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NORQUIST, G

See also ATR, also tag (zombied kerpen 3/16)

norquist 2 7/16 (blank 3/18)

labor coc walmart berman

IFF Jamba, dictators?

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mma1123

Right-wing media lavish praise on Argentina’s newly elected far-right president | Media Matters for America

argentine President-elect Javier Milei is becoming a right-wing media darling in the U.S. due to his austere proposed economic policies and conservative ideology. Right-wing media figures have reacted to Milei’s electoral success by praising him, comparing him to former President Donald Trump, and attacking mainstream media for their critical reporting.}:

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gang of  5: dad engr, picked mom out of yrbk to spec; priv upbringing; more populist, guns

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/159433-1

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omfg

720 got covid bailout $?!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/ppp-small-business-loans.html

no lnx

Lobbyists, Law Firms and Trade Groups Took Small-Business Loans

The Trump administration began releasing details of which businesses received Paycheck Protection Program aid.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, under pressure from Congress, is releasing data about where Paycheck Protection Program loans have gone.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, under pressure from Congress, is releasing data about where Paycheck Protection Program loans have gone.Credit...Michael Reynolds/EPA

By Jeanna Smialek, Jim Tankersley and Luke Broadwater

Published July 6, 2020

Updated July 7, 2020

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration, under pressure to reveal which companies received loans from a $660 billion program intended to keep small businesses afloat, on Monday released data showing that restaurants, medical offices and car dealerships ranked high among the top loan recipients.

The detailed information from the Paycheck Protection Program was confined to companies that received loans of more than $150,000. The administration said 86.5 percent of the loans were for less than that amount, so the snapshot captured only one sliver of businesses that tapped funds. So far, banks have made about 4.9 million loans through the program, with an average size of $107,000.

Nearly 5,000 businesses received individual loans between $5 million and $10 million, according to the data. The administration included ranges for the amounts, not specific figures.

And the figures did not include details on the roughly $30 billion in loans that were returned as companies realized that they were not eligible for the program, worried that they couldn’t meet program requirements or reacted to a public outcry about big firms getting funds.

Restaurants, medical offices and car dealerships were the top recipients of large loans from the program. More than 40,000 full- or limited-service restaurants received loans worth as much as $32 billion, according to the ranges provided by the government.

Sprinkled among the beneficiaries were businesses that are likely to attract scrutiny, including a fancy sushi restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in Washington; Kanye West’s company, Yeezy; and President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer.

Washington lobbying shops, high-priced law firms and special-interest groups also received big loans, according to the administration, the latest indication of how the government’s centerpiece effort to shore up mom-and-pop shops set off a race by organizations far afield from Main Street to secure federal money. The disclosure could further fuel outrage toward the program, which has been complicated by revelations that large, publicly traded companies were taking big loans and concerns that it might leave borrowers saddled with debt.

“My 1,000-foot takeaway is that the government was handing out free money and the line went around the corner,” said Aaron Klein, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “This is not your mom-and-pop shop on Main Street.”

The administration said the Paycheck Protection Program had helped to support more than 50 million jobs. The share of overall small-business payroll supported per state ranged from 72 percent in Virginia to 96 percent in Florida, according to the Treasury Department.

The program provides forgivable loans to companies that have 500 or fewer employees and meet certain requirements, such as using the bulk of the money to keep workers on the payroll. Lenders are responsible for reviewing recipients’ forgiveness applications to verify that they complied with the program’s rules.

More than 100 law firms received loans ranging from $1 million to $10 million, the data showed. The list included well-known names like Boies Schiller Flexner, the high-priced law firm run by David Boies, which received between $5 million and $10 million. “We don’t comment on our financials,” the firm said.

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Kasowitz Benson Torres, founded and run by Mr. Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, received a loan for between $5 million and $10 million.The firm represented Mr. Trump for over a decade before he was elected president, both in his business dealings and in other matters, such as helping him keep divorce records sealed. Mr. Kasowitz and the firm also represented Mr. Trump during Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

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Mr. Trump later diminished the role of Mr. Kasowitz in his dealings with Mr. Mueller’s investigators. A spokeswoman for Kasowitz Benson Torres said the loan, along with cost-cutting, “enabled us to preserve the jobs of our hundreds of employees at full salary and benefits without interruption.”

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The president also appears to have benefited from government support, at least indirectly. While the Trump Organization did not apply for loans under the program, the data showed that dozens of tenants at buildings owned by Mr. Trump or managed by his companies received funds.

One reported recipient was a hair salon in the president’s hotel in Chicago. More than 20 businesses listed at 40 Wall Street, an office building near the New York Stock Exchange that Mr. Trump has owned since the mid-1990s, also reportedly received government loans totaling at least $20 million. Among the recipients were law offices, financial service firms and nonprofit organizations.

Sushi Nakazawa, a restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, received a loan of between $150,000 and $350,000. The company did not respond to a request for comment about how it planned to use the funds.

Some loan recipients are connected to the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. The data show that a loan of between $350,000 and $1 million was made to Esplanade Livingston, a Kushner family entity that owns the land in Livingston, N.J., where the family’s Westminster Hotel is. In 2018, Mr. Kushner divested his stake in the entity, from which he once derived income generated by that hotel.

Princeton Forrestal, a real estate entity owned by various members of the Kushner family not including Mr. Kushner, received a loan of between $1 million and $2 million.

“Several of our hotels have applied for federal loans, in accordance with all guidelines, with a vast majority of funds going to furloughed employees,” said Pete Febo, Kushner Companies’ chief operating officer.

The Paycheck Protection Program, which was included in the $2 trillion stimulus bill passed by lawmakers in March, also benefited several members of Congress.

Car dealerships connected to Representative Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania, received three loans, each between $150,000 and $350,000. Mr. Kelly, a multimillionaire, owns Mike Kelly Automotive Group, Mike Kelly Automotive L.P.; and Mike Kelly Hyundai, all of which accepted loans.

Andrew Eisenberger, spokesman for Mr. Kelly, said that the congressman had properly followed the rules of the disaster aid program and that the money would be used “to sustain the income of workers who would otherwise have been without pay or employment at no fault of their own during the coronavirus pandemic.”

Businesses associated with other members of Congress or their relatives, both Democrats and Republicans, received similar disaster aid. They included a farm and other businesses owned by Representative Vicky Harzler, Republican of Missouri, and her husband. Ms. Harzler cited the need “to ensure the continued ability to maintain the employment of all team members during this time.”

A New York shipping business owned by the family of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the wife of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, received at least $350,000, according to the data. A person familiar with the company, Foremost Group, said that the loan was for less than $500,000 and that no employees had been laid off during the pandemic. Ms. Chao has no formal affiliation or stake in the business. In 2008, she and Mr. McConnell received millions of dollars in gifts from her father, James, who ran the company until 2018.

Many of the biggest and most influential lobbying and political consulting firms received money — despite prohibitions intended to restrict access — most likely qualifying by highlighting lines of business that fell outside the restrictions.

Wiley Rein, which has a large lobbying practice focusing on trade issues, received between $5 million and $10 million,according to the data. Van Ness Feldman and Beveridge & Diamond, two law firms that focus on helping energy industry clients push their agendas in Washington, received loans between $2 million and $5 million, according to the administration.

A firm that raises money for Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee received a loan of more than $1 million, according to the data set, while a company that produces Mr. Trump’s political advertisements received between $350,000 and $1 million. So did a consulting firm started by President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager Jim Messina and one that Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign paid for communications consulting.

Several firms that advise companies on how to deal with the government, but are not officially registered to lobby, were also said to have received loans. They include companies run by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served in the Clinton administration.

The administration listed loans worth between $350,000 and $1 million to a consulting firm started by former Senator William S. Cohen, a Maine Republican who also served in the Clinton administration as the secretary of defense, and one run by a homeland security secretary in the Bush administration, Michael Chertoff. And DCI Group AZ, a prominent political and corporate consulting firm, collected as much as $5 million.

An affiliate of Americans for Tax Reform, the influential conservative group that has been a vocal critic of government spending, received between $150,000 and $350,000, according to the government’s data. In a statement, the group said the foundation “was badly hurt by the government shutdown” and “does not engage in lobbying.”

A number of prominent private schools were listed as loan recipients, despite the controversy over whether such institutions should take the money.

In New York City, St. Ann’s School took a loan valued between $5 million and $10 million. Kent Place School, a private school in New Jersey, was reported to have received a loan worth between $1 million and $2 million.

Schools with political ties in the Washington area also received loans. Sidwell Friends, which has educated the children of presidents, received a loan worth between $5 million and $10 million, based on the data. Georgetown Preparatory School, which the Supreme Court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch attended, received a loan worth between $2 million and $5 million.

Georgetown Preparatory’s president, the Rev. James R. Van Dyke, said, “We remain committed to doing all that we can to retain our immensely talented faculty and staff,” adding that many of them accept salaries and wages “lower than what they might earn in the for-profit sector or the public school system.”

St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, where Mr. Trump’s youngest son is a student, also received a loan.

Touring companies for rock bands also turned to the government for help as concert venues around the country went dark to prevent the spread of the virus.

A limited liability company called Eagles Touring Company II Foreign received a loan between $350,000 and $1 million. Documents filed in California show that the entity shares an agent with a similarly named company whose president is Don Henley, a founding member of the Eagles, the rock band that had to postpone its tour this spring.

Lil’ Jon Touring and Nickelback Touring 2, among other acts, received loans between $150,000 and $350,000. Lil Jon’s publicist, Tamar Juda, said that the artist had canceled over 75 shows since the beginning of the pandemic and that the funds allowed his core touring staff to remain employed.

Yeezy, which California business filings show is a holding company registered to Mr. West, received between $2 million and $5 million to support 106 jobs, based on the disclosures. The holding company appears to be linked to Mr. West’s apparel brand, having recently filed to trademark the phrase “West Day Ever” for use on clothing. Public relations firms that have worked for Yeezy did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

There was no apparent link between the amount of economic damage suffered by states and how successful the small businesses in them were at getting the loans from the program.

North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas all saw loan approvals of at least 90 percent of their eligible small-business payroll, even though they rank among the least-affected states in terms of unemployment claims during the crisis. Two of the hardest-hit states for claims, New York and California, saw loan approvals equal to about three-quarters of their eligible payrolls; by that measure, California companies would have received billions more from the program if they had seen approvals at the same rate as the Plains states.

Reporting was contributed by Kenneth P. Vogel, Eric Lipton, David McCabe, Steve Eder, Ben Protess, Stacy Cowley and Noam Scheiber.

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2012

Revolution on the Hill.  That was the name of the first event held on the Capitol Hill lawn on Monday, April 16 and sponsored by former presidential candidate Herman Cain.  The purpose of the rally was to draw attention to tax reform, fiscal responsibility and the importance of electing true conservatives in government and included such speakers as Dick Morris, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist.  Also taking part were some important talk show hosts.  Pictured here at the event are (from l-r): Cox Media’sNeal Boortz; Talk Radio Network and WGST, Atlanta’s Rusty Humphries; and WLAC, Nashville-based Radio America-syndicated host Steve Gill.

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https://www.atr.org/grover-norquist-speech-new-orleans-vaping-movement-will-win

In a speech to vapor product business owners and consumers, ATR president Grover Norquist recently outlined his view on how vapers can defeat efforts to tax and regulate electronic cigarettes and vapor products.  New CDC data suggests that there are more than 9 million adult consumers of vapor products in the United States.

As Grover explains, the large number of consumers using these products to live healthier tobacco-free lives represents a political movement that politicians would be wise to recognize, especially as we head into the 2016 election cycle.

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daily caller bs

Democratic minority leader in the Utah House of Representatives launched a broadside against President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist Thursday, while arguing for an 86 percent tax increase for e-cigarettes.

Rep. Brian King argued the House Revenue and Taxation Committee should have a straight up or down vote on bill HB333, and told committee members and an audience that included a gaggle of high school students that taxation should be used to influence people’s behavior and lifestyle choices.

During his remarks, he decided to go after Grover Norquist and ATR, who have been vocal opponents of putting up taxes on e-cigarettes.

“We talk about how you get less of what you tax right?” King said. “It’s one of the things I hear about from the Grover Norquist acolytes, look up Grover Norquist. Grover Norquist acolytes say no tax increase is a good tax increase it’s always bad, always, always, always and he runs around and gets everyone to vow that they’re never gonna increase taxes. That’s all nonsense, it’s all bull.”

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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/05/grover-norquist-hammers-dem-demanding-massive-e-cig-tax/#ixzz44DVjkMTL}:

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60 min aug 2012

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-pledge-grover-norquists-hold-on-the-gop-2/

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_al_Barzinji

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5/14 (~ ingram)

Partnership for a New American Economy, Americans for Tax Reform, and Tea Party Express Release New Poll Showing Tea Party Voters Want Immigration Reform This Year

WASHINGTON DC – Today, Tea Party Express Co-Founder Sal Russo called on Congress to pass immigration reform this year on a new monthly call series hosted by the Partnership for a New American Economy. Russo was joined by Al Cardenas, Chairman of the American Conservative Union on a teleconference moderated by Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform.

“Our economy, our security, and our citizens deserve a system that works,” saidSal Russo, Co-founder of the Tea Party Express. “Tea Party voters want solutions to the real problems facing America and immigration is no exception. We encourage Congress to take action this year and provide conservative, free-market, common sense solutions to the problems in our immigration system.”

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quotes http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/02/990837/-Grover-Norquist-s-Greatest-Hits

A similar dynamic fueled [11] thetort-reformpush of the mid-'90s. This one was a twofer: Tort-lawyer bashing had always been a reliable applause line for Republican politicians, but in 1994 conservativeur-strategist Grover Norquist pointed out [12] that the big losers in tort reform are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers contribute huge amounts of money [13] to the Democratic Party. "The political implications of defunding the trial lawyers would be staggering," he wrote. After that, the tort-reform movement exploded.

You can think of this triumvirate—unions, minority redistricting, and tort reform—as Defunding 1.0. And most of it hasn't stopped: Republicans are still battling private-sector unions and pressing for tort reform. But private-sector unions have mostly been beaten, and tort reform has turned out to be a tough nut to crack. So the GOP has moved on to Defunding 2.0, with a brand new trio of pet projects.

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:{Grover Norquist Abruptly Changes Position On Carbon Tax:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: After Facing Criticism From Koch-Backed Group

By Stephen Lacey on Nov 13, 2012 at 1:27 pm

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist raised a lot of eyebrows on Monday when he told *National Journal* that acarbon tax might be on the table if it were swapped with a cut to the income tax.

“It’s possible you could structure something that wasn’t an increase and didn’t violate the pledge,” he reportedly said.

As president of Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist has convinced hundreds of members of Congress to sign a pledge that they will never raise taxes. While his influence appears to be waning in Washington, Norquist’s tax pledge is still considered gospel for many Republicans. That’s why his willingness to consider a tax on global warming pollution is a big deal in political circles.

But one day later, after being criticized by the American Energy Alliance, the advocacy arm of a**Koch-supported**energy think tankdevoted to promoting fossil fuel development, Norquist has completely reversed his statement, saying there virtually “no conceivable way” he could support a tax on carbon....http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/13/1182511/grover-norquist-abruptly-reverses-position-on-carbon-tax-after-facing-criticism-from-koch-backed-group/

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defends moon:  At times, Moon's penetration of conservative ranks has raised red flags among Republicans. In 1983, the GOP's moderate Ripon Society charged that the New Right had entered "an alliance of expediency" with Moon's church. Ripon's chairman, Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, released a study which alleged that the College Republican National Committee "solicited and received" money from Moon's Unification Church in 1981. The study also accused Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media of benefitting from low-cost or volunteer workers supplied by Moon.

Leach said the Unification Church has "infiltrated the New Right and the party it [the New Right] wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well." Leach's news conference was broken up when then-collegeGOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying. (Norquist is now head of Americans for Tax Reform and a prominent ally of House Speaker Newt Gingrich.)

For its part, The Washington Times dismissed Leach's charges as "flummeries" and mocked the Ripon Society as a "discredited and insignificant left-wing offshoot of the Republican Party." [WP, Jan. 6, 1983]

Despite periodic fretting over Moon's influence, conservatives continued to accept his deep-pocket assistance. When President Reagan and Oliver North were scratching for support for the Nicaraguan contras, The Washington Times established a contra fund-raising operation.Moon's international group, CAUSA, also dispatched operatives to Central America to assist the contras. robt parry wapost

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon3.html

enforcer:

Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative anti-tax group, is taking shots at Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) for donating to Senate Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia.[coal?]

**Read the whole story at *The Hill***

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salon: jumps the shark:

Has Grover Norquist gone too far? The uncompromising starve-the-beast activist — before whom (nearly) all Republicans bend a cowering knee, for fear of violating his anti-tax-hike pledge — has always had a way with the over-the-top sound bite. On Monday, he reaffirmed his penchant for lethal toxicity and may have finally stepped over the line, when he called a conservative Republican senator a liar who appears to have developed Stockholm syndrome.

The senator in question is Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn, and there’s some history here. Coburn and Norquist have been tussling with each other for years, providing much delight to liberal spectators who are probably hoping that neither party is left standing after a 12-round heavyweight fight. Their most recent disagreement centered on Norquist’s contention that abolishing a tax break for ethanol constituted a tax hike that must be matched by other cuts. Coburn, who introduced the amendment to get rid of the tax break, argued that Norquist’s position was ridiculous: Getting rid of tax loopholes negotiated by special interests should not be considered the equivalent of tax hikes.

In a Monday op-ed in the New York Times, “A Greater American Pledge,” Coburn upped the ante. Not only did he reiterate his scorn for Norquist’s position on matching every tax loophole eradication with another tax cut, but he also took matters a serious step further, declaring that Republicans were willing to cut a “grand bargain” with Democrats that included revenue increases.

Crazy talk! In the Church of Norquist, Coburn’s assertion is equivalent to saying that the Vatican is ready to cut a deal with Planned Parenthood that would allow some abortions. Norquist wasted no time communicating his dismay to The Hill.

Norquist told The Hill that the piece is filed with “lies” and said that Coburn is violating, and trying to get colleagues to violate, a pledge they made to voters…

He also said that Coburn’s claims about his colleagues turning their backs on the pledge are false.

“When Coburn stands up and says, ‘I want to raise taxes,’ he stands alone,” Norquist said.

Norquist said that Coburn … appears to have “gone native or developed Stockholm Syndrome” from spending too much time with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in Gang of Six meetings.

no real data, clever: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000047095&year=2012

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Norquist’s National Lobby Expenditures Drop Again in 2011

February 8, 2012 By Laurie Bennet

The Washington lobby expenditures of Americans for Tax Reform declined last year, for the third year in a row.

The organization’s spending has dropped by more than 40 percent, from $1.2 million in 2008 to $680,000 in 2011.

This might come as a surprise to many who see the group’s leader, Grover Norquist, as an omnipresent force for tax reform and a balanced budget amendment.

GQ ranked him as the 18th most powerful person in Washington. Sen. John Kerry called him “the 13th member” of the debt-reduction supercommittee.

(MSNBC host Joe Scarborough later criticized Democrats for trying to lay the supercommittee collapse on the anti-tax activist. “Blaming Grover Norquist is the greatest Democratic fabrication since the Tonkin Gulf incident,” Scarborough said.)

Norquist is one of seven people registered as ATR lobbyists. All work directly for the organization, which doesn’t employ outside lobby shops.

Norquist’s power comes less from lobbying than from his “no new taxes” pledge, weekly meetings with legislators, and campaign spending.

The size of his flock – an overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress have signed the pledge – has given him influence that extends well beyond Americans For Tax Reform.

He is a contributing editor at American Spectator and a director of both the American Conservative Union and the National Rifle Association of America.

Along with other conservative leaders, Norquist will take the stage this week for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

ATR has also broadened its reach, through targeted programs such as theAlliance for Worker Freedom, which advocates for right-to-work issues; and the Center For Fiscal Accountability, whose stated mission is to “enhance transparency in government.”

Other affiliated projects include the American Shareholders Association, the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, the Property Rights Alliance, and the Media Freedom Project.

None of the affiliates is a registered lobby client in Washington.

ATR has also focused on tax reform at the state level. Regular meetings similar to the group’s weekly sessions in Washington are now held in 47 states.

Norquist recently wrote to members of the Massachusetts House and Senate, urging them to reject proposed tax hikes on tobacco and soda.He also sent a letter to Washington state legislators, criticizing a proposal to ban plastic bags and impose a tax on paper bags.

In recent years, ATR has dedicated more of its cash to elections, spending more than $4.1 million in the 2010 cycle. Most of that money – about 84 percent – was spent in opposing Democratic candidates for the House and Senate.

The effort brought mixed results: Eight of those candidates lost and nine won.

The group has not reported 2011 contributions or expenditures to the Federal Election Commission.

According to its most recent tax returns, its total income in 2010 was almost $12.4 million, three times that of the previous year. It spent more than $8 million on advertising, including the expenditures for attack ads.

Many industries – such as tobacco and soft drink companies operating in Massachusetts and bag makers selling their products in Washington – would be in a position to support the group’s opposition to tax hikes.

However, as a 501(c)(4) organization, ATR does not disclose its donors.

Bills lobbied by ATR in the last quarter of 2011:

112 H.J.RES.2: Proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

112 H.R.1002: Wireless Tax Fairness Act of 2011

112 H.R.1173: Fiscal Responsibility and Retirement Security Act of 2011

112 H.R.1380: New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011

112 H.R.1540: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

112 H.R.1834: Freedom to Invest Act of 2011

112 H.R.1860: Digital Goods and Services Tax Fairness Act of 2011

112 H.R.1904: Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation Act of 2011

112 H.R.2112: Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012

112 H.R.2118: To amend the National Labor Relations Act relating to the authority to enjoin State laws that are preempted by or conflict with such Act.

112 H.R.2168: Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act

112 H.R.2309: Postal Reform Act of 2011

112 H.R.2354: Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012

112 H.R.2433: Veterans Opportunity to Work Act of 2011

112 H.R.2587: Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act

112 H.R.2701: Main Street Fairness Act

112 H.R.2913: To amend title 5, United States Code, to provide for the termination of further retirement benefits for Members of Congress, except the right to continue participating in the Thrift Savings Plan.

112 H.R.2945: Capital Gains Inflation Relief Act of 2011

112 H.R.3062: Dairy Security Act of 2011

112 H.R.3078: United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement Implementation Act

112 H.R.3079: United States-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement Implementation Act

112 H.R.3080: United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

112 H.R.3091: To make permanent the individual income tax rates for capital gains and dividends.

112 H.R.3099: Buffett Rule Act of 2011

112 H.R.3156: Consumer Debit Card Protection Act

112 H.R.3179: Marketplace Equity Act of 2011

112 H.R.3243: Common Sense Deficit Reduction Act of 2011

112 H.R.3261: Stop Online Piracy Act

112 H.R.3630: Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011

112 H.R.3671: Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012

112 H.R.622: To extend the Andean Trade Preference Act, and for other purposes.

112 H.RES.479: Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 10) to amend chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, to provide that major rules of the executive branch shall have no force or effect unless a joint resolution of approval is enacted into law, and for other purposes.

112 S.1011: Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2011

112 S.1212: Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act

112 S.1452: Main Street Fairness Act

112 S.1507: Employee Rights Act

112 S.1619: Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011

112 S.1651: Honest Budget Act

112 S.1660: American Jobs Act of 2011

112 S.1676: Buffett Rule Act of 2011

112 S.1720: Jobs Through Growth Act

112 S.1832: Marketplace Fairness Act

112 S.1863: New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011

112 S.1931: Temporary Tax Holiday and Government Reduction Act

112 S.25: Stop Unfair Giveaways and Restrictions Act of 2011

112 S.543: Wireless Tax Fairness Act of 2011

112 S.720: Repeal the CLASS Entitlement Act

112 S.971: Digital Goods and Services Tax Fairness Act of 2011

112 S.J.RES.10: Joint resolution proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

112 S.J.RES.6: A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to regulating the Internet and broadband industry practices.

http://firststreetresearch.cqpress.com/2012/02/08/norquists-national-lobby-expenditures-drop-again-in-2011/

wired 6.12 lobby for MS http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/podesta_pr.html

Clean-Energy Requirements Targeted by ALEC, Norquist

by Jim Snyder, bloomberg.com - Apr 23, 2012

Small-government groups including the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose advocacy for Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground law and other measures have drawn calls to revoke its tax-exempt status, are taking aim at state mandates requiring renewable energy use.

While environmentalists view the clean-energy standards as vital to reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels, groups like ALEC and the Grover Norquist-run Americans for Tax Reform say the mandates are a hidden tax on consumers and a drag on state economies.

[...]

End of Stimulus

Opposition to the mandates coincides with the expiration of some federal incentives for renewables -- many contained in the 2009 stimulus legislation. The repeal or weakening of state standards puts at risk an industry still dependent on government aid to compete with dirtier but cheaper fossil fuels, advocates say.

State standards have “really helped get the market started for renewable-energy technology,” said Dylan Sullivan, a Chicago-based staff scientist with Natural Resources Defense Council in New York, in an interview. [...]

"State standards" -- Hmmm that's right up the ALEC's alleyway.

Look out green-energy-frontier people.  Your government's got your back -- NOT! ... not if the GOP gets their short-sighted, 19th century way ...

It's not like rolling back Clean-Energy tax credits will put MORE money in Grover's greasy pockets.

Nope, it's just that he can't stand having Obama win -- on anything!  Nope, the GOP can't have that, their lies depend on it.

Never mind this Renewable Energy rollback will impact real Americans, already working at real American Jobs ...

tens of thousands of them.

Wind Power Layoffs Mounting While Congress Remains Gridlocked

by James McConnell, Chicago Economic Policy Examiner, examiner.com -- May 4, 2012

Federal Renewable Energy Production Tax Credits are scheduled to expire December 31, 2012, unless Congress acts to extend them. Congress isn’t doing anything about moving extension measures forward. The wind energy industry needs at least 18 months of certainty about availability of the credit to make starting a new project economically viable. As a result, industry layoffs are already beginning, and by the end of 2012’s second quarter are expected to reach 10,000 jobs lost.

Passage of time makes the picture even bleaker. Without Congressional action, wind power layoffs could reach 20,000 jobs lost by the end of the third quarter and 30,000 jobs lost by year end. [...]

On the other hand, if Congress were to act now, according to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry could create 100,000 new jobs in the next four years. Certainty about tax credit availability is the key.

[...]

GOP Conservatives talk a big game about "creating jobs" -- but when it comes to putting Americans to work, to build our Energy Independent future, they apparently think the only good energy subsidy -- is a Big Oil Subsidy.  

Ahh, we tried that already.  How's that Big Oil promise working out for you people?

Hopefully the American people catch on this time -- and VOTE IN people who actually share our Clean Energy goals ...

Poll: 75 Percent of Americans Support Regulating CO2 As A Pollutant, 60 Percent Support Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, thinkprogress.org -- Apr 26, 2012

A new national survey confirms strong public support for funding renewable energy research, regulating carbon pollution, and signing a global treaty to slash emissions. The study, [...] found a remarkable 75% of Americans support “regulating carbon dioxide (the primary greenhouse gas) as a pollutant.”

The survey’s results are counter to widely held assumptions among the media and politicians, but consistent with recent polling. The poll found:

* 61 percent said they support holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for “hidden costs we pay for citizens who get sick from polluted air and water, military costs to maintain access to foreign oil, and the environmental costs of spills and accidents.”

[...]

* By 3 to 1 -- 58 percent to 17 percent -- Americans say “protecting the environment … improves economic growth and provides new jobs” vs those who say it “reduces economic growth and costs jobs.”

[...]

We really can't afford many more "business as usual" years, now can we.

 nice archive http://old.mediatransparency.org/personprofileprinterfriendly.php?personID=52

60 mingrover norquist

 lobbied for BP  XL pipeline

http://www.wltx.com/news/article/159915/142/Grover-Norquists-hold-on-the-GOP

koch:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/grover-norquist-the-billionaires-best-friend-20111109

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/11/28/111128taco_talk_mayer

Norquist [32: 19],

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist

It was the birth of what is now known as "Starve the Beast" – a conscious strategy by conservatives to force cuts in federal spending by bankrupting the country. As conceived by the right-wing intellectual Irving Kristol in 1980, the plan called for Republicans to create a "fiscal problem" by slashing taxes – and then foist the pain of reimposing fiscal discipline onto future Democratic administrations who, in Kristol's words, would be forced to "tidy up afterward."

There was only one problem: The Reagan tax cuts spiked the federal deficit to a dangerous level, even as the country remained mired in a deep recession. Republican leaders in Congress immediately moved to reverse themselves and feed the beast. "It was not a Democrat who led the effort in 1982 to undo about a third of the Reagan tax cuts," recalls Robert Greenstein, president of the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "It was Bob Dole." Even Reagan embraced the tax hike, Stockman says, "because he believed that, at some point, you have to pay the bills."

For the remainder of his time in office, Reagan repeatedly raised taxes to bring down unwieldy deficits. In 1983, he hiked gas and payroll taxes. In 1984, he raised revenue by closing tax loopholes for businesses. The tax reform of 1986 lowered the top rate for the wealthy to just 28 percent – but that cut for high earners was paid for by closing tax loopholes that resulted in the largest corporate tax hike in history. Reagan also raised revenues by abolishing special favors for the investor class: He boosted taxes on capital gains by 40 percent to align them with the taxes paid on wages. Today, Reagan may be lionized as a tax abolitionist, says Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator and friend of the president, but that's not true to his record. "Reagan raised taxes 11 times in eight years!"

  1. But Reagan wound up sowing the seed of our current gridlock when he gave his blessing to what Simpson calls a "nefarious organization" – Americans for Tax Reform. Headed by Grover Norquist, a man Stockman blasts as a "fiscal terrorist," the group originally set out to prevent Congress from backsliding on the 1986 tax reforms. But Norquist's instrument for enforcement – an anti-tax pledge signed by GOP lawmakers – quickly evolved into a powerful weapon designed to shift the tax burden away from the rich. George H.W. Bush won the GOP presidential nomination in 1988 in large part because he signed Norquist's "no taxes" pledge. Once in office, however, Bush moved to bring down the soaring federal deficit by hiking the top tax rate to 31 percent and adding surtaxes for yachts, jets and luxury sedans. "He had courage to take action when we needed it," says Paul O'Neill, who served as Treasury secretary under George W. Bush.

The tax hike helped the economy – and many credit it with setting up the great economic expansion of the 1990s. But it cost Bush his job in the 1992 election – a defeat that only served to strengthen Norquist's standing among GOP insurgents. "The story of Bush losing," Norquist says now, "is a reminder to politicians that this is a pledge you don't break." What was once just another campaign promise, rejected by a fiscal conservative like Bob Dole, was transformed into a political blood oath – a litmus test of true Republicanism that few candidates dare refuse.

After taking office, Clinton immediately seized the mantle of fiscal discipline from Republicans. Rather than simply trimming the federal deficit, as his GOP predecessors had done, he set out to balance the budget and begin paying down the national debt. To do so, he hiked the top tax bracket to nearly 40 percent and boosted the corporate tax rate to 35 percent. "It cost him both houses of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections," says Chafee, the former GOP senator. "But taming the deficit led to the best economy America's ever had." Following the tax hikes of 1993, the economy grew at a brisk clip of 3.2 percent, creating more than 11 million jobs. Average wages ticked up, and stocks soared by 78 percent. By the spring of 1997, the federal budget was headed into the black.

But Newt Gingrich and the anti-tax revolutionaries who seized control of Congress in 1994 responded by going for the Full Norquist. In a stunning departure from America's long-standing tax policy, Republicans moved to eliminate taxes on investment income and to abolish the inheritance tax. Under the final plan they enacted, capital gains taxes were sliced to 20 percent. Far from creating an across-the-board benefit, 62 cents of every tax dollar cut went directly to the top one percent of income earners. "The capital gains cut alone gave the top 400 taxpayers a bigger tax cut than all the Bush tax cuts combined," says David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich – and Cheat Everybody Else.

The cuts also juiced irrational exuberance on Wall Street. Giving a huge tax advantage to investment income inflated the dot-com bubble, observed Stiglitz, "by making speculation more attractive." And by eliminating capital gains taxes on home sales, the cuts fueled the housing bubble: A study by the Federal Reserve estimated that the tax giveaways boosted housing transactions by 17 percent through 2007.

The most revealing aspect of the tax cuts, however, came from a simple mistake. In a major blow to the inheritance tax – America's most progressive form of taxation – the GOP cuts nearly doubled the amount that the rich could pass on to their heirs tax-free. From now on, the first $1 million would be exempt from federal taxes – unless your estate was worth more than $17 million. In those rare cases, the superwealthy would have to pay taxes on their entire inheritance.

Then something strange happened. Due to a "drafting error," the final bill failed to include the exception for the superwealthy. Everyone in both parties agreed that it had been a mistake. But instead of fixing the error, Republicans blocked a pro forma correction to the law – meaning that even the wealthiest estates would pay no taxes on the first $1 million. The move effectively secured an $880 million tax cut for the rich– one that Congress never intended, and never voted for. Ari Fleischer, the then-spokesman for Rep. Bill Archer of the House Ways and Means Committee, exulted over the undemocratic tax cut for the wealthy. "When a mistake works against the government and for the taxpayers," he explained, "we're in no rush to correct it."...

In retrospect, the true victor of the midterm elections last year was not the Tea Party, or even Speaker of the House John Boehner. It was Grover Norquist.

"What has happened over the last two years is that Grover now has soldiers in the field," says Bartlett, the architect of the Reagan tax cuts. "These Tea Party people, in effect, take their orders from him." Indeed, a record 98 percent of House Republicans have now signed Norquist's anti-tax pledge – which includes a second, little-known provision that played a key role in the debt-ceiling debacle. In addition to vowing not to raise taxes, politicians who sign the pledge promise to use any revenue generated by ending a tax subsidy to immediately finance – that's right – more tax cuts.

Norquist insists the measure is necessary to force Congress to rein in spending. "I'm not focused on the deficit," he says. "The metric that matters is keeping spending down." But in the real world, the effect of Norquist's oath is to prevent the government from cutting the deficit by ending tax breaks to the rich. All told, tax breaks cost the government $1.2 trillion each year – far more than defense spending ($744 billion), Medicare and Medicaid ($719 billion) or Social Security ($701 billion). And most of the breaks – think of them as government subsidies delivered through the tax code – go to the wealthy. The richest one percent of Americans receive a 13.5 percent boost in their incomes from such subsidies – almost double the benefit the bottom 80 percent receives. Under Norquist's pledge, lawmakers are forbidden from ending any kind of tax break – mortgage deductions for luxury vacation homes, subsidies for giant oil companies, lower tax rates for private-equity millionaires – without using the money to pay for another tax cut."If you can't get rid of tax expenditures – if old Grover is going to call that a 'tax increase' – it's not just ludicrous, it's deception," says Simpson, the former GOP senator.

Ludicrous or not, Norquist's intransigence on tax expenditures killed the "grand bargain" that President Obama proposed during the debt-ceiling standoff. In return for $1 trillion in cuts to social spending and national security, plus another $650 billion in reductions to entitlements like Medicare, Obama asked Republicans to get rid of $1.2 trillion in wasteful tax subsidies. "Democrats weren't talking about raising taxes – they were talking about eliminating tax expenditures, for God's sakes!" says Voinovich. "Many of them should have been eliminated a long time ago." But with so many Republicans committed to Norquist's anti-revenue pledge, Boehner was forced to walk away from the deal.

"Grover's got 'em terrified," says Simpson. "I always tell Republicans, 'Hell, Grover can't kill ya. He can't burn down your house. The only thing he can do to you is defeat you in re-election – and if re-election means more to you than your country, then you shouldn't be in the legislature.'"

The battle over the debt ceiling underscores the GOP's rapid evolution into the Party of the Rich. The budget savings projected from the compromise that Republicans wound up agreeing to – $2.1 trillion – won't even begin to pay for costs incurred by the Bush tax cuts. In their first decade alone, the cuts wound up depriving the Treasury of $2.5 trillion – with 38 percent of the money now going to the richest one percent of Americans. For all their talk of cutting the deficit in recent years, Republicans have spent far more of the public's money to subsidize the wealthy....

The composition of the committee offers little hope that Congress will hold the rich accountable for their share of the deficit burden. While Democrats appointed deal-oriented centrists like Sen. Max Baucus to the committee, Republicans stocked it with anti-revenue hard-liners, including Sens. Jon Kyl and Pat Toomey, who used to run the Club for Growth – an ally of Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. "Your wallet is safe," Norquist tweeted after the Republican roster was announced.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Norquist expresses pride that the GOP has been so thoroughly transformed since the days of Reagan. "It's a different Republican Party now," he says. Norquist even goes so far as to liken the kind of Republicans common in Reagan's day – those willing to raise taxes to strengthen the economy – to segregationists. The "modern Republican Party," he says, would no sooner recognize a revenue-raiser than the "modern Democratic Party would recognize George Wallace."

Norquist expresses no discomfort at the moral impact of his project – providing tax favors for the wealthy that are paid for by cutting services to those who truly need them. "I understand greed and envy," Norquist says. "The idea that somebody's making money and you want to steal some of it? That's an interesting idea. But it's not morality. It's certainly not justice."

Such extremist rhetoric – equating taxation with theft – is exactly the kind of talk that dismays old-line Republicans. Many of those who fought for years at the side of Ronald Reagan say they no longer recognize traditional GOP values in the new Republican Party. Fighting for the rich, after all, is not the same as championing the right.

"You can look up my record: On conservatism and taxes I was better than Jesse Helms," says Simpson, the former senator. "But whatever happened to common sense? People are going to look around in five or 10 years and say, 'Whatever happened to the things that made me comfortable? That made our streets and schools good things?' And they'll look, hopefully, at Grover Norquist. I can say to you with deepest sincerity: If this country and this legislature are in thrall to Grover Norquist, we haven't got a prayer."

This story is from the November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

related 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109?print=true

Grover Norquisthas never held elected office. He's not a political appointee or a congressional staffer, and few voters know his name. Yet this anti-tax lobbyist wields immense power over the Republican Party, enforcing a hard-line position that compels the GOP to protect tax breaks for the rich and billions in federal subsidies for America's wealthiest corporations. "It all comes from a single guy," says Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator. So how does Norquist do it?

Norquist's influence over the GOP began in 1985, when Ronald Reagan tapped the little-known staffer at the Chamber of Commerce to head up Americans for Tax Reform, a pressure group organized to push a comprehensive tax package through Congress. With backing from the Chamber, Norquist – a Harvard MBA and former head of the College Republicans – challenged GOP candidates to take a two-part pledge: that they would never raise taxes, and that they would only close tax loopholes if the additional revenue was used to pay for further tax cuts. Before long, he had 102 congressmen and 16 senators signed up.

Over the past 25 years, Norquist has received funding from many of America's wealthiest corporations, including Philip Morris, Pfizer and Micro­soft. To build a farm team of anti-tax conservatives, Norquist shrewdly took the pledge to state legislatures across the country, pressuring up-and- coming Republicans to make it a core issue before they're called up to the big leagues. "We're branding the whole party that way," Norquist says. "The people who are going to be running for Congress in 10 or 20 years are coming out of state legislatures with a history with the pledge."

Norquist also built the anti-tax pledge into the DNA of the GOP by hosting weekly Wednesday meetings that enable activist groups representing everyone from gun nuts to home-schoolers to mix with top business lobbyists and conservative officials. The meetings, which began shortly after Bill Clinton was elected, turned Norquist into the Republican Party's foremost power broker – and gave him a forum to enforce the no-new-taxes pledge as the centerpiece of the GOP's strategy. "The tax issue," he says, "is the one thing everyone agrees on."

Norquist cemented his influence by forging an early alliance with Karl Rove and setting himself up as a gatekeeper to George W. Bush's inner circle. Then, after Obama was elected, this ultimate Washington insider positioned himself as a leader of the anti-establishment Tea Party, complete with financial support from the billionaire Koch brothers. "These Tea Party people, in effect, take their orders from him," says Bruce Bartlett, an architect of the Reagan tax cuts. "He decides: This is a permissible tax action, or this is not a permissible tax action. And of course, anything that cuts taxes is per se OK."

Today, GOP politicians who have signed Norquist's anti-tax pledge include every top Republican running for president, 13 governors, 1,300 state lawmakers, 40 of the 47 Republicans in the Senate, and 236 of the 242 Republicans in the House.What's more, the GOP's Tea Party foot soldiers are marshaled by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor – a veteran of Norquist's farm team, who first signed the pledge as an ambitious member of the Virginia legislature. Under Cantor's leadership, Norquist's anti-tax pledge was directly responsible for last summer's debt-ceiling standoff that wrecked the nation's credit rating by leading the nation to the brink of default. "Congress was willing to cause severe economic damage to the entire population," marvels Paul O'Neill, Bush's former Treasury secretary, "simply because they were slaves to an idiot's idea of how the world works."

This story is from the November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

Related* •*How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

• The Enablers: Democrats on Board With the Party of the Rich

Articles about Grover Norquist and weekly right-wing coordination meetings

[153]

Sowing the Seeds of GOP Domination: Conservative Norquist Cultivates Grass Roots Beyond the Beltway [154], Laura Blumenfeld, Washington Post, January 12, 2004

"They gather every Wednesday morning in a boardroom of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist is president of the anti-tax group. The shades are down, the lights are weak, yet an incandescent assuredness infuses the room. A hundred and twenty people mill around, eating bagels, distributing talking points, exchanging business cards and tips. They are lobbyists, analysts, senior White House and Hill staffers, advocates for property rights, gun ownership and traditional values."

From The Mighty Wurlitzer [25], Robert Borosage, The American Prospect, May 6, 2002

"Most prominent is Grover Norquist's famous Wednesday meetings, which convene a who's who of conservative activists from 70 or so groups with grass-roots operations, from the NRA to the Christian Coalition, plus conservative congressional aides and writers who serve as movement propagandists. But there are also weekly Wednesday night gatherings of under-30 conservatives, called the Third Generation, at the Heritage. There are monthly Chinatown lunches of the Federalist Society, a network of right-wing judicial extremists. There's Tyrrell's Saturday Evening Club, a monthly confab of leading conservative writers and pundits at a French restaurant. And there's the annual national Conservative Political Action Committee meeting, where of hundreds of grass-roots activists from around the country are roused to battle and given their marching orders."

The Caveman Cometh [155], The Economist , March 31, 2001 U.S. Edition

House divided [156], Mary Jacoby, Salon, May 24, 2004

"For years, Norquist and DeLay have worked to purge the nation's corporate lobby shops of Democrats, and companies that fill GOP campaign coffers with money are rewarded with access to lawmakers. Enemies don't get their calls returned, and without access, they lose clients. Access is coordinated by the White House, often through the office of another powerful Texan, political strategist Karl Rove.

For two years, the assistant who answered Rove's phone was a woman who had previously worked for lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a close friend of Norquist's and a top DeLay fundraiser. One Republican lobbyist, who asked not to be named because DeLay and Rove have the power to ruin his livelihood, said the way Rove's office worked was this: "Susan took a message for Rove, and then called Grover to ask if she should put the caller through to Rove. If Grover didn't approve, your call didn't go through.""

Grover Norquist: 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan [157], Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation, April 26, 2001

" 'The meeting functions as the weekly checklist so that everybody knows what's up, what to do,' says Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, a conservative pollster who has been a regular attendee for years."

Grover Norquist [158], Media Transparency Report

"Grover Norquist is one of the most connected members of the new right wing movement. He has close ties to the Republican Party, large U.S. business interests, and both the subsidized and regular U.S. media. He truly represents the nexus of politics, business and media."

Wednesdays with Grover [159], New Yorker, August 1, 2005

Norquist's power high, profile low [160], Susan Page, USA TODAY June 1, 2001

The Soul of the New Machine [161], Michael Scherer, Mother Jones, January/February, 2004

"The invitation-only meetings Norquist hosts have become a hot ticket for Washington's conservative in crowd, the place for GOP players to brainstorm, swap intelligence, and see and be seen. The 100-plus people who come each week are the powers who run the federal government—congressmen, lobbyists, senior White House and Senate staffers, industry-group leaders, and right-wing policy wonks. "Everybody there has some sort of entrée," says conservative activist Peter Ferrara, a longtime attendee. "When the White House sits down and says, 'We want to get the word out on something,' the top of the list is Grover.""

Grover Norquist -- The Republican Party's prophet of permanence [162], Chris Suellentrop, Slate, July 7, 2003

Conservatives Savor Their Role as Insiders in the White House [163], Robin Toner, New York Times, March 18, 2001

From their own mouths

Sowing the Seeds of GOP Domination: Conservative Norquist Cultivates Grass Roots Beyond the Beltway [157], Laura Blumenfeld, Washington Post, January 12, 2004

"They gather every Wednesday morning in a boardroom of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist is president of the anti-tax group. The shades are down, the lights are weak, yet an incandescent assuredness infuses the room. A hundred and twenty people mill around, eating bagels, distributing talking points, exchanging business cards and tips. They are lobbyists, analysts, senior White House and Hill staffers, advocates for property rights, gun ownership and traditional values."

Achieving a "Leninist" Strategy [164], Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, Cato Institute, Cato Journal, vol. 3, no.2 (Fall 1983) (PDF 783K)

A second, clearer source here [165].

"Lenin recognized that fundamental change is contingent upon ... its success in isolating and weakening its opponents. ... we would do well to draw a few lessons from the Leninist strategy.

Iraq war plans:

And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting industries." The Plan makes it clear that—even if we didn't go in for the oil—we certainly won't leave without it.

If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S. corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.

From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.

Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right. In Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a pow-wow of big business political operatives and right-wing muscle groups—including the Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association where Norquist quarterbacks their media and legislative offensive for the week.

Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express, Norquist today directs Americans for Tax Reform, a kind of trade union for billionaires unnamed, pushing a regressive "flat tax" scheme.

Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's L-Street office. Below a huge framed poster of his idol ("NIXON— NOW MORE THAN EVER"), Norquist could not wait to boast of moving freely at the Treasury, Defense and State Departments, and, in the White House, shaping the post-conquest economic plans—from taxes to tariffs to the "intellectual property rights" that I pointed to in the Plan.

Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a piece of the Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the change in copyright laws after seeking the guidance of the Recording Industry Association of America.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=551

also palast:

Source:   Email from Greg Palast ( palast@gregpalast.com) July 2005.

More problems with Lyco's site builder

February 2001 - Only one month after the first Bush-Cheney inauguration, the State Department's Pam Quanrud organizes a secret confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam.   US oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator.   On BBC Television's Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained, "It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime."

March 2001 - Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil-company executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq.  Cheney refuses to release the names of those attending or their purpose.  Harper's has since learned their plan and purpose -- see below.

October/November 2001 - An easy military victory in Afghanistan emboldens then-Dep. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to convince the Administration to junk the State Department "coup" plan in favor of an invasion and occupation that could remake the economy of Iraq.  And elaborate plan, ultimately summarized in a 101-page document, scopes out the "sale of all state enterprises" -- that is, most of the nation's assets,  "…  especially in the oil and supporting industries."

2002 - Grover Norquist and other corporate lobbyists meet secretly with Defense, State and Treasury Officials to ensure the invasion plans for Iraq include plans for protecting "property rights." The result was a pre-invasion scheme to sell off Iraq's oil fields, banks, electric systems, and even change the country's copyright laws to the benefit of the lobbyists' clients.    Occupation chief Paul Bremer would later order these giveaways into Iraq law.

Fall 2002 - Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, is brought in by the Pentagon to plan the management of Iraq's oil fields.  He works directly with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. "There were plans," says Carroll, "maybe even too many plans" -- but none disclosed to the public nor even the US Congress.

January 2003 - Robert Ebel, former CIA oil analyst, is sent, BBC learns, to London to meet with Fadhil Chalabi to plan terms for taking over Iraq's oil.

March 2003 - What White House spokesman Ari Fleisher calls "Operations Iraqi Liberation" (OIL) begins.  (Invasion is re-christened "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom.)

March 2003 - Defense Department is told in confidence by US Energy Information Administrator Guy Caruso that Iraq's fields are incapable of a massive increase in output.  Despite this intelligence, Dep. Secretary   Wolfowitz testifies to Congress that invasion will be a free ride.  He swears, "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. …We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," a deliberate fabrication promoted by the Administration, an insider told BBC, as "part of the sales pitch" for war.

May 2003 - General Jay Garner, appointed by Bush as viceroy over Iraq, is fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  The general revealed in an interview for BBC that he resisted White House plans to sell off Iraq's oil and national assets.   “That’s just one fight you don’t want to take on,” Garner told me.   But apparently, the White House wanted that fight.   The general also disclosed thazt these invade-and-grab plans were developed long before the US asserted that Saddam still held WDM:   “All I can tell you is the plans were pretty elaborate; they didn’t start them in 2002, they were started in 1001.”

November/December 2003 - Secrecy and misinformation continues even after the invasion.  The oil industry objects to the State Department plans for Iraq's oil fields and drafts for the Administration a 323-page plan, "Options for [the] Iraqi Oil Industry."  Per the industry plan, the US forces Iraq to create an OPEC-friendly state oil company that supports the OPEC cartel's extortionate price for petroleum

http://www.skeptically.org/wars/id1.html

Grover Glenn Norquist (born Oct. 19, 1956) is a well-connected :{Republican:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: activist with close ties to business and the :{media:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:.

Contents

Norquist the conservative activist

He is one of the "Gang of Five" in Nina Easton's 2000 book by that name, giving the history of leaders of the modern conservative movement. He has been described as "a thumb-in-the-eye radical rightist" (The Nation), and "Tom Paine crossed with Lee Atwater plus just a soupcon of Madame Defarge" (P.J. O'Rourke).

Norquist is famous for his widely quoted comment that he wants to shrink government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Norquist largely rejects relativism and is comfortable assigning the labels of "good" and "bad". The pledge of "no new taxes" that so many Republican legislators signed was his project. He holds regular meetings for conservative leaders in which strategy is discussed. He once commented, "We play for keeps; they play for lunch."

"Adept at media appearances, Norquist writes a monthly politics column for the American Spectator magazine, and frequently speaks at regional and state think tanks of the movement. He is also well connected with large scale U.S. business interests, having served as economist and chief speech writer for the U.S. **Chamber of Commerce** (1983-1984)."

Shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States in 1992, Norquist began hosting a weekly get-together of conservatives in his Washington office to coordinate activities and strategy. "We were sort of like the Mensheviks after the Russian Revolution," recalls Marshall Wittmann, who attended the first meeting as a representative of the Christian Coalition.

The " Wednesday Meeting" of Norquist's Leave Us Alone Coalition has become an importanthubof conservative political organizing. President Bush began sending a representative to the Wednesday Meeting even before he formally announced his candidacy for president. "Now a White House aide attends each week," reported USA Today in June 2001. "Vice President Cheney sends his own representative. So do GOP congressional leaders, right-leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and some like-minded K Street lobbyists. The meeting has been valuable to the White House because it is the political equivalent of one-stop shopping. By making a single pitch, the administration can generate pressure on members of Congress, calls to radio talk shows and political buzz from dozens of grassroots organizations. It also enables the White House to hear conservatives vent in private -- and to respond -- before complaints fester. [1]

"My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit. Because that person doesn't need the goddamn government for anything," he said describing members of the "Leave-Us-Alone Coalition". [2] (IRA is the acronym for Individual Retirement Account, a privately held superannuation account).

"Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal," Norquist stated in May 2000. "If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050." [3] Norquist based this premise on an earlier statement: "Now that the federal budget is in balance - indeed in substantial surplus - it is the right time for the conservative movement to establish a new goal. We said we wanted to balance the federal budget - we did." Of course, this statement is no longer true thanks to the Bush administration's tax cuts and increases in military spending.

Even within conservative circles, Norquist's combative personality has made enemies. Conservative columnist Tucker Carlson once called him a "mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep ... the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home." [4]

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review's Washington D.C. journalist, Tony Walker, Norquist said the "reason why the Republican takeover of the House, Senate and presidency is important is because we can now avoid passing legislation to buttress the weakened walls of the left's edifice and we can pass legislation to undermine these structures." SYS DEFUND

Bush's second term

Norquist described three key planks of his agenda for Bush's second term as President as being aimed at crippling the financial base of the Democratic Party. First, he told Walker, is tort reform which would mean "trial lawyers have fewer ways to get rich and can't give as much money to the Democratic Party". [5]

Secondly, he said, would be legislative changes making it harder for unions to provide funding to political parties, a measure aimed primarily aimed at cutting funding to the Democratic Party. Finally, the promotion of free trade which further weakens the influence of unions.

Norquist sees the opportunity to perpetuate the conservative revolution beyond Bush's next four years too. "The government consumes 30per cent of people's incomes; that's hardly winning [but] if we do our job right over the next four years, weakening the institutions of the left, reducing the cost of government, reforming the government so that it becomes less intrusive in such a way that we deserve and win the presidency in 2008, that would give us another eight years," he told Walker. [6]

Biography

Norquist grew up in Weston, Massachusetts. Although he is best known as the head of Americans for Tax Reform, which campaigns against income taxes, his introduction to conservative politics was rooted in the anti-Soviet rhetoric of the Cold War. "I was actually a foreign-policy conservative first," he told an interviewer in 1998.

His political leanings were cemented at the age of eleven by reading anti-Communist tracts such as Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover and Witness by Whittaker Chambers. [7] He received a B.A. from Harvard College, which he attended from 1974-1978, following by an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (1979-1981). [8]

Norquist was the Executive Director of College Republican National Committee (CRNC) between 1981-83.

"As Executive Director of the College Republican National Committee in the 1980's, he oversaw the transformation of the committee into a conservative grassroots powerhouse for the Reagan administration. Mr. Norquist, Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed added streamlined the College Republican national structure turned away from the establishment and toward conservatism.

"During his tenure, the College Republicans gained a reputation for hard hitting activism. They built and destroyed a pseudo Berlin Wall for the press and printed thousands of posters depicting marching Russian troops with the caption, 'The Soviet Union Needs You'.Support a Nuclear Freeze'," a biogrpahical profile notes. [9]

As President of Americans for Tax Reform Norquist has used the TAXPAYER PROTECTION PLEDGE as a vehicle to mobilise anti-tax activists and gain commitments from candidates for federal and state office to oppose all tax increases.

He is married to Samah Norquist.

Positions held

Grover Norquist the lobbyist

Foreign Agent lobbying disclosures filed with the U.S. Department of Justice reveal that Norquist has worked for the Government of Seychelles and the Angolan UNITA.

Norquist earned $30,000 in the six months to the end of March 1997 working for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola "to strengthen the ties between the United States and Angola. This was accomplished through personal meetings, telephone calls, and letters directed to various U.S. Government officials". [16]

Subsequent returns stated that "the registrant contacted members of Congress and their staff to discuss the ongoing events surrounding the Angolan peace process" but no additional payments were reported. [17]

Norquist also represented the Republic of the Seychelles Islands, President France Albert Rene in 1997 and 1998. In the six month period ending March 31,1997 Norquists return states that he earned $40,000 for contacting "U.S. Government officials on behalf of the foreign principal in order to promote and strengthen ties between the U.S. and Seychelles, with specific regard to U.S. military activities in the Indian Ocean." [18]

The next return stated that he earned $50,000 over six months for contacting "members of Congress and their staff to discuss the strategic relationship between the U.S. and the foreign principal and the possibility of increasing U.S. visibility in the Seychelles." [19]

Norquist continued to represent the Seychelles until 1999. [20] [21] [22]

Abramoff ties— money laundering allegations

The Associated Press published a story on June 22, 2006, which described Americans for Tax Reform as being used as an obfuscating conduit to Ralph Reed's receiving over one million dollars from a Jack Abramoff client, The Mississippi Choctaws, to keep other casinos from opening as competitors.

Reed, who founded the Christian Coalition, would not have been able to transparently receive these funds directly from the Choctaw without alienating his religious base.

"In Jack Abramoff's world, prominent Washington tax-cut advocate Grover Norquist was a godsend."Moving money from a casino-operating Indian tribe to Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition founder and professed gambling opponent, was a problem. Lobbyist Abramoff turned to his longtime friend Norquist, apparently to provide a buffer for Reed."The result, according to evidence gathered by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, was that Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform became a conduit for more than a million dollars from the Mississippi Choctaw to Reed's operation, while Norquist, a close White House ally, took a cut."Without citing any specific group, the Senate panel found numerous instances of nonprofit organizations that appeared to be involved in activities unrelated to their mission as described to the Internal Revenue Service." [2]

Influence on state and local politics

Norquist's national strategy includes recruiting politicians at the state and local levels. In the Spring of 2005, a New Hampshire statewide grassroots organization, Democracy for New Hampshire (DFNH) [23], initiated a campaign to expose the Norquist influence in that state's political infrastructure. [24] The grassroots strategic initiative, which DFNH believes can be a model for other statewide grassroots organizations, identified state legislators who have pledged allegience to Norquist [25], described how this pledge trumps their oath of allegience to their New Hampshire constituents [26], provided evidence of how Norquist-based tactics affect local communities [27], and called on their elected "Senators and Representatives to renounce the Norquist Pledge and re-affirm their oath to the citizens of New Hampshire".

Resources and articles

Related SourceWatch articles

References

  1. ↑ USUF Board of Directors and Advisory Board, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, accessed August 17, 2008.
  2. ↑ Pete Yost, "Washington tax-cut advocate aided Abramoff," Associated Press, June 23, 2006.

External articles

Retrieved from " http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Grover_Norquist"

Categories: Politics (U.S.) | Think tanks/personnel

http://www.nndb.com/people/482/000049335/

:{Father: Warren Norquist (Vice President, Polaroid)

Mother: Carol Norquist (city tax assessor)}:

Wife: Samah Alrayyes (m. 2-Apr-2005)

    High School: Weston High School, Weston, MA

    University: BA Economics, Harvard University (1978)

    University: MBA, Harvard Business School (1981)

    The American Spectator Columnist

    Microsoft Washington lobbyist

    African American Republican Leadership Council Advisory Panel

    American Conservative Union Board of Directors

    American Enterprise Institute Columnist for the AEI Newsletter

    Americans for Tax Reform President and Founder

    America's Future Foundation Executive Council

    Bush-Cheney '04

    Citizens for America

    College Republicans

    The Constitution Project Liberty and Security Initiative

    Council for National Policy

    Council on Foreign Relations

    The Heritage Foundation Helped draft the 1994 "Contract with America"

    Islamic Institute President and Founder

    National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters

    National Rifle Association Life Member, sits on the Board of Directors

    National Taxpayers Union Executive Director (1981-83)

    Nevada Policy Research Institute Board of Advisors

    TheVanguard.Org Board of Advisors

    The Harvard Crimson

    Abramoff Scandal

    Evolution Skeptics

    Swiss Ancestry

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Council_for_National_Policy

gave tax hero award to aderholt, earmark biggie Big l 84

Grover Norquistis the 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan.Grover Norquistis the 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan.Grover Norquistis the 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan.Grover Norquistis the 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan.Grover Norquistis the 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan.
Submitted by fedup2006-01-05 11:37:562006-01-05 11:37:562006-01-05 11:37:562006-01-05 11:37:56

moving into high gear as the President's $1.6 trillion tax cut package is worked through Congress by Norquist as President of Americans for Tax Reform.

Norquist has also built a solid working alliance with the Fortune 500 corporate elite and its K Street lobbyists.

"What he's managed to do is to chain the ideological conservatives together with the business guys, who have money, and to put that money to work in the service of the conservative movement," says Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America's Future, who's repeatedly clashed with Norquist.

"And he picks big issues." Besides taxes, Norquist is also the go-to guy on virtually all of the right's favorite agenda items, from privatization of Social Security and Medicare to school vouchers and deregulation.

Norquist gained notoriety as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's right hand in the mid-1990s--helping to design the 1994 Contract With America and rallying the right's grassroots to go to the polls that year, a drive he chronicled in his book Rock the House. When Newt crashed and burned, Norquist survived to become an ally of Gingrich successors, including Tom DeLay, the House majority whip, and Dick Armey, the majority leader. And since late 1998 Norquist has been George W. Bush's unofficial liaison to so-called movement conservatives.

 http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showConnection.php?id1=2800&id2=190

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showConnection.php?id1=2800&id2=190

Norquist cuts an even more striking figure. During the 80's, he'd walk around Washington with a bumper sticker on his briefcase that proclaimed ''I'd rather be killing commies.'' Indeed, when he wasn't in Washington, he could often be found traipsing around Angola and Mozambique with (nominally) anti-Communist rebels. A Gingrich protégé, he later dispensed important advice to Republican politicians with the same fervor.

The K Street Project is a project by the Republican Party to pressure Washington lobbying firms to hire Republicans in top positions, and to reward loyal GOP lobbyists with access to influential officials. It was launched in 1995, by Republican strategist Grover Norquist and House majority leader Tom DeLay.

K Street in Washington DC is where the big lobbying firms have their headquarters and is sometimes refered to as the fourth branch of government. Lobbying firms have great influence in U.S. national politics due to monetary resources and the revolving door policy of hiring former government officials. It is common practice for politicians to request money from lobbying firms for an exchange in better access to officials and to buy favoritism in policies.

Historically, K Street hires top ex-politicians from both major parties since party in power can vary between elections and among the legislative and executive branches in government.

During most of the George W. Bush administration, the Republican party had majority control of both houses of Congress, in addition to control of the White House. DeLay of the House, Rick Santorum of the Senate, and Grover Norquist took this opportunity to expand the K Street Project by pressuring major lobbying firms to hire only Republicans in any new or open positions.

http://www.bananarepublicans.org/excerpt.html

Field Marshall Norquist

Grover Norquist is another prominent leader in the conservative movement's political war. "I would call him our field marshal," said Horace Cooper, a former aide to House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Norquist helped the Heritage Foundation write Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America." His most important contribution, however, has been coalition building. Since 1992, he has hosted Wednesday morning meetings in the Washington, DC office of his organization, Americans for Tax Reform. The Wednesday meeting pulls together the heads of leading conservative organizations to coordinate activities and strategy. "The meeting functions as the weekly checklist so that everybody knows what's up, what to do," says Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, a conservative pollster and regular attendee.

George W. Bush began sending a representative to the Wednesday meeting even before he formally announced his candidacy for president. "Now a White House aide attends each week," reported USA Today in June 2001. "Vice President Cheney sends his own representative. So do GOP congressional leaders, right-leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and some like-minded K Street lobbyists. The meeting has been valuable to the White House because it is the political equivalent of one-stop shopping. By making a single pitch, the administration can generate pressure on members of Congress, calls to radio talk shows and political buzz from dozens of grassroots organizations."

Norquist's coalition advocates abolishing taxes, especially estate taxes and capital-gains taxes. Regulations they want abolished include minimum-wage laws, affirmative action, health and safety regulations for workers, environmental laws and gun controls. They also support cuttingor eliminating a variety of government programs including student loans, state pension funds, welfare, Americorps, the National Endowment for the Arts, farm subsidies, and research and policy initiatives on global warming. Even well entrenched and popular programs such as Medicare, Social Security and education are targeted for rollbacks, beginning with privatization. Most members of the coalition are anti-gay and anti-abortion, although Norquist has made an effort to recruit gay and pro-choice Republicans.

Norquist's political leanings were cemented in his youth by reading anti-communist tracts such as Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover and Witness by Whittaker Chambers. During the 1980s, he visited battlegrounds in the Third World to support anti-Soviet guerrilla armies. In Africa, he assisted guerrilla movements backed by South Africa's apartheid regime - Mozambique's RENAMO and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in Angola, for which he worked as a lobbyist in the 1990s. Among the memorabilia in his Washington office, a prominent photograph shows Norquist holding an AK-47 in Afghanistan - a memento, not of the recent war, but of the 1980s when he and other Reagan conservatives backed the mujahideen in their guerrilla war against the occupying Soviet army. If it troubles him that the mujahideen went on to become the organizing base for Al Qaeda, he has never said so publicly.

The connecting thread between these foreign adventures and the conservative movement's domestic issues is the idea, also born in the Cold War, that all government is somehow like the Soviet bureaucracy and that government programs aimed at promoting the general welfare are therefore "creeping socialism" that must be fought with the same ferocity with which the cold warriors countered revolution in countries like Angola or Mozambique. Norquist has declared that his goal is "to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

This is also the logic behind the name of Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform. "It's not just because taxes are irritating and unpopular and all that," says journalist Elizabeth Drew, who profiled Norquist extensively in her book, Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America. "He has a long-term view, which is the lower the revenues that the government takes in, the less spending it will be able to do, the less money will go to the groups that he sees as the base of the Democratic party and its power - the teachers' unions, welfare workers, municipal workers and so on. This is a big, long-term war. It's total. It's Armageddon. And I have to say that the people on the right, I think, have thought this through much more than their opponents on the other side who really don't much know what they do and how the opposition thinks and are just waking up to it."

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is ostensibly a group that pushes for lower taxes. It has close ties to the Republican Party and has frequently allied itself with the tobacco industry.

Contents[hide]

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

ATR is a member of theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).[1]

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) They fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. Learn more at ALECexposed.org.

Special Projects

The website provides links to the following projects:[1]

Monthly radio program

Grover Norquist's Radio Show, "Leave Us Alone" broadcasts on the internet every fourth Thursday on Rightalk. The organizational website maintains an archive of the programs. [2]

Nationalization of Virginia state tax issues

Starting in 2004, ATF launched a national letterwriting campaign to persuade Virginia legislators to fight Democratic GovernorMark Warner's plan to raise taxes to maintain the state's AAA bond raising and meet commitments to K-12 and higher education funding, among other purposes. Warner had inherited budget shortfalls from his predecessor, Republican George Allen and had already cut spending to avoid a deficit. [3]

When 34 Republican legislators worked with Virginia’s Democratic governor to secure passage, they issued a "Virginia's Least Wanted" poster targeting those Republicans. On April 24, 2005, ATF issued a press release touting those legislators that had signed a pledge not to increase taxes.[4]

On June 15, 2005, after the state primary, ATR issued a press release claiming that "Taxpayer advocates believe the two scalps they claimed last night – those of Gary Reese (H-67), who was defeated by newcomer Chris Craddock, and James Dillard (H-41), who retired rather than face a strong challenge from Michael Golden – are only their latest wins against the pro-tax 'Republicans.' Last September, Sen. Ken Stolle (S-8) was denied a seat in Congress because of his pro-tax vote; anti-tax Delegate Thelma Drake took the seat in Congress instead. In the special election to succeed Thelma Drake, Republican Michael Ball lost by less than 100 votes because he tried to finesse the tax issue."[5]

However, the strategy may have backfired. Both the Dillard and Reese seats, which had been Republican, ended up as Democratic seats in the general election. In fact in the Craddock-Caputo race in Virginia's 67th District, Norquist became a target in the campaign.

KStreetProject.com

K Street Project is "non-partisan research of political affiliation, employment background, and political donations of members in Washington DC's premier lobbying firms, trade associations, and industries." Ironically, it shares its name with theproject by the Republican Party to pressure Washington lobbying firms to hire Republicans in top positions, and to reward loyal GOP lobbyists with access to influential officials. That projects was launched in 1995, by Republican strategist and ATF founder Grover Norquist working with former House majority leader Tom DeLay.

While many of the resources on this site appear non-partisan, there is also a prominent link to Daniel J. Flynn's report on liberal bias in higher education. [6]

Author of Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas (Crown Forum, 2004) and Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness (Prima Forum, 2002). The latter is a Crown imprint which publishes conservative, current event titles. [7] such as Flynn, Ann Coulter and L. Brent Bozell III, founder and president of the Media Research Center. Flynn served from 1994-1997 as program officer for Young America's Foundation, from 1997-2003 as executive director of Accuracy in Academia, and from 2004-2005 as director of the Campus Leadership Program at the Leadership Institute.[8]

Ronald Reagan Legacy Project

TheRonald Reagan Legacy Project is a project of Americans for Tax Reform. It is a project to put Reagan's image on U.S. ten dollar bill and to "dedicate more things after Reagan." It promotes a Ronald Reagan Day and naming landmarks after Reagan.Cite error: Closing missing for tag

Property Rights Alliance

This group works to influence legislation in opposition to the estate tax,[9] environmental protection, licensing restrictions, Federal purchase of land for national parks and wildlife areas, broadcast requirements for multicasting ?and drug importation, as well as seizure by eminent domain. [10]

Alliance for Worker Freedom

The "Alliance for Worker Freedom" is a "special project" of Americans for Tax Reform. The name is really a misnomer, as the Alliance opposes unions. At the Web site of the AWF, it says "AWF works to raise awareness of labor union abuses within the political system by educating movement conservatives on the threats to liberty posed by labor unions." AWF opposes collective bargaining.[2] AWF opposes the Employee Free Choice Act.[3] [11]

The Media Freedom Project

Advocating free market solutions to media, technology and telecommunications policy issueshttp://www.mediafreedomproject.org/index.php?content=aboutus

The American Shareholders Project

This project has the mission of providing a "voice to people...in the public policy debates that impact" savings and investments.[12] This includes opposition to the estate tax and a "fairer, simpler", e.g. less progressive tax rate.[13]

Conservative Movement Maps

"As a resource to our friends and supporters, we have provided issue maps that describe the 50 states in terms of where they are in the issues that most affect Conservatives" such as voting trends, but also government pensions, home schooling and official English laws.[14]

Action Alerts

[15]

End the Estate Tax
Fight Net Neutrality
Oppose any limitations on "Grassroots" Internet Lobbying
Extend lower taxes on capital gains and dividends
Suport Alito for the Supreme Court
Support the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)

"Approving CAFTA will reward the democracies in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic for rejecting the Communists, and will send the message to the region and the world that those who adopt free market policies will prosper, and those who adopt Leftist anti-American protectionist policies will fail."[16]

Personnel

ATR is headed byGrover Norquist, one of the most connected members of the new right-wing movement. He has close ties to the Republican Party, large U.S. business interests, and both the subsidized and regular U.S. media. Norquist helped the Heritage Foundation write the Republican's 1994 Contract With America.

Shortly thereafter, Norquist led a right wing charge to "de-fund" the left, declaring that "We will hunt [these liberal groups] down one by one and extinguish their funding sources." Norquist has also worked as a lobbyist for clients including Microsoft, American Business for Legal Immigration, Distilled Spirits Council, Edison Electric Institute, Interactive Gaming Council, and British Petroleum.

Funding

History

In a May 25, 1989, memo to the Steering Committee of Americans for Tax Reform – a document that was curiously found in the files of the now defunct Tobacco Institute –Grover Norquist excitedly reported progress on the ‘anti-tax front’. Not only had a swag of member of Congress promised to veto any tax increase, Norquist reported, there had been “threeWall Street Journal editorials highlighting the importance of ATR’s pledge campaign in stopping tax hikes”.

He also reported that an article in the Washington Times “which kindly quotes an agreement that I will have input into the question of what is a ‘duck’ – ie tax increase, and what is not”. [18]

Gingrich, as Republican whip in the House of Representatives, negotiated an agreement with the then President George Bush to vet any budget proposals. Under the deal, Gingrich would advise on whether proposed revenue raising proposals were in fact tax increases, or 'ducks' as Gingrich termed them. “It is fair to say, in dealing with Darman [White House Budget Director] and the administration in general on what is and isn’t a duck, I would lean very heavily on Richard Rahn (chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce), Jeff Eisenach and Grover Norquist … They have a very good sense of the distinction between ducks and geese”, Gingrich said.

“The president has agreed the administration team will consult with the House Republicans and that for my part I will, as whip, in turn consult with these three people regarding the duck test,” he said. [19]

Wining and dining with Norquist

While corporate funding for ATR may have been volatile, Norquist had success on another front. In a letter to invitation to PM’s Washington-based Legislative Council, Ms Beverley McKittrick, Norquist reported that during 1997, 1997 and 1998 a series of ATR hosted dinner discussions on tax issues had all been sold out. The earlier dinners had featured speakers such as former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, Congressman John Kasich and Congressman Bill Thomas.

Norquist offered McKittrick a subscription to the 1999 series of six dinners – with Congressmen Armey, Chairman Archer and the Speaker of the House Denny Hastert amongst the invited speakers – “for a modest contribution of $10,000”.

“Only 24 business leaders will be in attendance,” Norquist assured McKittrick. The series of dinners, Norquist wrote, were chaired by Bill Roesing of Seagram & Sons and co-chaired by Chuck Crowders of Lucent Technologies.[20]

By 1999 PM’s contribution to ATR had grown to $160,000. [21] The Tobacco Institute contributed another $10,000 in 1999. [22]

In March 1999, Norquist was active lobbying members of the Senate Budget Committee in defence of the tobacco industry. “The Tobacco industry is a lawful industry subject to an excessive tax burden, already 41 cents per packet to state governments for re-imbursement of smoking related illness and over a dollar per pack taxes (depending on the state, some taxes are much higher0. That is already one-third tax burden on a legal product. Furthermore they employ thousands of Americans, which educates, feeds and clothes families across this nation”, Norquist wrote. [23]

The following week ATR was claiming to legislators that a Senate Budget resolution seeking to remove the tax-deductibility of payments made by the tobacco industry to settle the legal actions taken against it by State Attorney General’s would breach ATR’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge. The second paragraph of the pledge, ATR said, required supporters to “oppose any further reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar further reducing tax rates”.[24]

ATR’s role also extended to facilitating the introduction of one Republican political aspirant to RJR. “Bethany :{Noble:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: from Americans for Tax Reform will be bringing Kevin Kellems (republican candidate to oppose Baron Hill in Ind. 9) by for a brief visit at 3.00 today. Kellems is a tobacco farmer, and has a pretty fair shot at unseating Hill,” Donald Foreman, an RJR staffer, wrote in an e-mail to his colleagues.

There was potential for embarrassment however, as RJR had donated $500 to Hill. Despite this, Foreman suggested “this is a race we may want to keep an eye on and see how it look [sic] in a few months”. [25]

A 1999 RJR Corporate Affairs plan identified one of the key strategies as being to “mobilize key third party groups (such as Americans for Tax reform, CART, NSA and others) to ensure that RJR’s message is effectively communicated, reinforced and understood by key opinion leaders”.

“We seek forums, in the media or with third parties who help us fight onerous legislation/regulation, to balance hyperbolic accusations of well financed critics whose credibility with key audiences is greater than hours”, the document stated. [26]

Tax and spend ... for war

Shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City, the New Republic reported that Norquist had been working to broker a "strange alliance" between the Republican Party and radical Islam.[27] In February 2003, however, ATR weighed in to support the Bush administration's war drive against Iraq. According to the New York Times, "Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said his organization had sent every state legislature a proposed measure for adoption the day fighting starts that supports Mr. Bush's actions."[28]

Contact information

Americans for Tax Reform

1920 L Street NW

Suite 200

Washington, DC 20036

Phone: (202) 785-0266

Fax: (202) 785-0261

Email: friends AT atr.org

Press contact: John Kartch, jkartch AT atr.org

Website:http://www.atr.org/

Articles and resource

Related SourceWatch articles

References

  2. ↑ Noble Ellington, National Chairman Of ALEC Responds To Report, "Fresh Air" Interview with Terry Gross, NPR, July 21, 2011
  3. ↑ Alliance for Worker Freedom Collective Bargaining, organizational Web site, accessed August 27, 2010
  4. ↑ Alliance for Worker Freedom The Employee Free Choice Act, organizational Web site, accessed August 27, 2010

External resources

External articles

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