Musings: Double Standards

As Civil Beat reports today, the Hawaii Center for Food Safety has demanded, without success, all emails exchanged between five state lawmakers and seed industry officials.

The ostensible purpose of the request is to determine whether the biotech industry exerted any untoward influence on lawmakers when agricultural pesticide bills were up for consideration last session.

But what Civil Beat fails to reveal, likely because it's never bothered to look, is that Hawaii CFS director Ashley Lukens, herself a registered lobbyist, has never disclosed who is funding her work. In her reports for January-February 2015 and March-April 2015, she offers no clue as to how she earns her keep. No lobbying reports were filed for 2014.

Meanwhile, the 2014 tax return for her CFS parent organization in Washington is not available and its 2013 IRS 990 report makes no reference to Hawaii.

So the public is left completely in the dark, in terms of knowing who has funded Ashley's lobbying and other work, which supposedly is carried out on the public's behalf.

Why should CFS demand that lawmakers be held to a higher degree of transparency than a group that enjoys nonprofit status and claims, like legislators, to be working for our best interest? Don't the taxpayers, who are subsidizing these activities, have a right to know who is funding the work of “nonprofits” that are striving to influence the political system?

It's yet another example of the double standard practiced by anti-GMO groups, and allowed by unquestioning reporters like Civil Beat's Anita Hofschneider.

Gary Hooser's Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action, HAPA, is similarly engaged in shadowy, nontransparent political activities. Though he was a regular at the state Capitol last session, and his group has launched a training academy specifically for “progressive” political hopefuls, neither he nor anyone from his organization have bothered to register as lobbyists.

After I wrote about HAPA's “Kuleana Academy,” program coordinator Aria Juliet Castillo contacted me to clarify that though participants will have to raise $1,000 for HAPA, their $9,000 tuition “is funded from grassroots support of Hawai'i residents and various grants from trusts and foundations.” 

She ended her email with: 

“If you have any other questions, I would be happy to answer them.”

To which I replied: 

“And which trusts, foundations and individuals have provided funding for this?”

Crickets....

So what are HAPA and CFS trying to hide? Why won't they reveal who is funding their work?

Laurie Cicotello, a strong supporter of Hooser and HAPA, filed a complaint against Kauai Rep. Jimmy Tokioka after he erred in filing his campaign funding report. As she told The Garden Island:

“Part of the reason why I felt compelled to do this was because as a voter, I absolutely believe we need to have transparency in the democratic process.”

But Cicotello seems unconcerned about the lack of transparency exercised by groups she supports.

Neither she nor HAPA made any mention of the fact that HAPA filed a report with the state Attorney General, claiming the organization is exempt from filing an annual financial report because it received less than $25,000 in contributions. Meanwhile, the National Center for Charitable Statistics showed HAPA with gross receipts of $121,446 and assets of $16,127 in 2014, the same year it got its nonprofit approval from the IRS and made that claim to the AG.

Hawaii SEED has similarly failed to register Capitol regulars Jeri DiPietro, Nancy Redfeather and Walter Ritte as its registered lobbyists, even though CFS executive director Andrew Kimbrell was featured in a youtube video congratulating Nancy for her years of work in the Legislature. And like CFS and now HAPA, Hawaii SEED is slow to file its tax returns, which offer the only glimpse into what they're doing.

Meanwhile, Monsanto, DOW, Syngenta, Bayer and Hawaii Crop Improvement Association all filed their lobbying income and expense reports, and contributions they make to politicians are duly noted in timely campaign reports.

But the supposedly progressive, supposedly transparent, supposedly public-minded groups hide their income sources and bundle their expenses, so the public can't easily learn who is funding their very political work, or how they're channeling those donations.

Rory Flynn, the capable editor of Farmers & Friends, (and I strongly urge you to subscribe) has done a bit of digging, and learned that HAPA received a grant from CFS to produce an anti-GMO/anti-seed company propaganda  video. (Where, btw, they used Gary's totally discredited claim that the companies applied 18 billion tons of pesticides on Kauai.) 

HAPA also got a grant from the Hawaii People's Fund, which typically gives less than $5,000, and another $10,000 from the Herb Block Foundation. 

But we'll never know to what extent, if any, North Shore Realtors and trust-funders are supporting the group's drive to draft political candidates.

Because at the end of the day, nonprofits are under no legal obligation to disclose their funders. Of course, groups like HAPA and CFS could voluntarily disclose how they get their dough, just like the seed companies have voluntarily disclosed how much pesticide they use. 

But the advocacy groups aren't doing what they demand of others.So they can lobby and influence legislators and the citizenry with no public scrutiny. And their funders can receive tax-deductions for what is in fact non-deductible political activity.

Both sides of the political spectrum game the system in this way. So when you see one of the players — especially one that claims to be "progressive," like CFS — crying foul, beware the crocodile tears.