Ford, Gerald Pres
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LEVER Master plan
MASTER PLAN, Ep 4: The Task Force That Took Over America
disney mtg:
JARED:Well, the main coordinator behind this gathering was a guy named William G. Whyte. He was the top lobbyist in Washington for United States Steel, one of the biggest steel producers in the world.
He was also picked to serve as Chairman of this newly-created Powell Memo Task Force. We’ll talk more about Whyte in a minute, but first I want you to check out this — it’s a roster of other Task Force Members
DAVID:Let’s see, there’s… Richard Jencks, president of CBS… Jay Van Andel, who co-founded Amway with the notorious Richard DeVos… let’s see, there’s top brass from Phillips Petroleum… I also see a bunch of executives from JC Penney, 3M, the American Medical Association, General Motors… deans from a couple universities....
Officially, Congressman Jerry came to Florida to take part in another work-related junket on the invitation of William Whyte — a junket paid for by U.S. Steel, of course. But, instead of heading to a golf course, Gerald Ford was going to the Happiest Place on Earth to schmooze and collaborate with the Powell Memo Task Force.
According to the conference schedule, the Honorable Gerald R. Ford was the official speaker at the luncheon on Friday.
But there may have been an ulterior motive for his participation in that day’s session — strategizing about the upcoming congressional elections and about how to deal with legislation that was problematic for the master plan — the “Federal Election Campaign Act.”
JARED: FECA!
So, remember, back in episode 2, we told you that Ford signed the amendments seeming to make FECA even stronger when he became president. So this is right before that, when they are discussing those amendments.
DAVID: When Ford did sign those amendments, it was seen as a big win for the reformers, not the master planners there at Disney World.
JARED: For the most part, it was a win for Common Cause and the reformers. But the master planners were desperate to get around FECA’s restrictions on corporate-funded political action committees that funnel money to politicians and political parties.
This Powell Memo meeting at Disney World was where they perfected their plan.
I got a letter for you to read, David. This was written by one of the attendees, a week before he went to Disney World on behalf of his boss John Merrill Olin.
DAVID:Olin, the wealthy industrialist. We’ll talk more about him later.
JARED:In this letter, the executive writes about the Powell Memo Task Force in intimate detail, especially their lobbying effort to amend the regulations around corporate campaign donations
He wrote,
“We should be able to get many companies to follow our own pattern of political fundraising…”
DAVID:He’s talking about political action committees, PACs. And without getting too far into the weeds, the corporate guys at this Orlando meeting wanted an exemption to an older law that was standing in the way of huge multinationals, like the Olin Corp, from dumping money into corporate PACs.
The effort was being opposed by Common Cause and a senator from Wisconsin named William Proxmire, who was threatening to filibuster.
JARED:Check out this line:
“I have suggested to some of my corporate associates that we might contribute to a special fund to have Senator Proxmire get a few more hair transplants… provided the operator drills a little deeper this time.”
DAVID:Okay, so they’re like joking about murdering Senator Proxmire, basically, or at least lobotomizing him.
JARED: Yeah, and remember: We know that Ford was there. We know that amending FECA was a major item of discussion at the meeting. And we know the meeting took place right before Ford’s keynote speech to the Powell Memo Task Force.
DAVID: So, let’s review: while drinking mai-tais at Disney World’s Polynesian Hotel, the master planners are specifically scheming to end restrictions on corporate PACs, and they’re schmoozing directly with Gerald Ford — the then-House minority leader on his way to becoming president.
JAREDAnd then, guess what? A provision killing those restrictions ended up in the FECA reform bill that Gerald Ford first dealt with in Congress… and then later signed into law as president!
DAVID:Wow! What a shocking coincidence! Remember what Ford said in episode 2, when he signed the bill into law?
GERALD R. FORD: …all the compromises that were necessary in the process…
DAVID:I guess now we know where some of those compromises came from.
So, under the guise of post-Watergate campaign finance reform legislation, the master planners from this Powell memo meeting ended up creating their first corruption loophole.
And as soon as that law took effect, there was an immediate explosion in campaign spending by corporate America… no more secret bags of dirty cash smuggled through airports, a la Nixon.
The Chamber wanted all of its members to write checks for millions of dollars to totally official, totally legal, and extremely powerful business PACs.
...
But if they were going to create a movement to counter the Left, they needed something that would not only inspire the insiders, and powerbrokers, and elites — but also something that would motivate the masses.
JARED: And this is why I’m skeptical about whether the Powell memo was leaked to the Washington Post without the knowledge of the top leadership at the Chamber of Commerce.
Because right after the memo went public in 1972, you see that the Chamber is immediately publishing it and distributing it far and wide. They mailed thousands of copies to members. They printed it in their official magazine with an elaborate design treatment like it was some mysterious quasi-religious text that must be read.
DAVID:It really was kind of like the conservative movement’s version of the “Anarchist’s Cookbook” — it was kinda like contraband, a publication everyone had heard about but wasn’t on the newsstand.
JARED: And even though the Powell memo was never an officially published book, according to the Chamber’s estimates, hundreds of thousands of copies of it were circulated, reaching millions of Americans and sparking numerous discussions, speeches, and articles. It was an underground bestseller.
DAVID: And by early 1973, activity around the memo was intense.
JARED: So intense, in fact, that at the same time Gerald Ford was at Disney World delivering his keynote address to the Powell Memo conference… it turns out there was another event — a rival event — about the Powell memo that was happening at the Marriott hotel in Dallas, Texas. AILES
DAVID:At the same time?
JARED: The same exact day, March 30th, 1973. I want to show you this.
These are notes taken by a man named John A. Howard. Howard came from the world of academia and was the President of Rockford College in Illinois. He was an influential figure in the emerging conservative movement during this time.
...
an 10 24
John McEntee, who served as the Director of the Trump White House Presidential Personnel Office, in a 2023 video said the U.S. should have “male only” voting. The video (below) resurfaced Monday, drawing outrage. It went viral, with over one million views in just 24 hours.
McEntee is the co-founder of a dating app for Republicans and conservatives, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, called Date Right Stuff.
He is also a senior advisor at The Heritage Foundation’s far-right Project 2025. He leads “the group’s efforts to compile a database of thousands of vetted conservatives to staff a new conservative administration,” The New York Times reported last week.
McEntee got his start in the White House as Trump’s “body man,” a personal aide, but was fired by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in 2018 because he was “under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes,” CNN reported at the time.
After Kelly’s exit, Trump brought McEntee back into the White House, but as the head of the White House personnel office. He was charged with purging the Executive Branch of anyone who was not deemed sufficiently loyal to Donald Trump.
READ MORE: ‘Confident’ Harris Campaign Says All Swing States ‘In Play’ in ‘Extremely Close’ Race
“So I guess they misunderstood,” McEntee says in the video, one of his many that show him eating in a restaurant. “When we said we wanted mail-only voting, we meant male — M A L E.”
The short clip (below) ends with him smiling. It was originally posted to his Date Right Stuff dating app TikTok account last year, which is filled with dozens if not hundreds of short clips showing McEntee opining on social and political issues. It was reposted Monday to an account on X that bears his name but says it is a supporters’ account.
That video is captioned: “Sorry we want MALE only voting. The 19th might have to go,” although McEntee did not say that specifically in the video.
Monday was the 50th anniversary of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), signed into law by Republican President Gerald Ford. TIME reports that before the law, “banks required women to have a male cosigner—typically a husband or father—on applications for credit cards, loans, and mortgages. It was an archaic policy in an archaic system that was designed to fail women—and for women to fail.”
MSNBC’s Jen Psaki profiled McEntee and his videos in July:
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9 24 the lever podcast series
trailer: Master Plan | Listen Now
ep 4
3 mtg orlando dallas and --- same time? jerry ford vp
white of US steel
devos amway pal, joe coors/ AILES
In this episode, we definitely answer that question for the very first time. Master Plan lead producer Jared Jacang Maher has uncovered troves of never-before-reported evidence that proves corporate executives and politicians didn’t just read Powell’s memo — they acted on it.
This includes three secret meetings of a “Powell Memo Task Force” — including one at Disney World. These gatherings drew together America’s most powerful businessmen, a future president, and an ambitious young media consultant named Roger Ailes.
By the end of 1974, the Powell Memo had transformed from a set of ideas into an actual master plan — and the pieces were in place to carry out a decades-long assault on American democracy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_E._Train
Politics, Pollution, and Pandas: An Environmental Memoir
By Russell E. Train
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/
FORD, KISSINGER AND THE INDONESIAN INVASION, 1975-76 Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975: New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 62 Edited by William Burr and Michael L. Evans December 6, 2001 |
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The New Evidence
The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975 set the stage for the long, bloody, and disastrous occupation of the territory that ended only after an international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999. President Bill Clinton cut off military aid to Indonesia in September 1999—reversing a longstanding policy of military cooperation—but questions persist about U.S. responsibility for the 1975 invasion; in particular, the degree to which Washington actually condoned or supported the bloody military offensive. Most recently, journalist Christopher Hitchens raised questions about the role of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in giving a green light to the invasion that has left perhaps 200,000 dead in the years since. Two newly declassified documents from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, released to the National Security Archive, shed light on the Ford administration’s relationship with President Suharto of Indonesia during 1975. Of special importance is the record of Ford’s and Kissinger’s meeting with Suharto in early December 1975. The document shows that Suharto began the invasion knowing that he had the full approval of the White House. Both of these documents had been released in heavily excised form some years ago, but with Suharto now out of power, and following the collapse of Indonesian control over East Timor, the situation has changed enough that both documents have been released in their entirety.
Other documents found among State Department records at the National Archives elucidate the inner workings of U.S. policy toward the Indonesian crisis during 1975 and 1976. Besides confirming that Henry Kissinger and top advisers expected an eventual Indonesian takeover of East Timor, archival material shows that the Secretary of State fully understood that the invasion of East Timor involved the "illegal" use of U.S.-supplied military equipment because it was not used in self-defense as required by law.
Although Indonesia was a major site of U.S. energy and raw materials investment, an important petroleum exporter, strategically located near vital shipping lanes, and a significant recipient of U.S. military assistance, the country—much less the East Timor question—barely figures into Henry Kissinger’s memoirs of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Gerald Ford’s memoir briefly discusses the December 1975 visit to Jakarta but does not mention the discussion of East Timor with Suharto. Indeed, as important as the bilateral relationship was, Jakarta's brutal suppression of the independence movement in East Timor was a development that neither Ford nor Kissinger wanted people to remember about their time in power. That the two decided on a course of action of dubious legality and that resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Timorese may well have also discouraged further reflection, at least in public. No doubt the omissions from Ford's and Kissinger's memoirs also reflect the low priority that East Timor had during the Ford administration. For senior officials, the fate of a post-colonial East Timor paled in comparison to the strategic relationship with the anti-communist Suharto regime, especially in the wake of the communist victory in Vietnam, when Ford and Kissinger wanted to strengthen relations with anti-communists and check left-wing movements in the region.(1) But it is not simply a matter of omission; on several occasions Kissinger has explicitly denied that he ever had substantive discussions of East Timor with Suharto, much less having consented to Indonesian plans.(2) The new evidence contradicts Kissinger's statements: Indonesian plans for the invasion of East Timor were indeed discussed with Suharto, and Ford and Kissinger gave them the green light. As Kissinger advised Suharto on the eve of the invasion: "it is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly" but that "it would be better if it were done after we returned" to the United States.
Although these new documents shed important light on U.S. policy toward the East Timor question in 1975, much more needs to be learned about U.S. policymaking during 1975 and 1976. Unfortunately, most of the relevant sources are classified. The large collection of Kissinger-Scowcroft office files at the Ford Library remains unavailable, as are the records of the State Department’s Indonesia desk and the Bureau of East Asian Affairs for the 1970s. The State Department's recent acquisition of Henry Kissinger's telephone conversation transcripts might include important material, although they will probably reflect the relatively low priority that the policymakers gave to the East Timor question.
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