family fdn

belated? see 4 sisters (tag)

see daughter defectors (or autocrat JBS OG dies off, wife and dtrs less wacko

rockefeller fdn starts with u chic and ends with col school jrnl and demos? hope

merri ok

---

SNIP

FAM FDN DENIAL CO2 COALITION

Among the foundations, which operate independently but bankroll many of the same groups, are the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

e nad e

Meet the ‘dead industrialists’ funding climate denialism

:{By Scott Waldman | 06/26/2020

Some of the most prolific funders of today’s climate science denial groups died decades before the general public knew climate change was transforming the planet.

Sarah Mellon Scaife and Daniel C. Searle. University of Pittsburgh/Historic Pittsburgh (Scaife); Searle Freedom Trust

Some of the most prolific funders of today’s climate science denial groups died decades before the general public knew climate change was transforming the planet.

While much of the attention on opposition to mainstream climate science has focused in recent years on funding from fossil fuel companies, there’s growing support for foes of carbon regulation from conservative foundations that are not widely known.

Foundations formed by now-dead industrialists have been instrumental in promoting rollbacks of regulations that protect the public from deadly air pollution and spreading misinformation around climate science.

Fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, the foundations have supported groups that worked with the Trump White House to roll back vehicle emissions standards and to ease restrictions on power plant pollution and water protections, public tax filings show. They have quietly funded presidential advisers who worked to conduct a hostile White House review of climate science and to restrict EPA’s use of scientific research when crafting public health protections.

Among the foundations, which operate independently but bankroll many of the same groups, are the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who studies and tracks climate denial funding, said such foundations have been quietly shaping public life for decades. They offer a way, he said, for "dead industrialists" to transfer economic power into cultural and political power that can last in perpetuity. The power of such foundations lies in their ability to operate for generations without any check on their power, he said.

"These foundations are totally unaccountable to anybody," he said. "A foundation can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants regardless of the consequences. Foundations have undemocratic and plutocratic power."

None of the foundations responded to requests for comment.

The foundations fuel more than just climate policy battles. They also support media organizations that promote misleading climate information and create confusion around climate science. That includes the conservative Daily Caller News Foundation as well as the Prager University Foundation.

The Daily Caller News Foundation provides articles for the Daily Caller, the conservative website founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. A Prager University video series has featured climate deniers saying that global warming concerns are overblown and that NASA, NOAA and the world’s major science agencies are wrong.

They have pumped millions of dollars into groups that have worked closely with the Trump administration and Congress to weaken climate policy and create confusion around climate science, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), CO2 Coalition, Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, Cato Institute and Texas Public Policy Foundation.

And the foundations have been a source of "baseload" funding for organizations that have battled the government for the last 40 years, said Kert Davies, director of the nonprofit Climate Investigations Center.

Even before fossil fuel companies and the Koch brothers began pumping money into organizations that oppose climate regulations, the foundations were quietly supporting such work, he said. And as the fossil fuel industry faces increasing scrutiny over its role in climate misinformation and has backed away from some public funding, the foundations have continued their support, Davies noted.

"They don’t have any material interest in fossil fuels, but they are fundamentalists about hating the government, hating regulation and trying to stop any progress on things like climate change because they see it as almost a step toward communism, it’s almost that stark," he said.

To be sure, not all foundations linked to dead industrialists oppose climate science. The fortune of John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil is now funding climate action. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund spends more than $10 million annually supporting climate causes and funding groups that promote regulation of fossil fuel.

3 big donors

One of the largest donors to anti-climate policy causes is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has spent millions of dollars annually on groups that try to sow doubt about climate change and that work to weaken climate regulations.

Public tax filings show that the Wisconsin-based foundation has assets of about $1 billion and was named for two brothers — Lynde, who died in 1942, and Harry, a member of the far-right John Birch Society, who died in 1965. The family made its fortune in electronic controls.

The foundation was expanded into a conservative powerhouse in 1985, when a sale of the family company expanded the foundation’s assets to $290 million.

In recent years, the foundation has pumped millions of dollars into groups that worked closely with the Trump White House to roll back most of the Obama administration’s climate policy; to increase the voice of industry researchers in order to diminish air pollution regulations; and to steer federal agencies such as the Interior Department, EPA and the Department of Energy toward the interests of fossil fuel companies.

Last year alone, the Bradley Foundation spent more than $2 million funding CEI, the Cato Institute, the CO2 Coalition, the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council. Former employees of those groups have served in senior positions at the White House, Interior, DOE and EPA, and on President Trump’s transition teams for those agencies.

Millions of dollars to the same groups has also flowed from the Searle Freedom Trust, public tax filings show. The trust was founded by Daniel C. Searle, who died in 2007 and was a fourth-generation CEO of a family pharmaceutical company that was sold to Monsanto.

In 2018 alone, tax filings show, the Searle trust gave more than $2 million to groups that worked with the Trump administration to roll back environmental regulations, including the CO2 Coalition, CEI, Cato and the Heritage Foundation.

In addition to policy support, the foundation funds public outreach for climate denialism. In 2018 alone, it spent more than $300,000 on groups that publish and promote climate misinformation, including the Daily Caller News Foundation and the Prager University Foundation, tax filings show.

The work of the Bradley Foundation and Searle trust is complemented by funding from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which is named after Sarah Mellon Scaife, an heiress to the fortune of her father, Richard Mellon, a banker and industrialist.

Scaife, who died in 1965, focused her support on funding for hospitals, disability and poverty issues, and environmental causes. Her money was even used to fund the University of Pittsburgh laboratory where the polio vaccine was developed by Dr. Jonas Salk in the early 1950s.

After Scaife’s death, her son, Richard Mellon Scaife, turned the foundation into a powerhouse for conservative issues, spending tens of millions of dollars on the Heritage Foundation alone before his death in 2014. Scaife steered the family’s fortune toward conservative causes so thoroughly that Hillary Clinton once pinpointed him as the figurehead of a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

The Sarah Scaife Foundation now funnels millions to groups that oppose environmental regulations and that attack climate science. That includes more than $3 million in its most recent filing, including to Cato, CEI, the CO2 Coalition, FreedomWorks, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, according to tax filings.

---

2025

https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=lawreview

Uncharitable Think Tanks 207

Institution—also led in the earlier one, with only slight shifts otherwise.229 • From 2010 on, the top funders were Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, and the Scaife, Bradley, and Koch family foundations. The Devos family foundations rose to join the ranks of the top ten. • Grants channeled through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund accounted for 13.7% of the total. • 74% of all contributions came from completely unidentified sources. • }:}:

After AEI, Heritage and Hoover, the largest recipients were Cato, the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Mercatus Center, the Acton Institute, the State Policy Network, the Reason Foundation, Heartland, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. From 2003 to 2018, Brulle and his co-authors tallied total gifts to this cohort of $9.77 billion 230—a sum that refutes the mistaken notion that charitable giving is small dollars, and influential only at the margin. Now for the thought experiment.

2 26

https://alimcforever.substack.com/

resources: Project 2025 - alimcforever

Contact: info@alimcforever.com

This is a personal newsletter by @alimcforever (Ailíe Nic an tSaoir).

Had you seen this? #billionaires #media #tech #uspolitics #trump

[

ali mcforever

17.7K subscribers

26,559 views Jan 30, 2026

Had you seen this? #billionaires #media #tech #uspolitics #trump

THE COMPLETE PROTECTION SYSTEM

Read together, Project 2025 creates a 10-layer protection architecture:

Kill internal oversight (fire IGs)
Terminate active investigations (FBI review authority)
Fire investigators (Schedule F)
Politicize FBI (remove independence)
Control DOJ (presidential litigation control)
Eliminate financial crime agencies (abolish CFPB, FTC)
Redirect trafficking investigators (HSI to immigration)
Remove police oversight (curtail consent decrees)
Create fear (expand death penalty)
Block campaign finance enforcement (defer to FEC)

Every single layer protects elite criminals from investigation.

===

We unraveled the $122 million web of climate denial, political extremism, and Trump ties to Project 2025

Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025 - DeSmog

As scrutiny of Project 2025 continues to grow, defenders of the Heritage Foundation-led initiative, which would reshape federal governance and give the next Republican president unprecedented new powers, say it’s the criticism — not the 922-page plan itself — that’s too extreme.

In a piece published last month, Fox News cited prominent conservatives who feel there’s “nothing radical” about the endeavor. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has accused detractors of “panic-mongering” and tried to reframe Project 2025’s sprawling “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint as more boring than scary — a milquetoast white paper that simply “melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups.” This echoes Heritage’s insistence that Project 2025, while conservative, is anything but fringe.

But the findings from DeSmog’s recent investigation into Project 2025’s funding sources tell a very different story. Our wide-ranging analysis of public financial disclosure forms found that the groups on Project 2025’s advisory board — whose experts largely helped to draft the plan — are heavily funded by just six family fortunes. Since 2020, foundations linked to these billionaire families have contributed over $122 million to Project 2025 groups, including at least 290 individual donations to 49 nonprofits that contributed to the Mandate for Leadership documents or are on the initiative’s advisory board. We’ve mapped the funding ties between the billionaire families and the Project 2025 individuals and organizations in an interactive graphic, below.

Groups that received funds from the six family fortunes are far from the political mainstream, according to DeSmog’s analysis, including entities that actively deny the science of anthropogenic climate change — as well as organizations that have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. DeSmog’s review also uncovered additional ties between the six families and the Trump/Vance ticket, though both candidates have tried to distance themselves from the initiative in recent months. Indeed, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein — the billionaire founders of the Uline packaging company, whose charitable donations tie them closely to Project 2025 — are among the former president’s biggest donors.

Project 2025 styles itself as populist, moderate, and far from the politics of Washington. Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts hails it as a plan for the perennially downtrodden, hard-laboring folks “who shower afterwork instead of before.” Its funding sources — elite, extreme, and closely tied to the Trump campaign — suggest exactly the opposite.

The Donors

Though the Mandate pledges to “prioritize the economic prosperity of ordinary Americans” and pry influence away from “America’s corporate and political elites,” the funding that produced it comes from the upper echelons of the billionaire class.

And not just any billionaires. The six family dynasties providing significant support to Project 2025 — Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — all have long histories of fighting for financial and environmental deregulation. Three of the six families have promoted climate denial consistently enough to appear in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, which tracks the people and organizations doing the most to undermine decarbonization efforts.

They include oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his Koch Family Foundations; the Scaife Family Foundations, which tap vast wealth from the Mellon aluminum, oil, and banking fortune; and chemicals-and-electronics industrialist Barre Seid, whose recent, record-setting $1.6 billion gift to a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard A. Leo has been a major source of Project 2025 money.

While the Heritage Foundation suggests a diverse conservative coalition gave rise to the Mandate for Leadership, the six family fortunes’ giving patterns were remarkably similar. Of the 49 Project 2025 groups, 37 percent received funding from at least three of the six families. 70 percent of the 49 groups received funding from at least two of the families. (In a few cases, the donations were to sister 501(c)4 lobbying arms that share offices and staff.) The average donation was over $420,000.

*Related:See DeSmog’s coverage of Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn’s Plan That’s More Extreme Than Project 2025

Links to Climate Denial

For decades, oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his late brother David fought vigorously for environmental deregulation, including by supporting groups that sow doubt about the science of manmade climate change. Foundations linked to Koch gave at least $9.6 billion to 15 Project 2025 groups since 2020. But four of the lesser-known families — Bradley, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — gave even more, and all six family fortunes helped to fund Project 2025 groups that have denied the science of manmade climate change.

Of the 10 groups that the six families funded most heavily, seven are in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database. That includes more than $11 million to the Heritage Foundation; $8.3 million to Turning Point USA, which has provided a platform for well-known climate deniers like Alex Epstein; and $4.6 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which in 2015 published an op-ed claiming warming is “obviously not initiated by the burning of fossil fuels”. In total, foundations linked to the six families gave to 15 Project 2025 groups with entries in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database.

That wasn’t the only form of extremism DeSmog uncovered. Four Project 2025 organizations that received donations from the six billionaire fortunes since 2020 are classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a leading civil rights watchdog group. These include the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ group that received over $1.6 million in donations from Bradley and Koch; The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant group that received $650,000 from Scaife; Eagle Forum, an anti-government and anti-immigrant group that received over $100,000 from Koch and Uihlein; and Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group that received $25,000 from Seid.

Of the six billionaire families, only Coors-linked foundations — run by heirs to the Coors brewing fortune — did not donate to at least one SPLC-designated hate group.

Links to the Trump Campaign

For months, Donald J. Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025, claiming to know nothing about the initiative. That stance conflicts with subsequent media reports, including resurfaced video of the former president and current Republican presidential nominee saying, as a keynote speaker at a 2022 Heritage Foundation event, that Heritage would “lay the groundwork & detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The Washington Post reported that Trump flew in a private plane to the event with Heritage President Kevin Roberts.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has also been the subject of intense scrutiny for numerous ties to Project 2025 — including writing the foreword to Roberts’ forthcoming book. DeSmog’s investigation also uncovered numerous ties between Vance and Project 2025 advisory groups, including a previously unreported 2017 keynote speech at a Heritage event.

But while the candidates continue to downplay any Project 2025 connections, one link is unavoidable: a billionaire family that heavily supports Project 2025 groups is among their campaign’s biggest donors, according to Federal Election Commission data.

In May, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the founders of the Uline packaging company, each donated $5 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump’s reelection. That’s not including the more than $48 million Richard contributed to Restoration PAC, a pro-Trump political action committee, last quarter alone. Restoration PAC has spent over $12.9 million this year on political advertising, including ads supporting Trump and attacking his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since 2020, the Ed Uihlein Foundation, which is run by the Uihleins and named in honor of Richard’s father, has donated at least $13.4 million to 13 different Project 2025 groups.

The map below is interactive. Click on a donor to see the groups it funded with dollar amounts, or a nonprofit to see which of the six family fortunes made donations.

[GFX]

---

GGL AI 10 25

Media Research Center (MRC)

The Media Research Center, a conservative content analysis and media watchdog group in the U.S., is funded by numerous conservative donors and foundations.

Major Donors and Foundations: Significant funding has been received from sources such as the Mercer Family Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and Donors Trust.
Individual Donors: It also receives funding from other conservative-leaning donors and foundations, including the John Templeton Foundation and the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation.
Anonymous Donor: It was originally established with funding from a single anonymous donor.

===

LEC GMU koch scalia laW school judge junkets Donors – Law & Economics Center

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/propublica-nobody-actually-knows-rich/

series: The Secret IRS Files](https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files)

Inside the Tax Records of the .001%

Periodically, we get a glimpse into the financial lives of the ultrarich. A pro athlete signs a huge contract, a tech CEO sells a boatload of shares in their company, or a billionaire heir unloads a Manhattan penthouse. Based on these nuggets of information, the media speculates as to how much income the rich might bring in every year. But nobody actually knows.

Thanks to an analysis of its unprecedented trove of IRS data, ProPublica is revealing the 15 people who reported the most U.S. income on their taxes from 2013 to 2018, along with data for the rest of the top 400.

The analysis also shows how much they paid in federal income taxes — and it demonstrates how the American tax system, which theoretically makes the highest earners pay the highest income tax rates, fails to do so for the people at the very top of the income pyramid. The top 400 earners pay noticeably lower tax rates than the merely rich; and, if you include payroll taxes, a married couple making $200,000 a year could end up paying higher tax rates than a person making $200 million a year. (The full analysis is here; it includes selected names beyond the top 15.)

Names That Won’t Surprise You

Scan the names on the list of the top 15 income earners and you’re certain to recognize several names — or at least the names of the companies they founded. Bill Gates hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft for over a decade, yet he still earned the most during the years we studied, reporting an average yearly income of $2.85 billion — and an effective federal income tax rate of 18.4%. Steve Ballmer, his former colleague, is also a well-known public figure, both for his time as Microsoft CEO and his current ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team. Ballmer’s average annual reported income of $1.05 billion landed him in the 10th spot on the list, and his effective federal income tax rate was 14.1%. The other side of the PC/Mac wars is represented here by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Her average reported income of $1.57 billion ranked fifth-highest; she paid an effective tax rate of 14.8%. (ProPublica sought comment from everyone mentioned in this article. Nobody disputed the numbers cited here. Unless otherwise noted, representatives for people named in this article either declined to comment, declined to comment on the record or did not respond to requests for comment.)

Another well-known billionaire sits just below Gates on the list: Media and tech mogul and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, with an average reported income of just over $2 billion, paid an effective income tax rate of 4.1%, by far the lowest rate among the top 15. (A spokesperson told ProPublica for an earlier article that Bloomberg “pays the maximum tax rate on all federal, state, local and international taxable income as prescribed by law,” and cited Bloomberg’s philanthropic giving.)

The presence of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — either the first- or second-wealthiest person in America, depending on the day — won’t shock most people, but Bezos’s annual reported income during these years of $832 million put him only at number 15. He paid an effective tax rate of 23.2%; as we’ve previously reported, Bezos had so little income in a couple of recent years that he was able to pay $0 in federal income taxes in those periods.

Who Are These Others and Why Are They Paying Higher Tax Rates?

Tech billionaires dominate the top 15, buthedge fund managers account for a full third of the names on this list, and some of their incomes were just as huge. Most of them paid relatively high effective tax rates, especially compared to most of the tech sector representatives. Hedge fund managers often make their money through short-term trades, which are taxed at a much higher rate than when tech titans cash in on long-term investments.

The highest-earning hedge funder is Ken Griffin, founder of the Chicago-based firm Citadel. From 2013 to 2018, he reported an average income of nearly $1.7 billion, putting him fourth on the list. Griffin paid a tax rate of 29.2% during these years. (A spokesperson for Griffin said the tax rates in the IRS data “significantly understate” what Griffin pays, because they were lowered by charitable contributions and do not reflect local and state taxes. He also said Griffin pays foreign taxes, which aren’t included in IRS calculations of effective tax rate.)

Israel Englander, co-founder of Millennium Management, paid at a 30.8% rate, while the co-founders of Two Sigma Investments, David Siegel and John Overdeck, paid tax rates of 31.6% and 34.2%, respectively.

Some of this variation in rates reflects how people structure their businesses under tax law. Income earned by publicly traded corporations is taxed at the company level. When it’s passed on to big shareholders, such as tech billionaires, it can come in the form of dividends, which are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. By contrast, the income from some manufacturing companies and hedge funds flows directly to company owners, who pay taxes on it, resulting in higher effective tax rates on average.

Where Are the Heirs?

Lists of the world’s wealthiest individuals are always heavily populated by heirs, ranging from descendents of old money to scions of more recently minted fortunes. Dozens of heirs made ProPublica’s list of 400 biggest income earners. Descendents and relatives of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, claim 11 spots.

The DeVos family, heirs to the Amway fortune, also have multiple members in the top 400. Perhaps the best known is Betsy DeVos, who served as U.S. secretary of education during the Donald Trump administration. With a reported annual income of $112 million, she was the 389th-highest earner in this period.

Much like the tech titans who top the list, most of these heirs get their income from dividends or long-term investments, which are taxed at a lower rate. Their effective tax rates ranged from as low as 10.6% for Betsy DeVos to a high of 23% paid by Walmart heir Tom Walton.

Don’t Forget the Deductions

Another key way that some top earners reduced their tax liability was to claim significant deductions, often in the form of large charitable contributions. This is particularly true for wealthy investors who are able to make their donations with shares of stock. Thanks to a generous provision of the tax code, they can then deduct the full value of the stock at its current price — without having to first sell it and pay capital gains tax.

Michael Bloomberg achieved a tax rate of 4.1% from 2013 to 2018 by taking annual deductions of more than $1 billion,mostly through charitable contributions. From 2013 to 2017, he also wrote off an average of $400 million each year from what he’d paid in state and local taxes. The 2018 tax overhaul limited that deduction to $10,000 — but also introduced a huge new deduction for pass-through companies that Bloomberg benefited from.

Wait — What About the Celebrities?

The earnings of actors, musicians and sports stars are a subject of nonstop scrutiny in the media, yet few celebrities cracked the list of the top 400 earners, which would have required them to report annual incomes of at least $110 million.

ProPublica’s trove has data on many celebrities. One who came close to the top 400 is basketball superstar LeBron James, who averaged $96 million a year in reported income. Grammy-winning singer Taylor Swift also came within reach of the top 400, averaging $82 million in reported income during these years. Actor George Clooney would have had to double his average income of $55 million to crack the top 400.

THE TOP 15

Here are the details on the top 15 income earners. Read the full analysis of the top 400 here.

For the full list of America’s top 400 income earners and their tax rates, along with our methodology, click here.

===

Brulle RJ, Hall G, Loy L, Schell-Smith K. 2021. “Obstructing action: foundation funding and US climate change counter-movement organizations,” Climatic Change. 2021;166(1):17.

Obstructing action: foundation funding and US climate

change counter-movement organizations

Robert J. Brulle1 & Galen Hall1 & Loredana Loy2 & Kennedy Schell-Smith1

Received: 1 February 2021 / Accepted: 28 April 2021/

The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021

In a 2016 congressional hearing on the climate crisis, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) held

up a book entitled Why Scientists Disagree About Climate Change and asked: “Who funded

this phony climate science denial textbook that the Heartland Institute published and mailed to

thousands of schoolteachers around the country? ... We know it costs a lot of money to print

[but] we don’t know who paid for it!” (SDC 2019). The publisher of the “textbook” was the

Heartland Institute, a central organization in the Climate Change Counter-Movement (CCCM).

The CCCM is a complex network of organizations that functions to obstruct climate action

(Brulle 2020). Senator Whitehouse’s question points to the extensive network of anonymous

funders that supports the CCCM. This anonymous funding allows unaccountable, unknown

entities to promote climate misinformation and obstruct climate action. Several analyses have

shown that this deliberate and organized effort to misdirect and distort public discussion of

climate change drives widespread misunderstanding of climate science and legislative gridlock

on the issue (NRC 2011, p. 35).

For these ongoing efforts to continue, it is imperative that CCCM organizations mobilize

sufficient financial resources (Jenkins 1983). Thus, an examination of the funding sources of

the CCCM can provide a deeper understanding of the institutional dimensions of this effort.

The effort to understand the financial support of the CCCM has been the topic of scholarly

concern (Brulle 2014; Farrell 2015, 2016, 2019). The most extensive analysis was that of

Brulle (2014).In his analysis, he found that over the time period 2003 to 2010, the majority of

identifiable CCCM funding came from several conservative philanthropies and, increasingly,

through Donors Trust, a donor-directed philanthropy designed to preserve funders’ anonymity.

In this research, we revisit and update Brulle’s initial analysis. We double the timespan of the

prior study, analyzing data from 2003 to 2018, add an analysis of the amount of unidentifiable

funds supporting the CCCM, and considerably sharpen prior estimates by approximating the

proportion of this funding that directly supports work on climate change.

...

2 Findings

A small group of foundations constitute the core of financial support for the CCCM. Figure 1

shows the top grant makers and recipients in the CCCM by total grants given or received. The

top 1% of grant makers account for 67% of grants, and the top 10% of grant makers account

for 94% of grants. Similarly, seven CCCM organizations (5%) receive 50% of all grants. The

top three grant recipients—the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the

Hoover Institution—have remained unchanged since Brulle’s (2014) analysis, with some shifts

in the order of smaller grant recipients. The top grant makers have changed slightly: the

network remains dominated by the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund (DCF) and the

Scaife, Bradley, and Koch family foundations, with the Devos family foundations now among

the top ten as well. Donors Trust and DCF alone account for 13.7% of grants.

These

organizations are Donor Advised Funds (DAF), with a central role in coordinating donations

to CCCM and conservative organizations while keeping their core donors anonymous.

Alongside donations through DAFs, 74% of all contributions to CCCM organizations over

the sample period come from completely unidentified sources. Figure 2 shows a sociogram of

the top 1% of grant makers and recipients in the network by total grants given/received, where

each line represents all grants between two actors over the sample period, with contribution

...[graphs]

totals less than $5000 removed for clarity. Unidentified contributions are represented by a

single node to demonstrate their prevalence, although they come from many anonymous

donors. Individual organizations received between 25 and 100% of their contributions from

unidentified sources, with no strong (p < 0.05) correlations with organizational assets,

revenues, or the proportion of documents relevant to climate change.

Overall, the funding of organizations that make up the CCCM grew steadily between 2003

and 2018 in terms of both total contributions and foundation grants. Figure 3a displays yearly

total contributions to the 128 recipient organizations, with grants from the top 100 donors

distinguished by the category of the grant maker. Contributions increased steadily over the

sample period, from $357 million in 2003 to $808 million in 2018, with a peak at $811 million

in 2012.

....

Our analysis also supports the finding that funding strategies differ between progressive and

conservative philanthropists.We find a striking stability in funding over the 16-year time

period. The funding strategy of the conservative movement was laid out in the so-called Fat

Memo (Miller 2005), which informed the giving practices of the Olin Foundation, the first

major conservative philanthropy, and subsequent conservative donors. These funding efforts

focus on the development and promulgation of a clear conservative viewpoint. To realize that

effort, conservative philanthropies have funded a range of organizations that act to realize that

goal on a long-term basis. This strategy focused on the creation and maintenance of conservative

think tanks, development of public intellectuals (“thought leaders”), and promulgation

of a consistent ideological message. Additionally, conservative foundations focus on building

institutional capacity in organizations with strong communications capabilities (Covington

1997; Barley 2010).

This consistent and long-term funding strategy has enabled the development of a cohesive

institutional network of conservative organizations that work collectively to promulgate a

consistent message. This strategy stands in marked contrast to the funding strategy of

progressive foundations, which focus on individual research projects and short-term efforts.

Consequently, the progressive activist organizations and think tanks form a very loose and

disconnected network(Barley 2010, p. 792). This differs significantly from the very tight

network of organizations and think tanks that comprise the conservative movement. The

analysis confirms the long-term stable funding that maintains the CCCM.

This analysis still leaves Senator Whitehouse’s question unanswered. The source of over

three-quarters of the funding of the CCCM cannot be identified.While some of this funding

could come from small donations, the existing IRS disclosure rules do not enable any further

investigation in this area. Further research is needed to develop new means to extend our

understanding of the unidentified funders that created and maintain the CCCM.[refs]

===

bad code

omg more i never heard of...https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/heritage-foundation...

In its 2019 annual report Heritage claimed to have more than 500,000 individual donors to either the Heritage Foundation or Heritage Action...Additional information regarding its financing is available from federal tax forms submitted by the Heritage Foundation and many of its foundation donors....For tax year 2018 the Heritage Foundation reported more than $81 million in revenue. For tax years 2012 through 2018, cumulative total revenue was approximately $633 million, for an average of $90.4 million per year. Heritage reported $79.9 million in total expenses for 2018, with salaries ($37.9 million) the largest line item. Heritage reported $250.6 million in net assets at the end of 2018, for liquidity equivalent to 300 percent of expenses at the 2018 level. [160] [161]

Contributions and grants accounted for $75.6 million of Heritage’s $81 million total revenue for 2018. Investment income ($4.4 million) was the second-largest source of 2018 revenue. [162]

According to the recordkeeping service Foundation Search, approximately $5.4 million of the $75.6 million in contributions and grants in 2018 were provided by 292 private foundation sources, with 280 of these donors providing grants of less than $100,000. [163] [164]

More than $1.5 million of the $5.4 million in private foundation donations for Heritage in 2018 was provided by three donor-advised fund providers: the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, the Schwab Charitable Fund, and the **Chicago Community Trus**t. [165]

A donor-advised fund manages charitable accounts through which donors can distribute gifts to charities of their choice while receiving immediate tax benefits. Many of the largest, such as those noted above, exist to serve the clients of large investment firms or residents of a metropolitan area, rather than a particular charitable cause or ideological agenda.

Outside of the large donor-advised funds, the three largest of Heritage’s institutional foundation donors in 2018 were as follows:[166]

Lillian S. Wells Foundation ($1 million). In 2018 this foundation also gave six figure donations to two other right-of-center organizations: the James Madison Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. [167]
Charles G.**Koch Charitable Foundation** ($200,000). In 2018 this foundation also gave donations in excess of $100,000 to libertarian and right of center organizations such as the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the Daily Caller News Foundation; and to centrist-left organizations such as the Vera Institute of Justice, the Brookings Institution and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. More than half of Koch’s 2018 grants (at least $64 million) were given to programs affiliated with approximately 100 public and private universities. [168]

Henry E. Haller Jr. Foundation ($200,000). In 2018 this foundation also gave five figure donations to other right-of-center organizations, such as the Federalist Society and the Media Research Center. [169]

For donation years 1998 through 2018, Foundation Search reports Heritage receiving a cumulative total of more than 4,300 separate foundation grants totaling in excess of $274 million, for an average of $13 million per year.

The ten largest foundation contributors during the 21-year period were as follows: the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund ($16.8 million over 21 years), the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($13.7 million), the DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative ($13.3 million), the Herrick Foundation ($12.6 million), the National Christian Charitable Foundation ($11.4 million), the Howard Charitable Foundation ($10.4 million), the Noble Research Institute ($9.2 million), the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation ($9 million), the Lillian S. Wells Foundation ($8 million), and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation ($7.9 million). [170]

===

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/12/04/cmd-files-lawsuitagain-against-irs-for-refusing-to-release-tax-records/

CMD Files Lawsuit…Again Against IRS for Refusing to Release Tax Records

By ExposedByCMD Editors

December 4th, 2020

at 2:24 PM (CST)

Democracy, Featured Investigations, News, Press Release

For Immediate Release: Friday, December 4, 2020

Contact: David Armiak, david@prwatch.org

MADISON, WI – The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in federal court on Thursday, December 4, 2020, for illegally withholding tax documents for five right-wing funders.

CMD filed the complaint after exhausting every option to obtain grant lists from tax filings from the IRS, and argues that the agency’s actions have violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In June 2020, CMD submitted a FOIA request seeking missing Part XV, “Grants and Contributions Paid During the Year or Approved for Future Payment,” from 23 tax returns from the nine right-wing funders. In October 2020, the IRS produced some of the attachments without explanation in a response to CMD, but not all. A few days later, CMD received another letter from the IRS stating that, “the Disclosure Specialist properly denied your requests.”

CMD is filing suit to obtain the Part XV section for the following:

Asness Family Foundation (2016 990 Form, 2017 990 Form, 2018 990 Form)
Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation (2016 990-PF Form, 2018 990-PF Form)
Dunn Foundation (2014-PF Form)
Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund (2013 990 Form, 2014 990 Form, 2015 990 Form)
The Randolph Foundation (2018 990-PF Form)

CMD’s December 3 lawsuit follows an April 20 lawsuit against the IRS for failing to produce 2018 tax records for 18 right-wing groups that it claimed did not exist. In May, the IRS informed CMD’s counsel, Courtney T. DeThomas from Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, that it would not contest CMD’s request for records and provided all but one of the filings. “The IRS’s response to CMD’s FOIA requests points to a pattern of arbitrary and capricious procedural dodges that undermines the core principles of government transparency that are enshrined in the law,” said Ms. DeThomas.

“After the IRS agreed to produce records following our April 20th lawsuit, I am shocked that it is again forcing us to go to court,” said David Armiak, research director with CMD. “It is mind-boggling why the IRS chooses to fight rather than produce the documents as they are legally required to. I sincerely hope that this is the last time we will have to go to court and the IRS can improve its procedures in dealing with tax filing requests.”

A full copy of CMD’s complaint is available here and below.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/01/27/right-wing-megadonors-financing-media-operations-promote-their-ideologies/

alex k

For decades, Charles Koch has been committed to radically changing American society into a libertarian paradise, free from taxes and regulations, in which the wealthiest oligarchs, like himself, can destroy the environment, exploit their workers, and reap astonishing profits.

His “Structure of Social Change,” first introduced by his top strategist, Richard Fink in the late 1970s, was a plan to weaponize philanthropy by using three areas of influence that would, together, gradually push far-right economic ideas into the American mainstream. The strategy begins with the funding of free-market university programs, something the Charles Koch Foundation has done at hundreds of higher education institutions including George Mason University, Florida State, and Western Michigan University, to produce the “intellectual raw materials” for libertarian policies. Then, Koch and his wealthy allies fund think tanks and policy shops that would convert the academic literature into usable policy proposals, which, in the third stage, Koch-funded advocacy groups promote to government officials and the greater populace.

Koch’s strategy has been a wild success, but it may not have been as effective without another avenue of influence: favorable media.

A CMD investigation has found that the family foundations of Charles Koch and a number of similarly-minded right-wing megadonors, along with two donor-advised fund sponsors that they use to shepherd their charitable contributions and receive special tax breaks, have donated at over $109 million to media operations since 2015, nearly all of them conservative.

DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund (DCF), the connected donor-advised fund sponsors, have sent more than $45.7 million of their clients’ money to finance media nonprofits, including the Media Research Center, Real Clear Foundation, and the National Review Institute, since 2015.

Longtime right-wing funders such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, and the Charles Koch Institute have showered many of the same media groups with millions of dollars over the same period. The recipients range from the nonprofit behind The New Criterion, a magazine that runs lengthy think pieces from conservative intellectuals, to the libertarian Reason Foundation, to James O’Keefe’s far-right smear operation, Project Veritas.

[table]

host of conservative media outlets have faithfully met the needs of their often billionaire funders. The Daily Caller, heavily funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, prints opinion pieces from senior fellows at the climate change-denying Heartland Institute claiming the idea that human-caused climate change is destroying the earth is a “delusion.” The Media Research Center’s CNS News site prints essays by right-wing personality Ben Shapiro attacking critics of free-market capitalism. Reason.com promotes the wonders of capitalism and makes podcasts extolling the legacy of the late David Koch, a longtime Reason Foundation trustee. Project Veritas attempts to smear the presidential campaign of economic populist Bernie Sanders and earns praise from President Donald Trump. The Motion Picture Institute produces films that attack regulation and a children’s video series in which an economics professor who is affiliated with several Koch-funded programs teaches kids about the value of free-market economics. And PragerU publishes five-minute videos attacking socialism, climate science, socialized medicine, and the left in general.

The 21 conservative donor nonprofits researched by CMD for this report are:

Adelson Family Foundation
Adolph Coors Foundation
Bradley Impact Fund
Charles Koch Foundation
Charles Koch Institute
Donors Capital Fund
DonorsTrust
Earhart Foundation
Ed Uihlein Family Foundation
Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation
Heavenly Father’s Foundation (Wilks family)
Jacqueline Hume Foundation
John William Pope Foundation
JM Foundation
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Mercer Family Foundation
Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation
Sarah Scaife Foundation
Searle Freedom Trust
Thirteen Foundation (Wilks family)
Thomas W. Smith Foundation

The donors investigated by CMD provided more than half of the contribution revenue over the researched time period for several conservative news operations, including the Lucy Burns Institute and the American Media Institute [table]

ere are some of the biggest recipients of grants from these funders.

Lucy Burns Institute—$13.4 million

The Lucy Burns Institute, a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit and member of the right-wing State Policy Network, received the most money from these nonprofit donors out of all media recipients. From 2015-18, the Institute took in nearly $13.4 million, mostly from DonorsTrust and DCF but also from the Coors Foundation, Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust. The Institute’s 2018 tax return is not yet publicly available, but grants from these six donors amounted to 76 percent of the Institute’s contribution revenue from 2015-17.

The Lucy Burns Institute runs the mainstream political database Ballotpedia. Its president, Leslie Graves, is married to GOP operative, Koch and Tea Party ally Eric O’Keefe, and Institute staff have been trained by Koch institutions.

The Lucy Burns Institute Board of Directors has members who are fixtures in the Koch-backed conservative political movement. Director Tim Dunn, the founder and CEO of an oil and gas company in Texas, is chairman of the Empower Texans Foundation, a group funded by DonorsTrust that has worked with Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, and vice chairman of the Koch-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation. Board member Jack McHugh is senior legislative analyst at the Koch-backed Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Director Todd Graves is an attorney who represented the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a Koch network nonprofit whose leadership includes board member O’Keefe, the founder of the media group now known as the Franklin News Foundation, in Wisconsin’s John Doe investigations. Plaintiffs in the case accused then-Gov. Scott Walker of illegally coordinating with the Wisconsin Club for Growth. Conservative nonprofits researched by CMD gave over $1.1 million to the Franklin News Foundation, which publishes conservative news wire and website The Center Square, from 2015-18.

Media Research Center—$11.2 million

Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center was also a major recipient of right-wing foundations’ cash from 2015-18, scoring nearly $11.2 million from nine nonprofits tracked by CMD. The family foundation of Breitbart financier Robert Mercer gave $7 million to the Center from 2015-17, and DonorsTrust ($1.3 million) and the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($1.3 million) have given large amounts since 2015. The nine donors provided 27 percent of the Media Research Center’s contribution revenue from 2015-17.

The Media Research Center, which operates conservative sites such as CNSNews.com and Newsbusters and bills itself as a media watchdog, is a huge favorite of right-wing politicians and media personalities. In its 2018 annual report, the Center boasts of accolades from the likes of Vice President Mike Pence, Trump fanatic and Fox News host Sean Hannity, and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The Center’s work is “a fundamental element of my show prep daily; they always have been and they always will be,” said talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Reason Foundation—$9.6 million

Libertarian think tank the Reason Foundation received close to $9.6 million from eight nonprofits researched by CMD, including $3.8 million from the Searle Freedom Trust and nearly $1.7 million from the two Charles Koch nonprofits, from 2015-18. The late David Koch was a Reason trustee.

The Reason Foundation publishes Reason Magazine and Reason.com, which includes podcasts and a video series by libertarian media personality John Stossel.

Project Veritas—$7.8 million

Right-wing propaganda organization Project Veritas, the group that took down ACORN and smeared Planned Parenthood, receives nearly one-third of its contribution revenue from DonorsTrust. From 2015-18, DonorsTrust funneled over $7.8 million to Project Veritas, accounting for 31.3 percent of its contribution revenue. The Bradley Impact Fund added $31,000 during that time period.

James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas attempt “stings” on Democratic politicians, liberal nonprofits, and media companies, most of which fail to prove anything close to the malfeasance O’Keefe hopes to expose. Perhaps most notably, the group tried to lure Washington Post reporters into writing about a woman who pretended to have had an underage affair with Alabama Senate candidate and right-wing extremist Roy Moore, but the reporters were able to sniff her out.

American Media Institute—$6.1 million

The American Media Institute bills itself as an independent investigative news service, but from 2015-16, Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, the John William Pope Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation gave it nearly $6.1 million, which was more than two-thirds of its total revenue. The following year, the Institute’s revenue dropped significantly, from $5.5 million in 2016 to $577,000 in 2017.

According to Media Matters, the Institute has “duped” mainstream news outlets into publishing its stories, which included one critical of the Clinton Foundation that originally didn’t meet the standards of its publisher, Fusion.

Real Clear Foundation—$5.9 million

The Real Clear Foundation, which funds investigative reporting for the site RealClearPolitics.com, is almost entirely funded by seven conservative nonprofits researched by CMD. DonorsTrust is the biggest donor, having given $3.8 million from 2015-18, and other contributors include Donors Capital Fund ($1 million), the two Charles Koch foundations ($458,000), the Ed Uihlein Foundation ($250,000), and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation ($100,000). The Koch total includes a $375,000 consulting contract paid by the Charles Koch Institute in 2018.

Daily Caller News Foundation—$5.2 million

The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) funds much of the content of the Daily Caller website, a site that has several ties to white nationalists and was co-founded by now-Fox News host Tucker Carlson with $3 million from right-wing donor Foster Freiss. As of 2018, Carlson was secretary of the DCNF board of directors.

Charles Koch Foundation officials may express concern over the site’s extremism, but the foundation is DCNF’s biggest donor–by a mile. The Koch Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute combined to give over $3.3 million to the Daily Caller News Foundation from 2015-18, representing 37 percent of the group’s contribution revenue during that time period. Including grants from DonorsTrust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and others, conservative nonprofits researched by CMD provided the DCNF with 58 percent of its donation revenue.

Charles Koch alleges he is not a fan of Trump, but Daily Caller and other Koch grant recipients has often been generous to the president. In fact, Daily Caller accepted an estimated $150,000 from the 2016 Trump campaign to rent its email list. Recently, reporting revealed that Trump family friend Tom Hicks, Jr. said last year that the Daily Caller editor could be counted on to advance Trump’s personal political goals regarding Ukraine.

Middle East Media and Research Institute—$5.1 million

An anti-Muslim nonprofit led by Daniel Pipes, the Middle East Media and Research Institute is another favorite of right-wing megadonors. The Institute, an organization at the “inner core” of the nation’s Islamophobia network that “attempts to portray Muslims and Arabs as being inherently irrational and violent,” according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, took in $5.1 million–or 23 percent of its contribution revenue–from four conservative foundations from 2015-18: Sheldon and Miriam Adelson’s family foundation ($4 million), DonorsTrust ($564,800), the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($450,000), and the Bradley Foundation ($70,000)....

===

https://www.**urban.org**/sites/default/files/**2019**/06/27/conservative_philanthropy_in_higher_education.pdf

...The importance of the Walgreen Foundation’s support raises a counterfactual: would these scholars have enjoyed prominent careers without that financial assistance? Like all counterfactuals, the conclusion must be speculative. Certainly, many of the scholars at the University of Chicago who received funding from the Walgreen Foundation (such as Posner and Becker) may well have had brilliant academic careers even if the Walgreen Foundation and the Graduate School of Business had never existed. However, this misses the point: the success of George Stigler’s Walgreen-funded project created a scholarly network and a financial infrastructure with which to promote their pro–free market ideas. Without Walgreen’s support, that may well have been more difficult.

CASE STUDY II: HENRY MANNE AND LAW AND ECONOMICS

The success of Stigler’s project can be understood within the context of a broader conservative philanthropic movement that built upon past victories. Before Stigler constructed an antistatist economics and business program at the University of Chicago, Keynesians (who supported muscular state interventions in the economy) tended to dominate economic thought in the United States. The most prominent economists and economics programs in America (e.g., Paul Samuelson, who served as an economic advisor to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and built MIT’s economics department into a powerhouse) predominantly belonged to the Keynesian tradition.11 Stigler’s antistatist economics program not only allowed for the transformation of economics programs throughout American higher education, but provided academic support for the conservative transformation of the law. Steven Teles’s (2008) book on the development of the conservative legal establishment, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law, strongly emphasizes the Chicago school’s importance in the creation of the field of “law and economics” in the 1970s. “Law and economics” is, essentially, the application of economic analysis—specifically economic analysis rooted in the Austrian school’s free market philosophy—to public policy and legal questions.12 Not every early attempt to institutionalize conservative legal and economics programs was as successful as Stigler’s. Henry Manne, whom Teles calls one the great organizational entrepreneurs of law and economics, attempted to build a dedicated conservative law program at the University of Rochester in the late 1960s by cultivating conservative alumni and foundation support.

...

CASE III: THE OLIN FOUNDATION AND THE BEACHHEAD THEORY

Although a dense network of conservative philanthropic foundations—including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation—became prominent funders of right-wing causes in the 1970s and early 1980s, the John M. Olin Foundation has received the most scholarly attention for the following three reasons: (1) it was one of the first conservative foundations to focus on giving in higher education to achieve its political aims, (2) its peer institutions considered it an innovative leader in right-wing philanthropic giving, and (3) it has actively supported studies that highlight its history and mission. Such studies include John J. Miller’s official history of the foundation, A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America, and Steven Teles’s more neutral The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, both of which received support from Olin Foundation grants. 17 Scholars and philanthropic officials have centered these points (particularly its reputation for innovation) in criticisms of the Olin Foundation’s politics (Sally Covington’s Moving a Public Policy Agenda, for example, devotes one of its major case studies to the foundation because of its reputation for innovation and impact).

Given the success of the Olin Foundation’s projects and of its broader vision of promarket social change rooted in college and university campuses, this reputation is well deserved.18 John M. Olin, whose Winchester Repeating Arms Company made a fortune during World War II manufacturing arms and ammunition for the US Army, was not the first right-wing billionaire to establish a dedicated philanthropic foundation in their name (Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and even the comparatively less wealthy Charles Walgreen preceded him). But Olin was concerned that “mission creep” had set in at the major establishment philanthropic organizations, leading them to betray their founders’ promarket ideals. He was determined to avoid the same fate, and to ensure his money was tied to meaningful institution-building and political change. The Olin Foundation was therefore designed to have a limited lifespan: Olin died in 1982, and the foundation folded in 2005 after having disbursed nearly $300 million to conservative causes.19

...

CASE IV: THE KOCHS AND GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

The Koch Family Foundations took a similar approach to Olin, except that unlike Olin, the Koch foundations funded “Gramscian” and “Fabian” strategies simultaneously. As of 2015, the Kochs had spent nearly $150 million funding academic programs at no fewer than 307 higher education institutions. In fact, they dedicated $50 million to a single flagship campus in the Koch system: George Mason University.34 How GMU became a Koch campus—or rather, how the Kochs became the major financial backers of several of the school’s promarket research centers, along with its economics department and law school—is worth exploring in detail. The Kochs’ approach to philanthropic giving is similar to Olin’s in important ways, among them the committed ideological vision, the importance of

...

CASE V: THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY

Institutions created by conservative philanthropy in higher education can have profound political, social, and cultural influence. The most influential of these institutions is the Federalist Society, founded as a group for conservative law students in 1982. The Federalist Society has given educational and social support to a generation of right-wing judges, attorneys, and legal scholars. The landmark cases settled by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court in the past decade—Citizens United v. FEC, Shelby County v. Holder, Janus v. AFSCME, and Trump v. Hawaii 46—would have been considerably more difficult for conservatives to win without the Federalist Society’s influence, not least because Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, the late Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas are all Federalist Society alumni. One opinion columnist has called the Federalist Society the “farm system for the [judiciary],” ensuring the ideological reliability of judicial appointees and preventing missteps like Richard Nixon’s appointment of Harry A. Blackmun (who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade) to the Supreme Court or George H.W. Bush’s appointment of David Souter (who was identified with the court’s liberal faction for most of his career).47 Although the media

...

CASE V: UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT GROUPS

Although the Federalist Society and conservative domination of the legal system represent conservative philanthropy’s most consequential achievements, other kinds of higher education philanthropy have contributed to right-wing political success. Conservative activists and philanthropists have underwritten right-wing undergraduate student activism that advocates free market ideology on college campuses. One of the earliest organized efforts was Young Americans for Freedom, founded by a group of some 90 young activists at conservative publisher William F. Buckley Jr.’s Connecticut estate in September 1960.55 (Young Americans for Freedom is not to be confused with Young America’s Foundation, discussed below. For clarity, I refer to both organizations by their full names...

notes: 54Maxine Joselow, “Is George Mason the New Trump U?” E&E News, July 17, 2018, https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060089361; “Tracking Deregulation in the Trump Era,” Brookings Institution, January 16, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trumpera/. 55 There are three scholarly treatments of Young Americans for Freedom by historians. These are Gregory L. Schneider’s Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (New York: New York University Press, 1999), John A. Andrew’s The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), and sociologist Rebecca E. Klatch’s A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). There are also a handful of accounts from conservative pundits involved in Young Americans for Freedom, notably William F. Buckley Jr.’s Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater (New York: Basic Books, 2008) and Wayne J. Thorburn’s (former executive director of Young Americans for Freedom) A Generation Awakes: Young Americans for Freedom and the Creation of the Conservative Movement (Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 2010). ]]

It should also be noted that Young America’s Foundation and Leadership Institute alumni have gone on to prominent positions in the American Right in the 2010s,including White House advisor and architect of the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policy Stephen Miller (Young America’s Foundation) and media provocateur James O’Keefe (Leadership Institute). 65

This poses another counterfactual: would a similar conservative leadership cadre have developed absent support from organizations like Young America’s Foundation and the Leadership Institute? Ultimately, it seems unlikely that conservative organizations operating independently on college campuses without any kind of overarching political and financial coordination would have developed such a wide-ranging and politically disciplined leadership class. For instance, the broad support that conservative philanthropy has provided to conservative firebrand Dinesh D’Souza, now a bestselling author, suggests that a vibrant conservative ecosystem, both on and off campus, is crucial for cultivating conservative leaders. The Olin Foundation and the Institute for Educational Affairs first supported D’Souza through his right-wing campus newspaper, Dartmouth Review, in the early 1980s. After graduating from Dartmouth, D’Souza secured a John M. Olin Fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute, where he helped popularize the phrase “political correctness” to decry early 1990s campus culture. It seems fair to say that D’Souza owes much of his success to Olin, which can likely be said for many lesser-known conservative thinkers and writers who have reliably promoted free enterprise and procapitalist views.66

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A survey of the literature on conservative philanthropy in higher education yields the following key themes: The importance of dense networks to achieve immediate and long-term goals. Michael Joyce, a senior official at the Olin Foundation and later the head of the Bradley Foundation, called this the “wine collection” effect; I refer to it as the career pipeline. This pipeline is a way for foundations to invest in conservative figures when they are students or scholars, who mature and eventually contribute to rightwing politics off campus.67

This was the Olin Foundation’s stated goal when it supported writers and activists like Dinesh D’Souza. But it was also a goal of institution-building on college campuses. Multiple foundations funded overlapping efforts at colleges and universities across the United States to establish centers for right-wing thought, and those efforts operated cumulatively over time. The creation of a center of conservative economic thought at the University of Chicago allowed for future successes; even failed attempts like Manne’s entrepreneurship at Rochester and Emory reaped results under different circumstances at George Mason.

The establishment of conservative student groups, from the Federalist Society to undergraduate conservative newspapers, provided a pipeline of talent to these institutions and, in the case of the Federalist Society, eventually provided financial support. Identifying faculty organizational entrepreneurs and sympathetic administrators. From an operational standpoint, this was a critical component of the eventual establishment of conservative centers on campus. When any of the three ingredients (dense networks of donors, dedicated organizational entrepreneurs among faculty, and a sympathetic administration)were lacking—as at the University of Rochester in the 1960s and Emory University in the 1980s—the institution-building efforts failed.

When those three ingredients were present, as they were at Harvard in the late 1980s and George Mason University since the 1970s, the transformations could be profound.The Koch network at George Mason would never have been as successful as it has been without the collaboration of faculty and administrators. A corollary to this is the importance of overcoming institutional resistance. There has been tremendous resistance in the academy to right-wing philanthropy. Three of the right-wing efforts discussed in this review—at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, the University of Rochester in the 1960s, and Emory University in the 1980s—were unsuccessful because of faculty or administration resistance; the successes were possible when support from faculty and, above all, administration was forthcoming.

===

https://www.**urban.org**/sites/default/files/**2019**/06/27/conservative_philanthropy_in_higher_education.pdf

...The importance of the Walgreen Foundation’s support raises a counterfactual: would these scholars have enjoyed prominent careers without that financial assistance? Like all counterfactuals, the conclusion must be speculative. Certainly, many of the scholars at the University of Chicago who received funding from the Walgreen Foundation (such as Posner and Becker) may well have had brilliant academic careers even if the Walgreen Foundation and the Graduate School of Business had never existed. However, this misses the point: the success of George Stigler’s Walgreen-funded project created a scholarly network and a financial infrastructure with which to promote their pro–free market ideas. Without Walgreen’s support, that may well have been more difficult.

CASE STUDY II: HENRY MANNE AND LAW AND ECONOMICS

...

CASE III: THE OLIN FOUNDATION AND THE BEACHHEAD THEORY

...

CASE IV: THE KOCHS AND GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

...

CASE V: THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY

...

CASE V: UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT GROUPS

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

===

aha:? family fdn tax shelter, ~ estate tax, arts philanthropy also tax dodge but also rehabiliatation PR (// "job-creators"?)

===

https://theconversation.com/spotting-the-political-calculus-behind-some-acts-of-corporate-charity-95743

the past few years, I have teamed up with fellow economists Marianne Bertrande, Matilde Bombardini and Francesco Trebbi to look into one underappreciated way that businesses may attempt to influence politicians: corporate philanthropy.

We found that what we call “politically linked charities” get more money from corporate foundations in general. We also find that when politicians gain leverage on issues tied to a company’s interests, charities in their districts get more gifts from that company’s foundation. For example, a nonprofit is more than four times more likely to receive grants from a corporate foundation if a politician sits on its board.

This means, in our view, that some corporate giving may influence members of Congress in both major political parties to a degree – indirectly bending laws and regulations in ways that boost profits rather than serve the public’s interests.

Political charity

Why would businesses rely on charitable donations rather than, say, campaign funds or lobbying efforts, to influence government? One big reason is that there are limits on campaign contributions, but effectively no limit on what what corporations may give to charity.

And it appears that corporate charity is deployed in ways that look a lot like influencing.

Second, companies may support nonprofits that serve the voters of individual politicians’ districts – thereby indirectly helping him or her get re-elected. For example, an investigation by The New York Times of former Democratic Rep. Joe Baca of Californiaconcluded that he used his family foundation and its generous giveaways “to run something akin to a permanent political campaign.” But much of the foundation’s largesse was funded by local companies and major corporations “that have often turned to Mr. Baca’s Washington office for help,” not by his family.First, companies may give to politicians’ pet charities. For example, as detailed in a recent New York Times article highlighting our research, the foundations of AT&T, ConAgra Foods, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Medtronic, Merck, Monsanto, Nationwide Insurance, Principal Financial Group and Rockwell Collins all contributed to either the University of Northern Iowa or the Partnership for a Drug-Free Iowa. Perhaps not coincidentally, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is a trustee of one of these organizations and an honorary board member of the other.

Then there is the stealth factor. It’s relatively easy to look up how much investment management giant BlackRock’s political action committee, or PAC, gave Rep. Carolyn Maloney, in the 2016 election cycle. According to the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets database, the New York Democrat got US$10,000. That’s because federal law has required all such donations to be publicly disclosed since the 1970s.

It’s harder, however, to connect the dots between BlackRock’s charitable giving that indirectly benefits Maloney and her colleagues who have New York City’s financial service businesses as their constituents.

Striking patterns

To uncover potential links between corporate donations and legislative interests, we looked at the grants provided by the foundations of companies in the S&P 500 and Fortune 500 lists that comprise many of America’s largest companies. Because these grants must by law be disclosed on tax returns, we could link most donations to specific nonprofits. That, in turn, meant we could pinpoint in which congressional districts the nonprofits were located.

As the Grassley and Baca examples indicate, it is fair to say that corporate foundations are more likely to give to nonprofits tied to politicians if those lawmakers belong to committees that matter to the company.

We also have also found that companies’ foundations give more to nonprofits in districts represented by politicians who also get campaign cash from those same enterprises. That suggests that corporate giving does double duty as a form of stealth campaign finance.

What can be done about it

Corporate charitable contributions totaled nearly $18 billion in 2014, the most recent year that we analyzed in our data. My colleagues and I estimated that 7 percent of them were politically motivated – about $1.3 billion. At that level, the political donations delivered through charity may be as important as more easily observable channels of influence.

For example, corporate PACs spent less than $500 million in 2014 while lobbying expenditures amounted to $3.3 billion.

In light of our findings, we believe that corporate-funded activities of all kinds should require more disclosure, including the donations companies give to charity.

===