Southern Minnesota's most beloved conservative blogger, Paleocon Strikes, touts the National Taxpayers Union's low rating for Tim Walz in a post yesterday. He borrows the group's self description (emphasis in original):
The non-partisan National Taxpayers Union (NTU) recently released its ratings for the 2007 session of Congress. The NTU rates all votes that affect taxes, spending, debt, and regulatory burdens on consumers and taxpayers.
We did a little reading about the group in order to discover why it might be so near to Mr. Paleocon's heart. Indeed, what we discovered in our ramblings across the tubes illustrated why this was a match made on the extreme right side of conservative heaven.
Here's some information about the group. We found this info about a past leader interesting:
Grover Norquist was NTU’s Executive Director before being tapped by the Reagan White House to head Americans for Tax Reform.
The current executive director is Duane Parde. Before joining the NTU, he served in leadership positions at the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Alliance for Affordable Health Insurance. Sourcewatch describes the former:
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was established in 1973 by Paul M. Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. It is a membership organisation of state legislators across the U.S. that drafts "model legislation" that is then often drafted into law.
ALEC is a conservative organisation that pushes legislation that favours big business and rollbacks environmental regulations. ALEC says that its membership exceeds 2,400 state legislators from both political parties, which is over 30 percent of all state lawmakers in America.
In 2002, two environmental groups, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, described ALEC as "corrosive, secretive and highly influential" and a "tax-exempt screen for major U.S. corporations and trade associations that use it to influence legislative activities at the state level."
In 2002, the American Prospect working at Outing ALEC: the most powerful lobby you've never heard of.
Parde worked in private industry--sort of--in between the stints at ALEC and the NTU, as a partner in Phoenix Strategies:
Phoenix Strategies www.phoenixstrategies.us 1425 K St. NW Suite 350 Washington, DC 20005 202.587.4799 [email protected] Phoenix Strategies"..was established as a consultancy, our team includes seasoned and professional senior level members of the Bush administration with strong experience in Federal as well as state and local intergovernmental affairs and corporate relations. " The Hill reported on December 20, 2005: A new lobbying firm, Phoenix Strategies LLC, has formed on K Street to specialize in business development, lobbying and consulting. The partners of the firm are James M. Kelly, former special assistant to the president and deputy director for intergovernmental affairs at the White House; Ken Meyer, former deputy assistant secretary for intergovernmental and interagency affairs with the U.S. Department of Education; and Duane Parde, former executive director of the nationwide state-legislator group the American Legislative Exchange Council. They have represented industry areas in education, manufacturing, technology, pharmaceuticals, energy and associations.
The Media Transparency Project in its look at Recipient Grants: National Taxpayers Union. notes the money coming into the group from the usual suspects funding the right's ideological agenda.
We're taken by the ideological conservatism of these groups, as opposed to a sense of fiscal conservatism. Indeed, the Scaife, Roe, Bradley, and other right-wing foundations might want to check out groups more carefully in the future.
After all, the Better Business Bureau's Charity Report says that the group doesn't meet five of its standards for accountability. The Charity Navigator, too, ranks it at one star.
That's some union of right wing ideologues, and they don't like Tim Walz. We are shocked, shocked, that movement conservatives would rate Congressman Walz so low.
NTU nonpartisan? Hah! About as nonpartisan as the Vets for Freedom.
Posted by: George Hayduke | April 12, 2008 at 03:02 PM