{"id":2136,"date":"2004-07-16T09:33:11","date_gmt":"2004-07-16T14:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2136.html"},"modified":"2004-07-16T09:33:11","modified_gmt":"2004-07-16T14:33:11","slug":"falwell-gets-busted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/falwell-gets-busted\/","title":{"rendered":"Falwell gets busted"},"content":{"rendered":"

TV preacher Jerry Falwell has, in recent years, been relatively cautious about using his tax-exempt ministries for partisan political purposes. He’s always been a GOP hack, and has repeatedly expressed support for Republican candidates, but in recent cycles, has generally kept his ministries out of the politicking business.<\/p>\n

This month, however, Falwell slipped<\/a> — and my friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State caught him.<\/p>\n

“For conservative people of faith, voting for principle this year means voting for the re-election of George W. Bush,” Mr. Falwell wrote in the July 1 issue of his e-mail newsletter “Falwell Confidential” and on his Web site, falwell.com. “The alternative, in my mind, is simply unthinkable. To the pro-life, pro-family, pro-traditional marriage, pro-America voters in this nation, we must determine that President Bush is the man with our interests at heart. It is that simple.” <\/p>\n

He added: “I believe it is the responsibility of every political conservative, every evangelical Christian, every pro-life Catholic, every traditional Jew, every Reagan Democrat, and everyone in between to get serious about re-electing President Bush.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously, this is a direct and unambiguous endorsement of Bush by Falwell. But federal tax law — which Falwell routinely rails against — prohibits tax-exempt ministries from intervening in political campaigns. Falwell’s explicit support, therefore, looks to be a pretty obvious violation.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argued in a letter to the I.R.S. that one of Mr. Falwell’s religious organizations, Jerry Falwell Ministries, had disseminated the message in violation of tax rules, which restrict tax-exempt religious groups and charitable organizations from engaging in politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Falwell’s defense was as twisted as it was unpersuasive.
\n
\nThe endorsement came from an entity called “Jerry Falwell Ministries.” But Falwell told the New York Times the message didn’t come from his ministry, but rather, his lobbying organization. As if that weren’t bizarre enough, Falwell said his lobbying organization, which is also tax exempt, doesn’t endorse candidates.<\/p>\n

I hate to break it to you, Jer, but you’re losing this argument.<\/p>\n

Falwell then said his endorsement was his personal view, not that of the tax-exempt lobbying organization. Does that make it legal? Not according to the former chief of the IRS’s tax-exempt rulings operations, Milton Cerny.<\/p>\n

As for the Web site, Mr. Cerny said that tax laws blocked even tax-exempt lobbying organizations from explicitly endorsing specific candidates, as Mr. Falwell did. “If they let him post it, it is still their activity,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And just to add insult to injury, I thought I’d mention this isn’t the first time<\/a> Falwell has run afoul of this law.<\/p>\n

February 1993: The Internal Revenue Service determines that funds from Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour program were illegally funneled to a political action committee [to benefit Republican candidates]. The IRS forced Falwell to pay $50,000 and retroactively revoked the Old Time Gospel Hour’s tax-exempt status for 1986-87.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, Falwell can’t argue he didn’t know about the legal prohibitions — he’s already been busted before. It looks like it’s happened again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TV preacher Jerry Falwell has, in recent years, been relatively cautious about using his tax-exempt ministries for partisan political purposes. He’s always been a GOP hack, and has repeatedly expressed support for Republican candidates, but in recent cycles, has generally kept his ministries out of the politicking business. This month, however, Falwell slipped — and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}