| Politics Just 55 Questions, Ma'am How the IRS just handed the Tea Party its biggest victory yet. By David Weigel
Posted Monday, May 13, 2013, at 11:05 PM ET  Tom Zawistowski lived the classic Tea Party origin story. He started a business. He raised a family. Then came 2009 and the Obama presidency, and he discovered politics from the couch of his Portage County, Ohio, home. "Quite frankly my wife and I were apolitical people," he remembers. "Glenn Beck was on TV, and we were learning things we didn't know. There was a Tea Party rally scheduled in Cleveland, and the local media was bagging on them. If nobody showed up at the rally, it really would have hurt, you know? So we called every registered voter in Portage County, and people showed up."
One meeting at a Cracker Barrel later and boom, a local Tea Party group was born. As it grew, it got happily ensnarled with politics. "We were handling money," says Zawistowski. "We were taking bus trips. We talked to lawyers, and they told us that we'd have to apply for 501(c)(4) status," which would make the Portage Tea Party a charitable organization. "We filled out the 1024 forms, like we were supposed to. We were supposed to hear back in 90 days." Thus began the saga that would, incredibly, make the universally despised Internal Revenue Service even more despised. Zawistowski was one of many amateur Tea Party activists who applied for tax exemptions and received lengthy questionnaires, containing up to 55 questions about possible political activity, asking them to prove that they were clean. According to an Inspector General's report ... To continue reading, click here.
Also In Slate
North Carolina May Ban Tesla Sales To Prevent "Unfair Competition"
Mad Men, Season 6
Let Me Tell You All About My Narcissism
|
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment