SMRs and AMRs

Saturday, July 21, 2012

When will the farce end? More examples of tax deductible political donations

Third-party groups ready multiple ads attacking health-care law

By Dan Eggen, WashPost, Published: July 20

Conservative groups are gearing up to spend millions of dollars over the next three months on ads attacking President Obama’s health-care law and Democrats who support it, but in many cases voters will have no way of knowing who paid for the barrage.

The ads amount to the next wave of opposition to Obama’s health-care plan, which was upheld by the Supreme Court last month as constitutional under the federal government’s taxing authority. Some of the groups most active on the issue have received funding from health-care firms opposed to parts of the legislation.

The American Action Network (AAN), for example, is targeting House Democrats who voted for “Obamacare” with $1.2 million in digital ads, mailings and other efforts. As a tax-exempt “social welfare” organization, the group is not required to identify its funders to the public.

“How far will they go to protect Obama’s agenda?” a narrator asks in one digital ad, which equates a trio of New York Democrats with the Three Stooges comedy troupe. “Tell congressmen Bill Owens, Tim Bishop and Louise Slaughter to repeal the health care tax.”

Two donations to the group have emerged publicly from the health-care sector: $3 million in 2011 from insurance giant Aetna and $4.5 million in 2010 from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), Washington’s biggest drugmaker lobby.

(More here.)

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