Ira Stoll has a good question at the WSJ: Is Harvard Complying With the Tax Code? (gifted link)
President Trump’s announcement Friday that he plans to take away Harvard’s tax exempt status prompted me to do something I never did while working there or serving as an alumni volunteer: actually read the plain text of the tax code that covers the tax exemption for Harvard and most other charities.
The law—Section 501(c)3—says the tax exemption applies to a corporation “organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes . . . no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda . . . and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” Courts have struggled for a century to distinguish “educational” from “propaganda” for tax purposes. In Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983), the Supreme Court even ventured beyond the statutory language and upheld the Internal Revenue Service’s decision to pull a tax exemption “where there is no doubt that the organization’s activities violate fundamental public policy.”
With respect to Ira, this really does sound like the flip side of the IRS going after conservative 501(c)3 groups in the last decade. (If you need a partisan refresher on that, here's a timeline compiled by the GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee. If you'd like to see how Wikipedia whitewashes the scandal, here you go.)
But speaking of political activities from 501(c)3 corporations…
I've been visiting some "public media" websites, partially taxpayer-funded, also claiming tax-exempt 501(c)3 status. On the "propaganda" front: going to New Hampshire PBS's site, nhpbs.org will assault the surfer with an initial popup:
The advertised website, "Protect My Public Media" does the standard stuff: forms to contact your CongressCritters, a petition you can sign, get on their mailing list, follow them on social media.
If you skip past the popup, there are still ads for protectmypublicmedia.org on the page.
Lobbying? Enough to yank their tax-exempt status? Probably not. Still, the "keep the taxpayer money coming, sucker" posturing is … unseemly. Or so it seems to me.
Also of note:
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Who you gonna believe? Me or your own ears? NHJournal describes the (Chico) Marxist defense from the state's public radio: NHPR Denounces Trump's 'Campaign Against Press Freedom,' Denies Any Partisan Bias.
Executives at New Hampshire’s taxpayer-subsidized media outlets are responding to President Donald Trump’s attempts to end federal funding by claiming he’s attacking “all independent reporting.”
And the head of New Hampshire Public Radio denied suggestions his programming has a left-of-center political bias, claiming the outlet can “ensure editorial integrity, balance and objectivity.”
That's NHPR's President/CEO Jim Schachter, protecting his $260K yearly compensation. There's kind of an iffy relationship between "independent reporting" and "demanding continued taxpayer subsidies", isn't there?
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Need a short class in how to dodge questions? NHJournal also presented a Q&A: NHPR's Schachter On Why Taxpayers Should Keep Paying. Sample:
[NHJournal:] While NPR/PBS provides a solid lineup of liberal news content, from “Morning Edition” to PBS “News Hour,” would it be accurate for NHJournal to report that you have no center-right content broadcasting in NH? If you do, could you please identify the program and the host(s)?
[Schachter:] Your question wrongly assumes that all journalism is biased. Our public service missions are clear that our content is designed to inform and educate, so that people can make up their own minds about where they stand on issues. We believe that spending time with our news and public affairs programming will confirm that we serve everyone in our communities.
In addition, we are dedicated to accountability and engage in regular reviews of practices and standards to ensure editorial integrity, balance, and objectivity. We are also responsive to our local community through our Community Advisory Boards, which are open to all.
I don't want to belabor the obvious, but Schachter failed to answer a pretty direct question there.
But: Accountability? Integrity? Balance? Objectivity? To adapt one more movie quote: "You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean."
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News You (Probably) Can't Use. Peter Suderman asks and answers a very relevant question: What if Trump doesn't want to spend money allocated by Congress?
Imagine, for a moment, a president who doesn't want to spend money. Given the last several decades of presidential history, this may sound fanciful. But assume that a president has successfully campaigned on spending less money, and perhaps even balancing the federal budget, and then, once in office, has decided to try to carry out that program. What would such a president do?
If a president wants the federal government to spend less money, then somewhere, somehow, at some time, someone with appropriate authority needs to actually stop spending money.
This is even more difficult than it sounds.
It's not just that in Washington, plans to spend more, but less than otherwise expected, are frequently denounced as debilitating cuts. Nor is it simply that bureaucrats stamp their feet and leak stories of supposedly draconian spending reductions to friendly media outlets. Nor is it even that the voting public, in its mass incoherence, seems to prefer a mix of high spending and low taxes—a luxury government lifestyle that it literally cannot afford.
There is an underrated impediment to spending less: the Constitution itself, at least if you're the president. The Constitution grants Congress the sole power of the purse. The executive branch is tasked with faithfully executing the laws Congress passes. If Congress passes a law saying jump, it's the president's job to jump. And if Congress passes a law that says spend, it's the president's job to spend.
Peter does his usual diligent job of historical and legal analysis. But if you like the Constitution…
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And now for something completely different. I'm pretty interested in the philosophy and science involved in "free will". So I'm linking to a Yascha Mounk interview with Kevin Mitchell on Free Will. (Determinists will argue that I had no choice but to do so.)
It's long, but there's a transcript. Sample:
If you look at the philosophical or theological literature, there’s a lot of armchair thinking, trying to divine from logical postulates how we could have free will given a particular supposed state of the universe and so on. My own feeling is that we don’t have to think about this issue in these really abstract terms. We can actually get quite concrete. If we’re asking, Do we really make decisions? or Are we in control when we make decisions?—those are actually biological questions. We can get into the neuroscience of decision making, and the biology of control more generally, and explore how these kinds of systems could have evolved.
How could it be that living things can act in the world in ways that non-living physical things can’t? There are some deep metaphysical questions there, but you can get a handle on them by really getting into those biological details and making the discussion a lot more concrete.
If I urge you to read or listen to the interview and make up your own mind on the issue, is that prejudicial?
[UPDATE: Oops, forgot to mention that I read Kevin Mitchell's book Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will back in 2023, and my report is here.]
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