Charity Begins at Home for Schneiderman

The NY Post is reporting that AG Schneiderman is looking to remove tax exempt status for a large number of not for profits that are delinquent in their paperwork:

"The gravy train is grinding to a halt for more than 1,600 delinquent nonprofits in New York, The Post has learned.State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman plans to cancel the registration of 1,649 charities — cutting off their ability to raise private funds and get taxpayer-funded government grants in New York — because they have not filed required paperwork with his Charities Bureau.Letters will go out this week to the nonprofits, telling them that they have 20 days to submit the required reports before losing their right to raise cash."

Great job Eric! But what about a not for profit a little closer to home-one that has close ties to Queens Democrats? That would be the Claire Shulman LDC that has been under investigation for what seems like forever-with nothing to show for all of the supposed effort. Kind of reminds us of Ali's rope-a-dope strategy: Let WPU flay away until the group exhausts itself and then the AG can continue to be a winner collecting the chits from Joe Crowley's boys and girls.

After all, if it's bad form to not file your paper work-and get cut from the team as a result-how much worse is it to engage in activities (like lobbying) that you are statutorily prohibited from doing? For that violation of the law the AG-former as well as current-should have pulled the tax exempt status of the LDC and thereby prevented the group from improperly applying for and receiving $1.5 million in tax payer money.

All of which makes the following remarks sadly comical: "Attorney General Schneiderman believes there must be one set of rules for everyone, and that those rules must be aggressively enforced,” said James Freedland, the AG’s spokesman."

The AG-for what can only be seen as blatantly political reasons-has failed to pursue the illegal activities of the Claire Shulman-led, and real estate developer conceived LDC. It's time that someone in law enforcement not blinded by political gain addressed this scandal.