No, really. That’s sort of a big deal.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Paging the IRS: Can we get a ruling on this?
https://twitter.com/MoronsUseRealNa/status/347934584685596672
Ace of Spades HQ co-blogger John Ekdahl did some poking around and discovered that the Mayors Against Illegal Guns website appears to be registered to New York City and hosted on city servers. The Nanny Bloomberg-founded gun-control organization has 501(c)4 status, just like Tea Party groups targeted by the IRS.
Most likely. RT @Slovydal: @JohnEkdahl Surely an error made by a Low-Level NYC Gov employee.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl Rogue employees in the IT department @irishspy
— ACSpollen (@ACSpollen) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl You betcha it's a big deal. As a NYC taxpayer, I'm pissed.
— CatsPolitics (@CatsPolitics) June 21, 2013
@CatsPolitics Yep. Also very illegal.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Is it legal to use New York City taxpayer-funded resources for the radically anti-gun website that promotes national gun-control legislation? And is that what’s happening? According to the group’s latest financial disclosure available at GuideStar, it spent over $80,000 on its website in 2011. Right now there are more questions than answers, but Twitter activists are working on piecing this together.
Serious question: Is it legal for @MikeBloomberg to appropriate taxpayer money for use by his nonprofit? @NYGovCuomo @JohnEkdahl
— TraderRLH (@TraderRLH) June 21, 2013
@JimmyPrinceton
OrgName: The City of New York@CatsPolitics— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Two New York City IT officials are listed as the technical contacts for the domain: Yisroel Hecht, Associate Commissioner, Network & Telecommunications and Dan Srebnick, Associate Commissioner, IT Security Division.
NYC political peeps: do the names “dsrebnick” or “yhecht” look familiar?
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Wha-oh. Dan Srebnick, NYC’s Chief Information Officer is the technical contact for that IP. http://t.co/ILN8UqUabb
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JimmyPrinceton Right, which means he approved it.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
RT @ebox75: @JohnEkdahl http://t.co/BPIMseswH3 Both Associate Commissioners. Look under Infrastructure Management.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
More from Ekdahl’s preliminary research:
Also interesting. A search at http://t.co/x1TuX943bn returns MAIG results. http://t.co/L6o4NtE9yN
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
I mean, FFS, the *registrant* of the MAIG domain is NYC.
Registrant Name:NYC DoITThttp://t.co/gUzwUyp5PE— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
The NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications REGISTERED the domain for Bloomberg’s anti-gun non-profit. WTF?
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
I mean, fuck. It says it right here on Bloomberg’s MAIG nameservers: http://t.co/ckwmdHbNQUhttp://t.co/gUzwUyp5PE
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl Wouldn't that be like, illegal coordination n' stuff?
— Brian Cates (@drawandstrike) June 21, 2013
@drawandstrike Um, it would be illegal scamming taxpayers for your nonprofit expenses.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Among the key questions:
@JohnEkdahl Do you have a link to the reg/law that says hosting not-for-profits on .gov servers is illegal?
— CatsPolitics (@CatsPolitics) June 21, 2013
@CatsPolitics No, but how could it be? It’s policy advocation unaffiliated with NYC government.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Is it possible there’s some loophole here? I can’t imagine how. He’s using NYC tax money for his personal national nonprofit policy campaign
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl Actually, in 2006 it started as a collaboration between NYC & BOS govt's. now it's a behemoth.
— CatsPolitics (@CatsPolitics) June 21, 2013
@CatsPolitics So, you think it could have been some stealth budget appropriation?
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl This is NYC. The city council funds nanny statism. It's sick.
— CatsPolitics (@CatsPolitics) June 21, 2013
Is anyone aware of any other 501c3/4 that is using government services for free?
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
I tend to think that wouldn’t be allowed.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
That’s possible, I suppose. RT @TheH2: @JohnEkdahl Can't be. Unless the MAIG 501(c)(3) is reimbursing NYC for it.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
This claims MAIG is a 501c4 http://t.co/xb6vKiL45q
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
“MAIG, social welfare organization set up under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, is first to comply with US ruling requiring organizations”
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
“which normally keep their donors secret, to disclose them if they run issue ads that mention federal candidates.”
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
So Bloomberg’s group was the first to comply with the 501c4 requirements.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Yeah, I’m not sure reimbursement even flies here.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Now that I think more about it, they’re running ads AGAINST sitting politicians. How is this legal?
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JimmyPrinceton Right, but it is set up under the strict 501c4 requirements.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@presjpolk Right, but WHILE USING taxpayer funded services to do it?
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
I guess we’ll see where this goes.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl NY State has TWO MAIG entities, Support and Action. That may explain how MAIG gets gov grants AND does politics…
— Tom Reynolds (@Beregond) June 21, 2013
@Beregond How can they expense hosting though?
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl C3s can get government grants. I haven't seen anything prohibiting in-kind contributions yet.
— Tom Reynolds (@Beregond) June 21, 2013
@Beregond Wait. But it’s HIS group. And he’s the Mayor.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@Beregond And why would NYC register the domain for them?
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
According to someone (I’ll source if he wants) MAIG did NOT get any government grants. So, this appears to be a thing.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
–> RT @Beregond: @JohnEkdahl They reported as of 12/31/2011 they got no government grants. Domain & hosting happened before that date.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl So either they lied on annual NY State charity reports, or NYC is not officially giving grants to MAIG Support or Action funds.
— Tom Reynolds (@Beregond) June 21, 2013
I pushed this to some mainstreamers. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
@JohnEkdahl Have you turned this into an article yet? It'll be killllllllllllllllller tomorrow.
— H (@Tark31) June 21, 2013
Ekdahl promises more on this.
@Tark31 Working on it.
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Follow him on Twitter to see where this goes.
Update:
A Twitchy reader passed along this image of the ARIN info:
@TwitchyTeam Here's the ARIN lookup (different from WHOIS) of the IP block the maig server is on. Site is on NYC srvr pic.twitter.com/4kBsM55o5m
— Gifted Placebo (@giftedplacebo) June 21, 2013
In the comment section, Gifted Placebo writes:
Just to be clear on the ARIN update, for the non-technical. While domain registrars manage domain names, ARIN manages who owns blocks of IP addresses. That screen shot shows that NYC IT owns the entire Class B of 161.185.0.0 The MAIG website is on 161.185.30.92 – part of that Class B. This would indicate that not only are NYC resources being used for managing the domain registration, but NYC resources are being used for physical hosting, possibly including the server, bandwidth, etc. A reverse lookup of the IP shows an alternate name for the server of prtl-sitea-maigs.nyc.gov
The plot thickens.
Update:
More plot-thickening: The website for Renew Our Economy, another Bloomberg project, is registered to MAIG.
Man, what a mess. Another Bloomberg group (Renew Our Economy) is registered to MAIG.http://t.co/c9oWwlgmzz
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Update:
RT @AoSHQ: Is Michael Bloomberg Using City Resources For His "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" Group? http://t.co/NP4Yd86dRe
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 21, 2013
Over at Ace of Spades HQ: “At best, this is really sloppy. At worst, this could be pretty serious.” Read the whole thing.
