[Steve Schulin]

Sure enough, Fox News' source for this story was former President of California NOW, and the money in question included the 1995 $500,000 grant, plus a later $200,000 grant. NOW is actually ineligible to receive such grants, but a separately chartered entity, called the NOW Foundation, is eligible, and was the recipient. Ms. Bruce noted that the Foundation is really the same group of people -- she was on the NOW Board of Directors at the time. NOW and the NOW Foundation may be legally distinct entities, but they are essentially the same folks wearing different hats. The reporter mentioned that the grants were supposed to be spent in pursuit of women and smoking, but the money actually was spent on general women's health programs.

[LarryLied]

Well we know what their price is.

[doug from upland]

Thanks for the additional info, Steve.

[Pipers]

Here it is, by Dulles NOW: "- In addition, former V/P Elizabeth Toledo received $ 459,779 from Clinton's Department of Health and Human Services to "strengthen national tobacco control". Repeatedly contacted to disclose disbursement of such taxpayers sums, Ms. Toledo chose to remain silent as did the rest of the national officers informed of the situation."

That means Kim Gandy and Eleanor Chmeal. Fox should talk to Dulles NOW. They seem to have the documents that prove Bruce is telling the truth. Toledo was president of California NOW at the time. She left NOW after falling in love with another woman. Left her husband too and took her two small kids with her. I seem to recall something about the money bit on Concerned Women for America's web. Dulles NOW has been talking about this for a couple of years.

There is more: Ten Million Dollars Budget? 250,000 Members? Think Again! (April 5, 2001) Of the many pompous and phony claims NOW leaders fondly trumpet, the most blatantly dishonest are the repeated assertions of political and financial independence from government and political parties, and the advertising of grossly inflated membership and budget figures. While the putrid Clinton years stunningly exposed the hoax of NOW's political independence, a quick look at the group's tax returns puts the others to rest. A ten million dollars budget? 250,000 members? Think again.

Basic tenets of disinformation teach that lies, served over and over, eventually implant themselves automatically in the mind of recipients as unquestioned truths, a principle increasingly substituted as policy in the undefined amalgam of self-serving hustlers entertainingly called "the left" in America today. From speeches to conferences to brochures to web sites, NOW leaders, the "left" noisiest female subordinates, were effortlessly able to convince a cooperative media, scores of unsuspecting members, the general public and even envious competitors, that the organization was indeed a 250,000-members-$10-million force to reckon with.

The benign propaganda serves multiple not-so-benign causes and, for obvious reasons, financial and membership information are closely guarded secrets, a constant source of internal curiosity and frustration. For other than the four national officers and their handful of devotees, NOW members, local leaders and many National Board appointees are studiously kept believing in the falsified figures lest the truth either demoralize them into abandoning ship or galvanize them into throwing the swindlers overboard.

Rest of Dulles NOW's IRS study Here