Public Relations Commentary

Increasingly, public relations pracititioners have to know not only how to write for the Web, but also how to manage and respond to blog postings. This blog was created to use in my public relations courses to help my students prepare to blog and learn how to respond to others in a virtual yet professional manner.

Friday, October 13, 2006

"Nonprofits may be ensnared in lobbyist scandal"

Thought this CNN article might be of interest ...

"Five nonprofit groups, including one of President Bush's biggest supporters, may have broken tax laws and put their tax-exempt status at risk by helping convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a Senate Finance Committee report concludes."

Read entire article.

Go Gators!

posted by Anonymous @ 12:42 PM  

1 Comments:

  • At 2:05 PM, October 15, 2006, Blogger Giselle said…

    This is exceptionally interesting, and also raises the accountability issue yet again. Assuming that these are legit nonprofits (which at least one probably isn't, but more on that in a second), how are they going to explain this to their stakeholders?

    Not to mention that a nonprofit's tax-exempt status prohibits them from being paid to lobby (and FYI, practice public relations), which is exactly what Americans for Tax Reform did. They are in all likelihood a PAC, as evidenced by this comment - "Americans for Tax Reform is headed by Grover Norquist, a key ally of Bush and a longtime associate of Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser." This quote from their website is also troubling - "ATR was founded in 1985 by Grover Norquist at the request of President Reagan." Does it strike anyone else as odd that a sitting president would request the formation of a lobbying group against taxation?

    Citizens Against Government Waste is yet another nonprofit formed at the bequest of President Reagan. They need to research further how donations to their organizations ended up in the hands on Abramoff clients for PR purposes, as they seem confused on how that happened.

    I wonder if this information would have come out if the Abramoff scandal hadn't happened. If that's the case, then who knows how many other nonprofits are engaging in activities that would jeopardize their status? I'll bet the IRS would be real interested in that...

     

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