They always say follow the money

IT’S THE TAX STATUS, STUPID
By J. Zane Walley

Rainforest Action Network is in the headlines again.

This time it’s 20 celebrity environmentalists carrying a banner blaring, “Save Free Speech! Stop Boise Cascade!”

They all got arrested for disrupting a Boise Cascade paper facility in Chicago. Much-arrested singer Bonnie Raitt was one of the busted. So was John Densmore, former drummer of former rock group The Doors. You probably wouldn’t recognize the other 18 celebrities by name – mostly non-profit types – even though the rainforest radicals spent a lot of money marketing them.

“Save Free Speech?”

Aren’t those banners supposed to say “Save the Rainforest?”

“Stop Boise Cascade?”

Okay, radicals don’t like big corporations.

But what, you may wonder, does a forest products company have to do with saving free speech?

I wondered too. So I looked into it.

The Rainforest group claimed that Boise Cascade tramples free speech by objecting to protesters disrupting their business. Rainforest radicals recently trespassed to hang a nasty banner on the company’s corporate headquarters in Boise, Idaho.

“We have a right to civil disobedience,” said a Rainforest spokesperson.
Well, amigo, to me “civil disobedience” means breaking laws for political reasons. Does anyone have “a right” to break the law?

A lawyer friend told me that speech which incites people to unlawful action is not protected by the First Amendment if there’s a direct connection between the speech and violation of the law. Trespass is a violation of the law. So is obstruction. Civil disobedience is strictly AYOR – At Your Own Risk. It’s not protected free speech.

That’s what I always thought.

The Chicago Police Department thought so too. The cops hauled off the Rainforest lawbreakers.

Which brings us back to the question: what’s Boise Cascade got to do with trampling free speech?

The answer: nothing.

The banner was a smoke screen.

What’s really going on is this: Rainforest Action Network (RAN), according to several non-profit critics, has been violating the terms of its privileged tax status.

RAN not only doesn’t pay income taxes, but its contributors can also deduct donations from their own income tax.

That’s quite a favored status, and many non-profit organizations have it. It’s called a 501(c)(3) status, named after the pertinent section of the United States Tax Code.

But it comes at a price. To get and keep a 501(c)(3) status, an organization has to engage primarily in educational activities. Advocacy – lobbying and direct action – is strictly limited. Go beyond those limits and your exempt status may be revoked.

RAN has gone beyond the limits, said the Washington, DC-based conservative think tank, Frontiers of Freedom (FOF), founded by retired Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming. RAN should be stripped of its tax exempt status, FOF said.

It’s who FOF said it to that has RAN in banner-carrying hysterics: Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rossotti. Sen. Wallop’s organization sent a long list of RAN’s advocacy violations to the commissioner and asked that RAN be stripped of its exempt status.

About a month later, another group sent Commissioner Rossotti a complaint against RAN, this one alleging unlawful acts. The Bellevue, Washington-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), presented the IRS with evidence of RAN’s alleged unlawful acts, including a document they say appears to show extortion. CDFE asked the IRS to investigate.

That’s what really happened.

But RAN can’t face being accused by fellow non-profit groups. They had to find a big bad corporate villain to blame it on.

It wasn’t hard. RAN operates shakedown campaigns against various large corporations, including Citigroup, Texaco – and timber giant Boise Cascade Corporation. RAN runs boycotts, protests and blockades against numerous companies and offers to stop in return for concessions and money payments.

CDFE’s Ron Arnold said, “If that’s not extortion, what is it?”

RAN immediately claimed that Frontiers of Freedom and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise were on the take from Boise Cascade. RAN said the whole tax exemption thing was a dirty trick by a corporate villain.
Not so, said the two groups. Neither has received grants from Boise Cascade or even talked to executives from the company. Both non-profits were founded to educate the public about American freedoms. Each singled out RAN for their own reasons.

CDFE, for example, has operated a public exposure Web site about RAN since last year (www.RANamuck.org) as part of a massive project exposing the funding of hundreds of environmental groups.

It’s the funding that makes RAN hysterical. Rainforest Action Network rakes in over $3.2 million a year. Over 75 percent is in tax deductible grants from big foundations with fat stock portfolios. Less than 12 percent comes from membership dues.

If the IRS strips RAN of its educational status, the outfit will have to reorganize as an advocacy group. Advocacy groups are not eligible for foundation grants or tax deductible donations. There goes nearly $2.5 million a year.

The Sierra Club changed to an advocacy group years ago when its mission changed from education to activism. RAN doesn’t want to do that. RAN doesn’t want to lose all that money. I’d get hysterical about losing two-and-a-half-million bucks, too, pardner.

Bottom line? It’s about the money. Not free speech. Not Boise Cascade. Not dirty tricks.

As President John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said, “Where there’s smoke, there’s usually a smoke-making machine.”

THE PARAGON FOUNDATION
PRESS RELEASE
Alamogordo, New Mexico
Office of Public Relations
505-653-4024
Toll Free 1-877-847-3443
For Immediate Release: August 13, 2001