Tea party groups call IRS process 'nightmare'

Conservative groups, big and small, talk of IRS 'nightmare' of delays, demands for information

Associated Press -

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Anger over President Barack Obama's policies drove businessman Tom Zawistowski to file paperwork with the Internal Revenue Service nearly three years ago to create theOhio Liberty Coalition.

His nonprofit organization largely attracted conservatives who were new to politics but concerned about the growth of government, fiscal issues and perceived threats to Americans' constitutional protections. It eventually swelled to more than 20,000 members, becoming one of the region's largest groups affiliated with the national tea party movement that emerged in the early months of Obama's first term.

Over the next few years, the Ohio Liberty Coalition would raise thousands of dollars to bus activists to rallies, run phone banks, rent a tent at a local fair, and knock on roughly 40,000 doors across Ohio to challenge the president and his fellow Democrats in the 2012 elections.

All the while, the organization was locked in a battle with the nation's tax enforcement agency over whether it should be granted tax-exempt status.

"They expected me to turn over the names of our members to the IRS. You'd have to kill me to get me to do that," said Zawistowski, who was among the first tea party leaders to formally protest the agency's actions last year. "I wouldn't accept tyranny."

It often takes a year for "social welfare organizations" to get tax-exempt status, which requires them to prove they're not primarily devoted to politics. But the IRS acknowledged last week that it inappropriately applied heightened scrutiny to conservative groups even though it's supposed to regulate the nation's tax laws without political interference. The revelation drew criticism from Republicans and Democrats, sparked a Justice Department investigation and prompted Obama to call the allegations "outrageous" if true.

The episode has pumped new energy into the tea party movement after a disappointing 2012 election season and created a bipartisan political headache for Obama at a critical time as he looks to get as much of his agenda passed as possible before all the focus shifts to next year's midterm congressional elections.

Zawistowski's experience is not uncommon among tea party and conservative groups.

As it did with other conservative groups, the IRS largely ignored Zawistowski's application for a year and a half and then refused to approve his nonprofit status unless he revealed the identity of the group's members, times and location of group activities and printouts of its website and Facebook pages, according to IRS correspondence reviewed by The Associated Press.

The IRS also requested "detailed contents of the speeches or forums, names of the speakers or panels and their credentials" for all future and past public events, according to one of the IRS letters.

"The intent of this was to hurt the ability of tea party groups to function in an election year. They were successful to a degree," said Zawistowski, a 57-year-old businessman who had virtually no political experience before joining the tea party movement. "It took an enormous amount of time and energy for me to handle this."

The IRS has refused to discuss individual cases, but it has apologized for "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see whether they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees in a Cincinnati office for targeting applications with words such as "tea party" and "patriot." In January 2012, the criteria for additional screening were updated to include references to the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

In some cases, the IRS acknowledged, agents inappropriately asked for lists of donors.

There is no definitive listing of the hundreds of tea party groups that sprung up across the nation in the past four years, but an AP analysis of 93 organizations that describe themselves as "tea party" or "patriot" groups found that many, like Zawistowski's, appear to have operated on small budgets.

Just two dozen of those organizations raised more than $20,000 in a single year, according to tax returns submitted by tea party groups between 2009 and 2011.

The Richmond Tea Party, based in Richmond, Va., began its application for tax-exempt status in December 2009 but didn't receive the status until July 2012, after more than two years had passed.

The group's executive director, Laurence Nordvig, called the experience "like your worst audit nightmare."

"I liken it to the movie 'Groundhog Day.' It's Groundhog Day every day," he said, referring to the 1993 Bill Murray movie in which a man relives the same day over and over. "Dealing with this was like dealing with tax day every day for two and a half years. It was like a cloud that hung over the organization."

The controversy partly is rooted in the patchwork oversight by federal agencies over the rapidly evolving realm of national political spending. In recent years, interest groups across the political spectrum have taken advantage of the tax code to set up tax-exempt organizations able to shield their donors' identities while scooping up millions of dollars in donations to pay for massive election-year media campaigns and voter information efforts.

The IRS typically treats these nonprofit operations as "social welfare" groups, allowing them to raise unlimited amounts of donations and keep their donors' identities secret, as long as they show that they do not primarily engage in political activities.

The 2012 national elections were dominated by free-spending political operations that blended the use of nonprofit advocacy groups with a separate new breed of "super" political action committees, or super PACs, spawned by a series of court cases, including the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.

Good government groups and several Democratic senators, notably Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have pressed the IRS recently to look more skeptically at the nonprofits' internal operations, claiming some groups were far more politically active than they let on. But lawyers for tea party groups say many low-budget grass-roots conservative organizations ended up being swept up in IRS audits instead of the larger nonprofits.

The most well-funded nonprofit tea party group targeted by the IRS appears to be the Tea Party Patriots, a Georgia-based organization that grew dramatically between 2009 and 2011. The group raised $706,000 in 2009, but revenues surged to $12.2 million in 2010 and $20.2 million in 2011, according to tax filings.

The sources of the group's sudden largess are unknown because donors' identities remain secret under IRS rules.

Alan Dye, an attorney for the Tea Party Patriots, said the IRS has been "very vague" about the rules governing social welfare organizations. "You shouldn't have to guess about the rules," said Dye, who represents six groups that fielded invasive questions from IRS agents.

While some of his clients were asked and subsequently refused to reveal donors, he said groups have been most affected by the lengthy delays in IRS' processing. Standard tax-exempt applications generally take about a year to process, he said. The Tea Party Patriots has already been waiting 30 months for its approval.

The Ohio Liberty Coalition first applied in June 2010 and had its tax-exempt status approved exactly one month and one day after Obama won re-election in 2012. While waiting, Zawistowski said, his and his wife's personal finances were audited.

"The question is, how do we stop this from happening again?" he said. "How do you stop the IRS from being used as a weapon against the American people? I don't know how you make a rule to do that."

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Residents shout 'Protest!' over refinery in China

Associated Press/Aritz Parra - Chinese demonstrators shout slogans during a protest against a planned refinery project in downtown Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan province, Thursday, May 16, 2013. About 2,000 demonstrators concerned about pollution took to the streets in southern China to protest plans for a planned refinery on the outskirts of Kunming. Placards and T-shirts read: "The placards read: "No to Kunming PX, (paraxylene)." (AP Photo/Aritz Parra)

KUNMING, China (AP) — More than 2,000 people in southernChina unfurled banners and shouted "Protest! Protest!" on Thursday to oppose plans for a petroleum refinery, in a large environmental rally that local authorities allowed to go forward in order to let the public vent frustration.

The gathering in downtown Kunming — the second one in the city this month — was largely peaceful, though there were minor scuffles with police. Witnesses said at least two people were briefly detained, though it was noteworthy that authorities — apparently eager to appear open and inclusive — made no effort to shut down the rally.

A city vice mayor, He Bo, even tried to meet with the demonstrators, but his attempts to explain the refinery project to the crowd were cut short by the cries of a protester.

Kunming officials said this week that the refinery planned by powerful state company PetroChina Co. will meet environment standards and is crucial for the local economy, but residents are worried about the air and water pollution that will result.

"We don't need speedy development. What we need is a healthy and peaceful country," Kunming resident Liu Yuncheng said. "I still haven't given birth to a baby. I want to be pregnant and I want a healthy baby."

But while police allowed the protest to proceed, censors scrubbed posts in China's social media that were critical of the project planned by the powerful state Petro China Co., and employees of state companies were asked to promise not to participate in any rally or talk about the project in public venues or online.

The scene in Kunming was in contrast to a planned protest against a petrochemical plant earlier this month in the city of Chengdu , where authorities thwarted the gathering by flooding the streets with police in a supposed earthquake drill, reflecting the balancing act of Chinese officials as they seek to promote economic growth while maintaining social stability.

Members of China's public, especially among the rising middle class, have become increasingly outspoken against environmentally risky factories, in reaction to a decade of development-at-all-costs policies that have polluted the country's air and waterways.

However, they have virtually no say on industrial projects, and have instead turned to organizing protests. Several of those turned violent last year, in some cases prompting local governments to scrap plans for factories.

In response to a May 4 protest by Kunming residents, local government officials and PetroChina held a series of public meetings and promised that operations at the 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) refinery would be environmentally clean. The facility is expected to produce up to 10 million tons of refined oil annually.

But officials also said the project's environmental evaluation report remains confidential, aggravating a public already upset with a lack of information about the project. Residents remain skeptical about any government claim that the project will be safe.

"We cherish blue skies and white clouds, as well as good air. If you want to build a refinery with 10 million tons of capacity here in the place where we live, we resolutely oppose it," said a Kunming resident who identified herself only by her surname, Liu. "We want a good life. We women want to be beautiful."

Kunming Mayor Li Wenrong was quoted in state media last week as saying the public's opinion would be taken into account in a democratic way in the approval process for another upcoming project — plans to build factory that would produce p-xylene, a toxic chemical used in the production of polyester and other materials.

The refinery is connected to operations of the upcoming Myanmar-China pipeline, which originally was due to start pumping oil and gas at the end of this month after eight years of planning and construction.

China has invested heavily for access to resources from neighboring Myanmar and to establish a new, shorter route for the procurement of oil and gas, as an alternative to shipping routes.

Opposition to the pipeline has been strong on both sides of the border. Myanmar officials recently said its operations would be delayed.

$10 million bond set in Mother's Day shooting

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — As the official tally of those wounded in a Mother's Day parade shooting ticked up to 20 on Thursday, the suspect made his first court appearance in the case, remaining silent as a judge set his bond at $10 million.

Prosecutors said a witness picked out a photo of Akein Scott, 19, from a lineup. An arrest affidavit said the unidentified witness told investigators that Scott was the person seen in a surveillance videothat police released to the public as they searched for him for three days. The witness also said Scott was carrying a silver and black semi-automatic handgun at the shooting scene, according to the affidavit.

Scott, shackled and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, stood by as his court-appointed attorney handled the proceedings.

Magistrate Judge Gerard Hansen set Scott's bond at $10 million — $500,000 on each of the 20 counts in the Mother's Day shooting case. Authorities earlier said 19 were wounded, but prosecutors told Hansen the number had increased.

Scott was arrested Wednesday night in the Little Woods section of New Orleans. He already faced gun and drug possession charges and was out on bond at the time of Sunday's shooting at a parade through a neighborhood near the French Quarter.

At a later appearance Thursday morning, a state District Court judge ordered Scott held without bond pending additional hearings in that case. He faces a felony charge of illegally carrying a weapon while in possession of a controlled dangerous substance.

In the neighborhood where the gunfire shattered the festive parade known as a second line, residents awoke Thursday to the news that the manhunt apparently had ended. Police had been searching for Scott since identifying him as a suspect Monday from the surveillance video.

Courtney Moles, whose apartment overlooks the shooting site, said she didn't feel her safety was in jeopardy while police searched the city.

"I didn't really think he would come back. It's more personal than that," she said. "He wasn't going to that second line to make national news. He was probably settling some kind of score."

Moles, 24, said the arrest underscores the city's crisis of violence among its young people. "His life is over now, too," she said of Scott.

Police have not established a motive and haven't said whether they know the identity of the shooter's target. Officials initially said three people were spotted running away from the shooting scene, but Scott has been the only suspect identified publicly.

Investigators launched an intense search for Scott, with police Superintendent Ronal Serpas urging him to surrender at a news conference Monday and warning the teen that "we know more about you than you think we know." At one point, SWAT team members and U.S. marshals served a search warrant at one location but did not find Scott.

Police offered a $10,000 reward in the case, and investigators received several tips after images from the surveillance camera were released.

The video released Monday showed a crowd gathered for the parade suddenly scattering in all directions, with some falling to the ground. They appear to be running from a man in a white T-shirt and dark pants who turns and runs out of the picture.

As many as 400 people had come out for the event. Officers were interspersed with the marchers, which is routine for such events. The crime scene was about less than two miles from the heart of the city's French Quarter.

Two children were among those wounded.

The mass shooting showed again how far the city has to go to shake a persistent culture of violence that belies New Orleans' festive image.

Gun violence has flared at two other city celebrations this year. Five people were wounded in a drive-by shooting in January after a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, and four were wounded in a shooting after an argument in the French Quarter in the days leading up to Mardi Gras. Two teens were arrested in connection with the MLK Day shootings; three men were arrested and charged in the Mardi Gras shootings.

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Syrian troops repel rebel attack on Aleppo prison

Associated Press/Aleppo Media Center AMC - This Tuesday, May 14, 2013 citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows the mother of a Syrian rebel cleaning a rifle, in Aleppo, Syria. Activists say Syrian rebels have detonated two car bombs outside the main prison in the northern city of Aleppo and are trying to storm the facility, where hundreds of regime opponents are believed to be held. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center AMC)

At least 6 confirmed dead in Texas tornadoes

An unidentified injured person is carried to an ambulance in Granbury, Texas, on Wednesday May 15, 2013. Officials report the tornado caused "multiple fatalities" as it tore through two neighborhoods of a North Texas town. Hood County sheriff's Lt. Kathy Jiveden reported the multiple fatalities, but she had no estimate of dead or injured. (AP Photo/Mike Fuentes)

Map locates area hit by tornado in Texas

GRANBURY, Texas (AP) — A rash of tornadoes slammed into several small communities in North Texas overnight, leaving at least six people dead, dozens more injured and hundreds homeless. The violent spring storm scattered bodies, flattened homes and threw trailers onto cars.

In Granbury, the worst-hit city, a tornado tore through two neighborhoods around 8 p.m. Wednesday. Resident Elizabeth Tovar said fist-sized hail heralded the tornado's arrival and prompted her and her family to hide in their bathroom.

"We were all, like, hugging in the bathtub and that's when it started happening. I heard glass shattering and I knew my house was going," Tovar said, shaking her head. "We looked up and ... the whole ceiling was gone."

The powerful storm crushed buildings as it tore through the area, leaving some as just piles of planks and rubble. Trees and debris were scattered across yards, fences flattened.

Behind one house, a detached garage was stripped of most of its aluminum siding, the door caved in and the roof torn off. A tree behind the house was stripped of its branches and a vacant doublewide mobile home on an adjoining lot was torn apart.

Daniel and Amanda Layne initially thought they were safe sheltering under their carport. But then "it started getting worse and worse," and the couple took shelter in their bathroom, Daniel Layne said.

"The windows and the cars are gone. Both our cars are messed up. I had a big shop. Ain't a piece of it left now," Layne said with a shrug.

Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds described the devastating aftermath and the hunt for bodies in Granbury, about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

"Some were found in houses. Some were found around houses," Deeds said. "There was a report that two of these people that they found were not even near their homes. So we're going to have to search the area out there."

Seven people remain unaccounted and authorities hope they are all staying with family or friends, Deeds said at a Thursday morning news conference. Emergency responders were combing the area and worked to identify the six adults whose remains were found, he said.

He said 37 injured people were treated at hospitals.

Harold Brooks, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's severe storm lab in Norman, Okla., said May 15 is the latest into the month that the U.S. has had to wait for its first significant tornadoes of the year. Brooks said he would expect 2013 to be one of the least lethal tornado years since the agency started keeping records in 1954. Officials have yet to determine the exact strength of the tornado in Granbury.

Utilities said about 20,000 homes and businesses were without power early Thursday.

Another tornado that storm spotters told the National Weather Service was a mile wide tore through Cleburne, a courthouse city of about 30,000 about 25 miles southeast of Granbury.

Cleburne Mayor Scott Cain said early Thursday that no one was killed or seriously hurt, although seven people suffered minor injuries. He estimated that dozens of homes were damaged and declared a local disaster.

In one neighborhood, a trucking company trailer that had been parked on the street was picked up and dropped onto a nearby car and garage.

Another tornado hit the small town of Millsap, about 40 miles west of Fort Worth. Parker County Judge Mark Kelley said roof damage was reported to several houses and a barn was destroyed, but no injuries were reported.

Hail as large as grapefruit also pelted the area around Mineral Wells on Wednesday evening. A police dispatcher reported only minor damage.

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Associated Press writers Terry Wallace and Jamie Stengle in Dallas and freelance photographer Mike Fuentes contributed to this report.