The Corporate Democratic Machine

Byron York has more on where all the money to fight the President's nominees for SCOTUS is coming from:

The liberal advocacy group People for the American Way (PFAW), which has sought to kill a number of President Bush's judicial nominations in recent years, is preparing to play a leading role in opposing the president's nominee for a place on the Supreme Court. But what few people know is that PFAW will do its work financed, in part, by several of the country's leading public — and ostensibly apolitical — corporations.

A copy of PFAW's 2003 annual report examined by National Review Online lists dozens of corporations as contributors. The companies include Sony Corporation of America, the New York Times, 20th Century Fox Television (a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.), Best Buy Corporation, A&E Television Network, Eastman Kodak, NBC, Home Box Office, Inc., the Hearst Corporation, Comcast Corporation, Blockbuster, Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Sotheby's, and Conde Nast.

Officials at some companies told NRO that their contributions were small and did not amount to an endorsement of PFAW's policies. For example, one Comcast official, who asked that his name not be used, said the company has occasionally contributed to awards dinners held by PFAW. The official said Comcast has given PFAW about $11,000 since its first contribution in 1997. "The years that we've sponsored it, they've given awards to people who are prominent in our industry," the official said, mentioning events held to honor media executives like Michael Fuchs and John Kluge.

When asked if contributing to PFAW meant that Comcast endorsed PFAW's activities, the official said, "I think it's more a reflection of the kinship we feel with the media industry honorees rather than any comment on the political beliefs of the group."

An executive from the Hearst Corporation had a similar explanation, saying the company had purchased tables at a PFAW awards dinner for industry executives. Some representatives of other companies knew little or nothing about their organization's contributions. "The short answer is I have no idea," said a spokesman for 20th Century Fox Television.

An official at People for the American Way told NRO that many of the contributions went to what he described as the "educational" wing of PFAW. People for the American Way, said vice president and general counsel Elliot Mincberg, is actually two groups. One, PFAW itself, is what is known as a 501(c)(4) organization — named for the section of the Internal Revenue Service code under which it was created. While PFAW is tax exempt, contributions to it are not tax deductible, because it engages in political lobbying.

The other part of the organization is the People for the American Way Foundation, known as a 501(c)(3) organization, which is a fully tax-exempt charity. Contributions are tax deductible, and the foundation is forbidden from engaging in most lobbying activities. Indeed, the foundation bills itself as a "nonprofit, nonpartisan civil rights and constitutional liberties organization that promotes the values that sustain a free and diverse society."

"We try to be pretty careful here that the C-3 does not take positions for or against judicial nominees," Mincberg told NRO. "That's done by the C-4, People for the American Way." Mincberg said that most, if not all, of the corporate contributions went to the People for the American Foundation, and therefore did not support PFAW's opposition to Bush judicial nominees. "Activity that is out there opposing nominees is not done by the C-3," Mincberg said, "and therefore the corporations' buying tables shouldn't be supporting that."

But there are questions about how "nonpartisan" the charitable foundation is.