posted on: Monday, September 19, 2005

In "Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case," The web edition of Time Magazine reported on September 17, 2005 that Republican Senators Jon Kyl (AZ) and Jeff Sessions (AL) have been scouring the lists of the hundreds of people Hurricane Katrina killed. Perhaps, those of us politically to the left of Attila the Hun might think, they were trying to reach out to the families most impacted by the storm? Hardly.

These two paragons of compassionate conservatism were trying to find a dead business owner whose estate would be liable for federal estate taxes. Kyl and Sessions are big proponents of repealing this tax, which would annually drain the federal government of billions of dollars of desperately needed tax revenue, as well as reduce charitable bequests and other giving by several billions of dollars each year.

Nationally, only about 1 percent of the estates of people who die each year are subject to the tax. The Center for American Progress reports that in the 3 Gulf Coast states hit by Katrina, only 709 estates had to pay the tax in 2003.

posted on: Wednesday, September 07, 2005

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports today that a political fund connected to Democratic State Senator Vincent J. Fumo reimbursed the Philadelphia-based Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods for political polling work that the Alliance conducted in 2003 (see http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12576322.htm). Fumo has publicly praised the Alliance, which is a 501(c)(3) public charity nonprofit organization. These types of organizations are barred from engaging in partisan political activity.

According to The Inquirer, “The polling is now a focus of a federal criminal investigation into Fumo's nonprofits, launched in early 2004 after The Inquirer reported that Fumo had extracted $17 million in donations for the nonprofit from Peco Energy, and an additional $10 million in money paid by bridge users to the Delaware River Port Authority.”

NCRP has written about Fumo’s dalliances with nonprofits in the past (see Rick Cohen’s “Strange Bedfellows” article in the Spring 2004 issue of Responsive Philanthropy at http://ncrp1.mediastudio.tv/rparticles.asp), as part of its on-going efforts to monitor and call attention to elected officials who use (and abuse) nonprofit organizations for personal and/or political gain. The Fumo case is also another good example of current shortcomings in government oversight of nonprofits and foundations—once again, the press discovered these nonprofit shenanigans, not the IRS or any other public agency.