WASHINGTON -- October 29 -- The election-eve IRS investigation regarding the nonprofit status of NAACP, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, is part of a growing pattern of intimidation and suppression of free-speech and advocacy rights of charities and other nonprofits. That trend was documented in a new analysis, Continuing Attacks on Nonprofit Speech: Death by a Thousand Cuts II, published this week by OMB Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group.

The OMB Watch report cites:

• Retaliatory action against government grantees that engage in controversial policy discussions or active advocacy that includes points of view different from the administration, regardless of how well those views are supported by science
• Aggressive application of the global gag rule, and signs of a back-door "domestic gag rule" that illegally imposes government rules on private funds of grantees
• Selective enforcement of laws against nonprofits engaged in direct action
• Overbroad implementation of homeland security policy that chills the nonprofit policy voice.

"Charities should be encouraged to speak out on policy issues even when dissenting from the President's policies," said Gary D. Bass, OMB Watch executive director. Kay Guinane, co-author of the OMB Watch report added, "Election eve political intimidation of the NAACP is wrong and a misuse of government funds."

OMB Watch's report describes the experience of a dozen other nonprofit organizations with what appear to be retaliatory audits, funding cuts and similar actions, by IRS and other federal agencies.

One example is IRS' auditing of the National Education Association (NEA) for political activities it is legally allowed to engage in, as the nation's largest teachers union, when paid for from a segregated fund. IRS also audited the Land Stewardship Project in Minnesota last year after it supported a referendum on the "pork checkoff" which favors factory farms to the detriment of small, family farms.

OMB Watch is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in Washington, DC, promoting government accountability, public access to information, and citizen participation. OMB Watch was formed in 1983 to lift the veil of secrecy shrouding the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB. Over the years this work has expanded to other concerns about the federal government's institutional responsiveness to public needs.

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