Jeanne Shaheen is a beneficiary of money flowing from the Sierra Club, but Sierra has recently come under scrutiny for some of its fundraising tactics, including commercial arrangements that financially benefited their leadership and also resulted in Sierra Club profits for which no taxes were ever paid.
We know how ‘concerned’ senator Shaheen is about how non-profits use their money. Is she equally concerned about how they acquire it and when they should pay taxes?
Regarding its failure to pay taxes on unrelated business income, the Sierra Club sends its members into communities to sell the products of a selected local solar panel company in Maryland, Utah and dozens of other states in exchange for contributions to the group. In Maryland, for example, the Sierra Club makes a $750 profit from every sale and has never paid taxes on that commercial enterprise.
As the Sierra Club’s Chief of Staff Jesse Simons has stated, “This has been a great revenue-generating tool for the Sierra Club.” The Sierra Club markets the products of a single company in each jurisdiction, in direct competition to several other similar companies who cannot rely on the Sierra Club sales force. “This violates the law,” says Schnare.
In terms of impermissible benefits to private interest, the Sierra Club’s use of its War on Coal not only produce profits, but apparently conspires with the companies that profit from that war. Eight of the Sierra Club Foundation’s 18 directors own or operate organizations that directly benefit from the War on Coal. These directors are the captains of the renewable energy industry. While the Sierra Club Foundation doesn’t pay these directors, their companies directly profit from the Sierra Club Foundation’s primary “program,” the War on Coal.
Beyond the illegal inurement to these directors’ interests is the direct benefit to major donors. Natural gas producer Chesapeake Energy paid $26 million to the Sierra Club for the express purpose of forcing coal-fired electricity companies to switch to natural gas. David Gelbaum, who controls more than 40 “clean tech” companies that directly benefit from forced shutdown of the coal-power industry, donated more than $100 million to the Sierra Club.
“The Sierra Club Foundation wages a war on coal to the direct financial benefit of its directors and top donors,” added Schnare. “This, too, is not lawful.”
It will be interesting to see if Senator Shaheen’s close ties to the IRS will result in some movement in the investigation against the powerful, wealthy, left-wing ATM that is the Sierra Club.
Or does she only care about targeting Conservative non-profits?
