Sen. Inhofe: Taxpayer Funded Radicals Unethical

Taxpayers who support President Bush’s re-election may be unaware of it, but rabidly anti-Bush Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has received at least $3.5 million in taxpayer money in recent years, according to information from the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW).

Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., has asked prosecutors to determine if the NRDC and similar tax-funded and/or tax-exempt groups have stepped over the line of what is allowable.

Further, the Senator met with officials of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) late Wednesday to demand an accounting of "how better to disclose what grants are available and to whom grants are being awarded.”

What sparked the Senator’s outrage was an ad in the New York Times a few weeks ago by NRDC and MoveOn.org, the latter backed by the Bush-hating multi-billionaire George Soros.

As Inhofe pointed out on the Senate floor, the ad — complete with pictures of a power plant with billowing smoke - claims that Bush’s policies are the source of mercury contamination in fish and that the president is simply following the wishes of industry contributors. "So why is President Bush trying to weaken controls on mercury pollution?” the ad rhetorically asks.

"The facts, however, are very different,” says Senator Inhofe. The president, he points out, "has proposed the first controls on mercury emissions from power plants,” despite the claim of NRDC.

The group should be asked by the Better Business Bureau to substantiate its claims, the senator believes.

Beyond violating the standards of the Better Business Bureau that solicitations and informational materials be "accurate, truthful and not misleading in any part,” there is a legal question.

The New York Times ad, which was circulated throughout the nation, "may be unlawful in as many as forty other states.”

In the senator’s Oklahoma, state prosecutors based in Tulsa and Oklahoma City have begun investigations of that. Other senators are known to be inquiring as to how the law applies in their states, as well.

The Oklahoma senator read on the Senate floor that part of the Oklahoma statute which reads, "Any person [or organization] who attempts to solicit any contribution as a charitable organization by means of knowingly false or misleading advertisement shall lose its status as a tax-exempt organization and upon conviction be guilty of a felony.”

At the bottom of the ad is a form which readers can use to send money to NRDC. It reads, "Yes, I want to join the Natural Resources Defense Council to help thwart President Bush’s plan to weaken controls on toxic mercury.” Then comes the line, "Here is my tax-deductible gift of $_______.”

One of NRDC’s allies, the Environmental Working Group struck back by filing charges against Senator Inhofe with the Senate Ethics Committee.

Specifically the EWG charges the Oklahoma Republican violated Senate ethics by criticizing the voting record of presumptive Democratic president nominee John Kerry on such environmental issues as "global warming” and drilling for oil in Alaska.

Inhofe’s postings were clearly labeled "Majority [GOP] Fact of the Day” and in no way claimed to be the view of the entire EPW committee. The gist of the Environmental Working Group’s complaint was that while Inhofe was accusing NRDC of unethical behavior, he was engaged in it himself.

"We are not accusing NRDC of [just] unethical behavior, we’re accusing them of illegal behavior, and we’re not doing anything unethical,” Committee Counsel Ryan Jackson told NewsMax.com.

At the Wednesday meeting with EPA, Senator Inhofe pursued his request for over 200 "questionable” grant files (direct taxpayer subsidies) "to various discretionary recipients over the past 6 years to investigate who has received grant funding and what they have produced."

Some of the grantees listed by the senator’s office include NRDC, Environmental Defense, Climate Neutral Network, Tides Center and Tides Foundation, Earth First, World Resources Institute, "and various grants on climate change and environment education.”

EPA promised to look into the matter of subsidies, including the $3.5 million to NRDC, of which the senator is aware.

As to prosecutions, Jackson tells NewsMax, there is a question of whether local district attorneys have the resources to pursue it.

With all the resources available to the EPA, putting one’s finger on all the relevant expenditures of money to these organizations can be difficult because they come from various sources and different programs.