Of course, King George didn’t have an IRS.  He had the British Army and Navy.

And prob­a­bly a lot of refunds to hand out at least.

It was Scrubs star Zach Braff who announced that his new com­edy – the follow-up to 2004’s well-received Gar­den State – could not get made with­out the help of fans’ finan­cial sup­port on crowd­fund­ing site Kick­starter. But a month on from launch­ing a high-profile cam­paign to raise fund­ing for inde­pen­dent film Wish I Was Here, Braff has not only hit his $2m Kick­starter tar­get but secured mil­lions of dol­lars in extra sup­port from a tra­di­tional film financier.

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter revealed on Wednes­day that World­view Enter­tain­ment is step­ping in with extra funds that will take the film’s total bud­get to about $10m. “Zach has proven again that he is a cre­ative force in inde­pen­dent film, and we were imme­di­ately drawn to his pow­er­ful and unique story,” World­view CEO Christo­pher Woodrow told the site at the Cannes film fes­ti­val.

Kick­starter is increas­ingly used by film-makers to raise finance for movies. Last month, pro­duc­ers of the Veron­ica Mars TV show secured a stag­ger­ing $5.702m (£3.70m) to revive the detec­tive series as a fea­ture film. In Sep­tem­ber, the Char­lie Kauf­man–scripted stop-motion film Anom­al­isa raised a then-record $406,237 (£250,600).

Wish I Was Here is writ­ten by Braff and his brother Adam. Braff will direct and play the lead role of a father, actor and hus­band strug­gling to find his iden­tity. Braff admit­ted in a video directed at fans as part of his Kick­starter cam­paign that he was close to a tra­di­tional financ­ing deal to shoot the film, but didn’t want to give up the final cut and the right to pick the cast. In response, fans donated $2.6m.

But Twit­ter users and blog­gers sub­se­quently ques­tioned why the actor, for­mer star of the hugely suc­cess­ful, long-running sit­com Scrubs, did not sim­ply use his own cash to make Wish I Was Here. Oth­ers won­dered if it was rea­son­able to ask fans to con­tribute when they would not ben­e­fit if the movie became a sur­prise box office hit. News that tra­di­tional fund­ing has been secured from a financier that will pre­sum­ably want a return on its invest­ment may fur­ther cloud the question.

In an inter­view with the LA Times about his Kick­starter cam­paign last month, Braff denied sug­ges­tions he had “Oprah Win­frey money”. He said: “I’ve done well in my career, but I am not sit­ting on $22m. I’m doing this so that one neg­a­tive audi­ence com­ment in a test screen­ing won’t force me to change the end of my movie.”

He also said he felt fans were being well-rewarded for their con­tri­bu­tions, with spe­cial early screen­ings and after-parties avail­able to many.

Kick­starter is hit or miss for many inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers.  Kevin Smith has said he’s going to bypass “Clerks III” on Kick­starter par­tially because he wants to avoid the headaches Braff is now get­ting, he wanted to ‘return to his roots’ and fund it him­self, like he did the first “Clerks”  and he believe Kick­starter should be there to “help the kind of up-and-coming film­mak­ers and entrepreneurs.”

Over­all, I’m intrigued by what Kick­starter is allow­ing folks to do.  It’s giv­ing a fund­ing option for entre­pre­neurs, artists and bands they never would have got­ten before.  Let’s be hon­est with our­selves, many banks aren’t hand­ing out the small busi­ness loans like they were thanks in part to Dodd-Frank and Kick­starter is fill­ing a void.

It also has been so suc­cess­ful, that it is legit­i­mately mak­ing many won­der if the National Endow­ment of the Arts (NEA) is even nec­es­sary since in 2012 it was reported that Kick­starter pro­vided more money for more projects than the NEA did in all of 2011.  Kickstarter’s co-founder felt he had to apol­o­gize on Talk­ing Points Memo for that — why, I have no idea?

Hav­ing helped fund a project or two on Kick­starter, I mostly do it not for a return on invest­ment (Like $5 to $50 is really an invest­ment for a $20,000 project?), but to get the idea off the draw­ing board and into the pro­duc­tion phase.  If the guy with the idea ends up mak­ing a mil­lion dol­lars some­time down the road, so be it.  My goal is get­ting a prod­uct in hand at the end of the day dur­ing the early adapter phase.

In the past it was wait­ing for a comic book, now it’s wait­ing for a “Set­tlers of Catan” game board.

As for the Braff / Smith debate, I believe Smith is on to some­thing when he says that Kick­starter should be reserved for the up and com­ers.  Guys like them have access to money and can get it with typ­i­cally a call or two to a Wein­stein.  You and me, who have hopes, dreams, a draw­ing board, a cam­era and dreams need some­thing like Kick­starter.  The big guys don’t.

Great piece of work here from the House GOP Con­fer­ence on the stalled eco­nomic recovery…now in its 5th year.

Fas­ci­nat­ing report this morn­ing from the USAToday:

In the 27 months that the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice put a hold on all Tea Party appli­ca­tions for non-profit sta­tus, it approved appli­ca­tions from sim­i­lar lib­eral groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As appli­ca­tions from con­ser­v­a­tive groups sat in limbo, groups with obvi­ously lib­eral names were approved in as lit­tle as nine months. With names includ­ing words like “Progress” or “Pro­gres­sive,” these groups applied for the same tax sta­tus and were engaged in the same kinds of activ­i­ties as the con­ser­v­a­tive groups.

The con­tro­ver­sial, 3-year-old strat­egy to man­age the increas­ing num­ber of polit­i­cal groups seek­ing tax-exempt sta­tus came under fire Tues­day. The agency’s own inspec­tor gen­eral blamed IRS lead­er­ship for “inef­fec­tive management.”

“Inef­fec­tive man­age­ment” is typ­i­cally IG code not for incom­pe­tence, but polit­i­cal favoritism.  Most inspec­tor gen­er­als aren’t fool­ish enough to say out­right what is going on.

Depend­ing on the agency, a lot of these guys are pres­i­den­tial appointees.  The last thing a lot of them want is to be sud­denly replaced by the very pres­i­dent they are being forced to inves­ti­gate.  Then again, if the IG needed Sen­ate approval to be con­firmed, that can always make things inter­est­ing as well.

There is start­ing to get a lot of sparks behind the early smoke of the IRS scan­dal.  Could be a fun next cou­ple of months.

Long thought by the MSM as the stuff of cranks and con­spir­acy web­sites like “News­Max” and “World Net Daily,” it now appears they weren’t kidding.

Not the best string of luck the White House is hav­ing this week are they?

The Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice inap­pro­pri­ately flagged con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal groups for addi­tional reviews dur­ing the 2012 elec­tion to see if they were vio­lat­ing their tax-exempt sta­tus, a top IRS offi­cial said Friday.

Orga­ni­za­tions were sin­gled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their appli­ca­tions for tax-exempt sta­tus, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS divi­sion that over­sees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which vio­lates IRS pol­icy in most cases, she said.

“That was wrong. That was absolutely incor­rect, it was insen­si­tive and it was inap­pro­pri­ate. That’s not how we go about select­ing cases for fur­ther review,” Lerner said at a con­fer­ence spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Bar Association.

“The IRS would like to apol­o­gize for that,” she added.

Lerner said the prac­tice was ini­ti­ated by low-level work­ers in Cincin­nati and was not moti­vated by polit­i­cal bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS offi­cials knew about the practice.

Agency offi­cials found out about the prac­tice last year and moved to cor­rect it, the IRS said in a state­ment. The state­ment did not spec­ify when offi­cials found out.

About 75 groups were inap­pro­pri­ately tar­geted. None had their tax-exempt sta­tus revoked, Lerner said.

Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Mitch McConnell of Ken­tucky called on the White House to investigate.

Hon­estly, it should be the House which does this inves­ti­ga­tion.  The Sen­ate isn’t going to do jack against the White House as long as it is in Demo­c­ra­tic hands as well as the Sen­ate, then I’m not hold­ing my breath.

Democ­rats with long mem­o­ries like to say that tax audits against polit­i­cal ene­mies was a favorite trick of the Nixon days.  Well, if they had any moral com­pass, they’d demand one of the Obama White House immediately.

Sadly, I don’t think such is the nature of the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of lib­er­als.  Threat­en­ing tax-exempt sta­tus is part of the cur­rent play­book; be it a church, a think tank, an advo­cacy group or what­ever, it is the enemy, and it must be destroyed thoroughly.

Think I’m kid­ding?  Read any press releases from One Wis­con­sin Now or the Demo­c­ra­tic Party of Wis­con­sin in recent years?