Enjoy the NSFL Super Bowl, comrades!

Here's a two-fer about America's beloved National Socialist Football League.

Enjoy your socialist Super Bowl, comrades!


From a UK perspective, American football and the Super Bowl look downright socialist
By Joe Ware
February 1, 2014 | Guardian
URL: http://gu.com/p/3mcc9


Here's How The NFL Makes A Killing Off Of Taxpayers (INFOGRAPHIC)
November 27, 2013 | Huffington Post
URL: http://huff.to/1eAcXXU

Cheater nation: The scam that is the U.S. nonprofit sector

In the U.S., charity is becoming big business:

More than 1.6 million nonprofit groups are registered with the federal government, and they control more than $4.5 trillion in assets.... From 2000 to 2010, the number of registered nonprofits increased by 24 percent, according to an Urban Institute study. Annual revenue at such organizations, adjusted for inflation, grew by 41 percent.

And just as in Big Business, cheating is rife.

According to a Washington Post analysis, from 2008 to 2012, more than 1,000 nonprofits declared to the IRS that they had "significant diversion" of assets -- theft, fraud, embezzlement, etc.  And those are only the ones that owned up!

Moreover, the IRS is pretty lax about what "diversions" must be disclosed: only amounts more than $250,000 or those identified as having exceeded 5 percent of an organization’s annual gross receipts or total assets. 

We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars being misspent or just plain stolen.

We'd be better off trusting the U.S. Government to do the poverty-alleviation work of many of these nonprofits. With it comes Congressional oversight, stringent public procurement rules, rigorous accounting and Inspector General audits.

Inside the hidden world of thefts, scams and phantom purchases at the nation’s nonprofits

By Joe Stephens

October 26, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1bqGqAN

IRS and Congress must define 'political activity'

It's not the IRS's fault.  It's not even Tea Parties' fault, as I already said.  

Congress should give the IRS guidelines to help them determine what is "political" activity and what is not:

This issue was highlighted last Friday during a House hearing on IRS activity. Asked if he could define when a group applying for tax exemption as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare organization” is being too political, Steven T. Miller admitted that he could not say for sure. If the IRS’s former acting commissioner doesn’t know, it is impossible to expect front-line staff reviewing applications to know what to look for, nor for citizen advocacy groups to understand what rules govern their conduct.

Nonprofits need better guidance on tax-exempt standards

By Gary D. Bass and Elizabeth J. Kingsley

May 24, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/11e6AQd

IRS investigating Tea-Party 'social welfare' groups

I'm sorry, everybody knows that Tea Party-related 501(c)(4) groups are not "social welfare" organizations -- teabaggers deny the very concept of social welfare -- and so the IRS would be perfectly correct to investigate whether political activists are abusing the tax system to carry out their political activities.

So far, all the IRS is doing is investigating. In fact, "The only known previous action by the IRS came in July, when it denied C4 status to three units of Emerge America, a group that identifies and trains Democratic women to run for office."

So hey, teabaggers, cool your conspiracy jets for now.

IRS May Make Political Groups Pay Dearly for Keeping Donors Secret -- And Out Them

By Dan Froomkin

February 8, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/irs-political-groups-501c4-_n_1333389.html

Cities putting tax squeeze on nonprofits

Here, here! If these big, fat non-profits with their hefty overheads and bloated CEO salaries benefit from gov't services, then let them dish out like everybody else.


Cash-Strapped Cities Put The Squeeze On Nonprofits
By Tovia Smith
May 14, 2011 | NPR

URL: http://www.npr.org/136278740