Monday, April 23, 2012

ALEC's Non-profit Status, Challenged

Today was another wonderfully bad day for ALEC.  Proctor and Gamble announced it was ending its association with and support of ALEC. Common Cause filed a lawsuit with the IRS against ALEC, challenging its non-profit status.  In their lawsuit Common Cause submitted over 4000 pages of documentation outlining ALEC's lobbying efforts.  Alec is non-profit?  It's certainly not profitable for 99% of Americans.


Bob Edgar president of Common cause:
 "ALEC is a corporate lobby front group masquerading as a public charity,"
Today, Common Cause is announcing a whistleblower complaint against ALEC filed with the Internal Revenue Service. We are submitting several thousand pages of ALEC’s internal records that we believe demonstrate beyond debate that ALEC for years has evaded federal taxes by masquerading as a charity and that it has lied to the IRS and the American public about its activities.
We’re asking the IRS to end this charade, cancel ALEC’s tax exemption, collect years of unpaid taxes and “impose necessary penalties.”
One final point — ALEC’s leaders have accused Common Cause and other ALEC critics of attacking free speech; they say we want to deny business a seat at the table where public policy is made.
Nonsense. Our entire effort has been and will remain focused on bringing ALEC into the open, so that EVERYONE can see and hear and evaluate its agenda, so that it will no longer be able to sweet talk our elected officials behind closed doors to work its will. The companies leaving ALEC have done so not because their speech was muzzled but because it was amplified.

Sign the Common Cause petition, Corporations Withdraw from ALEC
 Common Cause Homepage
 ALEC Exposed
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