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Stossel in the Classroom 1420 Walnut Street, Suite 1011 Philadelphia , PA 19102 Check to: Center for Independent Thought, Inc. To support the Center for Independent Thought's media project "Stossel in the Classroom." Using educational and engaging segments from John Stossel of Fox News, the project provides teachers with thought-provoking programs that stimulate lively classroom discussions on such subjects as free market economics, foreign aid, price gouging, andschool choice. Students are motivated to question conventional wisdom, gather and analyze information, and distinguish between fact and opinion. Total $25,000

Palmetto State Politics

Rich may have made his biggest mark in South Carolina— a state where he appears to have no personal connections or obvious business interests. But since 2006, Rich has spent large sums in the state, largely to pursue one of his favored causes: School vouchersto allow parents to send their children to educational institutions other than their local neighborhood schools.

In 2010 alone, Rich’s organizations gave more than $1.7 million to a handful of South Carolina non-profits — groups like South Carolinians for Responsible Government and Conservatives In Action. South Carolinians for Responsible Government is actually two separate nonprofits, one a 501(c)(3) and another a 501(c)(4). Both groups are based at the same address and have the same president and identical boards of directors. Combined, they listed having more than $1.6 million in revenue in 2010.

“South Carolinians for Responsible Government is a statewide grassroots non-profit organization,” the group claims on its website. “Unlike our opponents, who use tax dollars to fund their operations, we depend entirely on the generosity of citizens like you.”

But that’s true only if “citizens like you” includes four of Rich’s groups, which, according to their tax filings, made five grants to the two South Carolina organizations totaling $1.5 million — about 90 percent of the recipient groups’ revenues. It’s a classic Rich maneuver, indirect and complicated.

As is Rich’s sidestepping of South Carolina’s campaign finance laws: A recent investigation by The State newspaper found that since 2008, Rich had contributed at least $188,000 to 38 members of the South Carolina House of Representatives. An OpenSecrets Blog review of South Carolina’s campaign finance disclosures indicate that since that article was published, Rich has given at least another $19,000 to three state Senate candidates facing primary fights.

But since South Carolina caps individual donations at $2,000, Rich had to be creative. Instead he made his gifts through shell companies with names like Stillrich LLC, Coolcal LLC, 188 Claremont LLC, 123 LaSalle, Inc., and 51 First Avenue, LLC. The companies, many of which appear to linger from Rich’s time in real estate – a realm in which it’s common for each property to exist as its own LLC — all list 1420 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, PA, as their address.

That’s the address of the Center for Independent Thought, the libertarian think tank run by Rich’s wife, Andrea Millen Rich.

Dick Harpootlian, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, is blunt in his assessment of Rich.

“He owns the whole f***ing state,” Harpootlian said recently in an interview with OpenSecrets Blog.

Phil Noble, a Democratic party activist who in 2010 traveled the state confronting candidates for taking Rich’s campaign contributions, is almost as blunt.

“He’s basically bought the Republican Party and virtually all the state House candidates is what it boils down to,” Noble told OpenSecrets Blog. “God knows how many millions he has spent here.” According to Noble, Rich first came to the state to back former governor Mark Sanford, who was a prominent school voucher proponent.

Noble said that Rich has targeted candidates, often moderate Republicans, in primary contests, usually shortly before an election. One left-wing South Carolina blog found that in 2008, LLCs and individuals affiliated with Rich contributed $40,000 to a conservative state Senate candidate, Lee Bright, in the final two weeks before he faced off against an incumbent Republican. The contributions, which were not made public until after the vote, accounted for 20 percent of Bright’s funds in that election.

Simultaneously, the South Carolina Club For Growth — a group affiliated with the national Club For Growth, where Rich is a board member — dropped, blasting him for taking money from trial lawyers.

Bright narrowly won the race.

Noble blames Rich for corrupting South Carolina’s political culture by encouraging the development and use of secretive non-profits to attack political enemies.

“He was sort of the impetus for the the creation of a whole (c)(4) support network for Sanford and his agenda,” Noble said. “He brought that whole culture with him.”

Furthermore, said Noble, Rich and his network “don’t care at all” about bad publicity. “They just spend what they have to, and they keep spending big.”

Continuing to Spend

Background

A biographical note from the ALG website stated that "In 2000 he founded Legislative Education Action Drive (LEAD), which focuses on enacting school choice legislation across the country. He also serves as Chairman of Parents in Charge Foundation." Rich also "serves on the boards of various nonprofit organizations, including the Cato Institute, the Club for Growth and the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation." "In addition, Rich heads the Club for Growth State Action, which establishes and supports state affiliates of the Club for Growth across the nation, and the Fund for Democracy, which provides seed money to state initiative campaigns."^[5]

Rich is a New York real estate magnate who, for more than 30 years, "has steered millions of dollars toward the libertarian causes he has long championed, though he has managed to largely remain under the political radar while doing so. The 66-year-old Republican, who goes by 'Howie, serves as chairman of Americans for Limited Government, a national coalition that works with local groups to 'protect property rights, stop out-of-control government spending, and hold judges accountable to the rule of law'," PBS NOW noted in a September 2006 biographical sketch.^[1]

"Organizations associated with Rich have funneled nearly $7 million into 2006 state initiatives aiming to limit government in 12 states, according to an investigation" published October 4, 2006, by The Oregonian, PBS wrote. "Rich has generally declined to reveal how much of the money comes from his personal wealth, and is not required by campaign finance laws to report how much he privately funds his various groups."^[1]

"Early in his career, Rich was active in the Libertarian Party and worked with other leaders of the party, such as powerful billionaire Charles Koch, to promote their small-government, free-market causes. But after an internal party dispute in 1983, Rich left the party and continued his activism with private groups and foundations. Rich also sits on the board of directors of the Cato Institute, an influential libertarian think tank founded and funded by Koch and based out of Washington, D.C."^[1]

"In 1990, Rich and his wife Andrea took over the Libertarian Review Foundation, renaming it the Center for Independent Thought. The Riches have also financially supported the libertarian magazine Reason," PBS wrote.^[1]

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Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network

In September 2009, it was announced that Stossel was leaving Disney's ABC News and joining News Corp.'s Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. In addition to appearing on The O'Reilly Factor every Tuesday night, he now hosts a one-hour weekly program for Fox Business Network and a series of one-hour specials for Fox News Channel, as well as making regular guest appearances on Fox News programs.

The program, entitled Stossel, debuted December 10, 2009, on Fox Business Network.^[21] The program looks at consumer-focused topics, such as civil liberties, the business of health care, and free trade. His blog, "Stossel’s Take", is published on both FoxBusiness.com and FoxNews.com.^[22][23]

Publications

See also: No, They Can't

Stossel has written three books. Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media is a 2005 autobiography from Harper Perennial documenting his career and philosophical transition from liberalism to libertarianism. It describes his opposition to government regulation, his belief in free market and private enterprise, support for tort reform, and advocacy for shifting social services from the government to private charities. It was a New York Times bestseller for 11 weeks.^[24] Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel – Why Everything You Know Is Wrong, which was published in 2007 by Hyperion, questions the validity of various conventional wisdoms, and argues that the belief he is conservative is untrue. On April 10, 2012, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, published Stossel's third book No, They Can't: Why Government Fails – But Individuals Succeed. It argues that government policies meant to solve problems instead produce new ones, and that free individuals and the private sector perform tasks more efficiently than the government does.^[25]

With financial support from the libertarian Palmer R. Chitester Fund, Stossel and ABC News launched a series of educational materials for public schools in 1999 entitled "Stossel in the Classroom".^[26] It was taken over in 2006 by the Center for Independent Thought and releases a new DVD of teaching materials annually. In 2006, Stossel and ABC released Teaching Tools for Economics, a video series based on the National Council of Economics Educationstandards.^[27]

Since February 2011, Stossel has written a weekly newspaper column for Creators Syndicate.^[28][29]

grnpeace

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/front-groups/center-for-independent-thought-stossel-in-the-classroom/

$155,000 received from Koch foundations 2005-2013[Total Koch foundation grants 1997-2013: $155,000]

The Center for Independent Thought (CIT) owns and operates Stossel in the Classroom, the teaching series for middle and high school teachers based on the punditry of John Stossel, a FOX Business host who consistently denies the scientific evidence of global warming. CIT also serves as a pass-through organization for grants to Koch-affiliated organizations, according to CIT’s tax filings.

The 2009 edition of ABC News’ Stossel in the Classroom featured a segment explicitly telling students there is still debate “about whether or not human activity is the cause” of climate change (14 years prior to the Stossel lesson, even ‘conservative’ scientific authorities like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considered climate change proven beyond reasonable doubt by 1995).

The Stossel in the Classroom segment included numerous debunked arguments, such as atmospheric CO2 changes lag behind temperature changes or that global warming is caused by the Sun. Stossel featured several scientists with direct or indirect ties to fossil fuel companies and front groups, including John Christy, Tim Ball and Roy Spencer, who famously labeled those who recognize climate science to be “Global Warming Nazi’s.” Stossel mocks the notion of a “denial machine,” or a network of groups and people paid by fossil fuel interests to create doubt over climate science.

Teachers using the Stossel lesson plan were encouraged to ask questions such as, “If there is overwhelming evidence that global warming is a trend that will worsen and that we are causing it, why are people such as John Stossel questioning it?” The Stossel lesson plan encourages students to discuss quotes from people like Fred L Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and instructs students to use the Internet to find the “Oregon Petition,” a misleading petition co-published by the Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute.

Complimenting its misleading portrayal of climate science, Stossel in the Classroom has promoted fossil fuel use. The program hosted energy industry consultant Alex Epstein, who is paid by energy companies to claim that “fossil fuels improve the planet,” gave a platform for author Jason Mattera that hollywood celebrities promote the “scam” of climate science, and hosted a discussion on “energy independence” with pundits from fossil-fuel funded think tanks (Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute and Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute).

Through its funding and management, CIT and John Stossel are woven into Charles Koch’s political influence network. CIT past and present board members include longtime friends and fellow donors within the Koch network, such as Wisconsin Club for Growth director Eric O’Keefe, and Cato Institute executive David Boaz, and New Year real estate mogel Howie Rich, married to CIT president Andrea Rich.

Even the content of Stossel in the Classroom is a direct product of Koch political institutions. According to Counterpunch, professors in the Koch-funded economics department at George Mason University, as well as the Koch-controlled organizations hosted by GMU–the Mercatus Center and the Institute for Humane Studies–are involved in creating material for Stossel and staffing his program.

Organizations founded and controlled by Charles Koch work closely with John Stossel, including the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. These organizations provide material and pundits that promote anti-regulatory, pro-corporate policies that mirror Koch’s preferences. CIT acts as a pass-through for grants to the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. CIT itself increasingly hides its own funding through dark money funnels like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, according to Media Matters.

John Stossel himself has participated in conferences put on by top climate denial organizations, such asThe Heartland Institute and Americans for Prosperity.

http://www.centerforindependentthought.org/

The Roy A. Childs, Jr. Fund for Independent Scholars

This division of CIT issues grants to classical liberal scholars who are not associated with an educational institution or research organization, and who are producing publishable book-length manuscripts, to allow them to see their manuscripts through to publication.

Stossel in the Classroom

This division of CIT distributes free DVDs and streaming videos from popular TV journalist John Stossel to middle school and high school classrooms across the Americas. We also offer two economics DVDs for high school and college, "Making Economics Come Alive with John Stossel" and "The Power of Markets vs. the Failure of Regulation." Accompanying teacher guides offer ways for teachers to use the videos in their classrooms, as well as suggestions for other activities to supplement the lessons, which challenge conventional wisdom about many of today's issues. We also sponsor an annual student essay contest based on a John Stossel special.