THE TIDE FOUNDATION (BIG SCAM)

Tides Foundation & Tides Center When is a foundation not a foundation? When it gives away other foundations’ money.

Most of America’s big-money philanthropies trace their largesse back to one or two wealthy contributors. The Pew Charitable Trusts was funded by Joseph Pew’s Sun Oil Company earnings, the David & Lucille Packard Foundation got its endowment from the Hewlett-Packard fortune, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation grew out of General Motors profits, and so on. In most cases, the donors’ descendants manage and invest these huge piles of money, distributing a portion each year to nonprofit groups of all kinds (the IRS insists that at least 5 percent is given away each year). This is the way philanthropic grantmaking has worked for over a century: whether a given endowment’s bottom line occupies six digits or twelve, the basic idea has remained the same.

Now comes the Tides Foundation and its recent offshoot, the Tides Center, creating a NEW MODEL for grantmaking -- one that strains the boundaries of U.S. tax law in the pursuit of its leftist, activist goals.

Set up in 1976 by California activist Drummond Pike, Tides does two things better than any other foundation or charity in the U.S. today: it routinely obscures the sources of its tax-exempt millions, and makes it difficult (if not impossible) to discern how the funds are actually being used.

In practice, “Tides” behaves less like a philanthropy than a MONEY-LAUNDERING enterprise (apologies to Procter & Gamble), taking money from other foundations and spending it as the donor requires. Called donor-advised giving, this pass-through funding vehicle provides public-relations insulation for the money’s original donors. By using Tides to funnel its capital, a large public charity can indirectly fund a project with which it would prefer not to be directly identified in public. Drummond Pike has reinforced this view, telling The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with.”

In order to get an idea of the massive scale on which the Tides Foundation plays its SHELL GAME game, consider that Tides has collected over $200 million since 1997, most of it from other foundations. The list of grantees who eventually received these funds includes many of the most notorious anti-consumer groups in U.S. history:

Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Media Services, Environmental Working Group, and even fringe groups like the now-defunct Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet (which used actress Meryl Streep to “front” the 1989 Alar-ON-APPLES health scare fraud for NRDC).

For corporations and other organizations that eventually find themselves in these grantees’ crosshairs, there is practically no way to find out where their money originated. For the general public, the money trail ends at Tides’ front door. In many cases, even the eventual recipient of the funding has no idea how Tides got it in the first place.

Remarkably, all of this appears to be perfectly legal. The IRS has traditionally been friendly toward this “donor-advised” giving model, because in theory it allows people who don’t have millions of dollars to use an existing philanthropy as a “fiscal sponsor.” This allows them to distribute their money to worthwhile charities, while avoiding the overhead expenses of setting up a whole new foundation.

In practice, though, the TIDES Foundation HAS TURNED THIS WELL-MEANING IDEA ON IT'S HEAD. When traditional foundations give millions of dollars to Tides, they’re not required to tell the IRS anything about the grants’ eventual purposes. Some document it anyway; most do not. When Tides files its annual tax return, of course, it has to document where its donations went -- but not where they came from....

The Tides Foundation is quickly becoming the 800-pound gorilla of radical activist funding, and this couldn’t happen without a nine-figure balance sheet. Just about every big name in the world of public grantmaking lists Tides as a major recipient. Anyone who has heard the closing moments of a National Public Radio news broadcast is familiar with these names. In 1999 alone, Tides took in an astounding $42.9 million. It gave out $31.1 million in grants that year, and applied the rest to a balance sheet whose bottom line is over $120 million. Since 1996, one foundation alone (the Pew Charitable Trusts) has poured over $40 million into Tides. And at least 17 others have made grants to Tides in excess of $100,000.

Skirting the Tax Law

The Tides Foundation and Tides Center continue to build their activist war chest by exacting an 8 to 9 percent “handling fee” on funds that pass through on their way to other activists. Some monies are awarded as “grants” in the traditional fashion (according to “donor-advised” agreements). It’s impossible to know for sure whose money is being spent for which of these grants. Other funds go toward management services to existing activist organizations in return for a percentage of their gross revenues. In still other examples, the Tides Center offers financial and administrative support for start-up advocacy groups.

In this last case, the Tides Center offers a sort of blanket tax-exempt designation for its grantees and projects. The entire foundation (pun intended) on which the Tides Center is built depends on the notion that the law allows one tax-exempt group to “lend” its exemption to another organization.

The legality of this proposition has never been challenged in court, but Tides’ practice of allowing smaller groups to share “piggyback” tax-exempt status could make its own 501(c)(3) status vulnerable.

In 1997 Larry Wright, an officer with the Northern California District of the IRS, told The San Francisco Bay Guardian that “tax-exempt status is not transferable.” A nonprofit like Tides that holds a tax exemption, he said, legally has to prove that the activities of all of its sponsored “projects” satisfy the same exact tax-exempt purpose for which its own exemption was granted. “You can't just set up a clearinghouse,” Wright said. “[Tides] can’t pass along its tax-exempt status.” There ought to be a law. Oops -- there is a law. It should be enforced.

Drummond Pike Biography

Drummond Pike is one of the chief rainmakers of the anti-consumer movement. His nameplate appears in the boardroom (or in the driver’s seat) of a wide variety of organizations: the Environmental Working Group, the Solidago Foundation (which works on “trade issues” and “corporate accountability”), the Shalan Foundation (which seeks “social justice and environmental balance”), and several more.

But Pike’s most influential role is Money-Launderer-in-Chief for the Tides Foundation. With Pike’s help, Tides gives away other foundations’ money, shipping it out to fringe organizations whose missions might not pass muster with the funds’ original donors. An adjunct called the Tides Center, also run by Drummond Pike, offers a kind of legal and tax-exemption umbrella for a wide variety of leftist “social change” groups that could never hope to pass the IRS’s tests on their own.

As if that’s not enough for one activist, Pike also runs “eGrants.org,” an online fundraising company that he says “was created to facilitate online giving to progressive groups,” and the Tsunami Fund, “dedicated to the support of progressive advocacy work on a variety of issues.” Pike was also one of the founders of Working Assets, the left-leaning telephone and credit card firm, in 1983.

Background
President, Tides Foundation & Tides Center; president, eGrants.org. president, Highwater Inc.; director, Environmental Working Group; director, Solidago Foundation; founder & assoc. dir., Youth Project (Wash., DC); former exec. dir., Shalan Foundation

The social justice thing is a front. Most of the crazy radicals are funded by this foundation. They’re all connected - it’s just getting something on them that’s been the problem. I believe now that ACORN is under investigation they might find some tax problems as noted in the article which points to TIDE. My fear is that Soros is so big, our finances in such poor shape, and their buddies with Obama and the other socialists in the WH that they’ll get off the hook.

Here’s a good map of Soros, Pike, et al...
http://www.muckety.com/Query?SearchResult=4166&SearchResult=88012&graph=MucketyMap?_r=2D

I wish he’d fired them but the way they have it set-up it’s not easy.

Alar: The Great Apple Scare (TOTALLY BOGUS)

DAVID FENTON - FENTON FOUNDATION

Written By: Jay Lehr and Sam Aldrich
Published In: Environment & Climate News > March 2007
Publication date: 03/01/2007
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

This article is the ninth in a continuing series excerpted from the book Smoke or Steam: A Guide to Environmental, Regulatory and Food Safety Concerns, by Samuel Aldrich, excerpted and abridged by Jay Lehr.

Against a background of a skull and crossbones, overlaid on a red apple, the late Ed Bradley appearing on CBS TVs “60 Minutes” on February 26, 1989 said:

“The most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them on the trees longer and make them look better. That’s the conclusion of a number of scientific experts, and who is most at risk? Children who may someday develop cancer.”

Almost overnight the Alar story seemed to be everywhere: Phil Donahue, the Today Show, Women’s Day, CNN, The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc. Actress Meryl Streep announced on TV the formation of Mothers and Others for Pesticide Limits.

[…]

TESTING SHOWED ALAR SAFE (the same radical lefties tested for arsenic in New Orleans and initially found none – came back later and did some more testing and voila there was dangerous levels of arsenic. (They got a lot of mileage out of New Orleans.)
[…]

Bogus NRDC ‘Evidence’

In 1986 the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a SELF-APPOINTED environmental activist group, challenged the safety of Alar, especially for children, and asked EPA to declare Alar an “imminent hazard,” which would have allowed banning it at once.

The NRDC claimed to have scientific evidence showing Alar might cause cancer. The alleged evidence, however, was never published where it could be reviewed by qualified scientists.

EPA set up a “special review” panel—which rejected the NRDC results just three weeks before the 60 Minutes program.
[...].
In April 1989, Science magazine condemned the NRDC report.

CBS Ignored Evidence

Alar had in fact been eliminated in baby food three years earlier by Gerber, Heinz, and Beech Nut, and other companies eliminated the use of Alar in other products soon afterwards—because of unfavorable publicity, not because of any safety hazard.
Despite this, according to Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media, the NRDC arranged with CBS to air its report, “Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in our Children’s Food,” on 60 Minutes.
In the book Fear of Food (Free Enterprise Press, 1990), Andrea Arnold characterized NRDC’s Alar scare as “a deliberately misleading environmentalist fund-raising campaign.”

Shameful Collusion

Eight months after the first 60 Minutes presentation on Alar, as a result of an Accuracy in Media report, the public began to hear about the despicable collusion between NRDC and CBS. Few, however, were aware that in 1988 NRDC had hired Fenton Communications, a public relations firm, to plan and carry out the campaign against Alar. Fenton arranged months in advance for the 60 Minutes television segment.

Belatedly, apple growers tried to counter the effect of the Fenton campaign with reassuring statements from scientists, the Department of Agriculture, and EPA itself. But the message was buried under the avalanche of negative publicity generated by the NRDC misinformation project.

Scare Campaigns Continue

Science magazine in 1989 suggested “it may be time to develop appropriate measures so that victims of irresponsible information have redress.” In 1991 Colorado adopted a statute that would make those who cast needless doubt on the safety of perishable agricultural food products subject to a fine up to three times the cost of lost sales.

Apple growers sued in Yakima County, Washington asking for $250 million in damages against CBS, the NRDC, and Fenton Communications, but never received anything.

While most people still recall the historic Alar scare, few recognize the malevolent intentions of the groups involved. Thus, similar unjustified scare campaigns are likely to be repeated.

Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (lehr@heartland.org) is science director for The Heartland Institute. Samuel Aldrich is an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois. His groundbreaking book for laymen, Smoke or Steam? A Guide to Environmental, Regulatory, and Food Safety Concerns, is available from The Heartland Institute for $12. The table of contents of the book, containing 211 topics, can be viewed at http://www.heartland.org/smokeorsteam.pdf.

****Alar Alarmists Attack John Stossel (now employed by Fox]
August 18, 2000 Isn’t it interesting that the people who brought you the thoroughly debunked Alar scare in 1989 are the same ones who are now attacking ABC reporter John Stossel for his report on organic food?

The controversy surrounding Stossel centers on his statement that pesticide residue tests on produce were performed, though they really weren’t. The New York Times’ John Tierney points out that tests or no tests, the focus of Stossel’s report “reflected conventional wisdom among scientists: organic food has no nutritional advantages and poses a greater risk of bacterial contamination because it is grown in manure.”

The organic pushers from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) claim, “Stossel lied and threatened an entire industry by disseminating false and damaging information.” The group has been calling for Stossel’s head and getting a lot of press for the organic industry in the process. What is EWG and what connection does it have to the people who brought you Alar?

The attack on Stossel certainly appears to be coming from PR mastermind David Fenton of Fenton Communications, famous for introducing us to Alar during a 60 Minutes interview. In a Washington Times interview after the Alar scandal was discredited, Fenton said: “We designed [the Alar Campaign] so that revenue would flow back to the Natural Resources Defense Council [Fenton client] from the public, and we sold this book about pesticides through a 900 number and the ‘Donahue Show.’ And to date there has been $700,000 in net revenue from it.”

In a letter to his clients, Fenton added: “A modest investment repaid itself many-fold in tremendous media exposure and substantial, immediate revenue.” Fenton said as a result of the Alar campaign, “Lines started forming in health food stores. The sales of organic produce soared. All of which we were very happy about.”

The links to another Fenton attempt to boost organic sales couldn’t be clearer:

EWG is a project of Tides Foundation/Tides Center.
Arlie Schardt is Project Director for The Tides Center and also happens to be the head of Fenton Communications’ Environmental Media Services (EMS and Fenton are housed in the same office!).

The Tides Center earmarked over $975,700 for EMS in 1999 and more than $400,000 for EWG in 1998.
Fenton Communications did $169,920 of business for Tides in 1997.
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/headline/430

I’m glad Stossel’s at Fox. Hopefully he’ll revisit this horrifying injustice. There was so much suffering. CBS needs to pay by being totally humiliated.

David Fenton continues to boast, that this was his first big win, despite the fact that it was totally baseless. He’s gone on to win other injustices toward big and small business’ with the help of ACORN and the SEIU, or whatever rent a mob they need whether it’s the greenies, animal rights, info war etc. They fund them all.

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