The Wages of Lies and "Hate." Gays and Lefties Expose Southern "Poverty" Lie Center. The Cayman Island's Bank Account & The House That "Hate" Built.

Morris Dees. He had his fingers crossed no one would find out about the Cayman Islands account. Oops.


The House That "Hate" Built. I guess that's the Monkey God idol that Dees prays to.

Gay activist Mike Petrelis treats us TO some interesting facts about the Southern Preposterous Lie Center.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Southern 'Poverty' Law Center's Cayman Island's Bank Account

As if an unquestionable and unblemished deity was handing down tablets of absolute truth, many gay bloggers and community leaders including Dan Savage wholly embraced the release earlier this week of a new list on 18 of the menacing antigay groups stirring up trouble from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

No doubt, the groups fingered by the SPLC don't like us and contribute greatly to our political setbacks, but it's not big news to me that the groups have been corralled on to an SPLC list - one of obvious extremist enemies. The gays have more to worry about with the very mainstream Democratic Party and its affiliated gay front group, the Human Rights Campaign. Let's look beyond the scary report and peek at larger SPLC issues.

The SPLC's new 2009 IRS 990 filing shows they have a bank account in the Cayman Islands. Now, stop for a good long minute and ask yourself what the hell is a supposed poverty-fighting Alabama-based tax exempt organization doing with such an account. Then ponder this: how much money is in it.

Unfortunately, the IRS does not require SPLC or any tax exempt charity with an account in a foreign country to disclose additional details, such as the amount, and the SPLC's current 990 filing merely notes the existence of an account in a foreign country. The center's site reveals neither the existence of the off-shore account nor the total it contains.

Assets for the organization are listed at $190 million, a nice chunk of change in these economic hard times. When was the last time this group, with almost $190 million in assets, did a damn worthwhile thing about, um, poverty?

The latest 990 additionally shows founder and chief trial counsel Morris Dees had his salary raised to $350,000, and his CEO, Richard Cohen, is close behind at $345,000.

The tax filing also shows Dees traveled by air charter, and that his spouse, artist and businesswoman Susan Starr, accompanies her husband on the business trips.

Petrelis then references lefty Alexander Cockburn's critique of "King of the Hate Business."

Then he continues with an even juicier tidbit:

For Dees, the P in SPLC has nothing to do with personal poverty. That P better stands for profit or profiteering for him, and foolish donors keep sending him checks, thinking they're helping poverty-stricken blacks or whites in Alabama move into better housing.

Since we're on the subject of abodes in the Yellowhammer State, let's have a gander at where Dees lives courtesy of the May 2010 Montgomery Advertiser 60-photo feature just on his mansion, the opulent furnishings and layout, not to mention a fabulous outfit shown off by his wife:

Morris Dees' latest wife Susan Starr models a jacket she made in her studio at her home in Montgomery, Ala., Friday, March 19, 2010. (Montgomery Advertiser, David Bundy)

And here's the pool house as seen from the pool:



More scenes of the gracious living spaces of Morris "the Molester" Dees:





Poverty indeed.