Sourcewatch CMD

promote primary on pruitt foia emails

nuke option IRS on daily caller FDN?

see Lisa Graves

html pseudo-movement

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coc vs koch 2020 house races?

attack on public citizen 11 23

SFOF Exposed

cmd armiak

In recent years, the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a group of Republican state treasurers and auditors committed to promoting “free-market, pro-growth policies,” has been weaponized by right-wing operatives and organizations to amplify a manufactured crisis around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that work to address the climate emergency and promote a fairer and more just society. SFOF Exposed provides an easily accessible resource for journalists, researchers, and citizen activists to identify the financial officers, operatives, groups, and funders involved in the politicized effort.

Contributors to this project include: David Armiak, Liisa Silander, Edgar Valles, Juliana Broad, Connor Gibson, Ansev Demirhan, Evan Vorpahl, and Arn Pearson.

This project was made possible with a grant from the Sunrise Project.

american-accountability-foundation

CMD

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/24/2087833/-Koch-et-al-Spend-Over-50-Million-on-Climate-Disinfo-Organizations-Between-2014-2020

On Monday, Alex Kotch at the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) _{published the latest count of climate disinfo funding}_, tallying up over $50 million in “donations” to climate denial groups, straight from industry profits, billionaire ideologues fortunes, and everything in between.

Between 2014 and 2022, there was $54,298,510 that went to just eight organizations that, per Kotch, “represents key groups primarily focused on energy and the environment that consistently mislead the public about the climate crisis.”

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ref

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/03/21/the-dirty-dozen-the-biggest-nonprofit-funders-of-climate-denial/

in its recently released report on climate impacts and adaptation, a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change points out the very real danger of climate misinformation—for the first time since its annual assessments began in 2017.

The report, which states that “urgent action” is needed “to avoid mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure,” finds that “vested economic and political interests have organized and financed misinformation and ‘contrarian’ climate change communication.” The resulting “rhetoric and misinformation on climate change and the deliberate undermining of science have contributed to misperceptions of the scientific consensus, uncertainty, disregarded risk and urgency, and dissent,” it contends.

Geoffrey Supran, a Harvard University fellow in the history of science, says it’s great that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has finally called this out. But he believes the report should also detail exactly who has been bankrolling misinformation about the climate crisis.

“Indeed, there’s enough to write another report on,” Supran said. “The veiled reference to ‘vested economic and political interests,’ for instance, is an example of where reports such as this can and, in my opinion, should go further, and name names. It is a quantified, reported fact that those vested interests include specific fossil fuel interests and libertarian billionaires such as ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries, and that they have orchestrated multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar propaganda campaigns to sabotage science and undermine action.”

Naming Names

Fossil fuel corporations are among the special interests that have funded climate change denial for decades. But it’s not just the oil giants that are spreading this harmful misinformation. A host of nonprofit charities—ranging from mainstream money managers to private, right-wing foundations—are some of the biggest funders of climate change denial, research by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has found. 

CMD research has found that eight of the most egregious climate misinformation groups received more than $54 million from nonprofit funders between 2014 and 2020.

While the list is by no means exhaustive, it represents key groups primarily focused on energy and the environment that consistently mislead the public about the climate crisis.

[table NO LNX]

TABLE ONE 

Top Climate Misinformation Groups, 2014-20

These leading climate misinformation organizations received large donations from nonprofits from 2014-20.

Table with 9 columns and 9 rows. Currently displaying rows 1 to 9.

Recipient 2014   2015 2016 2017 2018 2019   2020   TOTAL

Heartland Institute $3,799,025 $2,537,850 $3,676,617 $3,693,650 $3,925,637 $2,860,232 $903,950 21,396,961

Competitive Enterprise Institute $3,840,074 $2,987,869 $3,474,275 $2,580,736 $2,656,600 $1,223,901 $1,927,938 18,691,393

Property and Environmental Research Center $451,500 $776,500 $827,000 $897,000 $1,043,000 $962,000 $1,019,550 5,976,550

Institute for Energy Research/American Energy Alliance $50,628 $727,495 $506,902 $479,967 $336,000 $96,165 $292,146 2,489,303

CO2 Coalition $0 $125,000 $441,126 $663,883 $358,000 $398,078 $394,115 2,380,202

Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow $181,252 $327,002 $227,150 $236,310 $172,850 $326,355 $366,982 1,837,901

Energy and Environment Legal Institute $125,000 $296,000 $350,000 771,000

Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change $10,000 $125,000 $10,000 $210,200 $400,000 755,200

TOTAL $8,332,479 $7,481,716 $9,403,070 $8,561,546 $8,998,287 $5,866,731 $5,654,6xx...  $54,298,510

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nOnprofit donations to these eight climate misinformation organizations swelled from 2016–18 and decreased in 2019 and 2020. Note that 2020 data may be incomplete, as tax returns are not yet publicly available for some nonprofit donors.

Many other right-wing groups regularly spread misinformation on climate issues, but since their work focuses on other areas as well, their donors are not included in this report. Larger-scale studies such as “Obstructing action: foundation funding and US climate change counter-movement organizations”offer additional details.

The Dirty Dozen Funders of Climate Misinformation

A dozen of the largest nonprofits donated $47.8 million to the leading climate denial organizations, accounting for 88% of the funds CMD was able to track down using FY 2014-20 federal tax returns. 

Half of the traceable funding came from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, two donor-advised fund sponsors that pass along their clients’ donations to other charities approved by their boards of directors. While the two funds give exclusively to conservative causes, no restrictions are apparent within that ideology. For instance, CMD was first to report that DonorsTrust is by far the biggest known funder of American white nationalist hate groups.

Among the “Dirty Dozen” climate denial financiers are foundations established by the right-wing Bradley, Koch, Mercer, Searle, and Scaife families. The Kochs, Mercers, and other Republican megadonors pour additional money into political groups and electoral campaigns focused on electing right-wing candidates who oppose meaningful action on climate change and often support expanding and deregulating the fossil fuel industry.

The funders named in this report have also financed a broader right-wing political strategy to misinform the public about a number of issues and increase GOP voter turnout.

“Bad actors are using a tried and tested playbook to weaken public mandates and create confusion [about] viable solutions going forward,” notes Jennie King, head of civic action and education at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent nonprofit dedicated to protecting human rights and reversing polarization, extremism, and disinformation around the world. “This includes weaponizing climate response within a broader ‘culture wars’ frame and conflating it with any supposed controversy, from Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates to critical race theory, trans rights, or geopolitics.”

Leading non-ideological donor-advised fund sponsors connected to the Vanguard and Fidelity financial firms are also among the Dirty Dozen climate misinformation funders.

“We cannot solve the climate crisis until we solve the climate misinformation crisis,” U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told CMD. “It is disappointing that mainstream organizations are still keeping ties with groups that have attacked climate science and legislative solutions. We need to be calling this behavior out publicly, so Americans know which organizations are linked to climate denial efforts.”

All nonprofits identified by CMD that gave $10,000 or more to the top climate misinformation groups from 2014–20 are listed in the table below.

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tABLE 2

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Top Nonprofit Climate Denial Funders, 2014-20

Numerous charities, private foundations, and trade associations have bankrolled the climate misinformation movement.

 Page 1 of 4  

Table with 9 columns and 53 rows. Currently displaying rows 1 to 15.

Donor    2014 2015 2016   2017 2018   2019 2020   TOTAL

1 DonorsTrust/Donors Capital Fund $3,293,850 $3,816,850 $3,676,750 $2,422,000 $3,830,200 $2,101,732 $1,416,500 20,557,882

2 Searle Freedom Trust $839,500 $589,500 $1,140,000 $940,000 $1,096,000 $754,000 $985,000 6,344,000

3 Sarah Scaife Foundation $350,000 $610,000 $842,000 $875,000 $960,000 $715,000 $1,245,000 5,597,000

4 Mercer Family Foundation $885,000 $100,000 $1,075,000 $970,000 3,030,000

5 Dunn Foundation $1,200,000 $250,000 $325,000 $200,000 $350,000 $350,000 $350,000 3,025,000

6 Bradley Foundations $344,376 $318,876 $458,500 $519,000 $280,000 $475,000 $110,000 2,505,752

7 American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers $365,000 $275,000 $470,000 $400,000 1,510,000

8 Koch Foundations $100,128 $431,891 $333,028 $413,016 $84,000 $99,049 $18,749 1,479,861

9 Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program $38,500 $228,500 $265,000 $230,000 $235,000 997,000

10 Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund $35,525 $21,350 $27,867 $241,355 $212,310 $231,055 $201,952 971,414

11 National Philanthropic Trust $150,000 $175,000 $175,500 $176,000 $200,000 876,500

12 Bartley J. Madden Foundation $45,000 $270,000 $270,000 $250,000 $30,000 865,000

13 Thomas W. Smith Foundation $150,000 $175,000 $200,000 $200,000 725,000

14 The 85 Fund $700,000 700,000

15 Ed Uihlein Family Foundation $10,500 $129,000 $35,000 $115,000 $115,000 $140,000...

:{

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P2

Donor 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 TOTAL

16 Schwab Charitable Fund $206,600 $14,475 $121,775 $32,925 $45,100 $44,895 $95,480 561,250

17 Chase Foundation of Virginia $84,000 $113,000 $108,000 $85,000 $75,000 $75,000 540,000

18 Murray Energy $10,000 $285,000 $100,000 395,000

19 Adolph Coors Foundation $80,000 $100,000 $90,000 $100,000 370,000

20 Claws Foundation $65,000 $115,000 $175,000 355,000

21 Lilly Endowment $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 350,000

22 Diana Davis Spencer Foundation $50,000 $100,000 $150,000 300,000

23 National Christian Foundation $200,000 $1,100 201,100

24 The Carthage Foundation $160,000 160,000

25 Barney Family Foundation $40,000 $40,000 $40,000 $40,000 160,000

26 DuPage Community Foundation $25,000 $50,000 $55,000 $25,000 155,000

27 Deramus Foundation $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 100,000

28 Pew Charitable Trusts $95,177 95,177

29 John William Pope Foundation $10,000 $10,000 $15,000 $25,000 $25,000 85,000

30 William H. Donner Foundation $82,000 82,000 ....

---

A number of the top funders of climate misinformation are closely connected. Staff and board members often overlap, and many currently work or previously worked for organizations linked to Charles Koch.

In addition to the fossil fuel companies themselves, this network of nonprofits has been effective at blocking meaningful policies and regulations to address the climate crisis. In 2022, after a number of dire warnings from the IPCC and other climate monitors, even a unified Democratic White House and congressional majority have yet to pass substantial environmental protection legislation.

In descending order, the leading nonprofit funders of climate science misinformation from 2014–20 are:

1. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund — $20.6 million

Known as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement,” DonorsTrust and its sister fund, Donors Capital Fund, have been the nonprofit funding vehicles of choice for the wealthy right wing for many years. They are both donor-advised fund sponsors, meaning that they manage the charitable donations of their clients. These clients “advise” the funds on which nonprofit charities should receive their money, but the funds decide on the recipients.

Between 2014 and 2020, the two funds gave the most money—$13.3 million—to the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank and charity that “has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change,” according to DeSmog.

The institute has historically received significant funding from fossil fuel giants such as ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and Murray Energy, and in the 1990s it worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking second-hand smoke to health problems.

The funds bankrolled the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based free market advocacy group that also has a history of funding from tobacco and oil companies, with nearly $6 million. The institute’s former executive director, Gregory Conko, is senior director of programs at DonorsTrust.

In addition, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund funded these climate misinformation groups from 2014–20:

• Energy and Environment Legal Institute ($421,000)
• Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change ($400,000)
• Institute for Energy Research ($371,000)
• Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($122,000)
• Property and Environmental Research Center ($30,000)

Kimberly Dennis, cofounder and board chair of DonorsTrust, is on the board of the Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC), which was formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center. She’s also president of the right-wing Searle Freedom Trust.

Thomas Beach, a member of the DonorsTrust board of directors, also serves on the PERC board.

2. Searle Freedom Trust — $6.3 million

The Searle Freedom Trust, a private foundation launched with money from the pharmaceutical company that invented the sugar substitute aspartame, donated a total of $6.3 million to several of the organizations mentioned above, as well as to the CO2 Coalition ($400,000), a pro-carbon organization founded by prominent climate change denier William Happer, who is currently its chairman.

A former adjunct scholar at the Koch-funded Cato Institute, Happer served as deputy assistant for emerging technologies on Trump’s National Security Council, a position he used to attack mainstream climate science. A 2015 Greenpeace investigation revealed that he agreed to accept thousands of dollars from a fake Middle Eastern oil company to write a paper on the benefits of carbon dioxide. CO2 Coalition board member and former Exxon lobbyist Bill O’Keefe suggested in an email that funders of the paper route their money through DonorsTrust to hide their identities, and a DonorsTrust representative, who previously worked with Koch Industries, confirmed to Greenpeace investigators that the fund accepted foreign money if it came from a U.S. bank account, which allowed donors to remain hidden. 

Happer also revealed that the CO2 Coalition had accepted thousands of dollars from coal giant Peabody Energy in exchange for his testimony that the earth is experiencing a “carbon dioxide famine” and would benefit from even more greenhouse gas emissions—a claim as absurd as it is false.

The Searle Freedom Trust is closely connected to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where Searle program officer Richard Tren is on the board of directors. Searle donated the most—more than $3.4 million—to the Competitive Enterprise Institute during the seven-year period in question. In addition, the foundation gave $2.2 million to PERC, $224,000 to the Heartland Institute, and $80,000 to the Institute for Energy Research, which Charles Koch cofounded.

3. Sarah Scaife Foundation — $5.6 million

The Sarah Scaife Foundation is one of three foundations that were previously overseen by Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon industrial, oil, aluminum, and banking fortune. In addition to funding right-wing political and climate misinformation groups, the Scaife Foundation is a major donor to anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant organizations.

Since 2014, Scaife has given big donations to the Competitive Enterprise Institute ($2.4 million), PERC ($1.2 million), the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($960,000), and the CO2 Coalition ($777,000), among other climate misinformation groups.

The 2020 board of directors included Roger Kimball, president of Encounter for Culture and Education, a nonprofit shell organization for Encounter Books, a publisher founded and funded by the Bradley Foundation.

4. Mercer Family Foundation — $3 million

The family foundation of hedge fund billionaire and Trump megadonor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah is one of the Heartland Institute's biggest funders, having donated nearly $2.6 million to the group from 2014–17. It also contributed $320,000 to the CO2 Coalition in 2016 and 2017, and $125,000 to the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in 2016.

While this might suggest the Mercer Family Foundation stopped funding climate misinformation after 2017, it’s likely still doing so. By then the foundation had already given millions to DonorsTrust, which allows donors to shield their names from the public. But in 2018, the foundation ramped up the size of its donor-advised fund, giving more than $8 million to DonorsTrust and another $1.4 million the following year. Then, in 2020, the Mercer Family Foundation gave DonorsTrust $20 million, moving its charitable operation into its donor-advised fund.

A veteran donor to far-right causes, Mercer is a longtime patron of nationalist Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, CEO of the 2016 Trump campaign, and a former White House special adviser. Bannon is currently focused on coordinating an international far-right movement and rabble rousing through his video podcast, which is a prime vector for ongoing lies about alleged election fraud and other disinformation.

5. Dunn Foundation — $3 million

The behind-the-scenes Dunn Foundation (formerly Dunn's Foundation for Right Thinking) has become one of the biggest climate misinformation funders in the U.S. The private foundation of Florida-based multimillionaire William A. Dunn, president of Dunn Capital Management, gave $1.3 million to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, $1.2 million to PERC, and $600,000 to Heartland from 2014–20. Dunn is an emeritus member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's board of directors and a former PERC board member.

6. Bradley Foundations — $2.5 million

The Wisconsin-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation was founded by a charter member of the far-right John Birch Society in 1942. Now a $1-billion private foundation, it’s one of the biggest funders of right-wing state policy think tanks. The connected Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised fund sponsor, finances many of these same operations.

Since 2014, the Bradley foundations have given nearly $2 million to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, as well as large amounts to Heartland ($361,000) and the CO2 Coalition ($125,000), among other climate misinformation organizations.

The foundations are major funders of the Big Lie of widespread voter fraud, anti-labor activism, and school privatization. The Bradley Foundation board includes Cleta Mitchell, a leading voter suppression lawyer who attempted to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, as well as Koch ally Art Pope, a North Carolina-based GOP megadonor.

7. American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers — $1.5 million

A trade group representing oil, gas, and petrochemical companies, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers has done its part to advance misinformation about climate change on behalf of its members, which include oil giants Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Valero. Its board chairman is Jeff Ramsey, CEO of Flint Hills Resources, an oil refining subsidiary of Koch Industries.

From 2015–18, the trade association donated to the American Energy Alliance ($1.2 million), the 501(c)(4) affiliate of the Institute for Energy Research; Heartland ($150,000); and the Competitive Enterprise Institute ($120,000). The group did not make any contributions in 2018, and tax records for 2019 and 2020 are not yet publicly available.

8. Koch Foundations — $1.5 million

Billionaire oil executive Charles Koch doled out at least $1.5 million to five climate misinformation organizations through two of his foundations. He and his firm Koch Industries have been among the most significant funders of climate change denial and misinformation for decades.

Since 2014, the Charles Koch Foundation and Charles Koch Institute bankrolled the Institute for Energy Research ($489,000), PERC ($390,000), the Competitive Enterprise Institute ($361,000), and two other climate misinformation operations.

A 2010 Greenpeace report showed that the Koch operation gave more to climate change-denying groups than big, public oil companies such as ExxonMobil.

9. Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program — $1 million

Like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program is a donor-advised fund sponsor—albeit a non-ideological one. It passes along clients’ donations to an array of causes deemed charitable by the Internal Revenue Service, including climate change misinformation and white nationalist hate groups. The charitable endowment program is not legally connected to the Vanguard investment company, but Vanguard money managers invest its charitable program’s funds and receive management fees, which the charitable arm raises from its clients. In other words, Vanguard profits from Vanguard Charitable and is able to increase its total money under management because of the relationship.

From 2014–18, Vanguard Charitable donated almost $1 million to the Heartland Institute. Between 2017 and 2020, it also gave nearly $70,000 to the VDARE Foundation, a white nationalist hate group, with the largest amount given in 2020.

As in past reporting, Vanguard responded to CMD’s request for comment with a standard statement glossing over concerns about the ethics of funding groups that help fossil fuel companies destroy the environment or demonize non-white people.

​​”Donors can recommend grants at any time to qualified 501(c)(3) public charities that are in good standing with the IRS,” the statement reads. “Vanguard Charitable abides by IRS guidelines that require all charitable dollars be used to advance the public good. If Vanguard Charitable becomes aware that an organization has been charged by state attorney general or federal regulatory authorities, putting the organization’s ability to carry out its charitable purpose in question, Vanguard Charitable will cease grantmaking until the issue has been resolved or charges have been dropped.”

Despite its board having full discretion over where its money goes, Vanguard appears to fund any nonprofit that isn’t being openly scrutinized by government authorities. 

10. Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund — $971,000

Like its rival, Vanguard Charitable, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund is another donor-advised fund sponsor closely affiliated with, but not legally connected to, a major financial investment firm. The largest U.S. charity based on annual income, Fidelity Charitable has funded a number of climate misinformation groups in recent years, including the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($354,000 since 2017), the Heartland Institute ($213,000 since 2014), and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change ($155,000 in 2018).

Like Vanguard, Fidelity Charitable has financed white nationalist hate groups. Fidelity did not respond to CMD’s request for comment.

11. National Philanthropic Trust — $877,000

The National Philanthropic Trust is a donor-advised fund sponsor that was worth $10.5 billion at the end of June 2020. Since 2014 it has donated $877,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

A National Philanthropic Trust spokesperson did not directly address a question about whether climate misinformation should qualify as a charitable activity, and whether that activity was worthy of the trust’s money. “As context, in 2021 National Philanthropic Trust donors recommended grants exceeding $200 million to charities focused on environmental causes, representing an increase of more than 100% compared to 2020,” the spokesperson said.

The National Philanthropic Trust gave the white nationalist VDARE Foundation $50,000 in the 2020 fiscal year, the most recent on record. When CMD asked if the trust is planning to take an honest look at its policies and confront the fact that it funds hate and environmental destruction, the spokesperson said, “NPT takes all constructive feedback under advisement and regularly reviews grantmaking policies.”

Among the top recipients of the National Philanthropic Trust’s donations in FY2020 was the Stand Together Foundation, a 501(c)(3) “venture philanthropy” foundation founded by Charles Koch, which received $37.9 million. 

12. Bartley J. Madden Foundation — $865,000

The foundation of retired finance industry veteran Bartley J. Madden has mostly donated to the Heartland Institute ($775,000 from 2016–19), where Madden is a policy adviser. The foundation gave $90,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute between 2016 and 2020. 

13. Thomas W. Smith Foundation — $725,000

Baker’s dozen: Hedge fund founder Thomas W. Smith is (along with Charles Koch) a major funder of free-market university programs and right-wing think tanks. He also stands out as a prodigious donor to organizations that oppose critical race theory.

Smith's foundation gave $400,000 to PERC and $325,000 to the CO2 Coalition from 2014–19. The foundation's 2020 tax records are not yet publicly available.

More Climate Misinformers

A number of other right-wing groups spread lies about the climate crisis, although they work on other issues as well.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing policy nonprofit that brings together state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists to write model legislation, has denied climate change for years, backing legislation that opposes environmental action and supports fossil fuel companies. Most recently, an ALEC committee approved model legislation penalizing government contractors who divest from fossil fuels. Already passed in Texas, the law is in play in four other states. DonorsTrust/Donors Capital Fund and the Searle, Bradley, Scaife, and Koch foundations all gave millions to ALEC from 2014–20.

Additional organizations that are funded by many of these same donors and misinform the public about the climate crisis include the American Enterprise Institute, Koch's Americans for Prosperity and affiliates, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Media Exacerbate the Problem

Fossil fuel corporations and groups willfully disseminating misinformation about climate change get help from social media companies and the news media, including mainstream publications.

As chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment, Rep. Khanna has “pledged to bring in the heads of these [social media] companies to outline the steps they are taking to crack down on misinformation.” Questioning social media CEOs “is one of the next steps in a long-term effort to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for their decades of climate misinformation,” continued Khanna, who added that his subcommittee will also examine others involved in the spread of this misinformation, including public relations firms.  

Right-wing media regularly misinform their audiences, but in its report the IPCC working group also called out “traditional media” for “the journalistic norm of ‘balance’ (giving equal weight to climate scientists and contrarians in climate change reporting)," which distorts coverage by “unevenly amplifying certain messages that are not supported by science, contributing to politicization of science, spreading misinformation, and reducing public consensus on action."

alex k

kochademia 100M$

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/11/23/koch-funding-of-universities-topped-100-million-in-2019/

gmu

$17,608,073

Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University $4,957,124

Florida State University $4,518,000

Arizona State University Foundation $3,212,641

New York University $3,017,956

Rice University $3,000,500

Utah State University $2,500,000

North Dakota State University Foundation $2,436,000

Southern Methodist University $2,386,618

Catholic University of America $1,971,283

Montana State University-Bozeman $1,642,250

Duke University $1,554,415

Claremont Graduate University $1,477,214

Texas A&M University Foundation $1,525,160

University of Florida Foundation $1,379,625

Indiana University $1,171,903

Ohio State University & Foundation $1,138,301

University of Pittsburgh $1,120,000

University of Notre Dame $1,115,641

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill $1,106,500

==

deJoy gave $600,000 to GOP after USPS job opened — should the focus be on his wife’s ambassador nod?

Roger Sollenberger / Salon September 17, 2020

Lisa Graves, the former executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, testified this week to Congress that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had donated $600,000 to Republicans after his future job opened up.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-protests-astroturf.html

Opinion

Who’s Behind the ‘Reopen’ Protests?

They are anything but spontaneous.

By Lisa Graves

Ms. Graves is the executive director of True North Research and curator of KochDocs.

April 22, 2020

A protest against Michigan’s stay-at-home order outside the State Capitol last week.

]

I first became aware of the political influence of Charles and David Koch in 2009 when I started looking into who was behind the protests at health care town halls.

The Tea Party, formed after America elected its first black president, used a series of health care town halls to spur angry Republicans to oppose the Affordable Care Act as a socialist takeover of American medicine. Little matter that it was modeled on a plan devised by Mitt Romney, a Republican, when he was the governor of Massachusetts.

Such false claims about the act have not aged well, as millions of Americans now depend on the law for health care coverage as the coronavirus contagion sweeps across the nation. And yet a Tea Party co-founder, Mark Meckler, is using the same tactics and same phony claims to stir his followers to protest against governors seeking to mitigate the Covid-19 death toll by closing businesses and banning public gatherings.

That public anger is both real and manufactured. The same was true in 2009, when the Koch fortune fueled the Tea Party’s attacks on the Obama administration’s health care law.

Still, the legend that the Tea Party was a spontaneous uprising took hold and continues to be peddled. As we face Tea Party 2.0, let’s not be fooled again.

The protests playing out now have the same feel as the Tea Party protests aided by Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity and others a decade ago — and with good reason: Early evidence suggests they are not organic but a brush fire being stoked by some of the same people and money that built the Tea Party.

Look no further than the first protest organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund — whose chairman manages the vast financial investments of Dick and Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary — to see that the campaign to “open” America flows from the superrich and their front groups.

Stephen Moore — a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Koch ally and a Trump adviser — admitted as much in a video I obtained comparing these new protesters to Rosa Parks, as first reported in The Times.

Mr. Moore, who is now leading an enterprise to end the virus precautions called Save Our Country, which includes the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council, boasted that he has been working behind the scenes with a conservative donor who agreed to cover bail and legal fees for demonstrators who get arrested for defying Wisconsin’s virus protective measures.

Others are providing legal assistance as well. The Times reports that a private Facebook group called Reopen NC has retained the legal services of Michael Best & Friedrich, a Wisconsin law firm whose clients include President Trump. The firm is well known for its work with dark-money groups that fought the recall of the Koch ally Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and waged war on unions.

Then there’s the Convention of States, established in 2015 with a big contribution from the conservative hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. The group recruits activists at gun shows to support a balanced-budget amendment and is promoting the protests online via “Open the States.” COS is an offshoot of Citizens for Self-Governance, which Mr. Meckler co-founded with a longtime Koch operative, Eric O’Keefe.

To give you a flavor of what’s unfolding to help orchestrate these events, this week one of Mr. Meckler’s organizers told supporters via Facebook that “optics are everything” and that they should be sure to wear a mask to the protests and stand six feet apart — because it will make the crowds look bigger.

COS and a Koch-financed public relations firm, In Pursuit Of, are also purchasing domain names tied to protests to open the states, suggesting they are investing for a long battle — even as the death toll rises.

The consequences are already starting. One week after a Kentucky protest, the state experienced its largest spike in coronavirus cases. Other states may soon see similar spikes.

Those fanning these flames, including President Trump and Fox News hosts, are unlikely to get burned by infection themselves, though they may be goading their followers to risk their health by attending mass demonstrations.

America is now facing three calamities: a deadly contagion, a capricious president and a well-funded right-wing infrastructure willing to devalue human life in pursuit of its political agenda. Some very rich men and women are making this medical disaster worse through their reckless bellows, inflaming people to demand that states open now no matter how many lives that costs.

Lisa Graves is the executive director of True North Research and curator of KochDocs, and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

==

CMD: June, we exposed how ALEC's deadly asbestos bills, which make it harder for terminally ill victims to hold companies accountable, benefit Koch Industries and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, which have asbestos-related liability.

==

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/09/17/verizon-dumps-alec-denounces-speaker-racist/

armiak

Verizon has decided to quit the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) following a public outcry over the corporate lobby group’s hosting of David Horowitz as a prominent speaker at its annual meeting in New Orleans in August.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD)’s exposé of Horowitz’s divisive and bigoted remarks at the ALEC event sparked a coalition of 78 democracy reform, civil rights, and advocacy organizations to send a letter of protest to ALEC’s largest corporate backers, including Verizon, urging them to “make it clear that [they] will not stand for the sort of toxic, inflammatory claims ALEC has embraced” and leave ALEC.

“Our company has no tolerance for racist, white supremacist or sexist comment or ideals,” Verizon spokesperson Richard Young said in a statement to The Intercept, which first broke the story.

ALEC may have tried to prevent Verizon from dropping its membership with a statement posted to its website on September 10 stating that Horowitz “was advised of the program parameters and did not abide the process,” and that “ALEC staff removed the video archive of the livestream and ceased promotion of the speech as the comments were inconsistent with the manner in which speeches are offered at ALEC.”

Verizon, a member and major donor of ALEC for over three decades, must have been unimpressed with the statement. The telecommunications giant was a long-time holder of a seat on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Board. Its exit is the second big loss for ALEC in 2018 after ExxonMobil’s decision to not renew its membership earlier in the year.

State Rep. Chris Taylor, who attended the event and wrote the original article exposing Horowitz’s rhetoric at ALEC, quoted him as saying that, “at the K-12 level, school curricula have been turned over to racist organizations like Black Lives Matter and terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Horowitz’s legal team attempted to intimidate CMD into retracting the story with the threat of a defamation lawsuit for describing him as a “hatemonger” and “anti-Islamic.”

Madison attorney Lester Pines sent a response on behalf of Rep. Taylor and CMD standing by the accuracy of Rep. Taylor’s column. “Were your client to bring a suit for defamation against Representative Taylor or CMD, it would be dismissed as frivolous and they would seek attorneys’ fees and expenses,” Pines wrote.

It remains unclear whether other brand-sensitive corporate backers of ALEC serving diverse markets will follow Verizon’s lead. More than 110 corporations and 19 nonprofits have severed their ties with ALEC in recent years over the front group’s backing of controversial “Stand Your Ground” and voter ID laws, and its radical climate denial stance.

==

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/judge-brett-kavanaugh-should-be-impeached-for-lying-during-his-confirmation-hearings.html

graves

Much of Washington has spent the week focusing on whether Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. After the revelations of his confirmation hearings, the better question is whether he should be impeached from the federal judiciary.

I do not raise that question lightly, but I am certain it must be raised.

Newly released emails show that while he was working to move through President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in the early 2000s, Kavanaugh received confidential memos, letters, and talking points of Democratic staffers stolen by GOP Senate aide Manuel Miranda. That includes research and talking points Miranda stole from the Senate server after I had written them for the Senate Judiciary Committee as the chief counsel for nominations for the minority.

Receiving those memos and letters alone is not an impeachable offense.

No, Kavanaugh should be removed because he was repeatedly asked under oath as part of his 2004 and 2006 confirmation hearings for his position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit about whether he had received such information from Miranda, and each time he falsely denied it.

For example, in 2004, Sen. Orrin Hatch asked him directly if he received “any documents that appeared to you to have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.” Kavanaugh responded, unequivocally, “No.”

In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy asked him if he had any regrets about how he treated documents he had received from Miranda that he later learned were stolen. Kavanaugh rejected the premise of the question, restating that he never even saw one of those documents.

...

john doe o'keefe sting target

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-bottari/money-trail-revealed-did_b_6560042.html

In 2014, as March drew to an end but the cold Wisconsin winter refused to let go,State Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) stopped at his favorite after-work hangout to relax after a long session in the Capitol. After a few drinks, Ellis was approached by what he thought were two young constituents, and the veteran GOP lawmaker started holding forth, as he was wont to do.

What he did not know, however, was that his new-found drinking buddies were not from his district or even from the state of Wisconsin. They were, however, on a mission to end his career. A few weeks later, the right wing’s favorite attack dog for hire, James O’Keefe, released a video of the conversation showing an inebriated Ellis spinning a tale about setting up a “Super PAC” to run attacks on his Democratic opponent in that year’s election.

If Ellis’ barroom boasts were actualized in the cold light of day, Ellis may have run afoul of state law prohibiting coordination between candidate committees and outside groups.

“I guess I have to learn to put duct tape over my mouth because any time you’re out in public you’re fair game,” Ellis told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel when the story broke. As for his Super PAC idea, he explained, “I was informed that the described scenario would be illegal, and the idea went no further.”

But the damage had been done. A few days later, the Senate president who was first elected to the Senate in 1982, announced that he would not be running for re-election. Ellis was an unabashed conservative, but he had split with Gov. Scott Walker and his increasingly right-wing party on issues like school vouchers and the corrupting influence of big money in politics.

James O’Keefe had gotten his man, but who bankrolled the hit?

Costly, Coordinated Wisconsin Job

For James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas franchise, registered as a non-profit in Mamaroneck, New York, the Ellis hit marked a conspicuous departure. O’Keefe gained fame for his hatchet job on the effective voter registration group ACORN, and for an attempt to tamper with the phones of then-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), which got him busted by the FBI.

But Republicans have not exactly been the main targets of O’Keefe’s hidden-camera henchmen. In the Ellis video, a smug O’Keefe tells viewers that his investigations know no political boundaries. His mission, he says, is to expose corruption .”

No one believed this. O’Keefe had been accused of many things, but protecting campaign-finance law was never one of them.

“James O’Keefe is a staunch conservative, and I don’t think he’d do a hit job on a Republican political figure unless one of O’Keefe’s far-right buddies gave him the green light to do so,” blogger Aaron Camp wrote.

Now CMD has discovered that O’Keefe indeed received a five-figure check from a “far-right buddy” and another “Scotty boy,” Wisconsin Club for Growth’s Eric O’Keefe. This O’Keefe is an old friend of the brothers Koch, a founder of a plethora of far-right organizations (including the Center for Competitive Politics, which fights clean elections laws), and a national leader in the effort to advance undisclosed dark money in elections.O’Keefe has steadfastly stood behind the extreme Walker agenda.

After Walker introduced a bill to destroy public-sector unions in 2011, sparking a historic uprising and the filing of 1 million signatures to recall Walker and a number of state senators, Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG) played a central role in the GOP response, prompting a “John Doe” criminal probe that has riveted the state for over a year.

Now, CMD has exclusively obtained tax filings showing that Eric O’Keefe (no relations to James) made a $50,000 donation to Project Veritas in 2013. Also among Project Veritas’ 2013 donors were two sources of cash,Donors Trust (for $242,000) and Donors Capital ($55,000), that cloak the identities of some in the Koch network of billionaires and millionaires.

The money trail comports with Ellis’ own theory. Ellis fingered WiCFG as the likely culprit in shortly after the hit. But Eric O’Keefe refuses to explain.

When called by CMD and asked about the $50,000 donation, Eric O’Keefe said, “I didn’t give that in 2013,” before quickly hopping off the phone.

Senate President Ellis, an Obstacle to Walker Agenda

Known as an independent thinker and a curmudgeon, Ellis had a history of taking positions contrary to the party line. Ellis was not involved in the caucus fundraising scandal that rocked the capitol in 2002 with the arrests of Assembly and Senate leaders. In the wake of the scandal, he helped lead a bipartisan effort to restructure the state elections and ethics agencies so that they were no longer under the control of a gridlocked partisan board but led by retired judges appointed by the governor and approved by the legislature.

The nonpartisan board “was his idea,” says Jay Heck, Director of Wisconsin Common Cause. “Ellis consistently supported disclosure and public financing for campaigns, while Eric O’Keefe has opposed both.” Heck worked with Ellis and other legislators to set up the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board, now under attack by Wisconsin’s GOP for its role in initiating the John Doe investigation.

Ellis also had a history of failing to fall in line behind the Walker’s agenda.

Ellis was publicly critical of Walker’s steep cuts to education and attempts to massively expand controversial voucher schools around the state, leading to embarrassing headlines regarding a GOP split.

He also privately voiced concerns over the union-busting bill that became Act 10. Although he voted for it, Ellis would later claim that he was blindsided by Walker and by ads paid for by the WiCFG pressuring him to fall in line after he had raised questions about the bill behind closed doors.

In a with Wisconsin Eye‘s Steve Walters that aired a few days after he announced his departure, Ellis talked about his 44-year career in politics, the “high-tech” operation that brought him down and the new era of hardcore, party-line politics “where you check your brain at the front door.”

“Independent thinking and compromise are two ingredients that our founding fathers were thinking of back in 1776; they are gone today,” said Ellis.

As for the sting operation, Ellis pointed the finger at WiCFG for having set him up because he was not “walking behind the cart” on Act 10. In February 2011, shortly after the union-busting measure was introduced. WiCFG popped up TV ads in support of the controversial bill. They also launched ads pressuring Ellis and another moderate Republican, Luther Olsen, to support the Walker agenda.

“Ellis was the last of the strong independent thinking legislators,” said Common Cause’s Heck. “Although he was very conservative and supported Walker more than 90 percent of the time, I guess he had his own ideas on a few issues and that did not comport with the new lockstep, everyone must be on the same page with no dissent, regime that Walker and the new Republican legislative leadership installed in 2011.”

Wisconsin Club for Growth at Center of Dark Money Investigation

As director of WiCFG, Eric O’Keefe has been a very good friend to Scott Walker. In 2012, the Washington Postinterviewed O’Keefe as he traveled cross-country with Walker in search of cash. WiCFG Director R.J. Johnson served as Walker’s campaign manager in 2010 and during the 2012 recall and was credited by Walker for winning those campaigns.

Wisconsin law prohibits coordination between candidate campaigns and independent “issue ad” groups. According to records inadvertently released by the court regarding the secret John Doe investigation, WiCFG is one of a number of dark-money groups being investigated for potentially illegal campaign coordination with the Walker campaign. A series of emails and campaign donations appear to show Walker fundraising on behalf of WiCFG. “The governor is encouraging all to invest in Wisconsin Club for Growth,” a fundraising consultant wrote in a 2011 email to R.J. Johnson. The consultant added that the governor “wants all the issue advocacy efforts” run through WiCFG to “ensure correct messaging,” while promising complete donor anonymity.

As CMD was the first to report, WiCFG served as a hub to secretly funnel millions to a complex array of groups, which ran ads in support of state senators facing recall and Walker himself. The state criminal investigation has been led by a special prosecutor with Republican credentials and a bipartisan group of Wisconsin county district attorneys, yet it has been portrayed by O’Keefe and his supporters as a partisan witch hunt and an attack on “free speech.” O’Keefe, a longtime advocate for eliminating campaign-finance regulations, has fought back hard: His high-priced Washington, D.C., lawyers at BakerHoestler have filed a series of state and federal lawsuits trying to halt the probe (including by falsely attacking CMD). O’Keefe also defied a secrecy order to speak with the Wall Street Journal editorial board about the case.

“Isn’t it ironic that the very thing they snagged Ellis on is the very thing Eric O’Keefe has been willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court to protect? Their right to engage in illegal campaign coordination under Wisconsin law,” notes Heck.

A New Low for Wisconsin’s Poisonous Politics

Eric O’Keefe has apparently known James for a while. In his book Breakthrough, James thanks Eric for his “role in the citizen journalism movement.” It’s possible Eric may have given James the $50,000 with other Wisconsin targets in mind.

In March 2014, James O’Keefe tried to embarrass Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner with questions about his efforts to expand voting rights. And in the summer of 2014, CMD itself was the subject of an elaborate and costly attempted sting operation tied to James O’Keefe, with operatives sent from California to track CMD. An undercover O’Keefe associate followed CMD’s executive director Lisa Graves around at the July Netroots Nation conference trying to get her on tape, and a woman using a fake name purporting to represent a fake group called “African Americans for Change” approached CMD offering money to help with a documentary on dark-money spending in elections, which CMD refused.

CMD’s reporting on the John Doe criminal investigation has certainly gotten under Eric O’Keefe’s skin. CMD was the first to report that WiCFG collected and distributed millions to other dark-money groups, which cut ads in support of Walker and other candidates facing recall. CMD was also the first to uncover O’Keefe role in helping to launch the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, whose Wisconsin Reporterwebsite has written more than 150 stories attacking the John Doe probe without regularly disclosing their relationship to O’Keefe. CMD was also the first to report that a Wisconsin Reporter executive is the president of Citizens for Strong America, another group implicated in the investigation, a shell group entirely funded by WiCFG. CMD has also filed a legal complaint against WiCFG with the IRS and federal prosecutors for abusing its status as a “social welfare” organization under federal law.

For now Eric O’Keefe is mum.

But one thing is for certain: the O’Keefes combined — one a New Yorker and the other a Michigander — have introduced a poisonous new element to Wisconsin politics.

nick surgey?

Each year, Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller marks “Equal Pay Day” by publishing a piece attacking the idea that women are paid less than men or trying to rationalize the pay gap.

This year, The Daily Caller criticized Google for highlighting the pay gap through Cheryl Sandburg’s Lean In initiative and a Funny or Die video about women being paid 20% less than men.

The piece, attributed to Carlson’s non-profit charity, the Daily Caller NewsFoundation, was illustrated with a photo of a woman “showered with money.”

The author, a recent college grad who is a Breitbart alum and former Koch intern, noted without irony that “the so-called wage gap only makes sense if hours worked, years of experience, and education of male and female laborers are considered.” It might help to read that “critique” again.

For good measure, the Daily Caller ran a second piece that day, a reprint of a blog claiming Elizabeth Warren paid women less than men. That spin bounced through the rightwing echo chamber from the Washington Free Beacon to the Daily Caller, Breitbart, and Fox, before it was refuted by Warren’s payroll data. No correction was issued by any of the outlets that spread the attack on Warren. (The Beacon has described itself as an “aerial hunting operation” and it has attacked watchdogs like the Center for Media and Democracy.)

But that’s par for the course for The Daily Caller. Though its website has more than 16 million visitors and a huge staff of writers who produce content for it through its non-profit the Daily Caller News Foundation, the site routinely relies on rightwing bloggers and groups to provide many of the “facts” it asserts as true in its news stories.

During the presidential election season, The Daily Caller was rife with articles attacking Hillary Clinton, including a piece by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF)that reinforced Trump’s nicknaming Clinton as “crooked,” which some might consider projection given his documented history of cheating contractors out of their full pay or the Trump University scam or more.

IWF’s smear piece published in The Daily Caller in the run-up to the presidential election could have been written this year about the policymaker-in-chief: “The bigger problem is that she doesn’t think the rules should apply to her in the first place. HRC – or Her Royal Crookness – sees herself as a Queen, existing in a realm above the minions who work for her, and even higher above her lowly subjects. Queens don’t have to bother with the system meant for ordinary schlubs. She doesn’t have to accept facts or findings; we peons are expected to accept her version of events, rather than trust our own lyin’ eyes.”

IWF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that is theoretically barred from intervening in an election by criticizing the character of a candidate. That story by the head of IWF concludes with: “Americans recall that we are supposed to be a nation of laws, after all, and those laws are meant to apply to everyone, even those with titles like Secretary or Senator. That’s bad news for Her Royal Crookness, Hillary Clinton, who epitomizes the elitism that Americans resoundingly reject.” IWF has not issued, and The Daily Caller has not published, a follow-up on that take in light of Trump’s acts as president.

Last summer, CMD released a major report detailing IWF’s history and role in the War on Women, a story that was broken by Joan Walsh in The Nation. CMD also documented that almost all of the publicly known funders of the IWF”s affiliated (c)(4), the “Independent Women’s Voice,” were men. CMD also filed an FEC complaint against IWV last November contending that the group violated election laws, which IWV denies.

CMD also documented how as IWF was claiming there was no “war on women,” IWV was running ads and doing calls to aid politicians like Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that IWF has sponsored a forum where its panelists contended that “rape culture statistics have been blown out of proportion in the United States, and that this is largely a product of the media’s focus on rape and sexual assault.” That’s the description from The Daily Caller’s coverage of the event. Another piece, titled “Restraining Orders Hurt Women” also credited IWF’s analysis.

IWF, by the way, has opposed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) for years and its renewal, despite the strong support for its protections by groups that represent women’s interests in not getting killed by a violent partner. VAWA helps fund a coordinated community response to help women who are beaten, raped, or stalked–and it helps ensure that those restraining orders are enforced across jurisdictions to help protect women where ever they may flee for safety.

IWF’s out-of-step assertions as a mainstream “women’s voice” have found a ready distribution channel in The Daily Caller. Take, for example, an article headlined “Stay vertical a bit longer, ladies: Study claims men as winning the game of love,” which featured IWF’s claims about marriage and sex. IWF’s rep expressed concerns about women engaging in “commitment-less sex” because “when it comes to marriage there is certainly a marketplace and many factors have changed that marketplace.”

That Daily Caller story also cited the controversial academic Mark Regnerus, who as CMD recently noted, has “claimed, for example, that ‘liberal’ and ‘very liberal’ women want to have much more sex than other women [and to] speculate that liberal women want more sex than other women because they’re not religious enough.Specifically, Regnerus theorizes that sex provides the “transcendent” feeling others achieve through faith – that these liberal women are getting in bed, as it were, what they’re not getting in church. ‘Basically,’ Regnerus writes, ‘liberal women substitute sex for religion.’ (Insert obligatory ‘Oh, God! Oh, God!’ joke here.)”

It’s not just sex on the brain of The Daily Caller, which regularly features swimsuit models to peddle its spin, like its “story” minimizing the effects of climate change on the day Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris agreement: “These 14 Models Prepared for Trump to Drop the Climate Deal.” The text accompanying the slideshow stated: “As we approach President Trump’s decision on the Paris climate accord, we decided to turn our attention to the models out there who have been hoping for warmer temperatures.”

The Daily Caller’s news presentation has sought to undermine grassroots efforts to secure paid leave and increase the minimum wage. One example is their story “Social Justice Activists Want Olive Garden To Be Nicer to Cows Before Serving Them As Meatballs.” That story emphasized that “Thus far, the coalitions’ campaign is not going well. The group’s attempt to set up meetings with Darden in the fall was an abysmal failure. The company responded with a letter rebuffing meetings and generally rejecting the demands set forth.” Other pieces pushed the rightwing narrative that requiring paid sick leave and increasing the minimum wage would lead to higher unemployment rates.

The Daily Caller has even written against maternity leave pay. One such piece was written by the Independence Institute, which is part of the State Policy Network: “Mandated Paid Maternity Leave: A Bad Idea for Women.” That’s not the view of most women or even of most CEOs, as CMD revealed last year after it was given a detailed survey by Frank Luntz’s group showing overwhelming support for maternity leave, paid sick leave, raising the minimum wage.

That survey of 1,000 executives was commissioned to help the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its global corporate funders and its state affiliates in their efforts to defeat popular paid sick leave policies and efforts to increase the minimum wage. Luntz’s team said the problem was business leaders have

Another Daily Caller piece amplified the assertions of the controversial PR flack Rick Berman–who 60 Minutes helped dub “Dr. Evil”–that “The $15 Minimum Wage Could Lead to More Youth Crime.” Like IWF, the claims of Berman’s front groups get plenty of play in The Daily Caller. CMD recently detailed how Berman’s front groups are funded not just by corporations but also with millions from the rightwing Bradley Foundation, which also funds IWF’s promo of “free market” alternatives to paid sick leave and raises in the minimum wage. CMD also published the audio of Berman bragging about his tactics: “I get up every morning and I try and figure out how to screw with the labor unions” and “marginalize the people on the other side….”

CMD has previously refuted to The Daily Caller’s claims about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and its assertions on climate change and fracking, but has not responded to every erroneous claim the outlet has made about CMD. Among other things, like other rightwing outfits, the Daily Caller has repeated the claim that CMD is “Soros-funded,” even though CMD has pointed out that it is not funded by George Soros and was awarded a grant from the Open Society Institute several years ago as part of a set of grants to examine national security surveillance of Americans, along with a grant to the Kochs’ Cato Institute–which the Daily Caller has never called “Soros-funded.”

During CMD’s investigation of IWF, its researchers noted the wayThe Daily Caller was readily echoing IWF claims on numerous issues. That led CMD to take a closer look at The Daily Caller’s operations, which resulted in the investigation reported by the Washington Post on June 2, 2017. More details about that research, which showed that Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller had received a six-figure sum from the Trump Campaign in the weeks before the election, are availablehere.

As Callum Borchers noted in the Washington Post story, tax experts have expressed concerns about how Tucker Carlson’s charity benefits his for-profit media outlet, The Daily Caller, which profits from the web traffic and list-building resulting from its content, a substantial portion of which is provided by the non-profit. CMD has also noted that Carlson did not tell FOX News viewers that he had financially benefited from the Trump Campaign cash, as he critiqued other outlets for their purported bias against Trump or when he interviewed Trump for a primetime show on FOX this spring.

How much Carlson received in pay or bonuses from The Daily Caller last year after it received the money from the Trump Campaign is not known.

==

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poptech hit discover the networks ag21

http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/10/truth-about-sourcewatch.html

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stroke?

~ mary b http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11482/99-spring-has-sprung-shareholder-actions-underway-across-county

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/15/the-progressive-movement-is-a-pr-front-for-rich-democrats/

==

At the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) there is an awful lot of good fortune coming our way.

First, a mysterious Middle East millionaire wanted to give us a boatload of money to produce a documentary on fracking and global warming (we declined).

Then our Lisa Graves was showered with compliments on our investigations into undisclosed election spending as a team repeatedly tried to get her on film at a recent Netroots Nation conference. When she asked them for their contact information, they claimed to have no email or Twitter accounts (at Netroots? Really?). The duo followed her to a private party and one stalked her down a hotel hallway at 2:00 in the morning, prompting another writer to intervene.

Now another deep-pocketed mystery funder wants to bankroll us to help with a film about the impact of dark money on the African American community -- a great idea frankly as the Koch-fueled attack on health care is resulting in governors, like our own Scott Walker, rejecting federal funds for expanded health care coverage.

But alas, we fear that the film idea is yet another scam designed for another phony "gotcha" moment.

When I met with the film maker it quickly became clear she knew very little about the topic of undisclosed dark money in campaigns and elections. She had no candidates, races or specific issues in mind. She did seem willing, however, to send us money to help her with her film. The incident has all the hallmarks of a James O'Keefe stunt.

If you don't know Mr. O’Keefe, he first hit Fox News wearing pimp garb and peddling a distorted video targeting ACORN, a nationwide association of community groups which had a long track record of effectively registering low income Americans to vote. That effort was followed up by more video lies about USDA official Shirley Sherrod, plus hatchet jobs on NPR and Planned Parenthood. And how can we forget O'Keefe's effort to “probe” U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu’s office? A spectacular move that got him arrested by the FBI.

It was O’Keefe who was behind the fantasy Middle Eastern millionaire. He attempted, but failed to sting "Gaslands" producer Josh Fox with that one.

Now O'Keefe or one of his ilk appears to have CMD in his sights.

Will you take action now to support our investigations that these groups are trying to suppress?

O’Keefe is known to get some portion of his funding from the Koch-funded Donor’s Trust and Donor’s Capitol. The twin donor-advised funds were specifically designed to allow politically motivated right-wing individuals and corporations to remain hidden when "funding sensitive or controversial issues.”

==

Jeffersonian Project Used to Lobby for BBA

ALEC's new lobbying arm, the Jeffersonian Project, appears to have been used to lobby for the bills.

According to a memo written by ALEC lawyer Alan Dye and reported by The Guardian, the new 501(c)(4) group was created in 2013 to resolve "questions of ethical violations made by our critics and state ethics boards." Groups like Common Cause, the CMD, the Voters Legislative Transparency Project and others alleged in IRS complaints that ALEC was violating its 501(c)(3) charitable status by engaging in excessive lobbying.Although ALEC publicly dismissed the complaints, the formation of the 501(c)(4) Jeffersonian Project indicated that behind the scenes, ALEC was taking the threat of an IRS audit seriously.

The memo advises, "Any activity that could be done by ALEC may be done by Jeffersonian Project if legal counsel advises it would provide greater legal protection or lessen ethics concerns."

A key element of Common Cause’s 2012 IRS complaint was evidence of ALEC sending hundreds of so-called “issue alerts” to legislators urging the passage or defeat of particular pieces of legislation – but never registering as a lobbyist in any state, and repeatedly telling the IRS that it engaged in zero lobbying.

Soon after the IRS complaint was filed, ALEC appeared to stop sending “issue alerts.”

Yet with the 501(c)(4) Jeffersonian Project up-and-running, the “issue alert” lobbying messages have once again begun to flow.

In March 2014, for example, the Jeffersonian Project sent an "issue alert" to state representatives in Utah asking them to support HJR 8, Utah's balanced budget bill. The alert highlights the ALEC connection, noting that "The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has adopted a model resolution calling for an Article V Convention to propose a Federal Balanced Budget Amendment."

Documents obtained by the CMD show that the Jeffersonian Project has also sent "issue alerts" to legislators in Arizona, suggesting that the BBA is the focus of a nationwide lobbying effort.

==

ron arnold extensive records/attack

http://www.undueinfluence.com/sourcewatch.htm

also on weekly st'd/ wash examiner

POLITICS

Take a look at the financial sources behind Source Watch

EXAMINER STAFF WRITER • | SEPTEMBER 03, 2010 AT 2:00 AM

TOPICS: BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL

Among the most frequently cited background information resources on the Internet is Source Watch, which describes itself as "your guide to the names behind the news."

But Source Watch is anything but non-ideological. It is actually a product of the Center for Media and Democracy, a radical liberal, Wisconsin-based non-profit that is "an independent for impact, non-for-profit that works to promote informed debate by exposing spin and propaganda."

The CMD also describes its activities as "assisting grassroots work that advances the health of people and our planet as well as the economy and democracy. In addition to SourceWatch, we report online at PRWatch.org. We do not accept grants from for-profit corporations or government agencies."

Perhaps most interestingly, CMD appears for contributions by claiming  "your financial support, in any amount, is crucial to the continuation of this collaborative website and our innovate work documenting the people and issues behind the news. Your contribution is also tax-deductible."

But the reality behind CMD and Source Watch is not legions of small donors sending the goup $10 here or $25 there. In fact, CMD is supported by a number of the nation's largest, most well-endowed and most liberal foundations, according to The Left-Tracking Library  a web site managed by Ron Arnold, author of "Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy."

Arnold notes that:

"The Center for Media and Democracy has received at least 70 foundation grants totaling at least $2,520,994, which makes its plea, 'Your financial support, in any amount, is crucial to the continuation of this collaborative website and our innovate work documenting the people and issues behind the news,' sound a little silly, unless they're begging big foundations.

"[The CMD] appears to be an employment haven for radicals untroubled by the strings of elite foundation grants, essentially doing on the left what corporations do on the right. SourceWatch never reveals who they’re taking money from or how much they get."

For more from Arnold on Source Watch, go here.

wow, activistcash Berman attack accuses of tobacco $: 30K of 2.25 mill$, several labor orgs (legit?)

http://www.activistcash.com/organizations/12-center-for-media-democracy/

[video]

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is a non-profit watchdog organization dedicated to exposing PR “spin.” Though the group is officially nonpartisan, it labels itself as “progressive” and avoids criticism of liberal organizations in its publications. The group operates the publication PR Watch and a related Wiki-platform SourceWatch, which present the group’s hostile view of free-market organizations.

CMD takes significant sums of money for its work from left-wing foundations, and has even received a half-million dollar donation from one of the country’s largest donor-advised funds—all the while criticizing pro-business or free-market advocacy groups who also use donor advised funds or rely on foundation support.

Left leaning groups are notably absent from negative mention in PR Watchand SourceWatch. While SourceWatch maintains a “tobacco portal” dedicated to exposing links between free-market groups and the tobacco industry, the site neglects to include the thousands of dollars given by the tobacco industry to many labor-affiliated advocacy organizations.

Despite this history of far-left advocacy and funding, media sources often mistakenly cite CMD and its SourceWatch website as independent watchdog organizations.

Background

CMD began primarily as a project of career far-left activists John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, who used CMD as a platform from which to publish a series of books. Since Stauber and Rampton’s retirements, CMD has been run by Lisa Graves, a career Democratic Party and left-liberal activist who previously worked for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Motivation

When New York City alt-weekly The Village Voicereviewed one of Stauber and Rampton’s books, the publication noted, “These guys come from the far side of liberal.” Twelve years hasn’t changed anything but the nameplates at CMD: The organization is still anti-corporate and far-left. CMD’s staffers come steeped in years of Democratic Party and left-wing advocacy group politics.

• Executive Director Lisa Graves was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in Bill Clinton’s Justice Department, moving on to serve the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee under Leahy and as Senior Legislative Strategist for the ACLU.
• Deputy Director Mary Bottari served as a Press Secretary to Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) in the late 1990s. She also worked for the Ralph Nader-founded advocacy organization Public Citizen on that group’s anti-free trade projects.
• Freelance Contributor Beau Hodai has also written for the liberal magazine In These Times and the magazine of anti-corporate media criticism organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

Black Eyes

Propped up by Left-Wing Foundations

CMD proudly declares on its website that it accepts “no contributions from for-profit corporations.” Yet, the group has no problem accepting huge grants from progressive foundations.

This history of far-left agitation has earned CMD grants from some of the largest left-leaning foundations including theFoundation to Promote Open Society, part of billionaire currency trader George Soros’s progressive philanthropic empire. The Foundation gave CMD $100,000 in 2010 and another $100,000 in 2011.

The left-leaning Tides Foundation has given CMD $160,000 since 2006, including funding a PR Watch “senior researcher” in 2009 and 2012. The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, another major left-wing foundation which has Lyndon B. Johnson’s former press secretary and PBS host Bill Moyers as its president, gave CMD $250,000 in 2005 and 2006.

In Stauber and Rampton’s day, CMD was directly supported by even more left-wing interests. The duo’s book projects earned grants totaling $47,000 from the Foundation for Deep Ecology, which calls for, among other things, reducing the human population.

Tobacco Connection

SourceWatch has an entire portal dedicated to the Tobacco Industry and its donations to various nonprofits and think tanks. Suspiciously missing from CMD’s research, however, is the Economic Policy Institute. The Tobacco Industry’s Labor Management Committee made annual payments to the Economic Policy Institute in the 1990s and named it one of the Industry’s “allied groups.” But the group’s tobacco ties aren’t mentioned once in any of CMD’s pages dedicated to unveiling funding from the tobacco industry to non-profits and think tanks.

In fact, progressive and labor-affiliated groups are absent from CMD’s tobacco profiles. The groups identified by CMD as having ties to the tobacco industry are those that promote free-market policies.

Watchdog Hypocrisy

CMD is heavily critical of “donor advised funds,” which allow individuals to make a donation to a public charity and then recommend non-profit grant recipients. In particular, CMD attacks DonorsTrust, a fund that donates to organizations dedicated to limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise. CMD has created a SourceWatch entry for DonorsTrust criticizing it for contributing to the “murky money maze” and detailing the recipients of its grants.

Yet, CMD itself has accepted donations from a donor advised fund. CMD received a $520,000 grant from the Schwab Charitable Gift Fund—one of the nation’s largest donor-advised funds.

Progressive Bias

One of CMD’s common tactics is to point out instances where businesses might be behind the funding of advocacy campaigns or non-profits and use those donations as proof that the public should not trust the campaign or organization’s information. CMD has created a series of “exposed” pages on SourceWatch dedicated to unveiling the funders of free-market organizations.

Yet CMD doesn’t turn the same critical eye on left-leaning groups.

• CMD frequently cites the work of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank funded by labor unions, without noting the union connection. CMD has also publicized work from the National Employment Law Project, another union-backed liberal think tank, without noting the organization’s funders.
• In addition to the Economic Policy Institute and National Employment Law Project, other liberal advocacy organizations such as the George Soros-funded Democracy Alliance and the Center for American Progress lack “exposed” profiles in any of CMD’s publications though none fully disclose their donors.
• CMD has invested considerable time in attacking the American Legislative Exchange Council. Yet the Progressive States Network, a liberal equivalent of ALEC,has received no attention from CMD despite performing many of the same tasks and refusing to disclose its donors.
• One of CMD’s project partners, ProgressNow, received direct funding from the same “donor advised funds” so derided by CMD. In 2006, ProgressNow received funding from the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, a donor advised trust, and has received more than $250,000 from labor unions.

When asked about this contradiction—where funding from conservative organizations is suspect but is acceptable from liberal organizations–Graves argued “The question of conservative funders versus liberal funders, I think, is a matter of false equivalency… Quite frankly a number of these (corporate donors) like Koch Industries … they’re advancing not just an ideological agenda but an agenda that helps advance the bottom line of their corporate interests.”

However, the very same corporations criticized by Graves for backing free-market friendly ALEC also donated to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which has worked to pass legislation in direct opposition to ALEC’s positions. In 2012, Bloomberg found that 13 of 22 members of ALEC’s private enterprise board contributed at least $2 million to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

Latest Effort by Eric O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth to End Criminal Investigation Makes False Claims to Federal Court

MADISON – The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) today denounced false claims filed in federal court by Eric O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG) who are seeking to derail a bipartisan, multi-county criminal investigation into their electoral activities.

“Eric O’Keefe and WCFG have misled a federal court with false claims about CMD in their effort to thwart a criminal investigation into their activities during the 2011-2012 recall elections in Wisconsin,” said CMD’s Executive Director Lisa Graves, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. “The legal complaint of O’Keefe/WCFG demonstrates a reckless disregard for the truth and defames our investigative watchdog group,” she noted, adding: “Their claim of selective prosecution, which suggests that CMD should be subject to criminal prosecution, is injurious and based on manufactured falsehoods.“

Graves believes CMD has been targeted as part of an effort to discredit the organization and its thoroughly documented investigative reporting about O’Keefe/WCFG, Citizens for a Strong America, David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and other groups. CMD/PRWatch will not be intimidated by these smears or stop reporting on these issues....

ALEC attacks

ALEC Goes After the Center for Media and Democracy

by Lisa Graves [1] — August 29, 2012 - 7:26am

• Topics: Activism [2], Corporations [3], Democracy [4]

• Projects: ALEC Exposed [5]

Share this [6]

The American Legislative Exchange Council [7] (ALEC) sent a message to hundreds of legislators and corporations across the country attacking the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the creator of ALECexposed.org [7]. Among other things ALEC claimed, "CMD is an attack-dog, not a watch-dog."

The error-filled missive, which was intended to buck up the ALEC faithful as more and more corporations flee the organization, has us here at CMD pondering the old adage, "First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they want to attack you and then you win."

ALEC Attempts to Spin Legislators about Corporate Exodus

ALEC's August 13 message claimed that CMD "continue[s] to spread half-truths and lies" about ALEC in order to "weaken [ALEC's] resolve" and "create the false impression that companies are departing from ALEC."

As CMD has reported [8], 38 corporations, four non-profit organizations, and 70 state legislators [9] have distanced themselves from ALEC by either dropping their funding or their membership or both. These major corporations include General Motors, Walgreens, Best Buy, Hewlett-Packard, MillerCoors, John Deere, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, Procter & Gamble, Mars, Wendy's, McDonald's, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola.

We reported on six new departures, including Sprint and GE, just days ago [10]. In every instance, CMD relied on a formal communication from the firm, a statement, letter, email, or conversation with staff.

Yet ALEC is attempting to make hay over whether some of the corporations that have said they are no longer funding ALEC are funders through paying membership dues and pay-to-play fees or whether they were funders of ALEC through sponsoring its meetings. Such distinctions among funders that have stopped funding ALEC are, to quote Shakespeare, "much ado about nothing."

Amgen: ALEC claims in its note to legislators that "Amgen is not severing ties with ALEC .... Amgen has informed us that it is letting its membership with us expire after this year." CMD reported on August 8th [8] that Amgen had "dropped" is membership with ALEC. CMD's article attached the letter [11] Amgen's assistant secretary and associate general counsel, Andrea A. Robinson, sent to Timothy Smith of Walden Asset Management which said, "After careful consideration, we have determined not to renew our membership in ALEC when our current membership expires this year." So Amgen is on the record dropping its membership after sustained pressure by community groups and shareholders [12].

As for ALEC's attempt to spin Amgen's public statement in August, the company's letter of departure speaks for itself.

Louis Dreyfus: ALEC claims, "Louis Dreyfus never had a membership in ALEC to drop.... ALEC has partnered with Louis Dreyfus in past programs and has counted Louis Dreyfus as a sponsor of past annual meetings." After a conversation with a spokesperson at the company, CMD originally mentioned [13], in a July 30th article about the 46 firms that had disappeared from ALEC's annual meeting brochure, that it looked as though Louis Dreyfus was no longer a member of ALEC. Later, in announcing the departure of the firm from ALEC's circle of sponsors, we clarified [8], "Louis Dreyfus confirmed to CMD that it had decided not to fund ALEC this year." CMD's website lists Louis Dreyfus [14] as a "Vice Chairman" level sponsor of the 2011 ALEC Annual Conference (in 2010, this level of sponsorship equated to $25,000).

The bottom-line is that Louis Dreyfus chose not to fund ALEC's annual meeting this year after sponsoring "past annual meetings."

And, despite ALEC's spin, neither Amgen nor Louis Dreyfus ever contacted CMD to request a correction about their decisions not to fund ALEC. However, some corporations have contacted CMD: firms anxious to distance themselves from ALEC [15] and asking CMD to remove documented references to their past funding of ALEC, requests which were declined.

ALEC Uses Edelman PR and Media Attack Dogs to Try to Discredit ALEC Critics

In May 2012, PRWeek reported [16] that ALEC had hired the notorious global PR firm Edelman [17]. Edelman is the firm of choice for big tobacco, big oil, and big pharma, all key sponsors of ALEC. ALEC also held a special meeting [18] asking right-wing bloggers, such as the Breitbart operation, for help in "a very aggressive campaign to really spread the word about what we actually do," as CMD has reported.

An "aggressive campaign" is clearly underway.

ALEC's recent note claims that CMD's "top investigative reporter" has a "lengthy criminal background." It links to a attack-piece published by a newly created entity called The Washington Free Beacon [19] (WFB), the online publication of the self-proclaimed "conservative advocacy group" the Center for American Freedom [20].

In that piece, recent college grad CJ Ciaramella focuses on Beau Hodai, a freelance reporter who has written for the Center for Media and Democracy, In These Times, Prison Legal News, Extra! (a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), and the investigative news publication he founded, DBA Press.

Beau has been researching and reporting on ALEC since late 2009. His reporting has detailed the relationship between ALEC and private prison contractors in the dissemination of bills based on Arizona's SB 1070. And he has identified ALEC as one of the key forces behind attempts to destroy public employee unions and privatize public services.

Notably, the WFB attack job does not find any material errors in any of Beau's extensively documented reports on ALEC, but focuses on misdemeanor court records. It dwells on the fact that his legal first name is Mohamad. Beau has been nicknamed "Beau" since birth. (It is worth noting that "CJ" is not Ciaramella's legal first name but the nickname he uses instead of "Carl.")

Beau recently stirred the pot with a special report [21] detailing corruption in the Ohio General Assembly based on public records that raise questions as to whether the state's elected officials in ALEC are complying with Ohio's ethics laws regarding gifts.

Interestingly enough, Beau learned that exactly one week following the publication of the Ohio ALEC corruption story, a private investigation firm requested court records concerning a past arrest. Allegations from those same court records emerged as the centerpiece of the WFB attack article.

The Washington Free Beacon's "Aerial Hunting Operation"

WFB's Matthew Continetti (who previously was an opinion editor at the right-wing Weekly Standard, where he remains a contributing editor) outlined [22] the WFB's strategy as part of its recent launch:

"What would happen if the media wolf pack suddenly had to worry about an aerial hunting operation? You are about to find out. The Washington Free Beacon is here to enter the arena of combat journalism. [...] At the Beacon, we follow only one commandment: Do unto them."

And this is the team ALEC is using to attempt to discredit CMD as an "attack-dog"?

This is not the first such piece to come out of WFB. In the past few months, Ciaramella has written three pieces personally attacking reporters and activists working to expose ALEC. In addition to the piece on Beau, he published a similar attack on Color of Change staffer Gabriel Rey-Goodlatte, as well as The Nation reporter Lee Fang. Fang has also written for Think Progress (the blog of the Center for American Progress) and Republic Report, and he has reported critically on ALEC over the past year. Color of Change has been instrumental in the call for ALEC corporate members to sever ties with the organization.

The latest piece also takes a shot at George Soros by attempting to link Beau to the philanthropist through PRWatch. But CMD openly discloses on its website that the past grant it received from the Open Society Institute was focused on homeland security, not ALEC. Notably, neither the WFB nor CAF disclose to the public which corporations, organizations, or individuals bankroll their operations or smear campaigns.

The People Behind the "Center for American Freedom"

WFB is a creature of the Center for American Freedom (CAF), which was incorporated in Washington, D.C., on August 18, 2011, as a not-for-profit corporation. According to [23] District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) records, CAF has two active trade names: "Free Bacon" [sic] and "Washington Free Beacon," both of which were formally effected in March 2012.

DCRA records list the names of two founding CAF "governors," Michael Goldfarb [24] and Aaron Harison.

Harison, currently CAF's president, previously served [25] as director of communications for the Republican National Committee (RNC). Harison is joined at CAF by former RNC acting director of communications [26], and current CAF research director, Tim Killeen.

Harison is also the former executive director [27] of Keep America Safe [28], an operation co-founded in 2009 by Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney. William Kristol [29], the founder and editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, is a founding board member [30] of Keep America Safe. Kristol is currently listed as a board member [31] of CAF, and is the former executive director of the Project for the New American Century [32] (PNAC), a neocon "think tank" that had strong ties to the American Enterprise Institute [33].

Michael Goldfarb, CAF's chairman, has reportedly worked [34] as an advisor to Keep America Safe and the militaristic Emergency Committee for Israel [35]. (Kristol is also a board member for the Emergency Committee for Israel). Goldfarb is also listed as a contributing editor [36] to Weekly Standard.

In addition, Goldfarb is a partner [37] in the lobby/PR firm, Orion Strategies LLC [38]. Not surprisingly, given Goldfarb and Kristol's warmongering predilections, Orion has lobbied on issues of arms sales and foreign relations for very special interests like defense contractors and foreign governments.

While these ties may explain some of the content on the WFB, what does any of this have to do with its efforts to defend ALEC by attacking the corporate bill mill's critics?

According to Politico, right-wing financiers Charles and David Koch also employ the services of Orion Strategies [39] and, as CMD has documented [40], Koch Industries and/or the Koch family fortune have helped fund ALEC and numerous ALEC private sector members that help operationalize the brothers' ideological and financial agenda. There is no indication that the Kochs asked WFB to jump to the defense of ALEC. However, the right wing has been howling that the press and progressive groups have been too persuasive in exposing ALEC and in making the case about how ALEC helps make the corporate wish list into law through its members and operations.

CMD Wins Awards for ALEC Exposed and Investigative Breakthroughs

In the letter to its members, ALEC also attempted to impugn CMD as a "highly partisan, fringe organization." The charge brings to mind pots and kettles. When CMD surveyed ALEC's political leadership in July 2011, it documented that 103 of the 104 legislators serving on ALEC's Board of Directors or holding the post of co-chair on its task forces or of a state were Republicans. It's difficult to imagine a more lopsided partisan make-up of a body of elected officials than that, other than in groups that are expressly described by their party label, such as the Republican Governors Association.

CMD is a non-partisan watchdog group that has taken heat for being highly critical of President Obama's financial policies and the Democrats' campaign financing practices. We have filed briefs challenging the Obama administration, including its detention powers under the recent National Defense Authorization Act, and have been critical of Democrats and Republicans who push the agenda of their corporate benefactors in dozens of areas.

CMD has been honored to receive several journalism awards for its work to expose ALEC: the "Sidney Award [41]" for Investigative Journalism, along with The Nation magazine, in September 2011; the "Izzy Award [42]" for outstanding achievement in independent media, along with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who covered the uprising in Egypt from the ground; and most recently, the "Professional Freedom and Responsibility award [43]" from the Cultural and Critical Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication -- an honor that has previously been awarded to Bill Moyers, Molly Ivins, I.F. "Izzy" Stone, Noam Chomsky, Studs Terkel, and Bob McChesney. Earlier this year, CMD also recieved one of the Milwaukee Press Club's 2011 "Excellence in Journalism [44]" awards for its investigative work.

ALEC Ups the Ante But the Odds Are on More Defections and Inquiries

While ALEC is fighting CMD with misleading missives to its members and media smears, it is still shedding corporate board members, funders, and sponsors [10]. And it is still getting hammered in the press for its extreme agenda and its corrupting influence, for the fact that corporate lobbyists vote as equals with elected officials on templates to change the law, and its repeated claims it does not lobby despite proof to the contrary. ALEC has also received continued scrutiny for its corporate-funded scholarships. CMD has learned at least one state has had trouble maintaining corporate donors to cover the usual trips for legislators to attend ALEC events.

As calls for investigation of ALEC's lobbying activities and financing practices mount (with three complaints now filed before the IRS and other ethics investigations at the state level), it will take more than Edelman PR and "combat journalism" to rescue ALEC from the trouble it is in.

Center for Media and Democracy • 520 University Avenue, Suite 260 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703

Phone: 608-260-9713 • Fax: 608-260-9714

Source URL: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11717/alec-goes-after-center-media-and-democracy

Links:

[1] http://www.prwatch.org/users/35268/lisa-graves

[2] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/activism

[3] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/corporations

[4] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/democracy

[5] http://www.prwatch.org/projects/alec-exposed

[6] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prwatch.org%2Fnews%2F2012%2F08%2F11717%2Falec-goes-after-center-media-and-democracy&linkname=ALEC%20Goes%20After%20the%20Center%20for%20Media%20and%20Democracy

[7] http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

[8] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11682/amgen-drops-alec-number-32-ebay-comes-under-fire

[9] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Legislators_Who_Have_Cut_Ties_to_ALEC

[10] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11724/six-more-corporations-dump-alec-38-companies-have-now-cut-ties-corporate-bill-mil

[11] http://alecexposed.org/w/images/f/f2/Amgen_Response_to_ALEC_-_Heartland_Letter_8-6-12.pdf

[12] http://alecexposed.org/w/images/f/fe/ALEC_Outreach_Letter_-_Amgen_Inc_.pdf

[13] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/07/11679/lot-white-space-firms-drop-alecs-meeting-brochure

[14] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations#L

[15] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11462/former-alec-supporters-now-find-connection-toxic

[16] http://www.prweekus.com/pages/under-fire-advocacy-group-alec-works-with-edelman/article/240419/

[17] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Edelman

[18] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11458/alec-sends-out-sos-breibart-bloggers

[19] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/The_Washington_Free_Beacon

[20] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_American_Freedom

[21] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/05/11498/quid-pro-status-quo-alec-state-sanctioned-corruption-ohio

[22] http://freebeacon.com/combat-journalism

[23] http://dbapress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/DCRA-CAF.pdf

[24] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_Goldfarb

[25] http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/harison_aaron

[26] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71099_Page3.html

[27] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28212.html#ixzz0Tqj4UEV7

[28] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Keep_America_Safe

[29] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_Kristol

[30] http://www.keepamericasafe.com/?page_id=215

[31] http://americanfreedom.com/staff/

[32] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

[33] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute

[34] http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/michael-goldfarb

[35] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Emergency_Committee_for_Israel

[36] http://www.weeklystandard.com/tws/aboutus/default.asp#Masthead

[37] http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Conservative-advocacy-group-Center/2012/01/05/id/423196

[38] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Orion_Strategies_LLC

[39] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71099.html

[40] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10904/alec-exposed-koch-connection

[41] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/09/11023/cmd-and-nation-magazine-win-sidney-award-investigative-journalism

[42] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/03/11327/cmd-receives-izzy-award-alec-exposed

[43] http://aejmc.net/ccs/CCSSpring2012.pdf

[44] http://www.milwaukeepressclub.org/honors/contest/2011-contest-awardees#pro

--

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January 31st, 2012

‘SourceWatch’ Exposed: Website Backed by Organic Food Industry Scrambles to Take down Court Documents after Being Caught in the Act

As briefly reported here late last week, WikiLeaks wannbe “SourceWatch.org” had recently begun posting previously unsealed, proprietary documents provided during discovery by Syngenta, the defendant in a long-running, if meritless, class action in Madison County, Illinois.  But now, caught in the act by Judicial Hellholes reporters, SourceWatch operatives are scrambling to pull down those documents, particularly the ones that suggest a direct link between the website and the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Not only is SourceWatch feverishly pulling down documents it had posted earlier, it’s erasing online records of those deletions, presumably in hopes of covering its tracks.  So much for all that “transparency” that SourceWatch’s sponsor, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), hypocritically insists is always in short supply when it comes to all those big, bad corporations that just happen to employ tens of millions of Americans.  

SourceWatch’s nascent document-dump webpage, “Atrazine Exposed,” funded in large part by the organic farming industry, is perhaps designed to undermine Syngenta — the manufacturer of atrazine, a safe and widely used weed killer — in the eyes of future jurors, or otherwise to help pressure the chemical company into a costly settlement with the plaintiffs.  

In any case, CMD and SourceWatch routinely about corporations’ efforts to influence politics, public policy and the law, but apparently they have no qualms about trying to do so themselves.  A victory for the plaintiffs in the atrazine class action, slowly playing out in longstanding judicial hellhole Madison County since 2004, will make conventional farming more costly and thus could make organic farming marginally more competitive.  So who’s trying to exercise influence now?

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Judicial Hellholes   atrazine, Center for Media and Democracy, class-action, Madison County, SourceWatch.org 

1. ### **SourceWatch** Exposed - Proprietary Court Documents Posted

Learn About Atrazine Case Here.   http://www.judicialhellholes.org/2012/01/31/sourcewatch-exposedwebsite-backed-by-organic-food-industry-scrambles-to-take-down-court-documents-after-being-caught-in-the-act/?gclid=CK7Vtf756LYCFUWo4AodNFUAVg

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ALEC Goes After the Center for Media and Democracy

by Lisa Graves [1] — August 29, 2012 - 7:26am

• Topics: Activism [2], Corporations [3], Democracy [4]

• Projects: ALEC Exposed [5]

Share this [6]

The American Legislative Exchange Council [7] (ALEC) sent a message to hundreds of legislators across the country attacking the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the creator of ALECexposed.org [7]. Among other things ALEC claimed, "CMD is an attack-dog, not a watch-dog."

The error-filled missive, which was intended to buck up the ALEC faithful as more and more corporations flee the organization, has us here at CMD pondering the old adage, "First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they want to attack you and then you win."

ALEC Attempts to Spin Legislators about Corporate Exodus

ALEC's August 13 message claimed that CMD "continue[s] to spread half-truths and lies" about ALEC in order to "weaken [ALEC's] resolve" and "create the false impression that companies are departing from ALEC."

As CMD has reported [8], 38 corporations, four non-profit organizations, and 70 state legislators [9] have distanced themselves from ALEC by either dropping their funding or their membership or both. These major corporations include General Motors, Walgreens, Best Buy, Hewlett-Packard, MillerCoors, John Deere, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, Procter & Gamble, Mars, Wendy's, McDonald's, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola.

We reported on six new departures, including Sprint and GE, just days ago [10]. In every instance, CMD relied on a formal communication from the firm, a statement, letter, email, or conversation with staff.

Yet ALEC is attempting to make hay over whether some of the corporations that have said they are no longer funding ALEC are funders through paying membership dues and pay-to-play fees or whether they were funders of ALEC through sponsoring its meetings. Such distinctions among funders that have stopped funding ALEC are, to quote Shakespeare, "much ado about nothing."

Amgen: ALEC claims in its note to legislators that "Amgen is not severing ties with ALEC . . . . Amgen has informed us that it is letting its membership with us expire after this year." CMD reported on August 8th [8] that Amgen had "dropped" is membership with ALEC. CMD's article attached the letter [11] Amgen's assistant secretary and associate general counsel, Andrea A. Robinson, sent to Timothy Smith of Walden Asset Management which said, "After careful consideration, we have determined not to renew our membership in ALEC when our current membership expires this year." So Amgen is on the record dropping its membership after sustained pressure by community groups and shareholders [12].

As for ALEC's attempt to spin Amgen's public statement in August, the company's letter of departure speaks for itself.

Louis Dreyfus: ALEC claims, "Louis Dreyfus never had a membership in ALEC to drop. . . . ALEC has partnered with Louis Dreyfus in past programs and has counted Louis Dreyfus as a sponsor of past annual meetings." After a conversation with a spokesperson at the company, CMD originally mentioned [13], in a July 30th article about the 46 firms that had disappeared from ALEC's annual meeting brochure, that it looked as though Louis Dreyfus was no longer a member of ALEC. Later, in announcing the departure of the firm from ALEC's circle of sponsors, we clarified [8], "Louis Dreyfus confirmed to CMD that it had decided not to fund ALEC this year." CMD's website lists Louis Dreyfus [14] as a "Vice Chairman" level sponsor of the 2011 ALEC Annual Conference (in 2010, this level of sponsorship equated to $25,000).

The bottom-line is that Louis Dreyfus chose not to fund ALEC's annual meeting this year after sponsoring "past annual meetings."

And, despite ALEC's spin, neither Amgen nor Louis Dreyfus ever contacted CMD to request a correction about their decisions not to fund ALEC. However, some corporations have contacted CMD: firms anxious to distance themselves from ALEC [15] and asking CMD to remove documented references to their past funding of ALEC, requests which were declined.

ALEC Uses Edelman PR and Media Attack Dogs to Try to Discredit ALEC Critics

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In May 2012, PRWeek reported [16] that ALEC had hired the notorious global PR firm Edelman [17]. Edelman is the firm of choice for big tobacco, big oil, and big pharma, all key sponsors of ALEC. ALEC also held a special meeting [18] asking right-wing bloggers, such as the Breitbart operation,for help in "a very aggressive campaign to really spread the word about what we actually do," as CMD has reported.

An "aggressive campaign" is clearly underway.

ALEC's note to legislators claims that CMD's "top investigative reporter" has a "lengthy criminal background." It links to a attack-piece published by a newly created entity called The Washington Free Beacon [19] (WFB), the online publication of the self-proclaimed "conservative advocacy group" the Center for American Freedom [20].

In that piece, recent college grad CJ Ciaramella focuses on Beau Hodai, a freelance reporter who has written for the Center for Media and Democracy,In These Times, Prison Legal News,Extra! (a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), and the investigative news publication he founded, DBA Press.

Beau has been researching and reporting on ALEC since late 2009. His reporting has detailed the relationship between ALEC and private prison contractors in the dissemination of bills based on Arizona's SB 1070, and has identified ALEC as one of the key forces behind attempts to destroy public employee unions and privatize public services.

Notably, the WFB attack job does not find any material errors in any of Beau's extensively documented reports on ALEC, but focuses on misdemeanor court records. It dwells on the fact that his legal first name is Mohamad. Beau has been nicknamed "Beau" since birth. (It is worth noting that "CJ" is not Ciaramella's legal first name but the nickname he uses instead of "Carl.")

Beau recently stirred the pot with a special report [21] detailing corruption in the Ohio General Assembly based on public records that raise questions as to whether the state's elected officials in ALEC are complying with Ohio's ethics laws regarding gifts.

Interestingly enough, Beau learned that exactly one week following the publication of the Ohio ALEC corruption story, a private investigation firm requested court records concerning a past arrest. Allegations from those same court records emerged as the centerpiece of the WFB attack article.

The Washington Free Beacon's "Aerial Hunting Operation"

WFB's Matthew Continetti (who previously was an opinion editor at the right-wing Weekly Standard, where he remains a contributing editor) outlined [22] the WFB's strategy as part of its recent launch:

"What would happen if the media wolf pack suddenly had to worry about an aerial hunting operation? You are about to find out. The Washington Free Beacon is here to enter the arena of combat journalism. [...] At the Beacon, we follow only one commandment: Do unto them."

And this is the team ALEC is using to attempt to discredit CMD as an "attack-dog"?

This is not the first such piece to come out of WFB. In the past few months, Ciaramella has written three pieces personally attacking reporters and activists working to expose ALEC. In addition to the piece on Beau, he published a similar attack on Color of Change staffer Gabriel Rey-Goodlatte, as well as The Nation reporter Lee Fang. Fang has also written for Think Progress (blog of the Center for American Progress) and Republic Report, and who has reported critically on ALEC over the past year. Color of Change has been instrumental in the call for ALEC corporate members to sever ties with the organization.

The latest piece also takes a shot at George Soros by attempting to link Beau to the philanthropist through PRWatch. But CMD openly discloses on its website that the past grant it received from the Open Society Institute was focused on homeland security, not ALEC. Notably, neither the WFB nor CAF disclose to the public which corporations, organizations, or individuals bankroll their operations or smear campaigns.

The People Behind the "Center for American Freedom"

WFB is a creature of the Center for American Freedom (CAF), which was incorporated in Washington, D.C., on August 18, 2011, as a not-for-profit corporation. According to [23] District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) records, CAF has two active trade names: "Free Bacon" [sic] and "Washington Free Beacon," both of which were formally effected in March 2012.

DCRA records list the names of two founding CAF "governors," Michael Goldfarb [24] and Aaron Harison.

Harison, currently CAF's president, previously served [25] as director of communications for the Republican National Committee (RNC). Harison is joined at CAF by former RNC acting director of communications [26], and current CAF research director, Tim Killeen.

Harison is also the former executive director [27] of Keep America Safe [28], an operation co-founded in 2009 by Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney. William Kristol [29], the founder and editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, is a founding board member [30] of Keep America Safe. Kristol is currently listed as a board member [31] of CAF, and is the former executive director of the Project for the New American Century [32] (PNAC), a neocon "think tank" that had strong ties to the American Enterprise Institute [33].

Michael Goldfarb, CAF's chairman, has reportedly worked [34] as an advisor to Keep America Safe and the militaristic Emergency Committee for Israel [35]. (Kristol is also a board member for the Emergency Committee for Israel). Goldfarb is also listed as a contributing editor [36] to Weekly Standard.

In addition, Goldfarb is a partner [37] in the lobby/PR firm, Orion Strategies LLC [38]. Not surprisingly, given Goldfarb and Kristol's warmongering predilections, Orion has lobbied on issues of arms sales and foreign relations for very special interests like defense contractors and foreign governments.

While these ties may explain some of the content on the WFB, what does any of this have to do with its efforts to defend ALEC by attacking its critics?

According to Politico, right-wing financiers Charles and David Koch also employ the services of Orion Strategies [39] and, as CMD has documented [40], Koch Industries and/or the Koch family fortune have helped fund ALEC and numerous ALEC private sector members that help operationalize the brothers' ideological and financial agenda. There is no indication that the Kochs asked WFB to jump to the defense of ALEC. However, the right wing has been howling that the press and progressive groups have been too persuasive in exposing ALEC and in making the case about how ALEC helps make the corporate wish list into law through its members and operations.

CMD Wins Awards for ALEC Exposed and Investigative Breakthroughs

In the letter to its members, ALEC also attempted to impugn CMD as a "highly partisan, fringe organization." The charge brings to mind pots and kettles. When CMD surveyed ALEC's political leadership in July 2011, it documented that 103 of the 104 legislators serving on ALEC's Board of Directors or holding the post of co-chair on its task forces or of a state were Republicans. It's difficult to imagine a more lopsided partisan make-up of a body of elected officials than that, other than in groups that are expressly described by their party label, such as the Republican Governors Association.

CMD is a non-partisan watchdog group that has taken heat for being highly critical of President Obama's financial policies and the Democrat's campaign financing practices. We have filed briefs challenging the Obama administration, including its detention powers under the recent National Defense Authorization Act, and have been critical of Democrats and Republicans who push the agenda of their corporate benefactors in dozens of areas.

CMD has been honored to receive several journalism awards for its work to expose ALEC: the "Sidney Award [41]" for Investigative Journalism, along with The Nation magazine, in September 2011; the "Izzy Award [42]" for outstanding achievement in independent media, along with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who covered the uprising in Egypt from the ground; and most recently, the "Professional Freedom and Responsibility award [43]" from the Cultural and Critical Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication -- an honor that has previously been awarded to Bill Moyers, Molly Ivins, I.F. "Izzy" Stone, Noam Chomsky, Studs Terkel, and Bob McChesney. Earlier this year, CMD also recieved one of the Milwaukee Press Club's 2011 "Excellence in Journalism [44]" awards for its investigative work.

ALEC Ups the Ante But the Odds Are on More Defections and Inquiries

While ALEC is fighting CMD with misleading missives to its members and media smears, it is still shedding corporate board members, funders, and sponsors [10]. And it is still getting hammered in the press for its extreme agenda and its corrupting influence, for the fact that corporate lobbyists vote as equals with elected officials on templates to change the law, and its repeated claims it does not lobby despite proof to the contrary. ALEC has also received continued scrutiny for its corporate-funded scholarships. CMD has learned at least one state has had trouble maintaining corporate donors to cover the usual trips for legislators to attend ALEC events.

As calls for investigation of ALEC's lobbying activities and financing practices mount (with three complaints now filed before the IRS and other ethics investigations at the state level), it will take more than Edelman PR and "combat journalism" to rescue ALEC from the trouble it is in.

Center for Media and Democracy • 520 University Avenue, Suite 260 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703

Phone: 608-260-9713 • Fax: 608-260-9714

Source URL: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11717/alec-goes-after-center-media-and-democracy

Links:

[1] http://www.prwatch.org/users/35268/lisa-graves

[2] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/activism

[3] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/corporations

[4] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/democracy

[5] http://www.prwatch.org/projects/alec-exposed

[6] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prwatch.org%2Fnews%2F2012%2F08%2F11717%2Falec-goes-after-center-media-and-democracy&linkname=ALEC%20Goes%20After%20the%20Center%20for%20Media%20and%20Democracy

[7] http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

[8] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11682/amgen-drops-alec-number-32-ebay-comes-under-fire

[9] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Legislators_Who_Have_Cut_Ties_to_ALEC

[10] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11724/six-more-corporations-dump-alec-38-companies-have-now-cut-ties-corporate-bill-mil

[11] http://alecexposed.org/w/images/f/f2/Amgen_Response_to_ALEC_-_Heartland_Letter_8-6-12.pdf

[12] http://alecexposed.org/w/images/f/fe/ALEC_Outreach_Letter_-_Amgen_Inc_.pdf

[13] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/07/11679/lot-white-space-firms-drop-alecs-meeting-brochure

[14] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ALEC_Corporations#L

[15] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11462/former-alec-supporters-now-find-connection-toxic

[16] http://www.prweekus.com/pages/under-fire-advocacy-group-alec-works-with-edelman/article/240419/

[17] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Edelman

[18] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11458/alec-sends-out-sos-breibart-bloggers

[19] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=The_Washington_Free_Beacon

[20] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_American_Freedom

[21] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/05/11498/quid-pro-status-quo-alec-state-sanctioned-corruption-ohio

[22] http://freebeacon.com/combat-journalism

[23] http://dbapress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/DCRA-CAF.pdf

[24] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_Goldfarb

[25] http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/harison_aaron

[26] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71099_Page3.html

[27] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28212.html#ixzz0Tqj4UEV7

[28] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Keep_America_Safe

[29] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=William_Kristol

[30] http://www.keepamericasafe.com/?page_id=215

[31] http://americanfreedom.com/staff/

[32] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Project_for_the_New_American_Century

[33] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute

[34] http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/michael-goldfarb

[35] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Emergency_Committee_for_Israel

[36] http://www.weeklystandard.com/tws/aboutus/default.asp#Masthead

[37] http://orionstrat.com/

[38] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Orion_Strategies_LLC

[39] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71099.html

[40] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10904/alec-exposed-koch-connection

[41] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/09/11023/cmd-and-nation-magazine-win-sidney-award-investigative-journalism

[42] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/03/11327/cmd-receives-izzy-award-alec-exposed

[43] http://aejmc.net/ccs/CCSSpring2012.pdf

[44] http://www.milwaukeepressclub.org/honors/contest/2011-contest-awardees#pro

tryingto track down ctr for food safety (link scrubbed)  got me to:

The Truth about SourceWatch

SourceWatch is a propaganda site funded by an extreme left-wing, anti-capitalist and anti-corporate organization, the Center for Media and Democracy. Just like the untrustworthy Wikipedia the content can be written and edited by ordinary web users. Users who all conveniently share an extreme left-wing bias. SourceWatch is frequently cited by those seeking to smear individuals and organizations who do not share their extreme left-wing bias since they cannot find any legitimate criticisms from respected news sources.

SourceWatch (Discover the Networks)

A project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), [...]

SourceWatch also seeks to expose what it calls the "propaganda activities of public relations firms" and the activities of organizations working "on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests." These "exposes," which tend to be critical of their subjects, deal predominantly with conservative entities. [...]

As with the online reference Wikipedia, the contents of SourceWatch are written and edited by ordinary Web users. Says SourceWatch: "You don't need any special credentials to participate -- we shun credentialism along with other propaganda techniques." While stating that it seeks to maintain fairness in the profiles and articles appearing on its website, SourceWatch does acknowledge that "ignoring systemic bias and claiming objectivity is itself one of many well-known propaganda techniques." [...]

...The perspectives are mostly leftist; the entries rely heavily on leftist and far-leftist sources.

Center for Media and Democracy (Discover the Networks)

An anti-capitalist, anti-corporate organization that seeks to expose right-wing "public relations spin and propaganda".

Established in 1983, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) aims to "strengthe[n] participatory democracy by investigating and exposing public relations spin and propaganda" -- focusing largely on what it views as the transgressions of political conservatives. Another CMD objective is to assist liberal and leftist "grassroots citizen activism that promotes public health, economic justice, ecological sustainability and human rights." [...]

In CMD's view, capitalism generally, and corporations in particular, are the principal root causes of societal ills in the U.S. and abroad. The Capital Research Center, which rates the ideological leanings of nonprofit organizations, places CMD near the extreme far left of the spectrum. [...]

Members of the CMD Board of Directors include: Joseph Mendelson, a former Director of Friends of the Earth and co-founder of the environmental organization Center for Food Safety; Anna Lappe, co-founder of the social justice organization Small Planet Institute [...]

The most notable CMD Board member is Ellen Braune, whose leftist affiliations are extensive and longstanding. She currently serves as Vice President of Communications at the Ms. Foundation for Women, and was formerly a Senior Vice President at Fenton Communications and a Communications Director for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Part of theSoviet-controlled World Peace Council, CISPES was established in America in 1980 by high-ranking members of the Salvadoran Communist Party and Cuban intelligence to support El Salvador's murderous guerrilla bands and to influence American public opinion through protests and one-sided disinformation.

CMD was founded by the leftist writer and environmental activist John Stauber, who continues to serve as the Center's Executive Director. Stauber began his activism in high school when he organized anti-Vietnam War protests and early Earth Day events. The co-author (with SourceWatch founder Sheldon Rampton) of six books, Stauber created the now-defunct website Vote2StopBush.org. He is also an unpaid advisor to several organizations, including the Action Coalition for Media Education, the Center for Food Safety, the Liberty Tree Foundation, the Media Education Foundation, and the Organic Consumers Association. [...]

An April 2001 commentary in the liberal publication Village Voice said of Rampton and Stauber: "These guys come from the far side of liberal."

Center for Media & Democracy (Activist Cash) page now gone 4/13

About Us

This site, created by the Center for Consumer Freedom, is committed to providing detailed and up-to-date information about organizations and activists. We have analyzed scores of media clippings, official statements, and government documents to create this database.

The organizations we track on this site are tax-exempt nonprofits, many of which engage in anti-consumer activism. Many are linked by personnel, history, and finances. These groups promote false science, scare campaigns, and sometimes even violent “direct actions” to threaten our right to choose certain products.

Some have gone far beyond their founding principles in their anti-consumer agendas. Others use misleading names to hide their radical agendas and engage in hypocritical and deceptive practices. Many over-inflate public health causes to enact punitive taxes and bans on our favorite foods and beverages. These activists trade on undeserved good names to attack our consumer choices.

This site is dedicated to showing the true faces of these radical organizations. For instance, did you know:

• The Humane Society of the United States doesn’t run a single pet shelter, and despite its advertisements’ reliance on images of distressed dogs and cats gives less than one percent of its $130 million budget to support hands-on care of pets at local pet shelters?
• People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) kills the vast majority of pets it takes into its pet shelter each year — in some years upward of 95 percent — according to Virginia state government records?
• The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), another animal liberation group received $432,000 from PETA to falsely promote itself as a mainstream medical charity?
• The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) advocates banning sodas and scaremongers against dishes that Americans enjoy despite being largely responsible for the adoption of harmful trans fat cooking oil in the first place?
• The Environmental Working Group and the president of the Waterkeeper Alliance promoted the harmful myth that childhood vaccines cause autism?

Another big reason activist groups are able to maintain their “good names”: Nobody’s been watching them and providing this level of research. Until now.

We welcome your comments, questions, compliments, and concerns.

The Center for Consumer Freedom will not sell or share your personal information with anyone.

For more information, please read our privacy policy.

Press is asked to call 202-463-7112.

The Center for Media & Democracy (CMD) is a counterculture public relations effort disguised as an independent media organization. CMD isn’t really a center it would be more accurate to call it a partnership, since it is essentially a two-person operation.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber operate, as do most self-anointed progressive watchdogs, from the presumption that any communication issued from a corporate headquarters must be viewed with a jaundiced eye. In their own quarterly PR Watch newsletter, they recently referred to corporate PR as a propaganda industry, misleading citizens and manipulating minds in the service of special interests. Ironically, Rampton and Stauber have elected to dip into the deep pockets of multi-million-dollar foundations with special interest agendas of their own.

Their books Mad Cow U.S.A. and Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! were produced and promoted using grant monies from the Foundation for Deep Ecology ($25,000) and the Education Foundation of America ($20,000), among others. Along with the more recent Trust Us: We’re Experts, these books are scare-mongering tales about a corporate culture out of control, and each implies that the public needs rescuing. Guess who the heroes in this fantasy are?

Despite his wild claims that federal agencies have covered up U.S. mad cow disease cases, John Stauber has become a quotable celebrity on the subject. In 1997, at the height of the initial mad-cow panic, a CMD press release warned: Evidence suggests there may already be a mad-cow-type of disease infecting both U.S. pigs and cattle. Rampton and Stauber have never provided any documentation to back up this reckless claim; no cases of mad-cow disease have ever been documented in U.S. livestock. John Stauber was one of only four mad-cow experts offered to reporters by Fenton Communications’ media arm, Environmental Media Services.

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sorta interesting wikipedia discussion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SourceWatch

Tim Lambert created the article on John Brignell , milloy. caruba ref

==

The Progressive Movement is a PR Front for Rich Democrats

Posted By John Stauber On March 15, 2013 @ 5:59 am In article,articles 2014 onward,FrontPageArticle | Comments Disabled

There is good news in the Boston Globe today for the managers, development directors, visionaries, political hacks and propaganda flacks who run “the Progressive Movement.”   More easy-to-earn and easy-to-hide soft money, millions of dollars,  will be flowing to them from super rich Democrats and business corporations.  It will come clean, pressed and laundered through Organizing for Action, the latest incarnation of the Obama Money Machine which has recently morphed into a “nonpartisan non-profit corporation” that will  ‘‘strengthen the progressive movement and train our next generation of leaders.’’

Does this information concern you?  If not, you need to get out of the propaganda bubble of your Progressive Movement echo chamber and think.  Think hard.  Think about fundamental, radical, democratic, social and economic change, who might bring it about and how.  Ask yourself if the the rich elite, the 1%, are going to fund that.   Leave The Nation and Mother Jones on the shelf;  turn off Ed Schultz, Rachel Madow and Chris Hayes;  don’t open that barrage of email missives from Alternet, Media Matters, MoveOn, and the other think tanks;  and get your head out of the liberal blogosphere for a couple days.  Clear your mind and consider this:

The self-labeled Progressive Movement that has arisen over the past decade is primarily one big propaganda campaign serving the political interests of the the Democratic Party’s richest one-percent who created it.  The funders and owners of the Progressive Movement get richer and richer off Wall Street and the corporate system.  But they happen to be Democrats, cultural and social liberals who can’t stomach Republican policies, and so after bruising electoral defeats a decade ago they decided to buy a movement, one just like the Republicans, a copy.

The Progressive Movement that exists today is their success story.  The Democratic elite created  a mirror image of the type of astroturf front groups and think tanks long ago invented, funded and promoted by the Reaganites and the Koch brothers.  The liberal elite own the Progressive Movement.  Organizing for Action, the “non-partisan” slush fund to train the new leaders of the Progressive Movement is just the latest big money ploy to consolidate their control and keep the feed flowing into the trough.

The professional Progressive Movement that we see reflected in the pages of The Nation magazine, in the online marketing and campaigning of MoveOn and in the speeches of Van Jones, is primarily a political public relations creation of America’s richest corporate elite, the so-called 1%, who happen to bleed Blue because they have some degree of social and environmental consciousness, and don’t bleed Red.  But they are just as committed as the right to the overall corporate status quo, the maintenance of the American Empire, and the monopoly of the rich over the political process that serves their economic interests.

RICH DEMOCRATS TO PROGRESSIVES:  WE LOVE YOU, MAN!

After the 2000 presidential election, the Al Gore Hanging Chad Debacle, rich liberal Democratic elite began discussing, conspiring and networking together to try and make sure that no scruffy, radical  political insurgency like the Nader 2000 campaign would again raise its political head.  They generally loved Al Gore, the millionaire technocrat, and they put in play actions which led to the creation of a movement of their own that aped the right wing’s institutions.  They reached out to the well-paid professionals who ran the big environmental groups they already funded and owned,  and to other corporate reform and liberal media operations.    They followed plans drawn up by Democratic Party insiders who wanted nothing more than to win elections, and who saw the need for the tools and groups and campaigns the Right wielded.  They made it clear there would be wonderful financial rewards and career advancements for progressive leaders and their organizations who lined up with them.

The Progressive Movement we see today was created by a small group including Democratic political operatives and foundations including  TIDES(formed in 1976), the millionaires and billionaires of the Democracy Alliance, (formed in 2005) and eventually the Obama machine.

After Al Gore’s 2000 debacle, the rich liberal Democrats in the East and the West began to talk and meet.  The green elite funders and dot.commillionaires of the Bay Area solidified relationships with the Beltway think tanks, political consultants and and PR flacks.   Liberal Democratic Party players like MoveOn’s co-founder Wes Boyd and TIDES Drummond Pike drew closer with others including the George Soros, John Podesta and Stanley Greenberg crowd.  The Democratic Party defeats in 2002 and 2004 fueled further despair and solidified plans for the elite to build a new Progressive Movement that would serve their agenda.

This became very visible with the arrival of the Democracy Alliance.  A summer 2005 article in the Washington Post made clear their intent to pour millions into creating and owning a Progressive Movement.  Looking back, someone needs to give these folks an award because the wealthy elitists in the Democracy Alliance succeeded wildly,  mission accomplished!

As the Washington Post reported,  “at least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades.  …  The goal of the alliance, according to organizers, is to foster the growth of liberal or left-leaning institutions equipped to take on prominent think tanks on the right, including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, as well as such training centers as the Leadership Institute and the Young America’s Foundation.”

The Washington Post explained, “There has been a flourishing of new, pro-Democratic think tanks and advocacy groups in recent years. Clinton administration chief of staff John D. Podesta established the Center for American Progress … and author David Brock helped create Media Matters for America last year, among others. All these groups are potential recipients of money from alliance partners. In addition, the number of liberal bloggers on the Web has been growing at a fast pace … .  Jockeying for cash among possible recipient organizations has already begun. Robert L. Borosage, director of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future, said the alliance will fund a ‘set of institutions in this city to be in the national debate, and we would like to be one of them.’ ”

For almost a decade now the funders of the Progressive Movement, the rich Democrats of the Democracy Alliance and their cliques, networks and organizations, have employed and funded political hacks, fundraisers, pollsters, organizers and PR flacks.  Over the past ten years they have dumped more and more money into the big feeding trough shared by the major players of the Progressive movement.  The overall goal and result has always been to bring withering rhetorical fire and PR attacks upon the Republican Right, while creating a tremendous fear of the Right to increase the vote for Democrats.  This has become Job #1 for the Progressive Movement.  No one quite remembers Job #2.

Real movements are not the creation of and beholden to millionaires.  The Progressive Movement is astroturf beholden to the rich elite, just as the Democratic millionaires and operatives of the Democracy Alliance intended.  The “movement’s” funding is in the hands of a small number of super rich Democrats and union bureaucrats and advisors who run with them.  Its talking points, strategies, tactics and PR campaigns are all at the service of the Democratic elite.  There is no grassroots organized progressive movement with power in the United States, and none is being built.  Indeed,  if anything threatens to emerge,  the cry  “Remember Nader!” arises and the budding insurgency is marginalized or coopted, as in the case of the Occupy Wall Street events.  Meanwhile, the rich elite who fund the Progressive Movement, and their candidates such as Barack Obama, are completely wedded to maintaining the existing status quo on Wall Street and in the corporate boardroom.  Their well-kept Progressive Movement is adept at PR, propaganda, marketing and fundraising necessary in the service of the Democratic Party and the corporate elite who rule it.

One of the Progressive Movement’s key new movers and shakers is Ilyse Hogue.  Her rise out of the green movement and into the highest echelons of Democratic power encapsulates how it all works.   In 2006 Hogue was recruited out of Rainforest Action Network by Wes Boyd of MoveOn to run their national campaigns.  Since then she has accumulated hats and desks at The Nation, Media Matters, the Soros-funded Super PAC Public Campaign Action Fund, and most recently the feminist lobby NARAL.  Hogue is an articulate and well-rewarded spokesperson, fundraiser and mobilizer for the new Progressive Movement. Her network of recent employers all benefited nicely from the successful work of the Democracy Alliance, TIDES, MoveOn, and Soros.   Anyone who wonders if there are good careers in the Progressive Movement can look at her and others and see the answer is clearly ‘yes’.

Every well-funded movement needs an echo-chamber to pump up its propaganda and messages, and for the Progressive Movement the Netroots Nation bloggers, The Nation, Alternet, Mother Jones, and scores of other journalists and pundits have filled the bill.  The development of the messages and talking points of the Progressive Movement is the realm of DC think tanks and organizations such as Media Matters, and a small army of flacks is also utilized including PR maven David Fenton,  pollster Stanley Greenberg and messaging guru George Lakoff.

CO-OPTING THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT TO WIN ELECTIONS

After the 2004 flop of the Kerry/Edwards campaign, luck shone on the Democrats.  The over-reach of the neoconservatives, the failure to find those weapons of mass deception (sic),  the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, turned American public opinion,  especially among the young, against the Republicans.  Growing anti-war sentiment, which had little to do with the organized anti-war movement, delivered to the Democrats what Governor Mario Cuomo called “The Gift.”  The horrific Iraq war, he explained to a Democracy Alliance gathering, was the gift that allowed the Democrats to take control of the US Congress.

It was at this point in early 2007 that the truly dark and cynical agenda of the professional Progressive Movement and the Democratic Party revealed itself.  Under Pelosi the Democrats could have cut off funding for Bush’s unpopular wars and foreign policy.  Instead,  with PR cover provided by MoveOn and their lobbyist Tom Matzzie, the Democratic Congress gave George Bush all the money he wanted to continue his wars.  For the previous five years MoveOn had branded itself as the leader of the anti-war movement, building lists of millions of liberals, raising millions of dollars, and establishing itself in the eyes of the corporate media as leaders of the US peace movement.  Now they helped the Democrats fund the war,  both betting that the same public opposition to the wars that helped them win control of the House in 2006 could win the Presidency in 2008.

Their bet paid off with a young, charismatic black candidate backed from his beginnings by Wall Street, and thus able to out-raise even the Clinton Machine for the big money provided by the Democratic elite.  Obama hired top online organizers and combined MoveOn’s “clicktivist”  style and expertise to both raise money and build an effective political machine.  The stock market collapse of 2008 was again like a gift for the Democrats, showing Obama’s cool contrasted with old John McCain’s panic.

Just before the Obama victory in 2008, Alternet’s Don Hazen interviewed Drummond Pike, the millionaire who founded the TIDES Foundation in 1976 and a founding member of the Democracy Alliance.  The topic was TIDES upcoming “Momentum” conference at a fancy San Francisco hotel.  The exclusive confab was described as “an invitational gathering of progressive donors and advocates” where “some of the most creative minds in the progressive community come together to challenge, inspire and energize each other.”  Pike said it was “where we bring funders, leaders of key nonprofits, think tanks and activist organizations together…   We are engaged in philanthropy. We granted $93 million dollars last year and manage grant-making for more than 400 individual and institutional donors.”  The wedding of the rich elite Democrats and the Progressive Movement just got better and better.

OCCUPYING OCCUPY FOR WALL STREET DEMOCRATS

After Obama’s 2008 victory the Progressive Movement celebrated itself and continued to solidify with ongoing funding from the Dem elite, playing a significant role in delivering the White House again to the Democrats in 2012.  One of their 2012 PR front stunts to benefit the Democrats was launched in early 2012, the “99% Spring.”

In the Fall of 2011, the spontaneous street action known as Occupy Wall Street withstood media derision long enough to earn its respect.  It’s images struck a chord during the recession.  Overnight protests in major urban areas might not have appealed to the typical Democratic voter, but bashing the rich did.  Occupy might have even threatened the Democratic Party had it ever been able to overcome its anarchistic roots and in some way produced a strategy and organization.  But its slogan “we are the 99%” resonated widely.

Nothing succeeds like success, and imitation is the most sincere flattery.  The Progressive Movement has plenty of bright marketers and messengers who saw the writing on Wall Street.  They decided to launch and hype an election year PR campaign to co-opt the message and theme of Occupy Wall Street.  They called it the 99% Spring, “Spring” as in the time of year but also as in Arab Spring of 2011.  When you don’t have a real Movement of your own, at least cop good language from some others!

What amused me most about the 99% Spring was its simultaneous audacity and vacuousness, and how obviously it was a front for MoveOn, Van Jones, and the messaging agenda of the Democratic Party.  And now it’s all gone, just a flash across the webpages of The Nation and Mother Jones, not even a website left behind with its web address up for sale to the highest bidder.  The Progressive Movement lives from PR campaign and to PR campaign.  When the money’s spent, the movement just pivots to the next bit of funding and a new campaign is launched.

I first heard of the 99% Spring in a February, 2012 email from the group formerly known as  SmartMeme, activists who work with the Progressive Movement and develop “stories” that can be used to get everyone thinking alike in a positive way.  They wrote:  “This spring is our opportunity to take the the emerging movement for the 99% to next level by following in the foot steps of previous successful movements and prepare for organized campaigns of sustained nonviolent direct action. SmartMeme is one of the initiating organizations of 99% spring because we believe the best way to challenge the corporate stranglehold on our economy and political system is with organized people power!”

Propaganda is my beat, so I was not impressed by this revolutionary development.   It sounded exactly as it was, a big flow of money into key Progressive Movement organizations to co-opt the brand of  Occupy Wall Street movement for the Progressive Movement and the Democrats.  In my email from SmartMeme there was a hotlink to the “the99%Spring” website.  Today that link and URL goes to NameJet, a company that auctions off unwanted web addresses.  How appropriate.

The MoveOn.org site on 99% Spring is still upas of this writing:  MoveOn pushed 99% Spring hard, and emails from their staffers employed revolutionary hyperbole that might have made Abbie Hoffman proud.  MoveOn wrote,  “groups from every corner of our movement are joining forces to do something that’s never been tried before. During the week of April 9-15, across America, we will bring 100,000 people together for an unprecedented national movement-wide training on what happened to our economy, on the history of peaceful direct action, and how — following in the footsteps of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — we can take direct action this spring to challenge corporate power, end tax giveaways to the 1%, fight the influence of money in politics, and more.”

99% Spring organizers Liz Butler and Joy Cushman extolled similarly in their emails: “Imagine if the 99% of us for whom this country is supposed to work came together as a unified movement for democracy and justice? What could happen if hundreds of thousands of us were willing to take nonviolent direct action to reclaim the America we love from the banks and lobbyists who’ve stolen it from us?  Let’s find out.”

The SourceWatch website:  lists the groups promoting 99% Spring:  “Jobs With Justice, United Auto Workers,National Peoples Action, National Domestic Workers Alliance, MoveOn.org, New Organizing Institute, Movement Strategy Center, The Other 98%, Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, Rebuild the Dream, Color of Change, UNITE-HERE, Greenpeace, Institute for Policy Studies, PICO National Network, New Bottom Line, Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, SNCC Legacy Project, United Steel Workers, National Education Association, Working Families Party, Communications Workers of America, United States Student Association, Rainforest Action Network, American Federation of Teachers, Leadership Center for the Common Good, UNITY, National Guestworker Alliance, 350.org, The Ruckus Society, Citizen Engagement Lab, smartMeme Strategy & Training Project, Right to the City Alliance, Pushback Network, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Progressive Democrats of America, Change to Win, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future, Public Campaign Action Fund, Fuse Washington, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, Citizen Action of New York, Engage, United Electrical Workers Union, National Day Laborers Organizing Network, Alliance for a Just Society, The Partnership for Working Families, United Students Against Sweatshops, Presente.org, Get Equal, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Corporate Accountability International, American Federation of Government Employees, Training for Change, People Organized for Westside Renewal (POWER), Student Labor Action Project, Colorado Progressive Coalition, Green for All, DC Jobs with Justice, Midwest Academy, The Coffee Party, International Forum on Globalization, UFCW International Union, Sunflower Community Action, Illinois People’s Action, Lakeview Action Coalition, Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, International Brotherhood of the Teamsters, Resource Generation, Highlander Research and Education Center, TakeAction Minnesota, Energy Action Coalition, Earthhome.us.”

In any good front group campaign lists like this serve a few purposes.  One is to give the impression that this is a really powerful and diverse effort with scores of leading organizations actively involved, rather than a well-funded PR effort run by a small group at the top, which it was.   Another purpose is to demonstrate that there is money behind this effort and that the major Progressive Movement hitters are involved.  When I saw the list I sent some emails to Progressive Movement activists asking why they were lending their names to a MoveOn-driven effort to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street for the Democrats.

Greenpeace’s Executive Director wrote back, clearly not sharing my view.  He said  “something funny is happening here. In a fascinating, good, confusing way.”  He believed that MoveOn and the public employee union SEIU were “focused on scaling civil disobedience. That’s different. You can look at it in many ways.  …  Friends asked us to sign on, we do that a lot.”

An employee of Campaign for America’s Future also gave 99% Spring a big left-handed thumbs up, writing me, “this is a ton of progressive groups trying to get a national movement going, organized, working together,” and “anything that drives the 99% versus 1% perspective advances everything we are trying to achieve.”

No one identified with the Progressive Movement would in any way question or criticize the 99% Spring, at least no one I could find.  And then my inquiries uncovered someone new who has a paid position in one of the groups.  She agreed generally with my perspective, and was disgusted by what she saw daily from her “movement”:  pandering to the rich elite; shallow public relations campaigns substituting for organizing; Democratic Party agendas; six figure salaries and consulting fees for the Progressive executives and consultants, and so on.  She saw the Progressive Movement a convenient way for the Democratic rich to control the rabble, manage dissent, and deflect attention from the need for fundamental, radical structural change in the United States.

Eventually she wrote an article under the pen-name Insider for CounterPunch exposing the 99% Spring as a front group for the agenda of the Democrats, organized largely by MoveOn.  The Insider’s  piece hit a nerve or two and gathered quite a bit of attention and clumsy efforts at rebuttal.

I bounced the piece around and became its defender and promoter.  She quoted me in her article.  I told her that the 99% Spring reminded me of the AAEI coalition, another MoveOn front that worked with Nancy Pelosi in 2007 to see to it that the Iraq war was funded and used as a political stick to beat Republicans in 2008.  Or the massively funded Health Care for America Now coalition backed by MoveOn in 2009 which made sure that single payer health care was ignored while the White House pushed its pro-insurance industry legislation derided as ‘Obamacare’.”

KEEP HOPE A JIVE

Predictably the echo chamber of the Progressive Media  —  bloggers, columnists and editors at The Nation, Mother Jones and Alternet and elsewhere who get funding from the Democratic Elite  — defended the honor of 99% Spring.  The Nation produced a special issue promoting it.  A Mother Jones writer claimed that it was an indication that Occupy Wall Street had co-opted MoveOn.

Some of the idealistic young green activists employed by 350.org bought heavily into 99%.  That inspired Insider to take a critical look at 350.org asa tool for Obama’s re-election.

Eventually, like all PR campaigns when the funding runs dry, the 99% Spring simply dried up and blew away.  It was nothing real, just election year pageantry from a Progressive Movement that — as the rich of the Democracy Alliance planned — would be a way to breathe some life into the morbid Democratic Party.  The 99% Spring showed again that the Progressive Movement primarily exists to stick it to the Republicans, the a mirror image of their think tanks, echo chamber media, and PR fronts that rich Democrats have created or funded.

RIP 99% Spring.  It was what we thought it was, all theater, and co-optation, all about getting Van Jones more publicity to promote Obama.

Will any of the paid professional Progressives ever admit so?  Not as long as their careers and funding depend upon it; they can’t afford to take off their rose-hued glasses.

More importantly, how do people who aren’t the kept, professional Progressives go about asking the right questions, organizing the right ways,  and making the fundamental, radical structural changes that will topple the institutional control of the 1% over our lives, communities, politics and biosphere?

I posed that question to someone not fooled by the foibles and feints of the Progressive Movement, my colleague Patrick Barrett, a University of Wisconsin academic who studies social and political movements.  A veteran of the 1960s civil rights and anti-war movements, Patrick has never swooned to the spell of the Progressive Democrats.  Patrick is one of the few truly wise people I know.

“What gets lost in all this faux movement politics,” said Barrett,  “is any real challenge to the growing imbalance of social, political and economic power. Quite the contrary, the ultimate impact of their actions is to reproduce if not  aggravate that imbalance. What we’ve got here is a deeply symbiotic relationship between a pseudo-movement that derives its raison d’etre and financial vitality from a vilification of the right, which it has helped to create and without which it would have no reason for existence. Indeed, the more extreme the right becomes, the better it is for them, since they live off of fear-mongering. To oppose the right in a meaningful sense would put them out of business. That isn’t to say that there is nothing to be feared in the right or that some of these folks don’t think they’re fighting the good fight, but rather that the two work in tandem, much like a good-cop-bad-cop team. As the right becomes ever more extreme, this Democratic Party cum non-profit industrial complex moves further and further to the right itself, thereby giving the Republicans and their ilk ever greater leash and making it easier to frighten the “progressive” masses.”

Barrett concluded, “Lest anyone think that this is some kind of conspiracy theory, it’s important to emphasize that this is primarily a function of social and economic structures and political institutions that create a market for these sorts of pseudo-movement leaders, who will flourish if the conditions are right. That’s why we need to focus our attention on altering those conditions, something these people have little or no interest in doing.”

John Stauber is an independent writer, activist and author.  His books include Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, Mad Cow USA and Weapons of Mass Deception.  In 1993 he founded the Center for Media and Democracy to exposed corporate, political and media propaganda campaigns.  He retired from the Center in 2008.  http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnstauber.

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