Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Independent Weekly this week features a blockbuster series of investigative stories about the Art Pope empire. One big shocker: Pope failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes on his foundation’s earnings for YEARS, eventually begging the IRS for forgiveness with various lame excuses. So Pope turns out to be a miserly tax cheater – no, he’s just a distracted daddy. There are other nuggets in the stories. Did you know that the rightwing Civitas Institute depends on Pope’s foundation for 97% of its money? It’s basically a wholly owned subsidiary of Art Pope. The same goes for several other outfits under the Pope’s authority. The story on elections includes this gem from Pope: “If [my money] helped them win, especially in a close election, then wonderful, but that doesn’t mean I spent millions of dollars to buy the North Carolina legislature.”