Which Major Corporations Are Backing a Climate-Denier Think Tank?

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/1-15-2012-2012-Fundraising-Plan.pdf">ThinkProgress</a>

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Over at ThinkProgress Green, Josh Israel and Brad Johnson expose 19 major corporations backing the Heartland Institute, the think tank whose internal documents were leaked this week, laying bare its plans to teach students that climate change is a hoax and other anti-climate efforts. As my colleague Kate Sheppard reported on Thursday, the documents—posted here and here—prompted a backlash from Heartland, which deemed at least one of the documents fake and some tampered with. Interestingly, Heartland president Joseph Bast then used the incident to write to donors, first to apologize—the leaked emails identified some private donors, to whom Heartland promises anonymity “because nobody wants the risk of nutty environmentalists or Occupy Wall Street goons harassing them”—and then to ask for more money (“Now more than ever, I need you to stand by us in our time of need”).

Heartland’s fundraising tactics (PDF) seem to have worked well in the past, given the group’s impressive suite of corporate donations in 2010 and 2011. Here’s a selection of the full list* of Heartland’s corporate backers, via ThinkProgress:

Altria Client Services Inc.: $90,000

Amgen, USA: $25,000

Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc.: $5,000

AT&T: $100,000

BB&T: $16,105

Comcast Corporation: $35,000

General Motors Foundation: $30,000

GlaxoSmithKline: $50,000

Microsoft Corporation: $59,908

Nucor Corporation: $502,000

PepsiCo, Inc.: $5,000

Pfizer: $130,000

Reynolds American Inc.: $110,000

Time Warner Cable: $20,000

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that the list above was the full list. The sentence has since been fixed.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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