The Relationship Between Grover Norquist and Richard ''Dickie" Scruggs

The Boston Globe reports:

Grover G. Norquist has become one of the nation's most influential activists by portraying his group, Americans for Tax Reform, as the leading ''grass-roots taxpayers movement," which gets thousands of politicians to sign a pledge against any new tax.


Behind the ''grass-roots" activism, however, is a multimillion-dollar donor list that is the envy of Washington. And the Massachusetts native has always refused to name his financial backers.

But interviews and copies of Norquist's donor lists, obtained by the Globe, show that contributors include an array of special interests ranging from tobacco companies to Indian tribes to a Las Vegas casino.

The biggest surprise is Norquist's largest individual donor: Richard ''Dickie" Scruggs, a Democratic Mississippi trial lawyer, who contributed $4.3 million. Scruggs had received a $1 billion fee in the landmark tobacco case against the same tobacco companies that were also Norquist's donors.

Scruggs, like the tobacco companies and some other leading donors, was interested in more than lifting the burdens of the taxpayer.

He said he had his own agenda: He wanted Norquist to work to defeat a congressional proposal that he feared would confiscate most of his $1 billion legal fee in the tobacco case.

''I paid a lot of money," Scruggs said. ''I thought that was the way the game was played."

Scruggs has made a rather interesting comment:the tax code isn't about "fairness" but about who pays off the right politicians.As you can see,the tobacco shakedown wasn't about health but large scale redistribution of wealth to wealthy lawyers and state governments.It will be interesting to see if Democratic bloggers pick up on this one.Or will they just forget about it? For Scruggs and Norquist "ideology" stops when it comes to money.