A Better America Now

<div class="article" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.4; font-family: Georgia, serif;"> why would fenwick "targeted candidates" means for or against?<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=C90013327&cycle=2012" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">America is not Stupid</a> (C90013327Total Independent Expenditures: $60,725      For Democrats: $0      Against Democrats: $60,725      For Republicans: $0      Against Republicans: $0 Total Electioneering Communications: $0<table class="tablesorter" id="tab" style="font-family: arial; background-color: rgb(205, 205, 205); margin: 10px 0pt 15px; font-size: 8pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;"><tbody><tr class="rowTint" style="background-color: rgb(240, 243, 246);"><td style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); padding: 4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: top;">Tester, Jon</td><td class="center" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); padding: 4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: top;">D</td><td class="center" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); padding: 4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: top;">MT</td><td style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); padding: 4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: top;">Senate</td><td class="number" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: right; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); padding: 4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: top;">$60,725</td><td class="number" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: right; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); padding: 4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: top;">$0</td><td class="number" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: right; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); padding: 4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: top;">$60,725</td><td class="center" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); padding: 4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: top;">Winner

</td></tr></tbody></table> <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/recips.php?cmte=America+is+not+Stupid&cycle=2012" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: normal;">http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/recips.php?cmte=America+is+not+Stupid&cycle=2012</a> but ad creepy baby says obamacare will hurt medicare; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz6qcM10nUA&feature=youtu.be">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz6qcM10nUA&feature=youtu.be</a>   esp since their mailers look like ati ads, Rehberg was their guy? rove attacked tester; senate seat is crucial=<a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/dark-money-group-spent-on-house-race-then-told-irs-it-didnt">http://www.propublica.org/article/dark-money-group-spent-on-house-race-then-told-irs-it-didnt</a><h1 class="article-title title-link" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; font-family: ff-meta-serif-web-1, ff-meta-serif-web-2, Georgia, serif; line-height: 1.2;">Dark Money Group Spent on House Race, Then Told IRS It Didn’t</h1>Shortly before Election Day last year,<a href="http://blog.mysanantonio.com/moveit/2012/11/pete-gallegos-got-an-eight-legged-problem-return-of-the-spider/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">mailers</a> went out to Texas voters featuring pictures of a Democratic congressional candidate and a rare species of spider, whose discovery had <a href="http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Tiny-spider-is-a-big-roadblock-3849198.php" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">forced stoppage</a> of an important highway construction project.“The same left-wing extremists who support Pete Gallego want more burdensome regulations that put the interests of spiders above our need to create more jobs,” the flier declared, referring to discovery of the endangered Braken Bat Cave meshweaver. “The best way to stop left-wing extremists from killing jobs is to vote against their hand-picked candidate Pete Gallego.”</div><div class="sidebar-inject" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-right-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; float: left; z-index: 20; position: relative; line-height: 12px;"><div class="callout-ad ad" id="google-callout" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; z-index: 0; line-height: 12px;"><div class="article" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.4;">The group that put out the mailer, A Better America Now, <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/717138-year-end-report-13960583326" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">reported</a> to the Federal Election Commission it had spent about $65,000 for the mailer and TV advertising in the hard-fought race to represent Texas’ <a href="http://gallego.house.gov/about/our-district" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">23rd district</a>.But in a <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/717251-better-america-now-2011-12-990s#document/p11/a107124" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">tax return</a> recently filed with the IRS, the group claimed it did not spend any money at all on “direct or indirect political campaign activities.”The tax return is signed under the penalty of perjury by the group’s president, <a href="http://www.thefenwickgroup.com/partners_portrie.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">Bob Portrie</a>, and the accounting firm <a href="http://thelbagroup.com/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">LBA Group</a>. Neither responded to requests for comment.We first <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/controversial-dark-money-group-among-five-that-told-irs-they-would-stay-out" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">reported</a> on A Better America Now earlier this year, showing it had told the IRS in a <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/539896-1024-2012-a-better-america-now-inc" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">2011 application</a> for nonprofit status that it did not plan to spend any money on elections. (That document <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/controversial-dark-money-group-among-five-that-told-irs-they-would-stay-out" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">was sent to</a> ProPublica last year by the IRS, even though the application was still pending and thus not supposed to be released.)<div class="article-inline-image" style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11px; font-family: Georgia, serif; margin: 0px 0px 12px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); display: inline-block; max-width: 470px; float: right; width: 330px;"><img alt="(San Antonio Express-News/Vianna Davila)" src="http://www.propublica.org/images/ngen/gypsy_image_lead_ngen/gallego-spider.jpg" width="330" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; max-width: 470px;" /><p class="photo-caption" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 5px 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); font-style: italic; line-height: 1.4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">(San Antonio Express-News/Vianna Davila)</div>“This type of inaccurate reporting by electioneering nonprofit groups has a long history,” says Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, when asked about the group’s most recent filing. “It is rooted in the fact that the IRS almost never holds these groups accountable for such false declarations.”A Better America Now was a bit player in the elections. But it’s also an example of the kind of <a href="http://www.propublica.org/tag/IRS+and+Politics" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">increasingly common outside groups</a> that inject anonymous money into political campaigns.Such social welfare nonprofits <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/how-nonprofits-spend-millions-on-elections-and-call-it-public-welfare" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">are not supposed</a> to have political campaign activity as their primary purpose — but the ambiguities around how the IRS measures such activity and how it screens the groups are at the center of the <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/six-facts-lost-in-irs-scandal" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">recent investigations</a> of the IRS’s treatment of Tea Party groups.ProPublica has documented how nonprofits that spent millions of dollars on ads in the 2010 elections <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/how-nonprofits-spend-millions-on-elections-and-call-it-public-welfare" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">failed to report or underreported</a> that political spending to the IRS. The tax form that the groups are required to file with the IRS specifically asks for details on any campaign spending.One of the curious things about <a href="http://abetteramericanow.com/qus&ans.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">A Better America Now</a> is that, though the group spent money in a congressional and a <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/717534-texas-house-expenditure-529236" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">state legislative</a> race in southwest Texas, it is based a few miles off the beach <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=183+Landrum+Lane,+Ponte+Vedra+Beach,+FL&ll=30.164126,-81.386719&spn=1.304853,1.472168&hnear=183+Landrum+Ln,+Ponte+Vedra,+St+Johns,+Florida+32082&gl=us&t=m&z=10" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">near Jacksonville, Florida</a>. The president of A Better America Now, Portrie, is also the head of a consulting firm, the <a href="http://www.thefenwickgroup.com/partners_portrie.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">Fenwick Group</a>. The two groups are listed at the same address. Fenwick’s website says it works with “organizations across the healthcare, financial services, insurance, retail and investment sectors.”Portrie and Fenwick were also <a href="http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/IndyBlog/archives/2012/09/10/election-2012-anti-tester-spending-ramps-up" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">linked to</a> ads run by another Florida-based social welfare nonprofit, America is Not Stupid, in last year’s U.S. Senate <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/key-montana-senate-race-draws-deluge-of-dark-money" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">race in Montana</a>.TESTER  Ads by America is Not Stupid featured a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz6qcM10nUA&feature=youtu.be" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">talking baby</a> complaining about alleged cuts to Medicare by President Obama, and referring to the baby’s stinking diaper.In 2010, the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/weekinreview/03mcintire.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">reported</a> on links between the Fenwick Group and yet another politically active nonprofit, the Coalition to Protect Seniors. Ads by that group featured the same talking baby ad.In last year’s race in Texas, which attracted a lot of <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/races/indexp.php?cycle=2012&id=TX23&spec=N" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(34, 98, 204); text-decoration: none;">outside spending</a> on both sides, the Democrat, Gallego, prevailed over Republican incumbent Quico Canseco.=bs<table border="0" cellpadding="0" style="background-color: rgb(233, 237, 242); font-size: 14px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px;"><tbody><tr><td>Bob Portrie , Managing Partner 
Robert E. Portrie “Bob” is an internationally known executive and speaker on customer relationship management. Working with companies like AT&T, Pitney Bowes, The Carlyle Group, FedEx, General Electric and numerous other organizations he has been a leader in the transformationof both large and small organizations to a customer centric approach to marketing and customer service Bob has spoken at numerous events sponsored by both</td></tr></tbody></table>companies and associations on customer strategy and services to help companies acquire, retain, manage and grow their customer relationships across many industries including insurance, financial services, healthcare and retail.
 
Today Bob is the Founding Partner of The Fenwick Group, a consulting and investment organization that has had long term engagements with a diverse set of clients including Digital Cement, The Caron Foundation, The University of Florida, Convergence Health and many other organizations across the healthcare, financial services, insurance, retail and investment sectors.
 
Bob spent more than twenty years with AT&T in numerous sales, marketing, operational and research positions. In his last position at AT&T he was the President and Chairman of the Board of AT&T InView, a subsidiary focused on providing network centric business applications for the insurance and financial services industry in the United States and network based mortgage illustration software in the United Kingdom. This technology evolved into the Application Service Provider technology prevalent today. Bob was responsible for taking this partially owned subsidiary based in Europe, buying out the European interests and transforming it into a wholly owned US subsidiary of AT&T.
 
After a career with AT&T, Bob took on the challenge of becoming the President and CEO of InfoMation Publishing Corporation, a CMGI subsidiary, located in the Boston area that was one of the first core CMGI organizations.Bob spent from 1997-99 at InfoMation creating a leading edge knowledge management software company.Following the merger of InfoMation, Bob became a Managing Partner at RCM Technologies, a National consulting and staffing company headquartered in New Jersey.During his tenure at RCM, Bob became active in working with companies ranging from the Fortune 50 to start up companies.Bob’s activities included capital formation, business plan development, product design and software development and integration. 
 
Bob is the former Chairman of RNETHealth, Inc., former Chairman and member of the board of Confirmnet Corporation, member of the board of Digital Cement, a Canadian Corporation formerly known as Envision Communications, former member of the board of Visual-IOand a member of the board of Liberty Bloom..
 
Bob is also on the Addiction and Psychiatry Board of the Brain Institute at the University of Florida.He is a past member of the Board of the MIS School at the University of Arizona, The Canadian/New England Advisory Board sponsored by the government of Canada, Technology Point International and the Advisory Board of ACORD.</div></div></div>