​The separation of church and state is such a fundamental principle of democracy that the framers found it essential to enshrine it in the Constitution’s First Amendment. A major element of this separation is the tax-exemption granted to religious organizations by the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). In return, they must stay out of politics. If they don’t, their tax exemption could be revoked.
 
Especially when election time rolls around, many churches cannot resist the temptation to become involved in politics despite the prohibition. The large majority of churches are registered for tax exemption under IRC section 501(c)(3). A 1954 law prohibits them from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for elective public office. Over the years, Congress has strengthened the ban.
 
Urging congregants to vote for or against a candidate is prohibited and should result in the loss of a church’s tax-exempt status. Except that most of the time, it does not.
 
Certain activities or expenditures are not prohibited depending on the facts and circumstances. For example, certain voter education activities (e.g., publishing voter education guides) conducted in a non-partisan manner do not constitute prohibited political campaign activity. Other activities intended to encourage people to participate in the electoral process, such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, are also not prohibited political campaign activity if conducted in a non-partisan manner. IRS Revenue Ruling 2007-41 says that churches can engage in a limited amount of lobbying (including ballot measures) and advocate for or against issues in the political arena.
 
However, voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, do constitute prohibited participation or intervention.
 
This Code provision has never been enforced with much vigor by the IRS. In 1960, more than a few Catholic priests urged their congregations to support John F. Kennedy, only the second Catholic candidate in American history. Both in 2004 and 2020, a number of bishops and priests told their parishioners not to vote for John Kerry or Joe Biden, respectively, because of their views on abortion. Not one parish church lost its tax exemption.
 
It took the IRS almost 40 years before it first revoked a church’s tax-exempt status for involvement in politics. In the 1992 presidential election, the church sponsored a series of advertisements in several major newspapers encouraging Christians not to vote for Bill Clinton. In the ensuing court case brought by the church, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the Code provision (Branch Ministries Inc. v. Rossotti, 211 F.3d 137 (D.C. Cir., March 12, 2000). The court rejected the plaintiff church's allegations that it was being selectively prosecuted because of its conservative views and that its First Amendment right to free speech was being infringed.
 
Today, evangelical pastors all over the country are overtly and aggressively—from the pulpit and in print, broadcast and social media—urging their flocks to support Donald Trump. Many go so far as to describe him as God’s representative on Earth.
 
I asked the IRS why they are not enforcing the Code provision prohibiting such blatant church political activity. The answer was that its Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division has for many years been, and still is, severely short-staffed and it must therefore “triage” enforcement activities. The IRS did not respond to my subsequent assertion that I found this strange because the 2022 Infrastructure Act added thousands of positions and billions of dollars of funding to the IRS to bolster enforcement across the board.
 
Many churches and pastors, because of the lax attitude toward this law, are patently violating it and actively campaigning for Donald Trump. Pastors even show up and speak at his campaign rallies. This is illegal. In that case, their churches should lose their tax-exempt status.
 
An individual who believes a church has violated the IRS code provision may report this violation to the IRS by sending an email to the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division ([email protected]). Alternatively, s/he can fill out the IRS complaint form (IRS Form 13909) on its website (irs.gov).
 
Whistleblowers may be entitled to a percentage of any back taxes the IRS eventually collects from the offending church. They can submit IRS Form 211, “Application for Award for Original Information” to apply for the reward.
 
Perhaps if it is barraged with a great many such complaints, the IRS might finally “get religion” and go after these institutions that violate the law with impunity.
 
Dick Hermann
January 28, 2024

Wow! 2024 is less than a month old and the news is already vying with the year just past for the gloom-and-doom prize:
 
Toast and Milquetoast

Ron DeSantis’ only presidential play was in Iowa. Despite spending upwards of $160 million and “doing a Grassley” (what Iowans call visiting all 99 counties), he finished a distant second in this week’s Iowa caucuses. The more people got to hear, see and know him, the more they reacted negatively to his failed attempts to come across as human, along with his weirdness and graveside manner. So now that he is effectively toast, he will soon return to the Florida Panhandle to lick his wounds and get back to the business of transforming Florida into Hungary.

Icky Nikki Haley, a political contortionist who rivals gymnast Simone Biles for her twisty legerdemain, could still make some noise in New Hampshire despite her third-place finish in Iowa and dread of saying anything that might offend MAGA voters whom she has no hope of winning over. Nevertheless, what little remains of the beaten and tattered traditional conservative Republican Party views her as the only hope of stopping the Trump juggernaut. A milquetoast candidate who is afraid to say that the Civil War was about slavery for fear of antagonizing Trump’s white supremacist base is, sadly, the best they’ve got. She is so timid she won’t even respond to Trump’s racist attacks on her.

So on to New Hampshire, like Iowa totally unrepresentative of America, yet disproportionately influential in selecting presidents. Iowa’s dour, Grant Wood-like farmers and white evangelicals who pretzled themselves into knots justifying their support for a total reprobate who is the antithesis of their purported biblical values and laughs at them behind their backs are now history. Instead, New Hampshire offers candidates somewhat less superficially virtuous, centrist Massachusetts transplants. Other than snow and bitterly cold weather, all the two states have in common is an almost complete absence of minority populations.

That dearth will be compensated for when the campaigns move on to the next primary states, South Carolina and Nevada, both of which have large minority populations. Former South Carolina governor Haley trails far behind Trump in her home state. If she loses there, which is likely, she too will be toast, albeit a rather limp variety thereof. At that point, the horror and inevitably of Trump as the Republican nominee will become reality.

Wherefore Art Thou, Lloyd?

Do we really want a Secretary of Defense who has abysmal judgment? I think not. This position is the second in command when it comes to military decision-making, including launching global thermonuclear war. Austin went AWOL while the administration was consumed with monitoring two major wars and potentially becoming involved in a third involving Yemeni Houthi terrorists, while also combatting Iran-induced daily attacks on U.S. troops and fending off China’s aggressive actions toward Taiwan.

What is perhaps most surprising about Secretary Austin’s truancy and lack of transparency about his medical condition is that it revealed that the President and Secretary of Defense do not talk to one another every day. That would be shocking in any era.

​I don’t expect Biden to fire Austin. He quite correctly fears likely backlash from the African-American community, not a good look for him in an election year. However, Democrats properly concerned about national security should urge the Secretary to resign as soon as possible. He could cite his health as a valid reason for leaving the scene.

Hungry Kids

The federal Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Program was launched during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide low-income families with $120 per child to purchase food during the summer months. Forty-eight states initially participated, and the two laggards, Louisiana and Idaho, eventually joined in. The program became permanent when the pandemic ended. Families can use the money, which comes loaded on a prepaid card, to buy their own food and cook at home.

States had to notify the federal government by January 1 if they planned to participate in the Summer EBT Program in 2024. Only 35 states, with more than 20 million eligible children, opted in. The other 15 states, all led by Republican governors, said “no thank you, let our poor children starve.” Almost 10 million children will go hungry this summer.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, whose family likely have full stomachs year-round, and who desperately wants to be Donald Trump’s running mate, said in refusing the federal EBT funds: “Federal money often comes with strings attached, and more of it is often not a good thing,”

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, cited “childhood obesity” as a justification for refusing EBT funds. This despite studies showing that the program helps kids eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt claimed falsely that the program was not “fully vetted” and would help relatively few children. It is estimated that 403,000 school-aged children in Oklahoma would qualify for food benefits.

Jim Pillen, the Republican Governor of Nebraska is denying his state’s food insecure families EBT benefits because “I don’t believe in welfare.”

This kind of policy should seem like a slam-dunk for any governor. Summer EBT is fully federally-funded.

Should Trump be returned to power, this cruelty toward low-income families promoted by red-state governors will probably become national policy. Apparently the sanctity of human life does not encompass having enough to eat in order to stay alive.

I can’t wait to see what February will bring.

​Dick Hermann
January 20, 2024

​“Naturally, after twenty-five years, one expects to find many changes but to find that one’s University had become so Hebrewized was a fea[r]ful shock. There were Jews to the right of me, Jews to the left of me, in fact they were so obviously everywhere that instead of leaving the Yard with pleasant memories of the past I left with a feeling of utter disgust of the present and grave doubts about the future of my Alma Mater.”
--A Harvard alumnus commenting on what he witnessed at the Yale-Harvard football game in 1922 (quoted in The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion by Jerome Karabel)
 
In December, we got a taste of what is happening on college campuses when the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT testified before a House of Representatives committee. In response to what was neither a trick nor a “gotcha” question from Trump devotee, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), concerning threats of genocide against Jewish students, the three presidents replied that condemnation of, or any other action against, the threateners would “depend on context.” This carefully crafted, overly legalistic response generated huge backlash from not only the Jewish community, but also the general population. Worse, it warned Jewish students that there are no safe spaces for them on campus.
 
The overt anti-Semitism inherent in this is nothing new in America, and certainly not new among Ivy League universities. The presidents’ inability to respond compassionately conjured up memories of campus anti-Semitism from a hundred years ago. In the early 1920s, a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, one Franklin D. Roosevelt worried that Harvard had a “Jewish problem”—too many Jewish students. He urged the university president to impose a quota to limit the number of Jews admitted. President Lowell agreed, and Harvard’s Jewish student population plummeted by a third. Both FDR and Lowell shared the undercurrent of anti-Semitism common to generations of the WASP upper crust elite. In fact, Lowell had been a vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, an organization advocating Eugenics.
 
The other Ivy League universities soon followed suit. For the next 40-plus years, the Ivies, along with many other “elite” academic institutions, severely restricted Jewish enrollment.
 
Until the 1920s, Jews had thrived on top college campuses for almost two decades. Columbia was 40 percent Jewish. At Harvard, the Jewish population had tripled since 1900 and stood at 21 percent. Jews at Ivy League schools were winning a disproportionate share of academic honors and Phi Beta Kappa keys.
 
By 1923, Harvard’s entering class was nearly 25% Jewish, Yale’s was 13.3% and Princeton’s (always the most restrictive of the “Ancient Eight”) almost 4%. Columbia’s figure may have been as high as 40%, and the University of Pennsylvania’s was similar. Most of these students were from families that had recently come to America.
 
By the mid-1920s, however, Jewish student populations declined dramatically. They would stay that way for the next four decades.
 
In the mid-1960s, pioneering Yale admissions dean, R. Inslee (“Inky”) Clark, new to the job, convinced Yale President, Kingman Brewster, that it was time for the Jewish quota to be shelved in time for consideration of the Class of 1964. Brewster agreed, and the rest of the Ivies soon followed. For the first time in almost two generations, Jewish students were welcomed and, once again, allowed to excel. In 1968, both the Valedictorian and Salutatorian of that pioneering Yale class that entered in 1964 were Jews.
 
Thus, it is quite a shock to discover, 55 years later and a century after the imposition of Jewish quotas, that the Ivy League had regressed once again into an anti-Semitic bastion, where institution presidents effectively condoned anti-Semitism and Jewish students must fear for their safety.
 
Dick Hermann
January 13, 2024

​The latest word from Palm Beach County, Florida, a place that will forever live in infamy (home to both the grifter palace, Mar-a-Lago, and the disastrously designed “butterfly ballot” that made George W. Bush president), is its school board’s attempt to ban…wait for it: To Kill a Mockingbird! Harper Lee’s magnum opus is not just a great book about racism and the pursuit of justice; it is also on every list of the greatest English language novels of all time. The late, great Ray Bradbury, author of the book-burning epic, Fahrenheit 451, is spinning in his grave.
 
Florida, a place I have visited more than a hundred times but never want to again, is meanwhile flooding the rest of America with its dirty linen, Governor Ron DeSantis being only one of the soiled items it is excreting. Fortunately, he will soon creep back to Tallahassee, a mere historical footnote in presidential wannabe lore.
 
Across the state from Palm Beach in Sarasota, Moms for Liberty founder, Bridget Zeigler, a member of the local school board, book-banner extraordinaire, and strident advocate for biblical morality, finds herself in the epicenter of a salacious sex scandal involving a threesome in which she allegedly participated along with her husband, the aptly named Christian Ziegler, and another lady. Mr. Ziegler also happens to be the chair of the state Republican Party. The disconnect between the Zieglers’ public personae and their private lives is causing her Moms for Liberty co-founders to distance themselves from her at speeds approaching Usain Bolt in his prime. Stuff like this could not happen to nicer folks. When these bigoted hypocrites get caught with their pants down (literally in this case), a little schadenfreude is perfectly fine.
 
The Sunshine State, meanwhile, is shedding K-12 teachers, university professors and good students at rates equaled only by the proliferation of pythons (200,000 is one estimate) wreaking havoc on the Everglades’ indigenous wildlife. The brain drain transfer portal dwarfs that of its college football player counterpart. The New College of Florida, a special DeSantis foil, has lost 40 percent of its faculty. Overly gentle Ben Sasse, who left the U.S. Senate where he was an occasional, timid Trump critic for the presidency of the University of Florida, has been reduced from cowering Republican voice to timorous toady, an irrelevant and ineffectual observer of the trampling of academic freedom at this formerly respected institution. Sasse is only one of thousands of victims of DeSantis’ “War on Woke.” That went so well that DeSantis no longer dares even say the word, “woke” as he scurries around Iowa shouting awkwardly into the void. His rhetorical retreat is likely due to recent polling showing that the War on Woke is yielding diminishing electoral returns. Anyone hoping that this political shift would be accompanied by a policy shift will be disappointed. His authoritarian, white supremacist attacks on Florida’s public education system continue apace.
 
DeSantis has enacted multiple “educational gag orders” that criminalize classroom discussions of race, gender identity, and ugly historical realities that might make white students “feel guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress.” Florida teachers, whose salaries rank 48th in the country, have seen their jobs become only more thankless. The result is a teacher exodus and consequent K-12 staff shortage of massive proportions. When DeSantis began his first gubernatorial term in 2019, Florida had 2,217 teacher vacancies. Four years later, vacancies had ballooned to nearly 7,000.
 
De Santis’s dumbing down of his state is unfortunate. His other policies—a 6-week abortion ban, criminalizing gender affirming care, climate change denial, and much more—are equally bad. But not to worry. Climate change will take care of all of the bad that Florida generates. Glub, glub.
 
Dick Hermann
January 5, 2024