Another FYI (I’ll add this to Sourcewatch, but haven’t done so yet) – attorney Robert Nordhaus (father of Ted) reports he has *no* affiliation to Nordhaus Law Firm, which has DC and New Mexico branches and does Native American law, including coal&uranium stuff -

“As Native American people truly begin to benefit from the development and use of tribal lands, Nordhaus Law Firm, LLP provides advice to businesses and tribal governments on how to best utilize tribal resources for the advancement of the entire Indian community.”
and
“Many of the firm’s tribal clients have substantial reserves of oil, gas, uranium, coal, other minerals, and timber. The firm pioneered the use of joint ventures to recover tribal minerals…
The firm also has expertise in developing comprehensive strategies for Indian tribes to achieve the best return for their non-renewable natural resources”

(I’m not providing URLs for these quotes, since multiple links make the ClimateProgress spam filter eat my comment. Joe, if you have an assistant, perhaps this person could add a warning to the comment form? It’s quite disconcerting to have a comment get eaten, esp. since the “disappeared” comment isn’t retrievable by any means I’ve yet discovered.)

Dammit Hank, I didn’t see your comment until now, 3 months later. We got a usability problem here.

No, it’s the Lotus fndn based in Houston, or rather, its law firm is based in Houston. They gave TBI 130k in 2008, as detailed in my comment here -
http://climateprogress.org/ 2009/ 09/ 28/ markey-the-breakthrough-institute-romm-technology-climate-bill/ comment-page-1/ #comment-132655

(…which is followed by an attack from “Steve”, who appears in fact to be not Steve at all, but….)

By the way, I finally did get confirmation (after making multiple phone calls, and sending multiple emails to multiple people) – Ted is the son of attorney Robert R. Nordhaus of Van Ness Feldman, and the nephew of economist William D. Nordhaus of Yale.

LOTUS FUND 2118 WILSHIRE BLVD 107
SANTA MONICA, CA 90403-5704 Educational Organization
( Health Support Services) * * * Tax exempt since: 11/2002
http://www.taxexemptworld.com/ organizations/ los-angeles-county-ca-california.asp?spg=64

http://www.taxexemptworld.com/organization.asp?tn=1272415
Filing Requirement Form 990 – (all other) or 990EZ return

And thanks to Joe for the whole topic red-flagging “Breakthrough” products.

You can see their recipient orgs and projects here -
http://www.nathancummings.net/enviro_grants

> “So…how has [The Breakthrough Institute] been funded?…I’ll also email TBI and ask.”

And today we have a prompt and tart response from Mr. Shellenberger, the short answer being -
“RPA is TBI’s parent non-profit, they do not fund us nor are they any longer connected to Big Oil. We have two funders…Cummings Foundation, from the Sara Lee fortune, part of the worldwide Jewish pound cake conspiracy, and Lotus Fund. Neither is connected to fossil fuels…”

Of the Cummings Foundation, last year CliProg commenter Alex Smith said (link) -
(Note -I’m just quoting what Google turned up, I haven’t looked into it at all)
“[Cummings] is a small family with hundreds of millions of dollars, from the founder of Sara Lee, and other food conglomerates.
Nathan Cummings Foundation used to fund all kinds of alternative environmental groups. Then, with a new funding manager, they swerved into a kind of rightist netherland, where environmentalism was the cause of all our problems, and must be killed off. Thus the “environmentalist is dead” craze.”

As for the Lotus Fund, it’s still a bit mysterious.

If it’s “The Lotus Fund” in Santa Monica at 2118 Wilshire Blvd #107, it’s an unknown quantity; Guidestar says it was founded in 2002 and is in the category “Health—General & Rehabilitative / (Health Support Services)”, but has no 990s for it (that I could see, at least) and it doesn’t seem to have a website.

Guidestar also shows a Lotus Endowment Fund and a Lotus Partnership Fund.

But it doesn’t look to be the Lotus Endowment Fund, Inc., which “is organized and operated exclusively as a supporting foundation for The Sundari Foundation, Inc. and its initiatives, including the Lotus House Women’s Shelter. The Endowment Fund was formed to secure the financial stability and long term viability of the Sundari Foundation” – which is “a public charity organized for educational and charitable purposes and dedicated to promoting the education, advancement and social inclusion of poor, disadvantaged and homeless women and children.”

The Lotus Partnership Fund is a little more likely – it’s a newbie, formed in 2008 (so no 990s available) and very very quiet, online – again, I see no website. Their category is “Community Improvement, Capacity Building / (Fund Raising and/or Fund Distribution)”
(for the moment, I will not speculate on the significance of this)

Is “Lotus” related to “former Lotus CEO Jim Manzi in The National Review ([who said that the Waxman-Markey climate change bill is] “a terrible deal for American taxpayers”)”? (link)

Hmmmm.

Followups will appear at my off-and-on TPM Muckraker blog (link), I think.