In a story about a fraudulent charity allegedly benefiting Navy veterans, the NYT throws out a baited hook and hopes for a bite.
The Charity Swindle
That, in and of itself, isn’t criminal. The alleged fraud was not that very, very little money ever went to Navy veterans. In fact, the fund-raising explicitly stated that a large portion of donations would go to cover telemarketing and other costs. Mr. Cody ran afoul of the law because he filed registration documents that contained false statements, because he stole the identity of the real Bobby Thompson, and because he pulled money from organizational accounts for his personal use. The irony is that he could have accomplished virtually his entire enrichment scheme without ever violating the law — and others have figured that out.
The I.R.S.’s Exempt Organizations Division, which is responsible for supervising the charitable sector, is chronically understaffed. It can’t do much more than process the routine and voluminous reporting of the more than 1.5 million American nonprofits, and keep up with the tens of thousands of applications filed each year to start new charities.
State and local authorities are in no better shape. Joel L. Fleishman, a professor of public policy at Duke, estimates that there are fewer than 100 full-time state charity regulators, far too few to exercise any real oversight.
New York Times The idea being pushed by Obama's lapdogs is that there's no way the division Lois Lerner oversaw at the IRS could have possibly targeted individual conservative organizations. They're simply too overwhelmed with work as it is. If you don't let them do their work, the public could fall prey to these swindlers. At least that's what they want you to believe.
