The Shuster Project

Tobacco Industry Fraud & False Claims Issues

Click HERE To Read Our Letter Sent to Senator Kerry's Presidential Campaign

   Dear William,   

Your assertion of any "interest" in the American Legacy Foundation that may be held by me is extremely misleading as there is no such interest, actually; but that beckons this addendum to my unabridged, "hard copy" letter mailed by Certified USPS to Christine O. Gregoire at your Washington, DC office that will address a singular paragraph that, in retrospect, I felt left unclear my justifiable disdain for whatever it is your group ever attempts to portray itself as actually being.

     In that letter was this dyslexic analogy, by which the English language does not offer adequate vernacular, idioms or parlance by which to adequately establish the immense absence of credibility obvious at several levels within the American Legacy Foundation, hereby referred to in this letter as ALF.

     The paragraph I wish to clarify is this:

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     Whatever your claims are to be "an 800 pound gorilla" or to be a "new kid on the block;" as a former tobacco company employee who attempted to correct multiple illegalities from within the tobacco industry, I know full well that your very existence and your prime tobacco company's funding resulting crucially restrictive, conditional, impotent potential to level factual, decisive and lethal blows to the tobacco company's that fund you dictate that without significant restructure divorcing those restrictions, you are to be ignored.

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     With the tobacco companies providing your core funding, regardless of any cosmetic, veiled or non-in-depth, credible and adequate "alternative" funding resources that just don't exist for you and never will, ALF can never divorce itself from the stranglehold of nonsensical and ridiculous conditions, holdbacks and deliberately divisive tobacco industry oversight of every breath ALF takes.

     Those alone would dismiss ALF as being an entity to be ignored by the general public.

     Unfortunately it goes much deeper and the scope of ALF's fatal lack of credibility comes with the fact that the Washington State Attorney General's office has been informed no less than four times of the tobacco industry's state and federal Income Tax Fraud.

     That sum of defrauded money totals in excess of $1.3 Billion Dollars, including the various applications of interest and penalties from all of the associated political subdivisions going back over 45 years.

     Surely, with Christine O. Gregoire being associated with the office of the Attorney General from Washington State everyone will soon ask why she did not immediately bring the great weight of this purported "800 pound gorilla" to bear on just these two issues of tobacco industry state and federal Income Tax Fraud?

     With the sum of defrauded money exceeding $1 BILLION dollars, how in the world can any person of fair and reasonable review, knowing just these two tobacco industry crimes, not also associate the facts of negligence (?), oversight (?), cover-up (?), compromised bedfellowship (?) of ALF's impotence and absence in addressing such extreme violations of the laws relative to Income Tax evasion.

     Any person of fair and reasonable review of these facts must also believe that many other tobacco industry crimes and so many other Antitrust violations are being neglected, overlooked, covered up or being ignored primarily because the head on the other pillow belongs to the tobacco industry.

     That makes two significant, fatal and insurmountable blows to the credibility and legitimacy of ALF, yet there is more.

     The vulgar references used in some text in ALF's web pages such as asking if one is adequately "_issed off" will, of course, generate what I will term as your deliberate, calculated, premeditated and intentional strategy of senseless and controversial theater designed and expected to mire significant and profound address to these crucial financial and social issues of tobacco industry Fraud & False Claims along with the distinctively separate arena of health related tobacco issues into a quicksand purgatory.

     The marriage of the incredibly stupid and numerous conditions and holdbacks and flashpoint thresholds the tobacco industry has barbwired to ALF is, by design and intent, meant to forever and constantly introduce controversy and the threat of the withholding of their (tobacco company's) funding of ALF, which is also designed and intended to mire most tobacco issues consumer advocacy groups to also forever address those intended controversies and funding issues thus preventing real and substantive and profound and significant address to the absolute real and varied and immense crimes of Fraud, False Claims, Antitrust, states Sales Tax Fraud issues and so many more also not even involved in the "health-related" component of Tobacco Issues.

     And if that wasn't enough of a blow to ALF's credibility and legitimacy, now there is the fact that you, William, have been given the potent knowledge of significant state and federal Income Tax Fraud practices by every tobacco company still in existence (with Brown & Williamson still on the hook for the Income Tax Fraud practices of the former American Tobacco Company, not to mention other prosecutable crimes and the resulting and enormous monetary recoveries yet to be made.)

     In order for you, William, to merely rise up to just address one of the two issues I and The Shuster Project have made known to ALF, that would mean you would have to also bring the weight of this "800 pound gorilla" to bear upon them ("them" being the tobacco companies, the IRS, Christine O. Gregoire and everyone and every organization The Shuster Project has been contacting on our own that can be found in our CORRESPONDENCE Pages within our web site.)

     So, I will end my letter to you by addressing what you ended yours to me with by making a reference to some "proposal" you assumed I had made to Christine or ALF.

     The content of The Shuster Project web site is both substantial and factual.

     I suggest you review The Shuster Project web site in addition to reviewing the unabridged letter I had sent to Christine.

     In our FEEDBACK and MEDIA ALERT Pages, there is enough there to offer your membership and visitors the opportunity to participate in a wide array of significant, important, substantial, ever-expanding and interactive tools empowering everyone from average citizens to the heads of national organizations and presidential candidates to begin to effectively address issues of tobacco industry Fraud & False Claims.

     The Shuster Project has introduced legislation to the Connecticut legislature and it's Judiciary Committee (originally HB5602, now RB6942) that our Attorney General Richard Blumenthal strongly spoke in favor of in person in the chamber and asked for it's passage over two years ago, yet our Bill continues to sit unpassed.

     The Shuster Project utilizes all of the newest available technologies that we can bring to bear to empower, to inform, to teach the general public, elected officials, appointed officials in positions of authority, heads of national organizations, state chapters of national organizations, teachers, students, parents, minorities, the elderly, women, teenagers, the Department of Justice, the IRS, the states Attorneys General, the media and many, many others including, but not limited to, the use of Petitions, Surveys, our Message Board sites, Grassroots Efforts, Media Alert programs, our new online audio broadcasting station iCAT (internet Citizens Action Talk-PC) with more programs in development including online video presentations relevant to non-health related issues of tobacco industry Fraud & False Claims.

     With effective and immediate "corrections" to these fraudulent tobacco industry practices, smoker-dollars will begin to generate various, "corrected" state and federal Income Tax revenues and "corrected" states Sales Tax revenues in the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS annually, collectively, among the 50 states that have income tax statutes and applicable state sales tax on cigarettes and tobacco products.

     These "new" revenues do NOT include the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS the states and federal governments can immediately recover, with interest and penalties and completely within the equally stupid, confining and restrictive MSA Agreement language.

     William...when you realize the distance The Shuster Project has come both on our own and in the company of dedicated individuals and groups and organizations mentioned in our LINKS page and/or in our CORRESPONDENCE Pages, you will quickly learn that there is so much more that absolutely must be addressed than what ALF seems to have initially confined itself to dedicating it's efforts to that I have no other decision than to dismiss you out of hand.

     Any proposal(s) that I could possibly imagine making to ALF would be two or three...and from a very great distance for the very good reasons I have taken all of the adequate space I required to explain them...

    Proposal one would be to access The Shuster Project web site and learn about the non-health related issues of tobacco industry Fraud & False Claims. We primarily address and focus on the two issues of state and federal Income Tax Fraud only because the IRS is in the process of attempting to disavow all knowledge of their participation with us in establishing the immense scope of these crimes and their ineptness and inability to handle that scope and that amount even though we have supplied them with the tobacco industry document that unfolds the crime itself, the simple timeline by which to establish its duration back in time and it pinpoints the actual amounts right down to the penny, sans interest and penalties.

     Proposal Two would be to acknowledge the massive recovery awaiting each state...not a "potential" recovery but actual dollars and understanding that this significant, individual state-by-state recovery is not, I repeat NOT adversely affected by the MSA...so weigh in here in Connecticut to get RB6942 passed. It's a Whistle-Blower statute that I wrote...a Bill that would effectively shut down the fraudulent and illegal business practices of the tobacco companies that results in the state of Connecticut being defrauded of state Income Tax revenues and state Sales Tax revenues.

     I would suggest a Proposal Three if I believed that you could fulfill Proposals One and Two.

     I am convinced that you will not, as opposed to cannot.

     As a former employee of an over two hundred year old industry that is trying to influence people's belief that the tobacco companies are actually changing their stripes at the same time they are trying to purchase influence to disarm, disable or otherwise disrupt appropriate address to their many crimes, ALF is but another disruptive tool as I see it.

     And any attempt by you to prove otherwise what I believe is not only an accurate observation of what ALF actually is and will be as a result of being maneuvered by your very administrative underpinning, the ridiculous oversight mechanisms, your constitution, your structure as established by the tobacco companies, you would either "lose" your funding or, more probably, the tobacco companies would intentionally set out to consume large quantities of your time and the time of most tobacco issues advocates in that senseless series of non-arguments over what essentially would be nothing for what won't ever get accomplished as a result.

     All of the above said, and as long as you realize, William, that The Shuster Project has a strict set of policies as set forth in our openly displayed Project Mission of addressing the many issues of tobacco industry Fraud & False Claims in a factual manner and routinely making the General Public, organizations, leaders, politicians, the media and others informed...we will never engage in such nonsense.

     Although I deeply apologize for the length of this correspondence, because I feel it will be my only correspondence to you, Proposal Number Three would probably be to catch up with us.

     In other words, if your name shows up on our Petitions, if you participate in our Survey, if your thoughts are added to our many Message Board sites, if you and your membership send out what should equate to hundreds of emails to hundreds of local newspapers and local radio news stations and local television news stations demanding that they expose with significant attention to and consistent follow-ups of every facet of just the two crimes of state and federal Income Tax Fraud by the tobacco companies, and you provided your membership and visitors with the address to The Shuster Project web site, THAT would get my attention, raise an eyebrow and offer you a reserved benefit of an immense and justified as immense doubt.

     We at The Shuster Project not only mean what we say, we also say what we mean and I have done so with you this evening, William.

     Now I have given you three tangible proposals you can refer to in deciding just what you are going to do now.

     It was a pleasure meeting you by way of correspondence, at least.

As is our custom, a copy of this letter will be placed into our CORRESPONDENCE 2000 page for public review.

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