Agenda Makers & The Real Agenda

GOP Political Discourse 

The other day this ad was running on the conservative site The American Spectator. It clicked through to USANext.org which is running Swift Boat Vet's type campaign against the AARP which opposes Bush's destruction of Social Security.

So who is behind USA Next? According to a Whois search the site is registered to

William Brindley
3900 Jermantown Road, suite 450
Fairfax, VA 22030
tel. (703)359-6500

So who else shares that address with them? There is United Seniors Association, Inc.or USA, Inc, which morphed into Next USA. I ran another search on the phone number. Again, there is United Seniors Association, Inc. (USA, Inc.), also known, as ALARM -Americans Lobbying Against Rationing of Medical Care, USA (notice the lovely choice of acronyms) and I saw there is also Maureen E. Otis sharing the same address.

This is where my search jumped in to the world of non-profits, political lobbying and commercial fundraising. The laws governing Lobbying and Political Activity by Tax-Exempt Organization are pretty clear except when State’s requirements for filing and auditing of fund raising organizations are concerned. That's when one needs a service like the Unified Registration Statement(URS) or a good lawyer like Texas-based Maureen E Otis.

Now if you had had thriving business in registering fundraising groups in, lets say, the State of Washington you would most likely have a mention of that on your website. I can only speculate on why one would play that down unless various connections weren’t meant to be known. Otis is tied to The Richard Norman Company also which has carried on some fundraising activities for USA/Next USA Inc. and funneled quite sum of money to the Swifties.

Interestingly the richardnorman.com domain is no longer in service, but through the power of Google I found out his bio with some interesing connections:

In 1994 Richard took a one-year sabbatical from his Agency to personally design and execute the fund raising program for Col. Oliver L. North's U.S. Senate campaign. The result was over 266,000 contributors who gave more than 22 million dollars. Both the number of donors and total dollars raised set new records for political fundraising. He also served as Finance Director for Dan Quayle's campaign for President in 1999 and currently handles fundraising activities for the Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives, Representative Tom DeLay.

Richard Norman was (is?) a fund raiser for Tom Delay!?! Worked for Ollie North! Furthermore his client list reads like a cabal of conservative advocacy groups that feed each other.

I am still sifting through a few days of research in trying to untangle the web of interdependent rightie groups and for profit-fundraisers. There are many more questions, such as, how much of Richard Norman's business went USANext's way and could Maureen Otis be related to William G. Otis? A few things that are emerging are the ties between religious groups, Texas, rightie fundraisers, and White House politics.