NEWS RELEASE
For More Information Contact: Gary Ruskin (503) 235-8012
For Immediate Release: October 12th, 2006
Commercial Alert Comment on Jack Abramoff’s Work for Channel One
Following is the statement of Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, regarding today’s Senate finance committee minority report on Jack Abramoff’s use of tax exempt organizations. Today’s report provides many new details on how Abramoff used tax exempt organizations to prop up Channel One, an in-school marketing company.
“It speaks volumes about Channel One that it could only generate support from Jack Abramoff and his merry band of mouthpieces for rent.”
“Channel One compels millions of children to watch ads in schools each day, which is abhorrent to parents across the political spectrum.”
The Senate finance committee minority staff report “Investigation of Jack Abramoff’s Use of Tax-Exempt Organizations” is available at: http://www.senate.gov/~finance/press/Bpress/2005press/prb101206.pdf
The report contains several amusing passages about Abramoff’s efforts in support of Channel One. For example, here is an excerpt of a note from Abramoff to Grover Norquist:
“Ariana Huffington has now joined Ralph Nader and George Miller in attacking Channel One…We want to do an oped which smacks her big time, and also swipes at Nader’s guy an the other loonies on this…”
For background about Channel One, see Commercial Alert’s web page on Channel One.
Commercial Alert’s mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy. For more information, see our website at http://www.commercialalert.org.
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