{"id":198469,"date":"2007-11-06T23:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-07T04:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/11\/06\/senate-investigating-top-televangelists-demanding-financial-records\/"},"modified":"2007-11-06T23:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-07T04:30:00","slug":"senate-investigating-top-televangelists-demanding-financial-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/11\/06\/senate-investigating-top-televangelists-demanding-financial-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Investigating Top Televangelists, Demanding Financial Records"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I should note that it is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2007\/11\/06\/cbsnews_investigates\/main3456977.shtml?source=mostpop_story\"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Republican<\/span><\/span> Senator Charles Grassley who is appearing to take the lead on this<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>They want to see if too much of the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">tax exempt<\/span><sup>*<\/sup> money is going to fund a lavish lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p>Ole Anthony, of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinityfi.org\/\">Trinity Foundation<\/a> has been trying to get coverage of this for years, and finally went to Grassley because the press would not cover it.<\/p>\n<p>My guess is that part of the reason for the lack of press coverage is a fear of being attacked by the religious institutions, and the other reason is because churches are allowed to conceal their financial dealings in ways that other non-profits are not,<sup>\u2021<\/sup> which makes it tougher for the average reporter to get the information  they need to make a story.<\/p>\n<p>With the threat of congressional subpoenas, the information that Grassley gets should be more complete.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">I actually have some experience with laws involving tax-exempt religious and educational institutions, section 501(c)3 of the tax code.  In 1990, I incorporated a group that put on a literary conferences, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arisia.org\/\">Arisia<\/a> as a Massachusetts non-profit and a federal 501(c)3<\/span><sup>\u2020<\/sup>.<br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">Truth be told, in a sane world, it would have had to incorporate as a 501(c)7, a membership organization, but the 501(c)3 code is lax enough to slip it in, and we needed the low postage rates available for a 501(c)3, but not a 501(c)7.  It was legal, as to the ethics, I try to think about Arisia as little as possible for any number of reasons.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2021<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">BTW, one of the problems about getting information about how churches are run is that unlike other tax exempt organizations, churches are <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;\" >not<\/span><span style=\"font-size:85%;\"> required to file form 990s, which are public documents with fairly full financial disclosure.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I should note that it is Republican Senator Charles Grassley who is appearing to take the lead on this. They want to see if too much of the tax exempt* money is going to fund a lavish lifestyle. Ole Anthony, of the Trinity Foundation has been trying to get coverage of this for years, and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,970,972,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-corruption","category-justice","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}