City of Richmond responds to Tea Party invoice—with tax audit

posted at 10:29 am on November 28, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Double Standards ]   

The city of Richmond is fighting fire with fire. Scratch that. It is fighting peaceful protest with fire. To fight fire with fire requires the actual setting of a conflagration, which is the M.O. of the Occupy movement.

It is the Tea Party, however, that is being singled out for this particular act of petty retaliation, which comes two weeks after the organization sent an invoice in the amount of $8,500 to Mayor Dwight Jones for costs incurred at previous rallies.

The purpose of the invoice was to draw attention to the disparate treatment of the Tea Party, which conducts peaceful demonstrations and pays its own way, and the Occupiers, which do neither: The stories of Occupier violence are legion, and the costs of their protests are being absorbed by taxpayers in cities across the country.

Presented with this stark contrast, the mayor had the option (duty?) of telling Occupy Richmond to put up or shut up—to apply for and obtain the needed permits to assemble in a public park and to pay for security, portable toilets, and other essentials.

Instead he opted for plan B. Under the guise of collecting delinquent fees from Richmond Tea Party, Inc., the city’s department of finance notified the group (which has an actual business address) that it is being subject to a comprehensive tax audit. A letter signed by Cynthia Carr, who identifies herself as “field auditor,” requests multiple pieces of documentation, including a financial statement and federal tax return for 2010. Sauce for the goose?

One explanation for this behavior unbecoming an elected official is that the mayor is an Occupy sympathizer. Another equally plausible theory is that the city of Richmond is understandably wary of incurring the wrath of a group that is prone to throwing Molotov cocktails.

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