chicago community trust

=<div>vs freedom trust?
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</div><div>=</div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://publicintegrity.org/politics/news-outlets-unearth-more-donors-trust-recipients/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://publicintegrity.org/politics/news-outlets-unearth-more-donors-trust-recipients/</font></a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><aside class="relation packaged" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 32px 0px; max-width: 100%;"><div class="relation-inner grid_4 suffix_desktop-large_3 suffix_desktop_1 stacked float-right" data-sigil="relation" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><section style="box-sizing: inherit;"><header style="box-sizing: inherit;"><hgroup style="box-sizing: inherit;"><h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.2; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px;">d<a href="https://publicintegrity.org/2013/02/14/12181/donors-use-charity-push-free-market-policies-states" target="_self" title="Donors use charity to push free-market policies in states" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">onors use charity to push free-market policies in states</font></a></h2><h4 class="authors" style="box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.2; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-weight: normal;">By <span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span class="author" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://publicintegrity.org/authors/paul-abowd" title="Paul Abowd" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Paul Abowd</a></span></span></font></h4><h4 class="pubdate" style="box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.2; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px;"><time datetime="2013-02-14T05:00:45-05:00" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">February 14, 2013</font></time></h4></hgroup></header><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charity acts as screen for conservative foundations that feed network of state-based think tanks, media outlets.</font></p></section></div></aside><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Virginia-based charity Donors Trust has promised anonymity to donors who seek to fund “sensitive or controversial” issues.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A Center for Public Integrity <a href="http://publicintegrity.org/2013/02/14/12181/donors-use-charity-push-free-market-policies-states" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">report last week</a> lifted that veil — at least partially — revealing dozens of conservative foundations that together in recent years have given tens of millions of dollars to Donors Trust .</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Donors Trust, in turn, has funded a nationwide network of free-market think tanks, media outlets and university programs to the tune of nearly $400 million since 2002.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Recently, much of that funding has gone toward state-based policy efforts. For example, Donors Trust provided 95 percent of the funding for a conservative media clearinghouse called the <a href="http://franklincenterhq.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity</a>, which runs a network of state-based blogs</span>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While many of the charity’s 193 donors remain anonymous, a variety of media reports have shown where Donors Trust money ends up:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change-denial</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">In late February, <span style="box-sizing: inherit; transition-duration: 110ms; transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; transition-property: color;">The Guardian GUK</span> reported that 46 percent of Donors Trust grants in 2010 went to groups opposing climate science. Between 2002 and 2010, the group gave $118 million to about 100 such groups.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">A detailed 2012 report published on <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/fake-science-fakexperts-funny-finances-free-tax" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">DeSmog Blog</a> ties Donors Trust to a vast climate science denial machine through its generous support for the<b> Heartland Institute,</b> a Chicago-based think tank that mobilized support for the tobacco industry before shifting its focus to climate change. BUCHHOLTZ?]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">An October episode of <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">PBS Frontline</a> said Donors Trust has become “the number one supporter” of climate denial groups like Heartland and the <a href="http://publicintegrity.org/2011/04/06/3936/kochs-web-influence" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Koch brothers</a>-funded <a href="http://publicintegrity.org/2012/06/21/9170/nonprofit-profile-americans-prosperity" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Americans for Prosperity</a> after industry giants such as ExxonMobil curtailed funding to Heartland following public protest.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Islamic radicalism</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Donors Trust made its largest grant in 2007 to a New York-based group called Clarion Fund. The $17 million donation went toward the production of a documentary called “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Obsession-Radical-Islams-Against-West/dp/B000SM7QTI" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Obsession</a>: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/10/26/the-far-rights-secret-slush-fund-to-keep-fear-alive/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Seven weeks</a> before the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president, Clarion distributed millions of copies of the movie, which stirred fear about Islamic radicalism, by inserting DVDs as ads in daily newspapers nationwide.</font></p><p style="margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/11/16/clarion_fund_obsession_dvds/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Reports</a> later suggested that Chicago businessman<b> Barry Seid</b> may have passed the $17 million through Donors Trust to Clarion. Seid and</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> Donors Trust director Whitney Ball</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> co-chair another foundation called</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"> Chicago Freedom Trust.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Academic coups?</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2010, a free-market <a href="http://mercatus.org/jason-sorens" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">professor</a> of economics whose research is funded through Donors Trust laid out his “<a href="http://freestateproject.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Free State</a>” plan for libertarians to migrate to and take over the state of <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/04/27/the-far-rights-plot-to-capture-new-hampshire/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">New Hampshire</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">In 2009, Donors Trust passed about <a href="http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2009/522/166/2009-522166327-0656b0af-9.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">$600,000</a> in donations to <b>Shimer College </b>while conservative Chicago businessmen, including Seid, attempted unsuccessfully to <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-conservative-menace/Content?oid=1251260" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">take</a> control of the small liberal arts school.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Fair representation’</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A Donors Trust subsidiary called the <b>Project for Fair Representation </b>has led legal challenges to affirmative action programs and, more recently, to the Voting Rights Act,</span> according to reports by <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/04/us-usa-court-casemaker-idUSBRE8B30V220121204" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">Reuters</a> and <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/the-more-things-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; transition: color 110ms ease-in-out 0s;">The New York Times</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 32px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The project sought out and tapped the majority-white <b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Shelby County, Ala., as plaintiffs in a challenge to Section 5 of the Act, </b>which gives the U.S. Department of Justice power to approve or reject changes to electoral laws in 16 states, mostly in the south. The case will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Cour</font></p></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2x?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks</div><div>
</div><div>Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate change science</div><div>
</div><div> How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups</div><div>Funding climate deniers  nn :  Americans For Prosperity </div><div>Climate sceptic groups are mobilising against Obama’s efforts to act on climate change in his second term. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</div><div>Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent</div><div>@suzyji</div><div>Thu 14 Feb<b> 2013 </b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.</div><div>
</div><div>Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.</div><div>
</div><div>Koch Industries Executive Vice President David H. Koch : Funding climate change deniers</div><div>
</div><div>"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said in an interview.</div><div>
</div><div>By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Ball won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organisations working to discredit climate science or block climate action.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, they found common ground.</div><div>
</div><div>"Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not," she went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a lot of differences on things like defence, immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.</div><div>
</div><div>The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking action on climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>Graphic: climate denial funding</div><div>
</div><div><b>Those same groups are now mobilising against Obama's efforts to act on climate change in his second term. A top recipient of the secret funds on Wednesday put out a point-by-point critique of the climate content in the president's state of the union address.</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">And it was all done with a guarantee of complete anonymity for the donors who wished to remain hidden.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>"The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing,</b>" said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.</div><div>
</div><div>"These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them," Davies said.</div><div>
</div><div>The trusts were established for the express purpose of managing donations to a host of conservative causes.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Such vehicles, called donor-advised funds</b>, are not uncommon in America. They offer a number of advantages to wealthy donors. They are convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are lawful.</div><div>
</div><div>That opposition hardened over the years, especially from the mid-2000s where the Greenpeace record shows a sharp spike in funds to the anti-climate cause.</div><div>
</div><div><b>In effect, the Donors Trust was bankrolling a movement, said Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who has extensively researched the networks of ultra-conservative donors.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"This is what I call the <b>counter-movement, </b>a large-scale effort that is an organised effort and that is part and parcel of the conservative movement in the United States " Brulle said. "We don't know where a lot of the money is coming from, but we do know that Donors Trust is just one example of the dark money flowing into this effo</span>rt."</div><div>
</div><div><b>In his view, Brulle said: "Donors Trust is just the tip of a very big iceberg."</b></div><div>
</div><div><b>The rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In 2002, the two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers donated to climate sceptic groups that year.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By 2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channelling just under $30m to a host of conservative organisations opposing climate action or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it came to blocking action on the climate crisis, the obscure charity in the suburbs was outspending the Koch brothers by a factor of six to one.</div><div>
</div><div>"There is plenty of money coming from elsewhere," said John Mashey, a retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate contrarians. "Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You can not ignore the Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things, but they are not the only ones."</div><div>
</div><div><b>It is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favourite projects using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.</b></div><div>
</div><div>But the records suggest many other wealthy conservatives opened up their wallets to the anti-climate cause – an impression Ball wishes to stick.</div><div>
</div><div>She argued the media had overblown the Kochs support for conservative causes like climate contrarianism over the years. "It's so funny that on the right we think George Soros funds everything, and on the left you guys think it is the evil Koch brothers who are behind everything. It's just not true. If the Koch brothers didn't exist we would still have a very healthy organisation," Ball said.</div></div><div><p class="large_header"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div></div><div>=</div></div>