IRS Political Activities Enforcement Program for Nonprofit Groups: Questions & Concerns

IRS The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) new approach to enforcing the ban on partisan activities by charities and religious organizations has raised serious questions about the agency's interpretation of the law, about evenhanded enforcement, and about the appropriateness of an approach aimed at deterring speech. This report summarizes the Political Activities Compliance Initiative (PACI) and new compliance guidance from the IRS, and raises questions that must be addressed to ensure charities and religious organizations can continue to play their essential role in public policy debates.


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Cow Sense: The Bush Administration's Broken Record on Mad Cow Disease

MadCow The Bush administration has failed the public time and time again on mad cow disease, putting corporate special interests above the public interest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Muslim Charities and the War on Terror

Muslim Charities

Top Ten Concerns and Status Update

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S.-based charities have become targets in the government's war on terror financing. Despite the sweeping implications for all domestic nonprofit organizations, the lion's share of the burden of increased scrutiny, suspicion, and pre-emptive action has fallen on Muslim groups. This imbalanced campaign raises significant legal and ethical questions.


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Dismantling the Public's Right to Know

TRI Under the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is slowly dismantling its flagship environmental information tool--the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The program has been protected and improved for over the last 15 years, serving as a constant example of the vital role information plays in a democracy. Unfortunately, the program's success has made it a target for those that seek to reduce corporate oversight and accountability.

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Secrecy Report Card 2005

Secrecy The second annual report from OpenTheGovernment.org, found secrecy in 2004 extended to more classified activity, more federal advisory meetings, more new patents deemed "secret," more domestic surveillance, and more new state laws restricting public access to information.

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Safeguarding Charity in the War on Terror

Safeguarding Charity Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, federal measures intended to cut off terrorism funding have imposed undue burdens on the nonprofit sector. This report addresses unbalanced anti-terrorist financing regulations and guidelines and suggests a clear, sensible system, under which nonprofit organizations and foundations can pursue legitimate charitable activities.

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Why Performance Standards May Be Superior to Cap-and-Trade

Cap-and-trade regimes do a worse job at stimulating innovative pollution control methods than performance standards, according to a new scholarly article challenging the industry-backed position that emissions trading and market-based programs are inherently superior to so-called “command-and-control” regulation. This analysis reviews the article and outlines the reasons why performance standards may be superior to cap-and-trade.

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The Going-Out-of-Business Myth

Again and again, when new regulatory protections have been proposed, corporate lobbyists have argued that business would be bankrupted and forced to go out of business. Again and again, they have been proven wrong. Check out this fact sheet showing examples of cases when compliance cost estimates turned out to be overstated.

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Special Interest Takeover: The Bush Administration and the Dismantling of Public Safeguards

SpecialInterest The Bush administration's first term was marked by a historic effort to eliminate the public's protections.

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Is Cost-Benefit Analysis Needed?

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is often touted by the administration and conservative think tanks as a neutral tool in policymaking, but recent studies by legal scholars show that CBA is inherently political and may even advise against what we consider our most immutable public protections. Three recent articles examine the neutrality of CBA both in theory and in practice and analyze the arguments of CBA's greatest proponents. This analysis reviews those articles and critiques CBA as a regulatory tool.

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