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April 15th, 2012:

Of course this organisation funded the overseas attendance and travels of Raymond Ho Man Kit of the Lion Rock institute / Momentum 107

April 15, 2012

Tobacco ally Grover Norquist jumps into tobacco tax fight http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_swarm/2012/04/nonprofit-corporations-such-as.html

Grover Norquist shocked no one when his Americans for Tax Reform based in Washington, D.C., sided with the tobacco industry by opposing Proposition 29 on the June ballot to raise the California tobacco tax by $1.

Nor should it surprise anyone that Norquist long has done business with the tobacco industry, as documents in UC San Francisco’s massive online tobacco library show. Those documents became public as a result of settlements of suits against the industry in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In one letter, Norquist solicited a modest sum, $2,000, to help fund an expansion of his campaign to convince state legislators to sign the anti-tax pledge that he continues to push.

Whether Norquist received that $2,000 isn’t readily apparent from the documents. But other tobacco papers suggest Americans for Tax Reform was a regular recipient of tobacco industry largess in the 1990s.

Nonprofit corporations such as Americans for Tax Reform are under no obligation to reveal their donors, and generally don’t.

Occasionally, however, donations become public, as occurred when tobacco companies were compelled to release internal documents.

Some documents showing donations to Americans for Tax Reform can be found hereherehere,herehereherehere, and here.

Norquist aide Patrick Gleason didn’t respond to inquiries about the tobacco donations, but questioned the news value of “a story on the fact that ATR opposes a tax increase, whatever it may be on.”

“ATR doesn’t think a tax increase that targets those with below average incomes and does nothing to rectify the state’s overspending problem is sound policy,” Gleason said in an email.

Posted by Dan Morain

The Sacramento Bee

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