Friday, May 04, 2012

Heartland Seppuku

One of the bunnies sent Eli a note.  Being a bunny he sent the IRS definition of what a 501 c3 ain't

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/rp_1986-43.pdf , Rev. Proc. 86-43, 1986-2 C.B. 729 )

 "Educational Purpose" section:

SEC. 3. CRITERIA USED TO DETERMINE WHETHER ADVOCACY BY AN ORGANIZATION IS EDUCATIONAL 03 The presence of any of the following factors in the presentations made by an organization is indicative that the method used by the organization to advocate its viewpoints or positions is not educational.
1. The presentation of viewpoints or positions unsupported by facts is a significant portion of the organization's communications. 
 Check
2. The facts that purport to support the viewpoints or positions are distorted. 
 Check
3. The organization's presentations make substantial use of inflammatory and disparaging terms and express conclusions more on the basis of strong emotional feelings than of objective evaluations. 
 Check
4. The approach used in the organization's presentations is not aimed at developing an understanding on the part of the intended audience or readership because it does not consider their background or training in the subject matter.
Double check

In memoriam Heatland Institute

 

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is fantastic! I soooo hope that someone with official horsepower follows up on that one! (Off to find someone with IRS connections!)

This is the first thing I've read today that actually made me happy!

TweetingDonal

Steve Bloom said...

So Eli, this would be the Obama IRS that you're expecting to do something about this? Just sayin'.

John Mashey said...

tweetingdonal:
It doesn't take IRS connections, one just files a whistleblower complaint via Form 211, something that just happened to have been bookmarked last Fall.

Steve:
The IRS is mostly the IRS, not the Obama IRS, Bush IRS, Clinton IRS, etc.


Some people read some of Fake science, fakexperts, funny finances, free of tax, especially:

pp.8-10 501(c)(3) Non-profits, IRS-?? tags,
of which the right side of p.8 bears some resemblance to the Rabett's post, but it's only a subset of the problems one can have with 501(c)(3), of which many are enumerated with coded tags.

p.12, which lists 48 entities, mostly 501(c)(3) of which most got tobacco funding some time, and which as a group got $330M in 2009. Of course, it is hard to imagine the public purposes to which tobacco money was put. People might ask. Otherwise, lots of money from Kochs, L&H Bradley, Scaife, Donors Trust/Capital, and some from ExxonMobil.

p.20 A set of allegations against SEPP, Heartland and CSCDGC, tagged with the various codes assigned earlier, and documented in detail.

pp.37-41: tobacco funding and what thinktanks do for the $, courtesy the wondrous tobacco archives.

Reading this document (which goes into excruciating detail on money flows and odd transactions, and 100+ pages of Heartland examples), a few people somehow got the idea that it might have occurred to me to file complaints.

Suzanne Goldenberg asked me, leading to this, last Feb 17.

So, that's 3 (SEPP, Heartland, CSCDGC), and Common Cause filed one against ALEC. (If your search my report for ALEC or American Legislative Exchange Council, you may find a few hits.)

Meanwhile, see list of corporations at at DeSMogBlog and look for Forecast the Facts.

Anonymous said...

Well Mashey is on the case, we can all sleep better or become disinterested. I'll do the latter.



Celery Eater

Steve Bloom said...

I sincerely hope some action is forthcoming, John, but it's not like these entities and their funding were invisible before now. Peak tobacco scandal would have been an appropriate time for the IRS to go after some of these outfits, and it didn't happen. Why will it now?

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Watts has responded by declaring that Real Climate is about to self-destruct.

Heartland's view seems to be that the Titanic could have sunk the iceberg , had it but backed up and rammed it a few more times.

willard said...

A related discussion:

> “is the Heartland Institute a fake charity?”

http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/02/23/the-heartland-strategy-memo/comment-page-6/#comment-100670

John said...

Eli, thanks for the nice musical interlude starring Louis Jordan.

As for myself, I prefer the rasping gritty R&B version by the Queen of the Blues, Koko Taylor

Let the Good Times Roll, indeed!

dhogaza said...

Mashey:

"The IRS is mostly the IRS, not the Obama IRS, Bush IRS, Clinton IRS, etc."

To some extent it's the Congressional IRS, though, as Congress has a history of "helping" to set priorities for who gets audited, etc, via micromanaging the IRS budget.

Which makes statements like "the Obama IRS" or "the Bush IRS" even sillier.

amoeba said...

I hope seppuku's catching among deniers.

J Bowers said...

A host of arguments to be used at an upcoming Chicago conference make their way to Prague airport.

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