" to "defend the right of people of faith to hear and speak the Truth of the Gospel," including "religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, marriage, and the traditional family."

Now, folks, if you are like me and have always thought that the "First Liberty" (i.e., the First Amendment to the Constitution) was intended to ensure that government doesn't attempt to limit the sources of information and ability to fraternize with others that is fundamental to a free and democratic society, you probably find some disjuncture between the "defending liberty" concept and the emphasis on the "culture war" icons proclaiming anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, and pro-status quo concepts of the family (no matter how unrealistic those nuclear family ideals may be).  The people that espouse those ideas are pretty kean on limiting the rights of people that disagree with them on those issues, by claiming, for instance, that gay marriages somehow taint straight marriages. 

But that's not what I want to focus on here.  I simply don't see how a constitutional "right" to tax-exemption in support of political campaign intervention can accord with freedom from the establishment of a government-sponsored religion.  Churches, of course, like anyone else, can become as involved as they wish in political campaigns.  They just can't do it on your and my dimes--the foregone taxpayer monies that support churches come from Jews and liberal Christians and Muslims and atheists, none of which should be required to support an evangelical agenda to acquire more say in government.   In addition, I find the religious litmus tests for high office increasingly pressed by the same right-wing evangelicals offensive.  Thus, I hope that churches have the good sense to avoid directly violating the law about campaign interventions.  I align with the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, an organization that describes itself as a "religious liberty watchdog group" that emphasizes the importance of separation of church and state to the preservation of religious liberty.  The organization has a "don't politicize the pulpit" project and a new website, announced here, urging ministers not to participate in an effort to break down the church/state barrier through political campaigning.

David Brennan, in the post mentioned above on Nonprofit Law Prof Blog, disagrees, suggesting that a good result of this action will be a Supreme Court case clarifying the issue. 

IRS guide for churches

The IRS has updated its guide for churches.  The updated guidance, The IRS Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations: benefits and responsibilities under the federal tax law, is available at the IRS website.  The publication covers a full range of issues relevant to the tax exemption of churches and other religious organizations, but a substantial section is devoted to expanded guidance on the question of political activities.  It includes a number of examples from the recent Revenue Ruling 2007-41, designed to illustrate the line between acceptable and unacceptable activities.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries: "No, thanks" to Sen. Grassley's Request

As readers know, Sen. Grassley has been trying to conduct an investigation of a number of megachurches whose publicity in local newstories or otherwise has suggested a possibility of misuse of tax-exempt status.  One of those churches is the Kenneth Lockwood ministry, and it has resisted requests for disclosure of information. 

The Senate committee released a report July 7, 2008.  See NonProfit Law Blog for a brief discussion. The report called KCM's response "not responsive" because it was only "partial" answers to most questions and no answers to any questions on compensation. 

Look at the press release (below) setting forth KCM's position that Grassley should ask the IRS to ask for information, instead.  Huh?  Why doesn't Congress have a right to carry out its oversight?  After all, these churches are given tax-exempt status on the understanding that they will comply with requirements for that status, and Grassley's investigation is one way of making sure that they are indeed held accountable. 

The church's release claims it is upholding its First Amendment rights.  I don't think so.  Congress has a right to ask about compensation and business-like activities that the church enters into, to determine whether the rules governing reporting of this kind of information are working appropriately.  That hasn't got any thing to do with a church's freedom of religious exercise.   Look at the second letter from Baucus and Grassley, below, noting that the Senate Finance Committee was exercising its appropriate oversight role and that the IRS rules govern enforcement actions.  Note also that the Senators have consulted legal counsel to ensure that their oversight role doesn't infringe on constitutional rights.

In fact, if you look at the April 4 news release on the same issue, the ministry says that it prefers the IRS to conduct a 90-day church tax inquiry, conducted under church-favorable rules under a provision enacted back in 1983 with considerable support of Senator Grassley, because the material on't be able to be released to the public. See below for a document providing a good summary of the church tax inquiry rules:  you'll note that such an inquiry cannot be undertaken by the IRS without a reasonable belief that the church is not entitled to tax exemption, is conducting an unrelated business or is otherwise potentially liable for tax, and there are a number of procedural restrictions and rules to expedite the process that are likely to hamper the IRS's ability to fully investigate. The IRS inquiry, in other words, is an enforcement inquiry.  The Senate's inquiry is different--it is a question of oversight and understanding and, to be clear, imposing more transparency through its investigation and report, so that the public has some basis to comment on the way the rules work. 

Thus, the church appears to be talking out of the side of its mouth--it says it is certain that the IRS would conclude that it has complied with all the rules for tax exemption after the 90-day inquiry and that no examination (a more rigorous auditing process where the IRS examines church records) would be necessary, yet it says that the IRS inquiry is the only way that it will provide whatever records are requested.   Sounds like the ministry is afraid, in other words, of what its contributors might think of some of the information.  Maybe its leaders are living too well, given the hard times for most ordinary people?  Maybe the church has not been entirely open in the way it has described its finances to the ordinary people who sustain the lifestyles of the church's founding family?  According to news stories at the beginning of the investigation, the KCM leaders enjoy use of a $20 million jet, ski vacations and exotic game hunting expeditions, an 18,000 square foot parsonage on Eagle Mountain lake with its own tennis courts and boat house (of course, all paid for by the people who contribute to the ministries or by the tax-free profits of the "related purpose" activities  of the ministries).  See this story summarizing WFAA-TV's investigations of the KCM leaders from November 8, 2007.

One can't help but speculate, in other words, that there is some fire underneath the smoke, given the church's admitted concern with "the public" finding out about its financial matters and its complete failure to respond to compensation inquiries from the oversight committee.

Whatever the real reason for the church's withholding the information requested by Baucus and Grassley, it disregards the right of the public to know that special concessions provided in the tax code are indeed serving the purpose for which they were intended.  Tax exempt organizations enjoy an enormous benefit and owe a public accounting to the taxpayers that make that possible.   

The object lesson from the Senate Finance committee's investigation is that it is time to rewrite the rules to require church's to file with the IRS when they begin in operation and to file a Form 990 just like every other tax exempt entity must do.  We probably should repeal or at least modify the church audit procedures act that treats churches with kid gloves.  The IRS should use fair procedures that don't threaten First Amendment rights for any organization, whether it is an environmental group, a poverty center, or a church, but we don't need a special rule that stacks the decks in favor of the organization's being able to hide information, as we now have.  It is simply too easy for people to claim themselves to be a church, claim property tax exemptions for their homes, and claim a minister's housing allowance for themselves, thus cheating the system and leaving ordinary taxpayers holding the burden of the revenue needs.

Here are a few items:

• a background posting on A Taxing Matter on the request for information and a followup posting on the July committee letter
• the 90-day church tax inquiry process.
• the second Senate Finance letter from Sens. Baucus and Grassley, March 11, 2008.
• the Kenneth Copeland Ministries April 4, 2008 news release (on KCM website)
• the Kenneth Copeland Ministries July 14, 2008 news release (on Bible Belt Blogger site)

Addressing Poverty, Protecting the Environment: PEW religious survey and its implications for tax policies

PEW has released the second part of its major survey of religion in America in the twenty-first century (this part on religious beliefs and practices, social and political views), described in Neela Banerjee, Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance, NY Times, June 24, 2008.  It seems that one major conclusion of the survey is that Americans, though accurately described as a religious people, are also a tolerant people.  The survey report notes an "openness to a range of religious viewpoints [that] is in line with the great diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice that exists in the United States."  Survey, linked above. 

Along with that tolerance go a few other attitudes that, I believe, are important to a sustainable democracy.   While Americans continue to differ strongly on issues that the right has for decades attempted to define as boundary "religious values" issues such as abortion and gay marriage, they are pretty consistently in favor of social and environmental justice, as evidenced by two views reported in the survey.  First is a view that we have an obligation through government to help the poor (more than two-thirds of those surveyed thought the government should aid the poor, even if it means more debt).  Second is a view that we have an obligation to protect the environment as a natural resource for people across generations (almost two-thirds agree that environmental protection and regulation is an important government obligation).

These findings are particularly interesting at this time, when an economic crisis means more ordinary Americans are finding it difficult to make ends meet while life remains an easy street for those few extraordinarily wealthy people at the top of the income distribution. 

On the concern for Americans in the lower income distribution, most politicians remain agonizingly silent.  We have known that we have a health care crisis for millions of Americans, but we continue to foster a private insurance system that makes its most profit by denying care.  At the same time, the country declines to take action to ensure that even the most helpless among us are protected--as shown by the decision on SCHIP.  We know that the economic crisis is extraordinarily stressful on those with few resources, but understanding and action on unemployment compensation extensions, foreclosure assistance, and infrastructure needs are terribly slow.

On the environmental front, some politicians have determined to take advantage of the ordinary person's pain from the increased price of gas to urge action --offshore drilling and opening of the Alaskan wildlife refuge--that does nothing in the short or long run to help those struggling with transportation costs but actually harms the environment and leaves us with an even more precarious energy dependency on oil.  We don't have the refining capacity to refine more oil if we got a tad more from the dangerous drilling; globalization of the energy industry means that a tad more oil here would do next to nothing to lower prices here (it's a global market, and the prices are set by global demand, including the rising powers of China and India); drilling offshore and in wildlife refuges has huge detrimental costs to wildlife and natural resources that swamp the piddling gains in energy availability; and it is time (in fact, it was time forty years ago) to take much more drastic action to reduce our dependency on oil and move us to alternate energy sources and conservation measures, both of which will improve the environment, conserve resources, and help cut our outsized contribution to global warming.

Taking the citizenry's clear support for helping the poor and protecting the environment, the idiocy of responding to high gas prices by subsidizing Big Oil and ensuring that Big Oil gets no-bid contracts in Iraq, and the need for fiscal and tax policies that better reflect the concerns of ordinary Americans, what could we do in our tax policies to make things better?  How about some or all of the following:

1. change the payroll tax system to make it progressive rather than regressive:  reduce taxes on the lowest-income Americans and increase them on the highest-income Americans by removing the cap and taxing capital gains as well as wages
2. eliminate corporate tax breaks that make moving offshore easy and profitable, for tax purposes, for big companies (e.g., define domestic companies by state of incorporate OR place of management and control; stop deferral of income--starting with the end of the active financing exception to Subpart F income and then transitioning over time to a complete no-deferral regime; and by all means, even if we don't get rid of deferral, for goodness' sake don't enact another corporate welfare provision like the 2004 de minimis tax on repatriated income that let the "bad" companies that keep their income overseas get a tax break for bringing it back to do all kinds of things other than create jobs (many of the companies actually laid off workers!)--see Lynnley Browning's NY Times story today on the windfall for 843 corporations that saved $265 billion in taxes); 
3. increase the Earned Income Tax Credit,
4. index the AMT rate brackets and exemption amount, creating an exemption amount that ensures that the lower 50% of the income distribution is not subject to the AMT; while at the same time adding various current preferences back into income for AMT purposes, such as the capital gains preference and mortgage interest deduction (if those aren't eliminated by other reforms)
5. Bring the regular tax rates into the 21st century by recognizing the way annual incomes have grown for those at the very top (CEOs making more in half a day than their average workers make in a year is not uncommon) while wages have remained stagnant (at best) for most ordinary Americans:  that means keep rates low at the bottom income tax brackets, but let them go back to their 2000 levels for the highest bracket AND add a rate bracket to the regular tax for taxpayers with more than $2 million in annual income (the current highest rate is reached at considerably less than half a million)
6. transition to a phase out of the mortgage interest deduction at lower mortgage levels
7. retain the Estate Tax (with something close to the 2001 rates and exemption levels) and at the same time eliminate gimmicky ways (from four-letter entities like GRATs and GRUTs to "valuation discounts") that the wealthy use to avoid the Estate Tax, and
8. eliminate the preferential rate for capital gains that favors accumulations of passive investments over productive engagement in enterprise--starting with the way "carried interest" is taxed for fund managers.

There are, I'm sure, a number of other things that should be done in the tax code to reflect the priorities that Americans consistently demonstrate--caring for those who are less fortunate, protecting the environment, having a fair tax system that doesn't let people off the hook just because they are wealthy enough to hire expensive "guns" to help them.   But some of these would be a welcome start.  Congress, are you listening to what ordinary Americans are saying?

LA Minister Calling for Death Prayers for Those Who Denounced Church's Political Activities to IRS

Buena Park Minister Wiley S. Drake has again asked for his followers to pray for the death of leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State because of its role in alerting the IRS to the church's endorsement of Huckabee for President. 

You can read the text of his original August 14 call for death prayers (notice that Drake calls for this action, which clearly seems to be a call for his congregation and others to take religious action, at the "key points of the parliamentary role"), and his renewed call for imprecatory prayer, and at this link, the complaint filed with the IRS by Americans for Separation of Church and State.  According to the complaint, Drake indicated that the press release "comes from my office, pastor" and also mentioned his role in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog, Pastor Again Asks Followers to Pray for Death of Critics, has a lengthy excerpt from the LA Times story and links to various other items discussing the matter.  See also McKibben, IRS Investigates Pastor's Huckabee endorsement, LA Times, Feb. 14, 2008. 

Wiley, a Southern Baptist Minister, first announced his endorsement of Huckabee on a press release on church letterhead, and then later repeated the endorsement on the church's radio program, the Wiley Drake Show.  See Flaccus, IRS Probes Huckabee Endorsement, AP, Feb. 13, 2008.  Drake claimed he was just making a personal endorsement within his free speech rights.  Id.   The Baptist Press reiterates that approach, claiming that the use of church letterhead and the statement in a program broadcast from the church basement are just personal statements and do not carry any church endorsement.  Kelly, IRS Probes Drake's Endorsement of Huckabee, Baptist Press, Feb. 15, 2008. 

Note that this isn't the first time Drake has done this--he created Southern Baptist Convention letterhead when he was an officer in that organization in 2006 and used that stationery to endorse Mountjoy for his Republican party bid for the U.S. Senate.  McKibben, IRS Investigates Pastor's Huckabee endorsement, LA Times, Feb. 14, 2008. Interestingly, when Drake created and used Southern Baptist letterhead to make a political endorsement, the Southern Baptist Convention wasn't so sure that it wasn't an improper religious rather than personal statement:  the Convention's executive committee general counsel August Boto sent him a stern warning not to do it again!  Kelly, IRS Probes Drake's Endorsement of Huckabee, Baptist Press, Feb. 15, 2008.   Drake even acknowledged, after the fact, that he shouldn't have done it.  See Warner, Reform-Minded Wiley Drake Won't Accept Traditional Obscurity of SBC's 2nd VP, ABPNews.com, Oct. 27, 2006.

Pardon me, but the idea that a pastor using church letterhead is simply making a personal endorsement is not realistic and not, in my experience, the way church congregations work.  The congregations that I was a part of (in Mississippi and Texas) viewed statements made by the pastor on public issues with church identification to be statements on behalf of the church congregation.  The pastor was the congregation's voice.

Obviously, the timid slaps on the wrist that the IRS gives to churches that violate the law to participate in political campaigns does nothing to change their courses of action.  The IRS needs to act by revoking tax exemption for organizations that violate the law.

Why is this important?  Churches are given tax-exempt status to permit them to pursue their religious aims without having to pay over taxes on their activities to government.  That is a special privilege and depends on a critical separation between church and state--no money to the government, no control by the government in the religion, and no interference by the religion in political and government activities.

Church participation in election campaigns is, quite simply, against the law.   Endorsement by a pastor in an official press release on church letterhead and then a few days later on a church-affiliated program seems very clearly to be the kind of activity that is attributable to the church and not a mere opinion of the person who happens to be a pastor.  This is one of those areas where the appearance of endorsement by the organization is a problem, and any representative, such as Drake, should take extra care not to give any cause for thinking that the church itself has endorsed a candidate.  Drake failed to do so.

This activity is inconsistent with the fundamental principles that underlie the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.  Those constitutional guarantees amount to a pledge that the government will not impose a religion and that it will not interfere in religious practices.  But the use of tax-free financing by a church to intervene in an election through endorsements and other means of supporting political candidates violates that pledge by using the "tax expenditure" (foregone federal revenues) to support its religious intervention in politics.  Other taxpayers, who may disagree strongly with the particular religious viewpoint of that religious organization, must pay more in taxes because of the exemption, yet the churches benefiting from the tax exemption are using the funds made available to them because of the exemption to act against those other taxpayers' religious interests.

Grassley's Investigation of Some Churches Activities

Senator Chuck Grassley wants some information.  Lots of it.  He has begun an investigation of six mega-ministries that have been covered in media reports recently.  As the press release explains, Grassley wants organizations that are tax-exempt to be accountable to their donors.  He is concerned that the boards are not acting independently but rather, the release implies, are acting like crony enablers of the luxury habits of the founders of the various ministries.

His letters requesting information are a revelation in themselves.  See

• Without Walls International Church
• World Healing Center Church
• Joyce Meyer Ministries
• New Birth Missionary Baptist Church
• World Changers Church International
• Kenneth Copeland Ministries

The Kenneth Copeland Ministries letter requests a laundry list of information about finances, names and addresses of auxiliary units, board members and compensation committee members, assets, jets, vehicles, domestic and foreign accounts, compensation to the founding family (salary, housing, and other forms of compensation, and any loans), expenses to maintain residences, credit cards, expense accounts, personal use of ministry assets, and on and on. 

In particular, the letter asks for information about property transferred to the ministry from the estate of Paul Pewitt.  Is the Copeland cattle ranch on that property, and if so, how did that come to be?  Is that property to be used for the purportedly planned "revival capital of the world" for which money has been raised and if so, how?  What about the for-profit corporation Security Petrol, Inc. formed with the church's mineral lease?  Where did the cash come from and who has interests in the corporation?  What about a series of other for-profit corporations and their relationship to the founding family?

A number of critics of these mega-minstries are at watchdog groups, according to Michelle Bearden, Without Walls Finances Face Senator's Scrutiny, Tampa Tribune, Nov. 6, 2007.  Ole Anthony, of  Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, noted that "some are committing outright fraud, and it's getting worse, not better, as time goes on." Rodney Pinzer, of Ministrywatch.com, noted the problem that these "prosperity gospel" ministries are "intended to make their leaders wealthy."

The Tampa Tribune was one of the papers that broke stories about problems at the Without Walls ministry, which is one of the largest nondenominational ministries in the nation.  The church took in about $40 million in 2006. It provided financial statements after the Tribune's original story, but those statements don't provide much accountability in terms of details of spending or information on compensation paid to top officials. The Tribune story had told about an elderly widown from whom the ministry "borrowed" $170,000 without providing care or repayment until after the story broke and another person who had "won" a significant award and been used in the ministry's publicity but had not received any such award until after the Tribune story broke.  Without Walls Finances Face Senator's Scrutiny.

There's a considerable amount of smoke here to make one wonder if Grassley isn't likely to turn up a fire.