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</div><div>Capital Research Center</div><div>ABOUT</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Capital Research Center was established in 1984 to examine how foundations, charities, and other nonprofits spend money and get involved in politics and advocacy, often in ways that donors never intended and would find abhorrent.</div><div>
</div><div>From the start, CRC has exposed how those organizations are “captured” by interest groups and used to undermine Americans’ freedoms.</div><div>
</div><div>Today, we study unions, environmentalist groups, and a wide variety of nonprofit and activist organizations. We also keep an eye on crony capitalists who seek to profit by taking advantage of government regulations and by getting their hands on taxpayers’ money.</div><div>
</div><div>We’re not afraid to take on the Washington Establishment—Republican, Democrat, or anyone else.</div><div>
</div><div>CRC reports take the form of articles on this website, newspaper and magazine articles, and books. We’re also a source of information for commentators and people in the news media.</div><div>
</div><div>We do have a specific point of view. We believe in free markets, Constitutional government, and individual liberty. But facts are facts, and our journalists and researchers go where the facts lead them.</div><div>
</div><div>CRC is tax-exempt and fiercely independent. We perform no contract work and we accept no government funds—not one cent. We depend on voluntary contributions to fund our important work.</div><div>
</div><div>We are the Capital Research Center, “America’s investigative think tank.”</div><div>
</div><div>Thanks for visiting!</div><div>
</div><div>Media Contact</div><div>To arrange a media interview please call:</div><div>
</div><div>Christine Ravold, Communications Officer, cravold@capitalresearch.org or directly at (202) 464-8871</div><div>Capital Research Center’s main number at (202) 483-6900</div><div>Kristen Eastlick, Vice President of Programs and Communications, directly at (202) 464-2052</div><div>[video scott w]</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>ARCHIVE</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>PODCAST</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>DONATE</div><div>FEATURED ITEMS</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Featured Video: Russia Meddled and Almost Nobody Cared, Until . . .</div><div>Russia has been meddling in our elections for 70 years, so why re we talking about it differently this time? When heavily exaggerated claims of meddling are being used to discredit the results of a free and fair election, it only plays into Russia’s desires to diminish the credibility of our democracy and standing on the world stage. Learn about the Russian’s history of attempting to undermine American democracy in…</div><div>by CRC STAFF on JULY 17, 2018</div><div>FEATURED ITEMS</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Featured Video: How Google Could Fix an Election</div><div>Research shows that search engines can manipulate people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions simply by changing the information that shows up. This includes the ability to change voting preferences and shift an election. How is this possible? It’s called the Search Engine Manipulation Effect. Learn how seemingly innocuous changes to Google search results can influence even informed voters in our video.</div><div>by CRC STAFF on JULY 17, 2018</div><div>GREEN WATCH</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>The Woes of the Western Sage Grouse: Environmental Canary in the Coal Mine</div><div>Ask environmental activists who have filed litigation under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) what they find so lacking in local conservation efforts and you will get some creative answers that…</div><div>by KEVIN MOONEY on JULY 17, 2018</div><div>GREEN WATCH</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>The Woes of the Western Sage Grouse: Party Divisions</div><div>The Western Watersheds Project, which is headquartered in Idaho, has joined with other well-endowed environmental advocacy groups to file suit against the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management and U.S.</div><div>by KEVIN MOONEY on JULY 17, 2018</div><div>GREEN WATCH</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>The Woes of the Western Sage Grouse: Weaponizing the Endangered Species Act</div><div>While there’s an argument to be made that the Gunnison sage grouse is a genetically distinct species from the greater sage grouse and has a different feather pattern and mating…</div><div>by KEVIN MOONEY on JULY 17, 2018</div><div>Support Capital Research Center's award-winning journalism</div><div>Donate today to assist in promoting the principles of individual liberty in America.&nbsp;</div><div>GREEN WATCH</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>The Woes of the Western Sage Grouse: Is Reform on the Way?</div><div>by KEVIN MOONEY on JULY 17, 2018</div><div>ORGANIZATION TRENDS</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Washington Post Mocks Female Litigator, Smears ADF with SPLC Reference</div><div>by DANIEL LAUER on JULY 17, 2018</div><div>ANTIFA</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Unmasking Antifa Using the Rule of Law</div><div>by MATTHEW VADUM on JULY 13, 2018</div><div>PHILANTHROPY</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Voluntary Sector Played Lead Role in Disaster Recovery Last Year</div><div>by MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER on JULY 12, 2018</div><div>PODCAST</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>InfluenceWatch Podcast Episode #32: Democratic Socialists of America</div><div>by CRC STAFF on JULY 12, 2018</div><div>GREEN WATCH, ORGANIZATION TRENDS</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Required Donor Disclosure: A Threat to the First Amendment</div><div>by CAROLINE DOWNEY on JULY 11, 2018</div><div>ORGANIZATION TRENDS</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Slaughterhouse Rules: Rights for Animals</div><div>by HAYDEN LUDWIG on JULY 10, 2018</div><div>ORGANIZATION TRENDS</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Slaughterhouse Rules: Disregard for Human Life</div><div>by HAYDEN LUDWIG on JULY 10, 2018</div><div>ORGANIZATION TRENDS</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Slaughterhouse Rules: Mercy Killings</div><div>by HAYDEN LUDWIG on JULY 10, 2018</div><div>&nbsp; FEATURED PUBLICATION</div><div>CAPITAL RESEARCH MAGAZINE, ISSUE 5 2018</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>DOWNLOAD PDF (2.8MB)</div><div>&nbsp; FEATURED TOPIC: ORGANIZATION TRENDS</div><div>Washington Post Mocks Female Litigator, Smears ADF with SPLC Reference</div><div>Required Donor Disclosure: A Threat to the First Amendment</div><div>Slaughterhouse Rules: Rights for Animals</div><div>Slaughterhouse Rules: Disregard for Human Life</div><div>Slaughterhouse Rules: Mercy Killings</div><div>Slaughterhouse Rules: The Next Generation</div><div>VIEW ALL ORGANIZATION TRENDS ARTICLES</div><div>NEWSLETTER SIGNUP</div><div>FIRST NAME</div><div>First Name</div><div>&nbsp;LAST NAME</div><div>Last Name</div><div>&nbsp;EMAIL</div><div>Email Address</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>CRC respects confidentiality and will not share your e-mail address. We look forward to keeping you informed.</div><div>&nbsp;Capital Research Center</div><div>Follow Us on Twitter&nbsp;</div><div>Follow Us on Facebook&nbsp;</div><div>Follow Us on YouTube</div><div>About Us</div><div>Capital Research Center (CRC) was established in 1984 to promote a better understanding of charity and philanthropy. We support the principles of individual liberty, a free market economy and limited constitutional government: These are the cornerstones of American society.</div><div>
</div><div>LEARN MORE ABOUT US&nbsp;</div><div>Contact Us</div><div>Capital Research Center</div><div>1513 16th Street, NW</div><div>Washington, DC 20036</div><div>(202) 483-6900</div><div>(202) 483-6990 (fax)</div><div>contact@capitalresearch.org</div><div>Resources</div><div>About</div><div>Archive</div><div>Magazine</div><div>Tags</div><div>Podcast</div><div>Donate</div><div>---</div><div>fellow</div><div>Michael E. Hartmann</div><div>Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Strategic Giving</div><div>Hartmann is senior fellow and director of the Center for Strategic Giving at the Capital Research Center. For more than 18 years, he served on the program staff of The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee, including as its director of research. He assisted Bradley’s vice president for program in administering the foundation’s grantmaking in K-12 education, employee rights, economic growth and prosperity, energy and the environment, law and legal reform, equal opportunity and individual liberty, and family and society. He is a past visiting fellow of the Philanthropy Roundtable in Washington, D.C., where he researched and wrote Helping People to Help Themselves:&nbsp; A Guide for Donors. Before joining Bradley in 1998, he was director of research at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>A graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School, Hartmann has published law-review articles on the constitutionality of school vouchers and aspects of welfare reform, as well as on the First Amendment and intellectual-property rights. He has also been a consultant to other foundations and education-reform organizations.</div><div>
</div><div>AUTHORED CONTENT</div><div>BOOK PROFILE</div><div>Magazine Funding Skews Left. What Can Conservatives Do About It?</div><div>Article on July 9, 2018 by Michael E. Hartmann</div><div>BOOK PROFILE</div><div>Philanthropy Against Democracy</div><div>Article on June 11, 2018 by Michael E. Hartmann</div><div>COMMENTARY</div><div>Featured Commentary: Lessons in Conservative Philanthropy</div><div>Article on June 8, 2018 by Daniel P. Schmidt, Michael E. Hartmann</div><div>PHILANTHROPY</div><div>Humbling the Bumbling, Encumbering Numbering</div><div>Article on May 4, 2018 by Michael E. Hartmann</div><div>PHILANTHROPY</div><div>Ideas Cost More Than They Used To. How Will Policy Donors React?</div><div>Article on April 23, 2018 by Michael E. Hartmann</div><div>+ SEE ALL CONTENT BY MICHAEL E. HARTMANN</div><div></div><div>Martin Morse Wooster</div><div>Senior Fellow</div><div>Wooster is a senior fellow at the Capital Research Center. He is the author of three books: Angry Classrooms, Vacant Minds (Pacific Research Institute, 1994), The Great Philanthropists and the Problem of ‘Donor Intent’ (Capital Research Center, 1994; revised 1998 and 2007), andGreat Philanthropic Mistakes (Hudson Institute, 2006; revised 2010). His monographs about philanthropy include Should Foundations Live Forever? (Capital Research Center, 1998), The Foundation Builders (Philanthropy Roundtable, 2000), Return to Charity? (Capital Research Center, 2000), By Their Bootstraps (Manhattan Institute, 2002), and Games Universities Play (Pope Center, 2011). His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Washington Times, American Spectator, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Commentary, Elle, Air and Space, Esquire, Philanthropy, Policy Review, Reader’s Digest, Reason, and Washingtonian.</div><div>
</div><div>Wooster frequently comments on philanthropic issues for newspapers, magazines, and television in the U.S. and Great Britain. He has contributed to the Encyclopedia of Philanthropy, the Encyclopedia of Civil Rights, and Notable American Philanthropists.</div><div>
</div><div>Wooster was formerly an editor at The American Enterprise, Reason, the Wilson Quarterly, and Harper’s Magazine. He was graduated from Beloit College with degrees in history and philosophy.</div><div>
</div><div>Read all Philanthropy Daily posts published by Martin Morse Wooster.</div><div>
</div><div>AUTHORED CONTENT</div><div>PHILANTHROPY</div><div>Voluntary Sector Played Lead Role in Disaster Recovery Last Year</div><div>Article on July 12, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster</div><div>PHILANTHROPY</div><div>Charter School Funders: Look Out for “Turnaround Consultants”</div><div>Article on July 3, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster</div><div>PHILANTHROPY</div><div>Funders Who Understand Regional Differences are Better Suited to Help</div><div>Article on June 21, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster</div><div>FOUNDATION WATCH</div><div>A Sweeter Future: Philanthropies Adrift in Philadelphia</div><div>Article on June 12, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster</div><div>FOUNDATION WATCH</div><div>A Sweeter Future: Deviating from Intent</div><div>Article on June 12, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster</div><div>+ SEE ALL CONTENT BY MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>bd:</div><div>Board of Trustees</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>MICHAEL FRANC</div><div>The Hoover Institution</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>HON. EDWIN MEESE III</div><div>Fellow, The Heritage Foundation</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>WILLIAM MEYERSOHN</div><div>Real Estate Consultant</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>ERIC O’KEEFE</div><div>Chairman, Citizens for Self-Governance</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>THOMAS S. WINTER</div><div>Editor-in-Chief, Human Events</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>GIL COLLINS</div><div>Trustee emeritus. Trustee, Intercollegiate Studies Institute</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>MARION G. WELLS†</div><div>1926-2016</div><div>=</div><div>adv bd</div><div>National Advisory Board</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>DR. LARRY P. ARNN</div><div>President, Hillsdale College</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>DR. JOHN A. BADEN</div><div>Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE)</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>LINDA CHAVEZ</div><div>Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>MIDGE DECTER</div><div>Author</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>CHRISTOPHER LONG</div><div>Trustee, Intercollegiate Studies Institute</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>ADAM MEYERSON</div><div>President, The Philanthropy Roundtable</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>KATE O’BEIRNE†</div><div>1949-2017</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>P.J. O’ROURKE</div><div>Author and Columnist</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>DR. KENNETH R. WEINSTEIN</div><div>President & CEO, Hudson Institute</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>DR. WALTER WILLIAMS</div><div>Professor of Economics, George Mason University AA</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>ROBERT L. WOODSON, SR.</div><div>Founder & President, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise AA</div><div></div><div>google ad #1 result</div><div>Capital Research Center</div><div>https://capitalresearch.org/</div><div>
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</div><div>“This is one film that Hollywood would never produce.” ~ Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager No Safe Spaces, a… Podcast ...</div><div>?</div><div>About · ?Organization Trends · ?The Battle for the Bench · ?Demand Justice, How?</div><div>Capital Research Center - Wikipedia</div><div>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Research_Center</div><div>
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</div><div>Capital Research Center (CRC) is an American conservative non-profit organization and watchdog group located in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1984 by ...</div><div>?</div><div>History · ?Publications and policy ...</div><div>Capital Research Center - SourceWatch</div><div>https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Capital_Research_Center</div><div>
</div><div>The Capital Research Center (CRC) is a right-wing "think tank" whose stated mission is to do "opposition research" exposing the funding sources behind ...</div><div>?</div><div>Mission · ?Ties to the Bradley ... · ?CRC Hosts State Labor ... · ?Funding</div><div>Top stories</div><div>The Woes of the Western Sage Grouse: Party Divisions</div><div>Capital Research Center · 3 hours ago</div><div>The Woes of the Western Sage Grouse: Weaponizing the Endangered Species Act</div><div>Capital Research Center · 3 hours ago</div><div>More for capital research center</div><div>Capital Research Center - Home | Facebook</div><div>https://www.facebook.com › ... › Community Organization</div><div>
</div><div>Capital Research Center, Washington, DC. 30K likes. We study unions, environmentalist groups, and a wide variety of nonprofit and activist organizations...</div><div>Capital Research Center - Media Bias/Fact Check</div><div>https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/capital-research-center/</div><div>
</div><div>Aug 28, 2017 - Notes: Capital Research Center (CRC) is a non-profit, right wing “think tank” organization located in Washington, D.C. Capital Research Center ...</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Capital_Research_Center</div><div>
</div><div>The Capital Research Center (CRC) is a right-wing "think tank" whose stated mission is to do "opposition research" exposing the funding sources behind consumer, health and environmental groups. CRC is an associate member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing “think tanks” and tax-exempt organizations in 49 states, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and the United Kingdom.</div><div>
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</div><div>1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Mission</div><div>2<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>News and Controversies</div><div>2.1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>CRC Launches Copy of CMD's Sourcewatch</div><div>3<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Ties to the Bradley Foundation</div><div>3.1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>CRC and Richard Berman's Interstate Policy Alliance Consult for Bradley on Right-Wing "Infrastructure" Investments</div><div>3.2<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Opposition Research On CMD and the "Left"</div><div>3.3<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>CRC Hires Former Bradley VP</div><div>4<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Defund the Left" Campaign</div><div>5<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Dangerous Documentaries</div><div>6<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>CRC Hosts State Labor Reform Conference</div><div>7<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Ties to the Coal Industry</div><div>8<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Ties to the Tobacco Industry</div><div>9<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Ties to Berman and Company</div><div>10<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>History</div><div>11<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Funding</div><div>11.1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Grants</div><div>11.2<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Corporate sponsors</div><div>11.2.1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>ExxonMobil</div><div>12<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Core Finances</div><div>13<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Personnel</div><div>14<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Contact Information</div><div>15<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Resources</div><div>15.1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>IRS Form 990 Filings</div><div>16<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Reference</div><div>Mission</div><div>The CRC was founded in 1984 by Willa Johnson. Prior to founding CRC Johnson had been Senior Vice President of the Heritage Foundation, then worked as Deputy Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in the first Reagan administration, and as a legislative aide in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. [1]</div><div>
</div><div>In his book American Foundations, Mark Dowie cites Johnson writing in the CRC's 1991 annual report that "a unified, sophisticated and well-funded philanthropic elite is dedicated to imposing on us the doctrine of 'progressive' philanthropy, doctrines that would reorder our political, economic and cultural priorities".</div><div>
</div><div>"This movement, driven by a bankrupt ideology, long since disproved by history, would impose its own standards of 'social justice' based on more involvement of government in philanthropy and more involvement of charities in politics. It has lost faith in the traditional American values of individual responsibility and free choice, to say nothing of the diversity in the marketplace of ideas," she wrote.</div><div>
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</div><div>CRC Hires Former Bradley VP</div><div>Former Vice President for Programs at the Bradley Foundation, Michael Hartmann, now works for Capital Research Center (CRC) as a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Strategic Giving. According to Hartmann’s twitter profile, he is working remotely out of Milwaukee. While Hartmann was at Bradley, it paid CRC to work with the PR spin doctor Richard Berman’s Interstate Policy Alliance (IPA) to assess states for consideration as “potential targets of opportunity” to strengthen its infrastructure investments.[4]</div><div>
</div><div>An internal email from Hartmann to Bradley CEO Michael Grebe states that CRC President Scott Walter recruited Hartmann,</div><div>
</div><div>"As discussed, new Capital Research Center (CRC) president Scott Walter has been in discussions with me ways about in which I could perhaps contribute to CRC's work...It would include compensation from CRC."[5]</div><div>...</div><div>Dangerous Documentaries</div><div>CRC creates what the organizations calls "Dangerous Documentaries". A separate "dangerousdocumentaries.com" website says that Dangerous Documentaries "serves as the media arm of the Washington, D.C. based Capital Research Center," "with the mission of spreading the ideas of liberty, including free speech, free markets, individual rights, and open and fair-minded political discourse.[6]</div><div>
</div><div>Documentaries include the "America Under Siege" which "investigates the growing influence of revolutionary Marxists and their allies in different sectors of American society."</div><div>
</div><div>“America Under Siege: Civil War 2017”</div><div>While 700,000 protesters are converging on Washington D.C. for Inauguration Day—in addition to anti-Trump rallies planned in dozens of cities across the country—the political groups behind the protests remain shrouded in mystery.</div><div>"As Fox News Channel first reported, “Civil War 2017” uncovers an extensive network of neo-Marxist operatives coordinating highly disruptive and potentially violent protests from coast to coast.</div><div>“America Under Siege: Soviet Islam”</div><div>Beginning in the Cold War and continuing through to today, the Kremlin has armed, trained, and supported these Islamists and dictators to advance a frightening goal: subverting their shared American enemy.</div><div>CRC Hosts State Labor Reform Conference</div><div>Mary Bottari reports in "Bradley Foundation Bankrolls Attacks on Unions" as part of the Bradley Files investigation,</div><div>
</div><div>"The “State Labor Reform Conference” on October 4, 2013, was hosted by the Capital Research Center (CRC), bringing together “75 state policymakers, policy researchers and analysts, and activists from 15 states” (Meeting of the Bradley IRA Committee, 11/12/13). The president of CRC is Scott Walter, a former employee of Berman and Company.</div><div>The list of participants is a “who’s who” of anti-union activists and organizations funded by Bradley (Meeting of the Bradley IRA Committee, 11/12/13).</div><div>[Grover] Norquist was there again and so was Kersey. On a panel called “Coalition and Communication,” PR spin doctor Richard Berman of Berman and Co. was there “representing” his front group Center for Union Facts, discussed further below. Jonathan Williams was there representing the the corporate bill mill, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).</div><div>Jennifer Butler, VP of External Relations of the State Policy Network (SPN), was there. SPN groups operate as the policy, communications, and litigation arm of ALEC, giving its cookie-cutter bills a sheen of academic legitimacy and state-based support.</div><div>In a panel called “Lessons from Wisconsin,” “Wisconsin Secretary of Administration Mike Huebsch, delivered lessons that Wisconsin has learned on labor-policy and public-pension reform and talked about how Wisconsin can be a good model for other states and localities” (Meeting of the Bradley IRA Committee, 11/12/13). Also presenting, Brett Healy of the Bradley-funded MacIver Institute and Jennifer Toftness from Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ office.</div><div>In a panel called “Lessons from Michigan,” F. Vincent Vernuccio, Director of Labor Policy for the Mackinac Center, was featured along with Terry Bowman, from a group called Union Conservatives, and Patrick Colbeck, Republican State Senator from Michigan.</div><div>There was also a panel on “Preventing and Responding to Legal Challenges” with Raymond LaJeunesse, VP and Legal Director for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.</div><div>The final panel, “Beyond Right to Work,” featured newcomer James Sherk from the Heritage Foundation. Sherk has worked on a new strategy to defund unions at the local level, with ALEC-style “right to work” ordinances. He was in Wisconsin in 2015 testifying on behalf of ALEC’s private-sector verbatim “right to work bill” and candidly testified that it would “drive down labor costs,” also known as wages. Sherk recently got a job in the Trump White House as a labor advisor. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Earl Taylor of the Goldwater Institute also presented."[7]</div><div>Ties to the Coal Industry</div><div>CRC has received large donations from pro-fossil fuel groups like Exxon and the Koch Family Foundations through its Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation.[8] In November 2010, CRC published a report criticizing the Sierra Club for its work in transitioning the US away from coal plants, portraying it as an attack on "American prosperity."[9]</div><div>
</div><div>...</div><div>
</div><div>Funding</div><div>CRC claims that exposing the funding of these groups is important because "sunshine--the glare of public scrutiny--is 'the best of all disinfectants.'" But CRC doesn't seem to think its own hidden agenda should receive public scrutiny. The CRC website does not give any indicator of where it gets its own funding, and it has not responded to queries from PR Watch staff. However, some of CRC's funders are publicly disclosed through IRS filings or other means.</div><div>
</div><div>Grants</div><div>Bradley Impact Fund: $63,000 (2013-2015)</div><div>Charles Koch Foundation: $39,200 (2011 -2015)</div><div>Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation: $660,000 (1998-2008)</div><div>Donors Capital Fund: $213,000 (2010-2015)</div><div>DonorsTrust: $27,500 (2010-2014)</div><div>Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation: $2.5 million (1998-2015)[3]</div><div>Corporate sponsors</div><div>ExxonMobil</div><div>While CRC publications identify corporate funding of what they perceive as liberal non-profit groups, they do not disclose their own corporate sponsors. However, voluntary disclosures and documents revealed as a result of court actions provide a small window into how CRC interacts with corporations. In 2002, ExxonMobil donated $25,000 to the CRC for the Green Watch project with another $25,000 in 2003, according to corporate giving reports no longer available on Exxon's website, but still available via ExxonSecrets.org. "Capital Research Center and Greenwatch has received $215,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998," and up to 2006, according to ExxonSecrets. [11] According to Exxon's website, the oil company gave another $50,000 in 2007, for "public information and policy research." [12]</div><div>
</div><div>Core Finances</div><div></div><div>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Research_Center</div><div>Capital Research Center</div><div>1513 16th Street, NW.JPG</div><div>The Capital Research Center offices located in Washington, D.C.</div><div>Formation<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>1984</div><div>Founder<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Willa Johnson</div><div>Type<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Nonprofit organization</div><div>Headquarters<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Washington, D.C., United States</div><div>Services<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Study of charity, philanthropy, voluntarism</div><div>Official language</div><div>English</div><div>Revenue (2015)</div><div>$2,561,903[1]</div><div>Expenses (2015)<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>$2,030,597[1]</div><div>Website<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>capitalresearch.org</div><div>Capital Research Center (CRC) is an&nbsp;</div><div>American conservative non-profit organization and watchdog group located in Washington, D.C.[2][3] It was founded in 1984 by Willa Johnson "to study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism." According to the organization, the group supports "free markets, constitutional government, and individual liberty."[4] It discourages donations by corporations to non-profits supporting what it sees as anti-business or left-wing policies.[5] It monitors the giving of major left-wing donors in the U.S.[3]</div><div>
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</div><div>1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>History</div><div>2<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Publications and policy stances</div><div>3<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Movie production</div><div>4<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>References</div><div>5<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>External links</div><div>History[edit]</div><div>CRC was founded in 1984 by Willa Johnson, former senior vice president of the Heritage Foundation, Deputy Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in the first Reagan administration, and a legislative aide in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. CRC's current president is Scott Walter, a former Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in the George W. Bush administration, and former vice president of the Philanthropy Roundtable.[6]</div><div>
</div><div>Journalist and author Marvin Olasky previously served as a senior fellow at CRC.[7]</div><div>
</div><div>In 2011, Politico reported that CRC had received millions of dollars from conservative philanthropists over the years, but that "its total 2009 budget of $1.4 million was dwarfed by those of Media Matters ($9.5 million) and CAP ($47 million)."[8] Donors have included foundations run by the Koch family, the Scaifes, and the Bradleys. As of 2005, CRC had received $115,000 from ExxonMobil.[9]</div><div>
</div><div>David Clarke, the former sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, is the chair of CRC's American Law and Culture program.[10][11]</div><div>
</div><div>Publications and policy stances[edit]</div><div>CRC has been highly critical of animal rights activists and the environmental movement. In 2006, it published The Green Wave: Environmentalism and Its Consequences, a book by Dr. Bonner Cohen. In 2007, it published the third edition of The Great Philanthropists and the Problem of "Donor Intent" by Martin Morse Wooster, a senior fellow at the Center. In 2008, it published Guide to Nonprofit Advocacy, by James Dellinger. The CRC said Al Gore's campaign to control carbon emissions is motivated by the likelihood that he will make an "immense fortune" if laws are passed to control them;[12] argues that organized labor is bad for America;[13] and has criticized government efforts to weaken intellectual property protection of prescription medications.[14]</div><div>
</div><div>Movie production[edit]</div><div>CRC has a movie production arm called Dangerous Documentaries, which partially funded No Safe Spaces, a movie by Adam Carolla and radio host Dennis Prager about political correctness on college campuses.[15][16]</div><div>
</div><div>References[edit]</div><div>^ Jump up to:a b "Capital Research Center" (PDF). Foundation Center. 28 August 2016. Retrieved 25 April 2017.</div><div>Jump up^ Vogel, Kenneth; Debenedetti, Gabriel (January 18, 2017). "Dems jockey for big money control". Politico. Retrieved 25 March 2018.</div><div>^ Jump up to:a b Vogel, Kenneth; Vinik, Danny (November 1, 2016). "Podesta paid $7,000 a month by top donor". Politico. Retrieved 25 March 2018.</div><div>Jump up^ CRC's "About" Page</div><div>Jump up^ Barr, Stephen (July 2, 1997). "12 Foundations Push Conservative Agenda; $210 Million Given Over 3 Years". The Washington Post. p. A.21.</div><div>Jump up^ "CRC Staff Biographies". Capital Research Center.</div><div>Jump up^ Eig, Jonathan (3 July 1994). "Strains of compassion; Frustration over rising homelessness leads some cities to limit panhandling, reduce aid". The Dallas Morning News.</div><div>Jump up^ Vogel, Kenneth (3 April 2011). "Right seeks edge in 'oppo' wars". Politico. Archived from the original on 7 April 2011. Retrieved 31 May2011.</div><div>Jump up^ "Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank". Mother Jones. May 2005.</div><div>Jump up^ Bice, Daniel (February 23, 2018). "Bice: Former Sheriff David Clarke files for divorce in Milwaukee County". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved 25 March 2018.</div><div>Jump up^ "Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr". Premiere Speakers Bureau. Retrieved 25 March 2018.</div><div>Jump up^ Lucas, Fred (24 July 2008). "Al Gore's Carbon Empire: Cashing in on Climate Change" (PDF). Capital Research Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 February 2012.</div><div>Jump up^ Reitz, Michael (June 2008). "When Unions Negotiate With Governments – What Should the Public Know, When Should They Know It?" (PDF). Labor Watch. Capital Research Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-11-28.</div><div>Jump up^ Crow, Karl (January 2008). "The New War on Drugs – Activists and Politicians Attack Intellectual Property Rights" (PDF). Organization Trends. Capital Research Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-11-27.</div><div>Jump up^ Bond, Paul (May 24, 2017). "Adam Carolla Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for 'No Safe Spaces' Movie". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 25 March 2018.</div><div>Jump up^ Acevedo, Yoselin (May 25, 2017). "Adam Carolla Crowdfunding for Anti–Safe Spaces Documentary — Watch". Indie Wire. Retrieved 25 March 2018.</div><div>External links[edit]</div><div>Official website</div><div>Organizational Profile – National Center for Charitable Statistics (Urban Institute)</div><div>show</div><div>vte</div><div>American think tanks</div><div>Coordinates: 38.9102°N 77.0361°W</div><div>
</div><div>Categories: Political and economic think tanks in the United StatesNon-profit organizations based in Washington, D.C.Think tanks established in 1984Conservatism in the United States</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>ORIGINAL</div><div>
</div><div>promoted to evil 6/17 on bermn and oppo res</div><div>
</div><div>poster boy for?</div><div>
</div><div>gearing up to track left like sourcewatch</div><div>
</div><div>crypto</div><div>
</div><div>scaife is biggest donor?&nbsp; promoted primary 1/14</div><div>
</div><div>sort of forgot about 6/16</div><div>
</div><div>never could connect the 2 scanlons enron</div><div>
</div><div>not to be confused with creative response concepts PR co</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;2 tags?</div><div>
</div><div>capt 819</div><div>
</div><div>see CAP RES CTR 2</div><div>
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</div><div>more caravan BS</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.foxnews.com/world/questions-arise-over-politics-motivations-of-caravan-organizers</div><div>
</div><div>oct 25 no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Questions arise over politics, motivation of caravan organizers</div><div>Hollie McKay</div><div>By Hollie McKay | Fox News</div><div>
</div><div>What can US do to stop migrant caravans?Video</div><div>What can US do to stop migrant caravans?</div><div>
</div><div>President Trump vows to deploy troops to the border as migrants from Central America make their way toward the U.S.; insight from former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.</div><div>
</div><div>As several thousand Central Americans and Mexicans continue to march toward the United States in the migrant caravan, more questions are being asked about how the effort was brought together, who is behind it, and what prompted the movement to this point just weeks before critical U.S. elections.</div><div>
</div><div>While some claim the caravan began organically, others argue opponents of President Donald Trump's immigration policy have played a key role in the movement, with the aim of embarrassing the U.S. administration, and its supporters in Central American countries like Honduras.</div><div>
</div><div>“This caravan was initially organized by Bartolo Fuentes, a known leftist activist and former member of the national Congress in 2013, representing the political party of deposed Honduras president Manuel Zelaya," Johan Obdola, president of Latin America-focused global intelligence and security firm IOSI, told Fox News. "Now, this is not new, but is the first time it gets a high level of international media attention. And the reasons are beyond the political.”</div><div>
</div><div>Obdola argued it's in the interest of Honduran opposition members like Zelaya to “actively create violent acts and destabilization in Honduras," and said the caravans are part of a plan to keep the region "in constant chaos." He also argued the former Honduran leader – who served as president from 2006 to 2009 – is closely allied with the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro, and questioned that conflict-riddled nation’s role in fostering mass migration in an effort to embarrass the current, pro-U.S. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.</div><div>
</div><div>Honduras has been plagued by discord since its election last November of Hernandez, who defeated Zelaya. Many Zelaya supporters protested the results, claiming they were fixed in favor of a U.S-approved leader. The subsequent unrest has been cited as a key factor for Hondurans wanting to leave their country.</div><div>
</div><div>Fuentes, a former Zelaya government legislator and host of the migration-focused radio show “Without Borders,” is often characterized by Honduran government figures as a "coyote," or human trafficker. To others, he is a social activist. Fuentes himself last week was pulled from the main caravan group in Guatemala and deported back to Honduras.</div><div>
</div><div>Zelaya staunchly denied any link to the caravan, or any effort to push Hondurans toward the United States.</div><div>
</div><div>“This apocalyptic exodus is due to the disgraces that the people are living,” he told Fox News in an exclusive interview Thursday. “The caravan is a natural process of unity. It is self-summoned, and there is no organization assembling this quantity of immigrants in the country. It is a reaction from the people to the problems they are living in our countries.”</div><div>
</div><div>The former president also accused the U.S. of “maintaining a socialist dictatorship” in its support for the “illegitimate” Hernandez leadership, but denied any other governments – including Venezuela – were behind the caravan.</div><div>
</div><div>“No leftist government has come here to promote immigration to the U.S., nor has it financed it. No one needs to pay Honduras to leave. They leave voluntarily,” Zelaya continued, adding that while he has personally worked with Bartolo Fuentes in the past, immigration has long been his most important issue of advocacy.</div><div>
</div><div>“Fuentes has worked with the immigrant community for 20 to 30 years – well before entering politics – and that he receives no money for this work nor has he given out money to anyone,” Zelaya insisted.</div><div>
</div><div>The Honduras Embassy in Washington and Fuentes did not immediately respond to request for comment. Fuentes wrote on Facebook this week that the migrants are in need of basics like ointments for blisters, socks, shoes, diapers, and umbrellas. He thanked the help of pastors and churchgoers for food and other supplies.</div><div>
</div><div>While Fuentes had much to do with helping bring to life and expand the presence of the caravan, others contended he was not the first. Rather, social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp laid the first foundations that made it easy to draw in Hondurans looking for an easier path to the U.S.</div><div>
</div><div>“They had been unable to afford coyotes, so they viewed joining this caravan as their opportunity to flee turmoil in much of Central America,” said James Hyde, an analyst and member of the Electromagnetic Pulse Task Force on National and Homeland Security. “When Honduran TV picked up the posts and the reactions to it, the number of people swelled from hundreds to thousands.”</div><div>
</div><div>Hiring coyote smugglers for the perilous journey can cost up to $5,000, more than double what most Hondurans make in one year.</div><div>Central American migrants walking to the U.S. start their day departing Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, about 5,000 Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early Sunday in southern Mexico. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)</div><div>
</div><div>Central American migrants walking to the U.S. start their day departing Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, about 5,000 Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early Sunday in southern Mexico. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)</div><div>
</div><div>Small groups started to talk among themselves about making a journey last month, sources said, while Fuentes got on-board to help mobilize the migrants – just as he had with another caravan in April – this time urging the group to meet up at the San Pedro Sula bus station.</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s very well-organized by those who started the social media campaign. It gained momentum when Bartolo Fuentes got involved and the movement stirred up lawyers group funded with dark money, who teach those headed north what to say for asylum,” Hyde said. “Joining the massive group is simple. People decide to cast away their current lives and jump into the opportunity to join.”</div><div>
</div><div>Word spread with media attention and a local news coverage. And soon Hondurans from across the country, who saw it as an opportunity to relocate cheaply and under the guise of “safety in numbers,” allowing them safe passage from dangerous drug cartels and smugglers along the dangerous roads.</div><div>
</div><div>Estimates on the size of the current caravan vary. And while there are signs the Mexican government is taking steps to better control or reduce the number of migrants, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras seemed unwilling or unable to take much action. Some two-thirds of those in the caravan are Hondurans, according to estimates, with the remainder from other Central American countries and Mexico.</div><div>
</div><div>COLOMBIAN MOTHERS CHALLENGE 'BAD LUCK' TABOOS, TAKE THE LEAD EMERALD MINING</div><div>
</div><div>The motivations for those in the group also vary. Many are seeking better economic opportunities. Others are members of persecuted groups who say they're unable to live safely and openly in their home countries. Some were previously deported from the U.S., and are trying to get back to family members who remained behind.</div><div>
</div><div>“For most of these people trying to reach the USA, and fleeing violence and poverty, they are the ones paying the highest price as many of them are victims of crime, torture and sexual abuse," said Obdola. “There are some humanitarian and social groups assisting the caravan along the way. Some with only a humanitarian interest, some with more of a political interest who see the USA and Trump as the enemy.”</div><div>
</div><div>Sources said the caravan is being supported and nourished in part by an array of Mexican church and human rights organizations, as well as locals on the streets.</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s a weird mishmash of people involved. Small amounts of money have been handed out, but it is not clear from who and where,” said one Mexico-based law enforcement source. “It isn’t a cartel operation and cartels aren’t involved. The cartels are very nervous about what is happening, the last thing they want is attention on the border which only makes their job harder.”</div><div>
</div><div>Some have strongly argued the issue should be viewed in humanitarian rather than national security concerns.</div><div>
</div><div>VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER LAMENTS "GENOCIDE" IN HIS COUNTRY, REVEALS HIS ESCAPE FROM DETAINMENT</div><div>
</div><div>“We need to focus on the human aspect of this and consider what is driving this migration; violence, corruption, economic limits or degradation, and the effect of climate change,” said Michael Scadden, Geopolitical Risk and Corporate Security Advisor specializing in Latin America. “Food and water security is a major factor in many migrants’ decisions to take the risk of this journey.”</div><div>A caravan migrant stops for a break in Mexico on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)</div><div>
</div><div>A caravan migrant stops for a break in Mexico on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)</div><div>
</div><div>Others contend that whatever the legitimate asylum claims of those in group, international law dictates caravans should not make it to the United States border.</div><div>
</div><div>“International law on asylum is that the asylum seeker is supposed to present themselves to the authorities of the first international border they reach upon fleeing their countries," said Dennis Santiago, a global risk and foreign policy analyst. "For Central Americans fleeing north from their governments, that country is Mexico; specifically, the southern border of Mexico.”</div><div>
</div><div>Santiago explained that Mexico, with aid from the international community, should have set up refugee camps at the borders to handle the migrant flow. That would have then triggered the involvement of the U.N. High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR).</div><div>
</div><div>"It is from these camps that other organizations such as the U.S. Office for Refugee Resettlement are supposed to process persons to qualify eligible refugees for movement from the camps to a third host nation,” he said.</div><div>
</div><div>Santiago also asserted the U.S., Mexico and the U.N. have the money and resources to support the refugee camps.</div><div>
</div><div>"We’re talking 1,500 people per caravan, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the 11 million Syrians, Kurds and Yazidis displaced in the Middle East,” he continued. “But most of these people are refusing to go into camps and process as refugees. Somebody’s giving them a better deal than the internationally sanctioned solution set. Instead, they are marching towards the U.S. border. Are these people really legitimate refugees from their own governments?”</div><div>
</div><div>Joseph Fallon, a research associate for the U.K. Defense Forum, also argued that “if fear of violence in their country was their primary motive, they could have traveled to neighboring Costa Rica.”</div><div>Central American migrants, part of a caravan trying to reach the U.S., cross the Suchiate River to avoid the border checkpoint in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, October 20, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Central American migrants, part of a caravan trying to reach the U.S., cross the Suchiate River to avoid the border checkpoint in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, October 20, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Under pressure from the Trump administration, Mexican officials have been desperately urging caravan members to stay in Mexico and be processed there. Yet the vast majority have remained steadfast in their endeavor to get to the United States. Migrants in the past have complained that applying for asylum in Mexico is a demoralizing process, which can take more than a year, and even then routinely results in a rejection.</div><div>
</div><div>For the first time ever in 2016, Mexico deported double the number of Central Americans than did the United States. That has at least in part what has motivated many to head north.</div><div>
</div><div>Yet at least some of those seeking asylum also appear to have been "coached," according to several sources, and have memorized scripted stories that would make them more sympathetic to U.S. immigration officials.</div><div>Migrants bound for the U.S.-Mexico border wait on a bridge that stretches over the Suchiate River, connecting Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)</div><div>
</div><div>Migrants bound for the U.S.-Mexico border wait on a bridge that stretches over the Suchiate River, connecting Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)</div><div>
</div><div>“Caravans didn’t exist before 2010. Trips are carefully planned and coached. Aliens removed do share their experiences back home and that presents lessons learned for a return trip for others planning their first run,” Gabriel Ruiz, a California border-based deportation officer with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told Fox News. "Almost all have birth certificates and identity documents, but establishing the validity of those documents is time-consuming and difficult because a processing officer doesn’t have that sort of time to investigate identities in detail.”</div><div>Hollie McKay has a been a Fox News Digital staff reporter since 2007. She has extensively reported from war zones including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, and Latin America investigates global conflicts, war crimes and terrorism around the world. Follow her on Twitter.&nbsp;</div><div></div><div>http://thejewishvoice.com/2018/10/31/meet-the-folks-who-are-really-behind-the-illegal-alien-caravan/</div><div>
</div><div>News about the caravan of illegal aliens from Central America who are making their way across Mexico in an attempt to breach the U.S. border has been shuttled to the sidelines thanks to the attempted bombing of prominent Democrats.</div><div>But they’re still coming. And as they approach the U.S. border, more questions are being asked about who organized the caravan in the first place.</div><div>
</div><div>Many on the right believe that George Soros is behind the effort. But an investigation by Fox News discovered that domestic Honduran politics was the impetus for forming the caravan and sending it on its way.</div><div>
</div><div>“This caravan was initially organized by Bartolo Fuentes, a known leftist activist and former member of the national Congress in 2013, representing the political party of deposed Honduras president Manuel Zelaya,” Johan Obdola, president of Latin America-focused global intelligence and security firm IOSI, told Fox News. “Now, this is not new, but is the first time it gets a high level of international media attention. And the reasons are beyond the political.”</div><div>
</div><div>Obdola argued it’s in the interest of Honduran opposition members like Zelaya to “actively create violent acts and destabilization in Honduras,” and said the caravans are part of a plan to keep the region “in constant chaos.” He also argued the former Honduran leader – who served as president from 2006 to 2009 – is closely allied with the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro, and questioned that conflict-riddled nation’s role in fostering mass migration in an effort to embarrass the current, pro-U.S. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.</div><div>
</div><div>Honduras has been plagued by discord since its election last November of Hernandez, who defeated Zelaya. Many Zelaya supporters protested the results, claiming they were fixed in favor of a U.S-approved leader. The subsequent unrest has been cited as a key factor for Hondurans wanting to leave their country.</div><div>
</div><div>Fuentes, a former Zelaya government legislator and host of the migration-focused radio show “Without Borders,” is often characterized by Honduran government figures as a “coyote,” or human trafficker. To others, he is a social activist. Fuentes himself last week was pulled from the main caravan group in Guatemala and deported back to Honduras.</div><div>
</div><div>Zelaya staunchly denied any link to the caravan, or any effort to push Hondurans toward the United States.</div><div>
</div><div>Zelaya’s supporters may be pulling the strings behind the scenes, but the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or “People Without Borders,” was heavily involved in organizing the caravan.</div><div>
</div><div>Capital Research Center:</div><div>
</div><div>Some left-leaning publications such as the New York Times have said that “no group has claimed responsibility for organizing [the most recent] caravan,” perhaps in order to stave off claims by President Trump and other conservatives that it is being aided by left-wing activists in the United States.</div><div>
</div><div>The Times, however, is only partially correct. While no single group has claimed control of the migrant caravan, at least two activists from Pueblo Sin Fronteras – Denis Omar Contreras and Rodrigo Abeja – are embedded in the caravan, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. Contreras (sometimes spelled Contera or Contrera) reportedly helped lead the caravan to illegally enter Mexico, where he told migrants “Welcome to Tapachula!” (referencing a town near the Guatemala border). Abeja, too, was identified as one of the leaders of the April 2018 caravans, which were also supported by Pueblo Sin Fronteras.</div><div>
</div><div>On October 18, Irineo Mujica – director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras in Mexico and an American citizen – was arrested by Mexican officials for allegedly attacking immigration officials at a pro-illegal immigration protest near the Guatemala-Mexico border.</div><div>
</div><div>By: Rick Moran</div><div>(American Thinker)</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/12/bradley-foundation-funds-web-climate-change-deniers/</div><div>
</div><div>Armiak</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley Foundation internal documents reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reveal a concerted effort by the organization to delegitimize climate science, while promoting fossil fuel energy development in the United States.</div><div>
</div><div>An analysis of Bradley’s climate-related activities shows that the foundation has made significant grants to support energy policy think tanks, attack-dog groups that target environmentalists, and efforts to discredit climate science.</div><div>
</div><div>A 2013 internal foundation document details how Bradley “instructed staff to explore options…to make more energy-related grants.” The document also notes that the Board gave a “terminal grant” of $263,591 to the Sand County Foundation (SCF), which previously administered the Bradley Fund for the Environment.</div><div>
</div><div>The documents do not reveal Bradley’s motivation in splitting from SCF, but they do outline a serious effort to promote fossil fuel industry interests at the expense of the environment.</div><div>
</div><div>CENTERS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL AND FOSSIL FUEL DEVELOPMENT</div><div>As part of its push to support studies and public relations to cast doubt on mounting scientific evidence on climate change, Bradley has focused its resources on “Energy Policy Centers,” many of which are housed in “Bradley-supported” State Policy Network (SPN) “think tanks.” SPN is a web of 156 right-wing groups in 49 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, and the UK that receives funding from the billionaire Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and the Roe Foundation, as well as many multi-national corporations.</div><div>
</div><div>The examined documents show that the Center for Energy Policy and the Environment (CEPE) at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MIPR), a member of SPN, received a total of $500,000 for its Center, with another $200,000 distributed in 2016. (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, February 23, 2016) CEPE works to promote fossil fuel development despite the devastating effects of climate change. A background document on CEPE states its goal clearly: “The Center’s research and public education activity aims at demonstrating that the United States is poised to reap substantial economic benefits in the form of job creation, lower gasoline and electricity prices, and increased productivity provided public policies allow companies to access valuable energy resources and distribute them at home and abroad.”</div><div>
</div><div>A recommendation by Bradley staff on the Manhattan Institute’s 2016 grant proposal specifically states that CEPE is worth funding because, “They have succeeded in identifying and publicizing so many of the falsehoods that surround energy and the environment.” (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, February 23, 2016) Anexample of this “success” can be found in the work of CEPE senior fellow Mark Mills, who is recognized as originating the idea that North America can surpass the Middle East as the largest energy supplier in the world. (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, November 12, 2013)</div><div>
</div><div>The Energy Policy Center (EPC) at another SPN “think tank”, the Independence Institute, received $195,000 from the Bradley Foundation between 2012 and 2016.</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley documents examined show that EPC’s purpose is to “consciously counter-balance former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s environmental think tank” at Colorado State University, which promotes a “New Energy Economy.”</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley considers EPC to be highly successful in fighting local and federal environmental initiatives. The Bradley documents note that EPC was a “key coalition partner” in preempting local bans on fracking in Colorado, and that it “has developed a toolkit for policymakers, attorneys general, and other conservative state think tanks to help them push back against U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.” (Independence Institute GPR, June 2, 2015)</div><div>
</div><div>In addition to these two centers, Bradley has funded the Center for Energy and Environment (CEE) at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an “associate member” of SPN, and the Center for Energy Innovation and Independence at Consumers’ Research.</div><div>
</div><div>CEE is led by the prominent climate change denier Myron Ebell, who steered Trump’s EPA transition team. Ebell also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, which brings together right-wing activists and scholars for monthly meetings. The coalition was established on May 6, 1997, “to dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific and risk analysis.”</div><div>
</div><div>CEI was long tied to tobacco disinformation campaigns, but is now a leading organization in the movement to discredit climate science.</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley does not mention how much of its funding to CEI was designated for CEE operations. Between 1986 and 2015, Bradley Foundation gave $2.2 million to CEI, the majority of which was “to support general operations.” (Competitive Enterprise Institute GPR, June 2, 2015).</div><div>
</div><div>The Center for Energy Innovation and Independence received $250,000 from Bradley in 2013 to get the new group off the ground. According to a background document, the group “will closely monitor federal environmental regulations and potentially lay the foundation for multi-state litigation against them, similar to those actions in the Obamacare and Dodd-Frank lawsuits, of which aggressive (Scott) Pruitt was and is a part.” Pruitt is the former AG of Oklahoma and recently resigned as the EPA Administrator under Trump.</div><div>
</div><div>SMEAR CAMPAIGNS AND FUNDING EFFORTS TO DISCREDIT CLIMATE SCIENCE</div><div>At the same time Bradley rolled out funding for “Energy Policy Centers,” it was doling out cash to discredit environmental organizations and climate change science.</div><div>
</div><div>A grant proposal record for the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a front group created by the close Bradley ally Rick Berman, details an organized effort to weaken the credibility of well-respected, national environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, and Food and Water Watch. (The Center for Consumer Freedom GPR, November 12, 2013) Berman also founded Berman and Company, a notorious Washington, D.C.-based corporate lobbying and PR company known for creating numerous corporate “front groups” and astroturf propaganda campaigns.</div><div>
</div><div>Berman’s anti-environmental project at CCF was called Big Green Radicals and was seeded with a $150,000 “public education” grant from Bradley in 2013.</div><div>
</div><div>According to Bradley’s background document, the Big Green Radicals project would include the following components:</div><div>
</div><div>[N]ew, updated research profiles for NRDC, Food and Water Watch, and Sierra Club; standalone websites for all three organizations; a Facebook group seeded with several thousand fans to provide a base for the message; the production of two online videos to explain the real agenda of the environmental left; and Google keyword advertising for members of the media and the public searching for information about one of the targeted groups.</div><div>
</div><div>In addition to providing the start-up funding for Big Green Radicals, Bradley gave $85,000 to the Capital Research Center (CRC), a group led by former Berman and Company employee Scott Walter. The grant was designated for “general operations,” but it may have been used to support the publication Green Watch. A background document on CRC states that, “Green Watch tracks the money flow to environmental nonprofits and critiques their positions, and those of their allies, including their policymaking ones.” (Capital Research Center GPR, August 19, 2014)</div><div>
</div><div>Since 2014, the Bradley Foundation has distributed numerous grants to discredit the vast amount of scientific research demonstrating the harmful effects of climate change. In 2014, it gave $65,000 to the George C. Marshall Institute (GMI), a right-wing front group largely funded by oil and gas interests. Newsweek called GMI “a central cog in the denial machine” in 2007.</div><div>
</div><div>GMI folded in late 2015, so Bradley recommended $50,000 in “seed funding” the following year for its “successor organization,” the CO2 Coalition. The coalition is led by a Dr. William Happer, a well-known climate change denier. “We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It’s not a pollutant at all,” Happer said at a Heritage Foundation event on energy and climate.</div><div>
</div><div>Another $10,000 Bradley grant in 2014 for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CSCDGC) went to support its Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI). A staff recommendation notes that SPPI “has helped demonstrate that no real-world data confirms that floods, draughts [sic], or hurricanes are becoming more frequent or severe, as global-warming alarmists allege. Neither is there any real-world data that sea levels are about to rise precipitously, inundating the world’s coasted [sic] lowlands, as is also often alleged.” (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change GPR, June 17, 2014)</div><div>
</div><div>ENERGY ROUNDTABLES</div><div>Documents show that, beginning in 2013, Bradley provided funding to the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, also an SPN member, to host and organize two “energy roundtables” a year — one before the Heritage Foundation’s annual Resource Bank meeting, and the other before SPN’s annual fall meeting. (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 10, 2015)</div><div>
</div><div>The $50,000-per-year grant from Bradley for the meetings was matched “by staff arrangement” by the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a front group for the energy industry that promotes fossil fuel development and opposes efforts to regulate its activities.</div><div>
</div><div>“Planned and put on in close cooperation with the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), the roundtables allow state think tanks to better promote free-market energy and environmental policies,” one document states. (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 12, 2013)</div><div>
</div><div>Attendance has been high at the roundtables, with as many as “67 SPN leaders” attending the event in Denver in September 2014. The agenda for that meeting details presentations from a number of fossil fuel lovers including: Artic Power, Consumer Energy Alliance, Vital for Colorado, Devon Energy, GOPAC (a political action committee that backs and trains Republican candidates), and Freedom Partners. Freedom Partners, a funding conduit for the billionaire Koch brothers, delivered a talk on “Messaging and State Action.” (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 11, 2014)</div><div>
</div><div>BRADLEY GRANTEES WORKED TOGETHER TO DEFEAT LOCAL REGULATIONS ON FRACKING IN COLORADO</div><div>In 2014, the Independence Institute and Berman’s Big Green Radicals worked in lockstep in Colorado to defeat local fracking bans, such as the one that passed by ballot measure in Longmont in November of 2013. A 2015 Bradley backgrounder on the Independence Institute praises the anti-fracking work of Independence Institute’s Energy Policy Center, saying, “It has also been a key coalition partner in the movement to stop local and statewide bans on hydraulic fracturing. Last year, current Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper crafted a delicately balanced compromise on local control of oil and gas drilling that removed all initiatives on the issue from the state ballot.”</div><div>
</div><div>Berman’s Big Green Radicals rolled out an attack campaign to discredit anti-fracking efforts in the state in May of 2014. Big Green Radicals assertedthat “extreme groups, mostly based far from Colorado in San Francisco, New York, or Washington D.C., are spending millions and spreading their anti-science message to scare voters into approving ballot measures in November to send the oil and gas industry (and the jobs and affordable energy it provides) packing from the Centennial State.”</div><div>
</div><div>The efforts by these two groups were successful in overturning local fracking bans. Bradley agreed and decreased its funding recommendation for EPC to $25,000 in 2016, saying, “it is unlikely that there will be any significant developments for EPC in the upcoming months, and therefore staff believes this reduced award is important.”</div><div>
</div><div>It is uncertain where the next battleground for energy development will be for Bradley, but the documents demonstrate that they have the funds to bankroll infrastructure in place to discredit climate science and smear the opposition.</div><div>
</div><div>OTHER NOTABLE BRADLEY GRANTS</div><div>Other significant Bradley grants to support fossil fuel development or dispute climate science in recent years include:</div><div>
</div><div>$150,000 to Opportunity Ohio for “program activities.” (2016)</div><div>$100,000 to Energy and Environment Legal Institute for “transparency practice general.” (2016) HORNER SCHNARE</div><div>$20,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment for “general operations.” (2016)</div><div>$200,000 to Competitive Enterprise Institute for “general operations” and “litigation.” (2013, 2015)</div><div>$100,000 to The Sand County Foundation for “energy resource development.” (2014)</div><div>$100,000 to National Center for Policy Analysis for “general operations.” (2014)</div><div>$20,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment for “general operations.” (2014)</div><div></div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>http://www.prwatch.org/news/2017/05/13240/bradley-foundation-bankrolls-front-groups-richard-berman</div><div>Documents examined by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) pull back the curtain on the highly politicized funding of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and its relationship with Richard Berman, the public relations spin doctor dubbed a "hired gun" for corporate America by 60 Minutes.</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley is bankrolling multiple Berman front groups along with groups across the nation that are working to "defund Big Labor" and to destroy unions, the most significant advocate for higher wages and better working conditions in America. Berman was caught on tape telling prospective funders: "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," as CMD helped reveal in 2014.</div><div>
</div><div>The highly political nature of Bradley's efforts is underscored by Bradley grantees who boast in major newspapers and in Bradley-funded publications like the Daily Signal that the evisceration of public and private sector unions in states like Wisconsin and Michigan was successful in turning blue states red in the last presidential election cycle. Bradley even has a promotional video "Blue Lakes Red States," boasting of the success of its numerous grantees.</div><div>
</div><div>Berman has mastered the dark art of dissemination disinformation though front groups, websites, TV and print ads and paid social media campaigns. While most of Berman's front groups are no more than a website, a few of them have been incorporated as non-profit "charitable" organizations. They may even have an employee attached to them and a specific focus, but as the New York Times detailed in 2016, employees are generally housed at the PR firm Berman and Co. and report to the boss, Rick Berman.</div><div>
</div><div>These "charities" serve the function of allowing groups like Bradley to send tax-exempt funds, which are then funneled into Berman's wholly-owned for-profit entity, Berman and Co., under the rubric of "management fees." This scheme has prompted Charity Navigator, an independent authority on charitable giving, to issue donor warnings on Berman front groups. It has also prompted serious complaints against Berman and Co. for abusing the tax code and engaging in activities for private benefit.</div><div>
</div><div>The Bradley Files suggest that the foundation is quite comfortable with the Berman shell game. Bradley board documents characterize Berman's confusing jumble of front groups and websites as a "collaborative cluster of nonprofit groups" and reveal for the first time that Bradley itself created a Berman project called the "Interstate Policy Alliance" within Berman's Employment Policies Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), an ethics watchdog group, filed an IRS complaint against Berman some years ago and helps track the flack's activities.</div><div>
</div><div>"When a company or a foundation gives money to Richard Berman or one of the groups set up and run by his consulting firm, they're investing in his way of doing business, which includes exploiting 'fear and anger' to 'shoot the messenger,' usually in defense of issues his clients don't want to be publicly identified with," said Matt Corley, CREW Research Director.</div><div>
</div><div>One example is Berman's "BigGreenRadicals.com" website, an attack on four environmental organizations, the National Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Food and Water Watch. The website says it is a project of the "Environmental Policy Alliance" and does not disclose Berman's involvement. The Bradley files reveal for the first time that the foundation gave $150,000 to a Berman front group to fund this website under the misnomer "public education" (Center for Consumer Freedom, Grant Proposal Record, 11/12/2013).</div><div>
</div><div>In recent years, the site has been trashing environmental activists in Colorado. There has been a multi-year throw down between anti-fracking community groups battling it out against the oil and gas industry, and the national environmental groups have been lending a hand.</div><div>
</div><div>"Richard Berman is a go-to hire for corporate bullies. If the Bradley Foundation is paying groups to focus more on political bullying, it makes sense they would support Berman's attacks on environmental advocates," said Connor Gibson of Greenpeace's investigations team.</div><div>
</div><div>More recently, Bradley has funded another Berman front group to "expose Big Labor's strategies and tactics, including in the policymaking arena." Materials included in the Bradley files as examples of Berman's work are a series of print ads accusing teachers of treating kids like garbage and ads that liken teachers' unions to roach traps (Center for Union Facts, Grant Proposal Record, 1/10/2015).</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley even has an enemies list.</div><div>
</div><div>In board meetings and committee meetings in 2014, Bradley Foundation staff distributed and discussed a chart of "Organizations that Attack Conservatives." The chart lists 17 groups with information about their size, funders, and leadership. The groups are a mixture of good government groups, media groups, public relations firms, and funding organizations including, in alphabetical order:</div><div>
</div><div>Alliance for Justice; American Bridge, BerlinRosen; Center for American Progress/Think Progress Blog; Center for Media and Democracy; Change.org; Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW); Color of Change; Common Cause; Democracy Alliance; Fenton Communications; FitzGibbon Media; Media Matters for America; Mother Jones, One Wisconsin Now; Open Society Institute; and Progress Now.</div><div>
</div><div>A note with the chart says Bradley wanted to "survey the landscape of such groups for a more informed perspective about that which could perhaps be done to mitigate the damage they could do." The note says the information about the groups came from two Berman websites "Activistfacts.com and CREWexposed.com, projects of the Bradley-supported Center for Consumer Freedom" (Meeting of the Implementation and Impact Committee, October 14, 2014).</div><div>
</div><div>Through Berman, the Bradley Foundation can engage in unseemly opposition research and disinformation campaigns, while still keeping the appearance of a staid, philanthropic institution.</div><div>
</div><div>According to the Bradley Files, Bradley has given Berman groups at least $6.5 million. Bradley gave Berman's "Employment Policies Institute," an organization that spreads misinformation about the effects of minimum wage increases and other workplace reforms, a total of $3,650,000 between 2009-2015; Berman's "Center for Consumer Freedom," a front group created to undermine public support for food-safety and animal welfare groups, $625,000 between 2009-2013; Berman's "Center for Union Facts," created to attack and undermine unions and collective bargaining, $2,240,000 between 2006-2015.</div><div>
</div><div>In addition, Bradley funds the "Capital Research Center" to work with Berman on projects. The Center is not part of the Berman operation, but is run by a former Berman employee, Scott Walter. It received $2.5 million from Bradley between 1998-2015.</div><div>
</div><div>But for all intents and purposes, the Bradley foundation is underwriting the activities of three people: Berman and Co. President Richard Berman, Vice President Sarah Longwell (who is often listed as the contact for Center for Consumer Freedom and many other Berman groups), and Vice President Michael Saltsman (who is also listed as the head of the Employment Policy Institute, which is located within Berman's offices).</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley bankrolls Berman for at least three sets of activities:</div><div>
</div><div>Disseminating studies via the Interstate Policy Alliance</div><div>Recommending state infrastructure investments[? no mass transit? nope as in RWI]</div><div>Coaching on "crisis communication" and opposition research</div><div>Dissemination of Studies</div><div>Berman's Employment Policies Institute (EPI) was named to confuse the public with an actual think tank, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which employs a host of PhD-level economists and other support staff. Berman's EPI has no economists on staff, but does employ "Research Director" Michael Saltsman, who has no advanced degree. MSNBC's Chris Hayes pinned Saltsman down on that point in a remarkable interview.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2013, Bradley earmarked $300,000 for a new Berman project within EPI called the Interstate Policy Alliance (IPA). In 2014, the grant for the same work doubled to $600,000 and included "crisis communication" for Bradley-funded groups on the receiving end of bad publicity, and in 2015, Bradley provided $400,000. Click here for a full list of Berman IPA groups.</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley documents describe IPA as a "discrete channel" for "studies" that could be utilized by state-based groups "to achieve maximum credibility in local and social media outlets."</div><div>
</div><div>"Created at Bradley's behest in 2012 and with continuing Bradley support since then, IPA is a discreet channel for the better coordination and presentation of helpful, high-quality research on existing and proposed state-level, free-market policies around the country. It provides this research, too often out of reach for many small state think tanks, and customizes it for each state to achieve maximum credibility in local- and social-media outlets. The Searle Freedom Trust has joined Bradley in support of the project" (Barder Fund, August 18, 2015).</div><div>
</div><div>State think tanks participating in Berman's IPA, which include Wisconsin's Bradley-supported MacIver Institute, do not have to pay for the research or its packaging or dissemination. They are able to easily access data that has been uploaded to a password-protected website. As needed, Berman's IPA also helps with report writing, graphic design, news release preparation, op-ed placement and the scheduling of interviews, (EPI, Grant Proposal Record, 11/10/2015 ).</div><div>
</div><div>In 2015, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Energy and Policy Institute revealed how IPA operated, when it reported that the Beacon Hill Institute was releasing misleading studies attacking President Obama's Clean Power Plan, an ambitious multi-year effort to cut carbon pollution and mitigate the harmful effects of climate change. The funding for the study came through the previously unknown group called the Interstate Policy Alliance.</div><div>
</div><div>In many of its sponsored research "studies," IPA promotes fossil fuel development over renewables. This has been a long-term agenda item of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate funded bill mill and many State Policy Network "think tanks" and advocacy groups funded by Bradley. In addition, the Bradley documents examined by CMD show Bradley is funding numerous climate denial groups, including Myron Ebell's Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>One IPA report, touts the tens of billions of revenue North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia might gain from offshore oil and gas development in the Atlantic Ocean.</div><div>Another report argues that fossil fuel development of federal lands in seven Rocky Mountain states will grow the economies at a faster pace than renewables.</div><div>Another promotes the transfer of federal lands to states, claiming that revenues from taxes and fees will rapidly flow to states.</div><div>And yet another study criticizes the Renewable Portfolio Standards in 29 states and D.C. as costly to consumers, while ignoring any benefits to jobs or the environment.</div><div>Infrastructure Investments</div><div>The Bradley files reveal that the foundation has a previously undisclosed stream of funding to build right-wing infrastructure nationwide and is using a metric to assess the strength and depth of the infrastructure in individual states a phenomenon that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has dubbed the Bradley Blueprint.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2015, Bradley asked Berman's IPA and the allied Capital Research Center (CRC) in Washington, D.C. to conduct an assessment of "second tier" states for consideration as "potential targets of opportunity" to enhance their infrastructure investments.</div><div>
</div><div>The Bradley files also laud Berman & Co.'s Vice President Saltsman, who is described variously in Bradley documents as the "executive director" of EPI and "executive director" of IPA. "The talented and energetic Saltsman's IPA experience has exposed him to many of the strengths and weaknesses of the mid-sized state think tanks and conservative infrastructure around the country."</div><div>
</div><div>The CRC/IPA evaluation of the quality and potential of states' existing conservative infrastructure and recommended investments in eight states: Colorado, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and California in that order. The documents note "(Given IPA's Bradley supported role in trying to help all state think tanks, they were quite keen on the report's contents being kept confidential)" (Barder Fund, Nov. 10, 2015).</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley asked Saltsman "to discreetly consult with ALEC's Lisa Nelson, ATRF's Grover Norquist, and Ned Ryun of the also Bradley-supported American Majority" on what states should get funding (Barder Fund, 8/18/15).</div><div>
</div><div>The advisors named Colorado a top tier priority. Not only is Colorado an important swing state, but Coloradan Terry Considine is on the Bradley Board of Directors. Considine is a failed Colorado politician, but a dedicated right-winger who has long served on the Board of Directors of Club for Growth, the national dark money group.</div><div>
</div><div>The political nature of Bradley's investment in this swing state is made clear in a report "Colorado state-infrastructure recommendations" included in the Bradley documents. "Colorado is an important swing state with a broad base of center-right organizations and donors," writes Bradley. The report discusses "The Gang of Four"liberal funders in the state who were featured in an "attention-getting" book called "The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care)," which details how a small group of Democratic donors helped turn the state blue. The book made a big impression on Bradley staff; a picture of the cover is included in the Bradley documents multiple times.</div><div>
</div><div>Now Bradley wants to fund institutions in Colorado in an effort to swing the pendulum back again. Bradley recommends five specific grants, including two that illustrate the political nature of the endeavor.</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley recommends $125,000 to American Majority for 2016. The grant asks for support for a new field office in the I-25 corridor, an executive director, field staffer and intern. "They would coordinate with Centennial [Institute] and Independence [Institute] to identify, train and nurture mentoring relationships with conservative Coloradans." American Majority is an organization that trains candidates to run for office. It claims to be nonpartisan, but was founded by Republicans to train Republicans (Barder Fund, Nov. 10, 2015).</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley recommended $250,000 to the Independence Institute in 2016. The Independence Institute is a State Policy Network member heavily funded by Bradley for both its work on climate issues and its anti-union work. The Bradley documents say it is led by "the charmingly bombastic Jon Caldara" "who has lead the creation of one of the more-effective conservative state infrastructures." But that infrastructure has a problem. "Colorado has 3,600 local governments."</div><div>
</div><div>"Not only does the left exercise its power and coercion through these governments, he and [the Independence Institute] believe, but it uses them as farm teams to groom people for higher office." Caldera wants to counter this problem and "build a better bench" for the right-wing by compiling a database of every appointed and elected position in Jefferson County and conducting outreach to these officials. The Institute would coordinate its activities with American Majority, the Centennial Institute and the Leadership Program of the Rockies. Staff recommended $75,000 for this later institution (Barder Fund, Nov. 10, 2015).</div><div>
</div><div>These two investments appear to be exactly the type of political spending that might run afoul of IRS rules for permissible non-profit activity.</div><div>
</div><div>Other Colorado grantees included Colorado Christian University for its Centennial Institute ($75,000), Leadership Program of the Rockies ($75,000) and the Steamboat Institute ($50,000).</div><div>
</div><div>"Crisis Communications" and Opposition Research</div><div>Bradley has also bankrolled the Berman team for a communications program for many years.</div><div>
</div><div>"Also at Bradley's behest in 2012, CCF [Center for Consumer Freedom] created a related crisis-communications program for state infrastructures. It has been led by Berman vice president Sarah Longwell, formerly director of public affairs at the Bradly-supported Intercollegiate Studies Institute... CCF has consistently exposed the agenda of the activist groups that seek to attack personal freedom and its allies" (EPI, Grant Proposal Record, 11/10/2015).</div><div>
</div><div>This crisis communication work as described by Bradley relates directly to the successful, grassroots campaigning against ALEC that was sparked in 2011 after CMD published more than 800 ALEC "model bills" secretly voted on by corporate lobbyists and legislators on its website ALECexposed.org in 2011.</div><div>
</div><div>To quote from the Bradley files:</div><div>
</div><div>"In the wake of the media firestorm that engulfed the American Legislative Exchange Council last year, it was clear that a new group of influential, media-savvy activist outfits have emerged [color of change]—along with a new group of targets that includes state think tanks and other entities including foundations. The Gates Foundation, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, Walmart, Johnson and Johnson, McDonalds and Wendy's are just a few of the funders that cut ties to ALEC following the media onslaught generated by activists who successfully linked it to the shooting of Trayvon Martin."</div><div>
</div><div>"ALEC never saw it coming. Neither really did the Heartland Institute or Chick-fil-A see what was coming when they subsequently have been on the receiving end of similar onslaughts. Caught flat footed as the media charged ahead with the 'Stand Your Ground' story, ALEC had no rapid-response strategy in place to combat this runaway narrative. Berman and Co.'s advice to ALEC to be more aggressive in its response was not followed. The 'I stand with ALEC website' came much too late and brought far too little to its defense" (EPI, Grant Proposal Record, 11/11/2014).</div><div>
</div><div>These are "case studies," writes Bradley staff, and "cautionary tales" for any conservative organization. Now Bradley wants to fund CCF for an "off the shelf public relations strategy for use by any such conservative outfit caught in the media crosshairs."</div><div>
</div><div>Already-prepared "well sourced opposition research" is key, says the Bradley grant document:</div><div>
</div><div>"Just as CMD was able build an online dossier on ALEC that provided activists and sympathetic journalists with a base of research, so too is CCF using its data and information to build a 'bigger and better clearinghouse of research on groups within the wider left-wing network' as part of a rapid response strategy."</div><div>
</div><div>CCF boasts of training Bradley-supported "think tanks" across the nation that are members of the State Policy Network (SPN), such as North Carolina's Civitas Institute, Michigan's Mackinac Center, and Washington State's Freedom Foundation. CCF asks Bradley for support to expand this type of opposition research and training to the rest of the SPN network and the Interstate Policy Alliance.</div><div>
</div><div>According to a grant proposal record, "Full Service Menu" of Berman Center for Consumer Freedom services would include, 1) support for two or three studies a year, 2) op-ed drafting and placement, 3) drafting and sending of news releases on the groups behalf, 4) compiling a media list of reporter contacts, 5) ad buying for television, radio, print and online, 6) crisis communication assistance and in-state infrastructure seminars (EPI, Grant Proposal Record, 11/11/2014).</div><div>
</div><div>In addition, Bradley is recommending a $200,000 grant in renewed support for ALEC in 2016 as it continues to build a "comprehensive communications infrastructure" in response to citizen campaigns targeting its funders. The grant summary reads: "ALEC has been under sustained, organized attack from the Left for several years, as well-documented in Bradley Prize recipient Kimberly Strassel's new book The Intimidation Game: How the Left Silences Free Speech. Under Executive Director Lisa Nelson and at Bradley's urging, ALEC is aggressively, but thoughtfully responding." "The plan consciously mimics the Left's Citizen Engagement Laboratory (CEL)...the parent organization of Forecast the Facts and Color of Change."</div><div>
</div><div>ALEC also redesigned and beefed up its website, deployed more social media, and partnered with CrowdSkout a data analytics company to track, view and engage supporters (ALEC, Grant Proposal Record, 8/16/2016).</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley outlines the bigger game plan for ALEC: "The larger plan also has an important component for aggressive 'opposition research,' which has yielded many beneficial outcomes, including to Strassel for her helpful book, among others." This last comment in the Bradley documents suggests that ALEC provided Wall Street Journal editorial writer Kim Strassel with information for her book Intimidation Game. In it, Strassel portrayed the sustained citizen campaigning against ALEC as a well-funded, nefarious effort to crush the "free speech" rights of ALEC and its enormous funders, including Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, and ALTRIA/Phillip Morris (Strassel received a $250,000 Bradley Prize in 2014).</div><div>
</div><div>As part of its opposition research funding, Bradley recommended $115,000 in 2016 for the Capital Research Center run by Bradley-ally Scott Walter to develop "an online encyclopedia of the left" in conjunction with Berman that mimics the Center for Media and Democracy's Sourcewatch.org wiki. CRC wants to focus on the anti-ALEC groups and the Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal funders.</div><div>
</div><div>"This will be a comprehensive, wiki-style resource that provides in-depth profiles of left-of-center individuals and organizations based on the model of the Center for Media and Democracy's website Sourcewatch.org…CRC plans to take a page out of Sourcewatch's playbook by ensuring that its new, wiki-style encyclopedia of the left is thorough, regularly updated and written in a manner that is accurate and measured in order to attract and retain a larger audience. The website will be constructed and in partnership with Berman and Company [where Walter worked briefly as director of development], and CRC is collaborating with ALEC and the Heartland Institute to make use of their data as it builds the new website's profile list," (Capital Research Center, Grant Proposal Record, 8/16/2016).</div><div>
</div><div>"Sourcewatch is a widely used resource that significantly influences public opinion regarding the activities of center-right groups and individuals. While there are a number of conservative resources that profile organizations and individuals on the Left (such as David Horowitz's DiscoverTheNetworks.org, Heartland Institute's LeftExposed.org, Berman and Company's ActivistFacts.org and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise's UndueInfluence.com) CDC will build upon and complement their efforts adding value through its more comprehensive coverage, superior search engine optimization, and wiki-style format," (Capital Research Center, Grant Proposal Record, 8/16/2016).</div><div>
</div><div>Current members of the Bradley Foundation Board are Richard W. Graber (President), Art Pope (Chairman; Variety Wholesalers), Patrick J. English (Vice Chairman; Fiduciary Management, Inc.), Terry Considine (AIMCO), Curt S. Culver (MGIC), Robert P. George (Princeton University), Victor Davis Hanson (Hoover Institution), Diane Hendricks (ABC Supply Co. and Hendricks Holding Co.), Cleta Mitchell (Foley & Lardner), and James T. Barry III (The Barry Company). Former board members include Michael W. Grebe and George F. Will.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;AlterNet [1] / By Bill Berkowitz [2]</div><div>
</div><div>Defunding the Left</div><div>February 18, 2001&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>For years, "defunding the left" has been an idea that has resonated deeply with conservatives. Now that Republicans have control of the White House and Congress, it's an idea whose time may be coming faster than you think. President Bush's initiative to move government services to faith-based organizations and the battle over the nomination of Attorney General John Ashcroft may provide the necessary trigger to turn the right's twenty-plus-year pipedream into a reality.</div><div>
</div><div>Terrence Scanlon, president of the Capital Research Center (CRC), and Mark R. Levin, head of the Landmark Legal Foundation are two longtime conservative activists on the front lines of this fight.</div><div>
</div><div>Scanlon's Capital Research Center, founded in 1984, is one of the lesser-known Washington, DC-based think tanks that serves as a conservative watchdog over so-called liberal/left nonprofit philanthropic institutions. CRC's analyzes how "those organizations with tax-exempt, tax-deductible -- and sometimes tax dollars -- mix advocacy and 'direct action' to promote their own vision of the public interest." CRC also looks at how closely individuals in the corporate and foundation sectors are sticking to the "donor intent" of the founders of these corporations.</div><div>
</div><div>In mid-February, Scanlon told a packed house at the 28th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that "for the first time we have an opportunity to go after these [liberal nonprofit] groups and take away their federal money." Conservative News Service (CNS) reported that in his remarks, Scanlon named several organizations that are receiving federal funding including the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). He told the gathering that the "AARP received $73 million in federal grants in 1999, 73 million of your tax dollars went to the AARP. Most of this money came from the Labor Department for job training programs for seniors."</div><div>
</div><div>Scanlon pointed to what he considered the most "egregious" example of a group getting federal funds -- the National Council of Senior Citizens (NCSC). Founded in 1960 during the Kennedy-Johnson campaign, Scanlon said that NCSC "were well known four years ago during the Hillary Clinton health care debate when they were lobbying for national health care. Their budget is 96 percent federally funded. If it were not for federal dollars there would be no National Council for Senior Citizens."</div><div>
</div><div>Mark R, Levin, head of the Landmark Legal Foundation has been doing more than giving speeches about challenging federal funding of liberal non-profit groups. During the first week in February, Landmark announced the formation of its "501-C Project" which intends to "ensure that liberal non-profit organizations that lobby against presidential appointments comply with U.S. tax and lobbying laws."</div><div>
</div><div>The Unification Church-owned Washington Times reported that Landmark has asked the Internal Revenue Service "to investigate accusations that several civil rights groups and other nonprofit organizations violated their federal tax-exempt status by participating in lobbying efforts against the nomination of John Ashcroft as attorney general."</div><div>
</div><div>According to Levin: "Published reports reveal that scores of liberal, 501(c) tax-exempt groups spent the last month, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, in a well-coordinated and highly organized lobbying campaign against the Ashcroft nomination. They have also announced that they will lobby against future nominees who they consider too conservative. The IRS must look at these activities very carefully to ensure that these organizations are not skirting the law or failing to pay their taxes."</div><div>
</div><div>Levin pointed to a January 9 meeting of organizations opposed to Ashcroft's nomination, held at the headquarters of the American Association of University Women. Called by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, among the groups Levin identified as present were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Education Association and the National Black Women's Health Project.</div><div>
</div><div>This was one of several complaints with federal agencies that Landmark has filed during the past few months. They filed a complaint with the IRS and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against one of the right's perennial targets, the National Education Association. Over the years, Landmark has butted heads with the NEA particularly around the issue of school vouchers in Wisconsin, where Landmark provided legal support for pro-voucher organizations.</div><div>
</div><div>Levin claims the teachers union is using millions of dollars in unreported tax-exempt funds to influence the outcome of political races. According to its website www.landmarklegal.org, [3] the complaint, part of the its Quality Schools 2001 initiative, claims that "the last several NEA Form 990 federal tax returns, submitted to the IRS under penalty of perjury, disclose no political expenditures whatsoever. The NEA and several of its affiliates have also failed to disclose the full extent of their political activities to the Federal Election Commission (FEC)."</div><div>
</div><div>Landmark is asking these government agencies to "initiate comprehensive investigations of the NEA's political activities and expenditures to determine whether it has violated federal tax and campaign laws. Landmark is also asking the IRS to consider whether the NEA's tax-exempt status should be revoked, and whether the IRS and the FEC should impose fines and penalties on the NEA."</div><div>
</div><div>Landmark was founded in 1976, as the Great Plains Legal Foundation with an office in Kansas City, Mo. (it also has an office in Herndon, Va.) Its mission is to provide litigation and legal aid to conservatives and conservative causes. In 1995, taking advantage of the Republican takeover of the House, Landmark stitched together a plan called "Beyond the First 100 Days: A Legal Reform Plan for the 104th Congress," which put forward strict conservative ideas in several areas including antitrust, civil justice, criminal justice, and private property rights.</div><div>
</div><div>"Defunding the left" is not a new project for conservatives. (It should be noted that for conservatives, "left" includes any organizations to the right of Attila the Hunt.) Almost eighteen years ago, longtime muckraker James Ridgeway wrote about the onslaught against various non-profit organizations in the Village Voice. He noted that the campaign was "being carried out through direct-mail solicitation? in the pages of Conservative Digest? and in other right-wing publications? and by researchers and propagandists for such conservative think tanks as the Heritage Foundation."</div><div>
</div><div>Flash forward two decades and the defunding crowd's planets are moving closer toward alignment. According to CNS, Terrence Scanlon praised Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) for "attempting to take away federal funding from these non-profits during the last congressional session." Although Gregg lost that battle, Scanlon believes that the Senator's efforts, combined with the GOP's control over the government, might be the prelude to success. Since most heads of government agencies should be conservative, "for the first time we have an opportunity to go after these groups and take away their federal money," he told the aroused crowd. "Let's do it," he bellowed, urging his audience to go back home and mobilize at the grassroots in order to realize their twenty-plus-year dream of defunding the left.</div><div>
</div><div>Bill Berkowitz is an Oakland-based freelance journalist covering the Religious Right and related conservative movements. Contact him via e-mail atwkbbronx@aol.com. [4]</div><div>Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/story/10496/defunding_the_left</div><div>Links:</div><div>[1] http://alternet.org</div><div>[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-berkowitz</div><div>[3] http://www.landmarklegal.org</div><div>[4] mailto:wkbbronx@aol.com</div><div>[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B</div><div>---</div><div>
</div><div>The Capital Research Center's Green Watch - which gained $50,000 in funding from ExxonMobil in 2002 and 2003 - is perhaps the most effective at profiling the "liberal environmentalist movement". [1][2]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;---</div><div>
</div><div>update:</div><div>
</div><div>Regular html version with links</div><div>
</div><div>Bill Berkowitz</div><div>December 10, 2004</div><div>The Capital Research Center at 20</div><div>Defunding progressive organizations and scrutinizing the funders that sustain them drives DC-based institute</div><div>In April, Foundation Watch, one of the flagship publications of the Capital Research Center (website), managed to stir up a minor election-year controversy by raising questions about the philanthropy of Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic Party presidential candidate Senator John Kerry. In a report entitled "The Heinz Foundations and the Kerry campaign – One Has Money, the Other Needs Money", Ron Arnold – one of the godfathers of America's "Wise Use Movement" – examined the relationship between the "foundation's charitable gifts to environmental groups and environmentalist supporters of the Senator's presidential campaign." Arnold raised a red flag over the possible influence environmental organizations might exert should the Senator win the presidency.</div><div>
</div><div>In mid-October, the Center's president, Terence Scanlon, launched a pre-emptive strike against ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and its voter registration efforts. Scanlon cast a shadow over ACORN's reports that it had registered over one million new voters. He charged that because of irregularities, the organization was coming under scrutiny by lawmakers "in state after state [where] allegations are surfacing that ACORN activists are padding the registration books."</div><div>
</div><div>As a non-profit community-based organizing group, ACORN has been in CRC's radar for several years. According to Scanlon, ACORN, with some 150,000 dues-paying members organized into 65 city chapters, "is better known for public disruption." Its so-called community organizing "has relied on in-your-face confrontation," including a 1995 demonstration targeting then House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "In 2002 it burst into the Heritage Foundation to harangue welfare reform expert Robert Rector. Dozen of city councils and state legislatures have had to face angry ACORN protesters demanding higher minimum wages and more welfare entitlements. Banks have been pressured to change their lending practices or face ACORN charges of discrimination before regulators."</div><div>
</div><div>In the constellation that comprises the growing sector of right wing think tanks and policy institutes, the Capital Research Center (CRC) isn't the best funded, the most noteworthy, or the most influential. It doesn't have the largest staff, or the biggest building. Unlike its well-known sister institutions -- the Heritage Foundation (website), the American Enterprise Institute (website) and the Hoover Institution (website) – the Capital Research Center mostly slogs away in relative anonymity.</div><div>
</div><div>Don't be fooled by the CRC general lack of buzz-generating activities: For over 20 years, the CRC has been hell-bent on carrying out its mission – defunding and disempowering the progressive non-profit sector and casting a wary eye on the foundations that fund them.</div><div>
</div><div>Most of time, however, CRC staffers are busy doing the nuts and bolts of the Center – analyzing how tax-exempt, tax-deductible organizations combine advocacy and "direct action" to promote their vision of the public interest. And it examines how closely individuals in the corporate and foundation sectors are sticking to the "donor intent" of the founders of these corporations and foundations. CRC's staff gets most infuriated when they discover that foundations that were originally established by free-market entrepreneurs that accumulated enormous wealth based on distinctly anti-environmental activities, provide significant funding support for environmental groups.</div><div>
</div><div>During a late-May, 2000, hearing before the House Resources Committee on the role of the Pew Charitable Trusts played as part of a project called the Heritage Forests Campaign, CRC's executive vice-president Robert Huberty's testimony spoke to what he viewed as a disconnect between the founders original intent and how business was currently being handled: "The source of wealth for the Pew Trusts comes from energy exploration and development," but the original intent of the founders of the foundation was to "acquaint the American people [with] the evils of bureaucracy, the values of a free market and the paralyzing effects of government controls on the lives and activities of people." He rhetorically asked, "How do the Pew Trusts honor the intentions of their donor by supporting a campaign to permanently end logging in a large portion of the national forests?"</div><div>
</div><div>Founded in 1984 by Willa Johnson, a former Senior Vice President of the Heritage Foundation who worked as Deputy Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in the first Reagan administration, the Capital Research Center (CRC) was established "to study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism."</div><div>
</div><div>In the CRC's 1991 annual report Johnson warned that "a unified, sophisticated and well-funded philanthropic elite is dedicated to imposing on us the doctrine of 'progressive' philanthropy, doctrines that would reorder our political, economic and cultural priorities." "This movement, driven by a bankrupt ideology, long since disproved by history, would impose its own standards of 'social justice' based on more involvement of government in philanthropy and more involvement of charities in politics. It has lost faith in the traditional American values of individual responsibility and free choice, to say nothing of the diversity in the marketplace of ideas," she wrote.</div><div>
</div><div>According to the web site, SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy, the publishers of the invaluable PRWatch newsletter, the membership of the National Advisory Board was listed on its website in 2001, but it no longer discloses the board's current membership: In 2001 it included a veritable Who's Who of the right:</div><div>
</div><div>Richard V. Allen - President, Richard V. Allen Company, Washington, D.C. A member of the Council on National Policy since 1988 and former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan (1980-1982). Allen is currently a senior (CSIS) first senior staff analyst and research principal from 1963 to 1966. He currently serves as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the CSIS Advisory Board as well as the Advisory board of the CRC.</div><div>
</div><div>Dr. Larry Arnn - President, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan.</div><div>Dr. John Baden - Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Seattle, Washington.</div><div>Linda Chavez - a former Reagan appointee president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity. Chavez was Bush's first choice for Secretary of Labour. Signatory to the PNAC.</div><div>T. Kenneth Cribb Jr - President, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Cribb "was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration, serving as President Reagan's top advisor on domestic matters".</div><div>Midge Decter - Author, New York. Wife of Norman Podhoretz (one of the key forefathers of neoconservatism), She "continues to advocate hard-line policies from her perch at the neoconservative Institute on Religion and Public Life". Signed Founding statement of Principles of the Project for the New American Century. Board of Trustees of Heritage Foundation. Board of Overseers of Hoover Institution.</div><div>Michael J. Horowitz - Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.</div><div>Dr. Deal W. Hudson - Editor, Crisis, recently forced to resign from the magazine over publicity involving a sexual harassment case.</div><div>Adam Meyerson - President, The Philanthropy Roundtable. Ex- Vice President for Educational Affairs, The Heritage Foundation.</div><div>Michael Novak - George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy, American Enterprise Institute.</div><div>Kate O'Bierne -Senior Editor, National Review, Washington, DC</div><div>P. J. O'Rourke - Author, Peterborough, New Hampshire.</div><div>Marvin Olasky - Editor, World Magazine, and a senior fellow at the Acton Institute.</div><div>Sally Pipes - President, Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco.</div><div>Menlo F. Smith - President, Sunmark Capital Corporation, St. Louis.</div><div>Dr. Walter Williams - Professor of Economics, George Mason University Fairfax, Virginia; serves on advisory boards of: Landmark Legal Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and others.</div><div>Thomas S. Winter - Editor-in-Chief, Human Events, Washington, D.C.</div><div>Robert L. Woodson, Sr - President, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise Washington, D.C.</div><div>Disinfopedia also reported that the CRC's 2002 IRS return filed in May 2003 listed the office bearers as:</div><div>
</div><div>Terrence Scanlon, President and chairman of CRC's board of trustees since 1994.</div><div>Marion G. Wells, Vice President; the Founding Trustee of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based Lillian Wells Foundation and, since 1992, has been a Co-Chairman of The Heritage Legacy Society, a group of Heritage Foundation supporters making estate gifts to the foundation.</div><div>Daniel J. Popeo, Treasurer; Chairman and General Counsel of the Washington, DC-based Washington Legal Foundation (WLF).</div><div>Constance Larcher, Secretary; President and Executive Director of the WLF.</div><div>Beverley Danielson, Director; with the Institute of World Politics in Coral Gables, Florida.</div><div>Edwin Meese III, Director; A former Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and currently a Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.</div><div>Dean Webster, Director; retired CEO of Blue Seal Feeds, Inc in Kennebunkport, Maine.</div><div>Pamela Witherspoon Officer.</div><div>Barbara Kenney, Director; serves on the boards of the Washington Policy Center and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and is trustee of the Lillian L. Wells Foundation in Ft Lauderdale Florida.</div><div>CRC publishes four newsletters: Organization Trends, a monthly that reports on and analyzes the activities of advocacy organizations; Labor Watch, a monthly tracking "the increasing activism of labor unions that are trying to achieve through political coalition-building the goals they have failed to achieve at the bargaining table"; Foundation Watch, a monthly "examin[ing] the grantmaking of private foundations"; and Compassion & Culture, a monthly "highlighting the work of small, locally based charities that help the needy."</div><div>
</div><div>Ironically, reports Sourcewatch, while the organization "claims that exposing the funding" of progressive non-profits "is important because 'sunshine--the glare of public scrutiny--is 'the best of all disinfectants'...[it] doesn't seem to think its own hidden agenda should receive public scrutiny," as it allocates no space on its web site to information about where it receives its funding.</div><div>
</div><div>Media Transparency's grants database shows that between 1985 and 2002, the CRC received 153 grants valued at more than $7 million. Major donors include The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, The Carthage Foundation, and the Earhart Foundation.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CRC also sponsors three additional watchdog projects: GreenWatch, "an on-line database and information clearinghouse providing factual information on over 500 non-profit environmental groups"; EducationWatch, "an online database and news service providing timely information about nonprofit policy and advocacy groups involved in the public debate over the reform of K-12 primary education"; and CorporatePatterns, "monitor[ing] the philanthropic activities of America's leading corporations."</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;=</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>original mission: defund the left:&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>While the A-122 proposals were defeated, they still had the effect of chilling both non-profits and some foundations. Nor had the conservative movement given up on the notion of 'defunding the left'.</div><div>
</div><div>In 1984, the Capital Research Center (CRC) was founded by former Heritage Foundation senior Vice-President and Reagan administration staffer Willa Johnson. CRC was established with seed funding from Richard Mellon Scaife, Adolph Coors and John Olin foundations. The role of CRC was to erode the standing of those it viewed as 'liberal' non-profit advocacy groups and foundations.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>scanlon testified issa hearing against ACORN? http://www.docstoc.com/docs/47819049/Issa--ACORN-Report&nbsp; cites breitbart, wa times (also nyt) pitt trib-review</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;SW</div><div>
</div><div>The Capital Research Center is a conservative think tank whose stated mission is to do "opposition research" exposing the funding sources behind consumer, health and environmental groups.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; 1 Mission</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 2 Key activities</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 3 History</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 4 Personnel</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 5 Funding</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;o 5.1 Grants from foundations</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;o 5.2 Corporate sponsors</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;+ 5.2.1 List of corporate sponsors</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 6 CRC and coal</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 7 CRC and the tobacco industry</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 8 Contact information</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 9 Articles and Resources</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;o 9.1 References</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;o 9.2 External links</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Mission</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The CRC was founded in 1984 by Willa Johnson. Prior to founding CRC Johnson had been Senior Vice President of the Heritage Foundation, then worked as Deputy Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in the first Reagan administration, and as a legislative aide in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. [1]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In his book American Foundations, Mark Dowie cites Johnson writing in the CRC's 1991 annual report that "a unified, sophisticated and well-funded philanthropic elite is dedicated to imposing on us the doctrine of 'progressive' philanthropy, doctrines that would reorder our political, economic and cultural priorities".</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>"This movement, driven by a bankrupt ideology, long since disproved by history, would impose its own standards of 'social justice' based on more involvement of government in philanthropy and more involvement of charities in politics. It has lost faith in the traditional American values of individual responsibility and free choice, to say nothing of the diversity in the marketplace of ideas," she wrote.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Testifying before a Congressional committee on resources, CRC Executive Vice-President, Robert Huberty explained the organization's role and concern about foundations. "Capital Research Center studies charity, philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. We take a particular interest in the role of public interest organizations and their impact on American politics and society. We do not solicit or accept any government grants or contracts," he said.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>"The Congress and the public have good reason to question the funding priorities of large foundations. Private foundations are peculiar creations of public law. Their assets are tax-exempt. Contributions to them are tax-deductible. They are often established in order to avoid estate taxes. The government gives a foundation these privileges with the expectation that its trustees will respect the intentions of the donor who established it, and that those intentions are benevolent and charitable," he stated.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>However, Huberty objected to foundations supporting environmental advocacy campaigns for the protection of forests from logging or other extractive uses. "Certainly a foundation may support research and education programs. But when a foundation organizes a lobbying campaign on a highly divisive political issue, when it uses its largess to task one nonprofit organization -- the National Audubon Society -- to coordinate the lobbying of other nonprofits, then Congress should ask whether the spirit of the law is being upheld," he said.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>"The Pew Charitable Trusts may respond that they are doing what they have a right to do, that others do it, and that no one has called on them to stop doing it. But by making themselves merely another Washington lobbying group, they undermine the traditions and institutions of philanthropy which are a vital part of our society," he stated. [2]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Key activities</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>As part of the conservative campaign to 'Defund the left' the Capital Research Center produces a range of publications targeting foundations, unions and activist groups that it views as supporting 'liberal' causes.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Its key monthly publications are:</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Organization Trends that reports on and analyzes the activities of advocacy organizations;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Labor Watch that scrutinises union contributions and activism;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Foundation Watch that "examines the grantmaking of private foundations"; and</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Compassion & Culture which highlights the "work of small, locally based charities that help the needy." [3]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>It also publishes Patterns in Corporate Philanthropy, which documents corporate donations to non-profit groups. CRC also host two other projects:</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Green Watch, which it describes as a project dedicated to "monitoring the leadership, activities and funding of the liberal environmentalist movement"; [4] and</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Searchlight: "Get the inside scoop: Find information on the philanthropic activities of leading foundations, Fortune 500 companies and non-profits," it claims on its website. [5]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>History</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In April 1995, House Majority Leader Richard Armey wrote on official letterhead to 82 companies warning them that their contributions to non-profit groups helped "support expansion of the welfare state." The companies were selected on the basis of a classification by CRC which ranked Greenpeace as "radical left" and groups such as the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association as "liberal", the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Spokesman for CRC Robert Berkebile explained that the American Cancer Society was classed as 'liberal' because it supported taxes on cigarettes. (It is now known that Philip Morris was funding CRC at the time). The American Lung Association got the same rating because it supported regulations on burning hazardous waste in cement kilns. Monsanto, not known for its support for radical causes, got a "centre-left" tag because it contributed to the Nature Conservancy, amongst others.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Equally interesting is CRC's assessment of who it viewed as the real conservatives. The RAND Corporation was tagged as "center left" while the American Enterprise Institute was designated as in the "center". The true believers, gaining the "conservative" badge of honour were CRC itself, the Center for the Study of American Business, the Chamber Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution and the Hudson Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The director of the Congressional Accountability Project, Gary Ruskin, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the analysis was more than 'defunding the left' "it's defunding the center, too".</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In mid-February 2001, CRC President Terrence Scanlon addressed the 28th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) stating "for the first time we have an opportunity to go after these [liberal nonprofit] groups and take away their federal money."</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Conservative News Service (CNS) reported that Scanlon named several organizations that are receiving federal funding including the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). He told the gathering that the "AARP received $73 million in federal grants in 1999, 73 million of your tax dollars went to the AARP. Most of this money came from the Labor Department for job training programs for seniors." [6]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Scanlon had the National Council of Senior Citizens (NCSC) in his sights. NCSC, he said, "were well known four years ago during the Hillary Clinton health care debate when they were lobbying for national health care. Their budget is 96 percent federally funded. If it were not for federal dollars there would be no National Council for Senior Citizens." [7]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In February 2002, CRC's President, Terrence Scanlon signed onto a letter initiated by Edward Feulner from the Heritage Foundation arguing that a "stimulus package that reduces tax rates on workers, investors, and business will mean more jobs, higher incomes, and a stronger America". (The letter carried the curious disclaimer 'organizational affiliations are included for identification purposes only'). [8]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Scanlon has also signed on for other lobbying letters too. In August 2002, Scanlon was a co-signatory to a letter from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity which complained that "we are particularly concerned that the tax code is making it very difficult for U.S based companies to compete in global markets. The corporate tax rate in the United States is much too high and we compound the damage by taxing income U.S. taxpayers earn in other countries". [9]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CRC has also lobbied members of Congress against supporting measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions. In May 2003, on behalf of CRC, Scanlon joined 32 other conservative groups warning against "alarmist statements about climate change and science contained in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's State Department authorization bill". It warned House Committee members against accepting the Senate version of the bill. "The Senate committee findings include exaggerations, misleading statements, out-of-context citations, and reliance on discredited sources," they wrote. [10]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Personnel</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The CRC's 2002 IRS return filed in May 2003 listed the office bearers as:</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Terrence Scanlon, President/Chairman</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Terrence M. Scanlon, President</div><div>$247,831</div><div>Capital Research Center</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Marion G. Wells, Vice President</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Daniel J. Popeo, Treasurer</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Constance Larcher, Secretary</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Beverley Danielson, Director</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Edwin Meese III, Director</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Dean Webster, Director</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Pamela Witherspoon, Officer</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Barbara Kenney</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The December edition of CRC's Foundation Watch newsletter stated that Barbara Kenney joined the board in late 2003. However, it did not mention who had left.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Staff</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Robert Huberty, Executive Vice President and Director of Research</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* John Carlisle, Editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* David Riggs, Executive Director of Green Watch</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Christopher Morris, Editor of Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The membership of the Capital Research Center's National Advisory Board was listed on its website in 2001. However, it does not disclose the current membership of the board. A review of CRC records also provides details of some former staff and board members.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Funding</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CRC claims that exposing the funding of these groups is important because "sunshine--the glare of public scrutiny--is 'the best of all disinfectants.'" But CRC doesn't seem to think its own hidden agenda should receive public scrutiny. The CRC website does not give any indicator of where it gets its own funding, and it has not responded to queries from PR Watch staff.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Grants from foundations</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>However, Media Transparency calculated that CRC received 106 grants between 1985 and 2002 from a handful of conservative foundations totalling $6,058,820 (unadjusted for inflation). [11]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Sarah Scaife Foundation</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Carthage Foundation</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Earhart Foundation</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* John M. Olin Foundation</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Philip M. McKenna Foundation</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>A list of specific foundation grants to CRC provides some insight into their work.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Over the last five years that data is publicly available, CRC have built their financial assets from just over $3 million to $7.48 million. While total revenue has slumped from a peak of $2.7 million in 2000 to just over $1.5 million in 2002, there has been little impact on the organization's activities.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Since 1998 the cost of CRC's program services has remained relatively constant around the $1 million per annum mark. For his efforts Scanlon was paid $211,989 in 2002. (See also Capital Research Center financial data from its IRS returns between 1998 and 2002.)</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Like many on the right, Scanlon is critical of corporations funding advocacy non-government organisations, not because it compromises their independence, but because in his view it doesn't succeed in 'buying them off'. "The corporations 'think they can buy off' the environmental groups, Scanlon told Insight. "When you talk to these corporations, as I have done over the years, generally it's a buy-off; they think they will get rid of these people [through donations], but that's not the case."[1]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Corporate sponsors</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>While CRC publications identify corporate funding of what they perceive as liberal non-profit groups, they do not disclose their own corporate sponsors. However, voluntary disclosures and documents revealed as a result of court actions provide a small window into how CRC interacts with corporations. In 2002, ExxonMobil donated $25,000 to the CRC for the Green Watch project with another $25,000 in 2003, according to corporate giving reports no longer available on Exxon's website, but still available via ExxonSecrets.org. "Capital Research Center and Greenwatch has received $215,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998," and up to 2006, according to ExxonSecrets. [2] According to Exxon's website, the oil company gave another $50,000 in 2007, for "public information and policy research." [3]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>List of corporate sponsors</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Found this section, titled "Grants to Capital Research Center", inexplicably over at ACSH in Nov 2010; now moving it here.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Capital Research Center reports grants from:</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Abbott Laboratories</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Bristol-Myers Squibb</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Exxon Mobil</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* McDonalds</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Chevron</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Eastman Kodak</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* 3M</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* DuPont[12]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CRC and coal</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CRC has received large donations from pro-fossil fuel groups like Exxon and the Koch Family Foundations through its Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation.[4] In November 2010, CRC published a report criticizing the Sierra Club for its work in transitioning the US away from coal plants, portraying it as an attack on "American prosperity."[5]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CRC and the tobacco industry</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Documents released as a part of the settlement by tobacco companies with U.S. state governments revealed the close relationship between CRC and Philip Morris. See Capital Research Center and the tobacco industry for more details.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>A report by CultureWatch described CRC's leadership "reads like a Who's Who of the establishment right."</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Contact information</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Capital Research Center</div><div>
</div><div>1513 16th Street, NW</div><div>
</div><div>Washington, DC 20036</div><div>
</div><div>Phone:(202) 483-6900</div><div>
</div><div>Fax:(202) 483-6902</div><div>
</div><div>Email: contact@capitalresearch.org</div><div>
</div><div>Web: http://www.capitalresearch.org</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Articles and Resources</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>References</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; 1. ? John Elvin, "Feeding the Hand That Bites Them", Insight on the News, August 6, 2001.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; 2. ? "Factsheet: Capital Research Center and Greenwatch," ExxonSecrets.org, accessed August 2008.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; 3. ? "Exxon Mobil Corporation: 2007 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments (pdf)," ExxonMobil.com, accessed August 2008.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; 4. ? "CRC Funders" Media Matters, accessed November 2010.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; 5. ? "The Sierra Club’s War on Coal" CRC, November 2010.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>External links</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Mark Dowie, American foundations: an investigative history, MIT Press, May 2001, page 15.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Robert Huberty, "Testimony of Robert Huberty Executive Vice President Capital Research Center Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Resources", May 23, 2000.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* John Elvin, "Feeding the hand that bites them", Insight, August 6, 2001.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Christopher Carey, "GOP tells firms: don't aid liberals; donations by May, Anheuser-Busch catch eye or Armey's army", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 25, 1995.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Jim Burns, "Conservatives Must End Government Funding Of Non-Profits", Conservative News Service, February 15, 2001.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Bill Berkowitz, "Defunding the Left", AlterNet, February 19, 2001.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Bill Berkowitz, "The Capital Research Center at 20", DissidentVoice, January 11, 2005.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Edward Feulner, "A real tax package: Coalition letter to the Senate", February 11, 2002.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Center for Freedom and Prosperity, "letter to the Honourable William Thomas, Chairman House Ways and Means", August 29, 2002.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Competitive Enterprise Institute, "Conservative Groups Raise Alarm on Climate Resolutions: Appeal to Rep. Hyde to Reverse Language on U.S. Obligations, May 6, 2003.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;* Bill Berkowitz, "Republicans resurrecting Jeremiah Wright as campaign issue", Media Transparency, August 20, 2008.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Search the Documents Archives of the Tobacco Industry</div><div>
</div><div>Legacy Tobacco Documents Library:</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Capital_Research_Center"</div><div>
</div><div>Categories: Coal Issues | Energy | Tobaccowiki | Activism | Non-Government Organizations | United States | Tobacco documents organizations</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Capital_Research_Center</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Intimidating democracy</div><div>From SoureW</div><div>The notion that a healthy democracy is based on the free exchange of ideas and that citizens should be able to freely organise to influence public policy is under attack.</div><div>
</div><div>The dominance of the Republican Party and an increasingly assertive conservative movement, has led to a growing intolerance for allowing dissenting voices to speak, let alone be listened to. Fuelled with funds from foundations and corporations, the conservative movement is attempting to silence its critics.</div><div>
</div><div>With Republicans controlling the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and increasingly state governments, conservative activists believe they have an opportunity to intimidate democracy by restricting who qualifies for tax-exempt status, undermining government and foundation funding sources for non-profits and restricting attention grabbing civil disobedience protests.</div><div>
</div><div>What started as a plan to 'defund the left' in America has also inspired their counterparts around the world to adopt and adapt the same strategy.</div><div>
</div><div>Contents</div><div>1 From Reagan to Bush</div><div>2 The campaign countering non-profits goes global</div><div>3 Conclusion</div><div>4 Related SourceWatch articles</div><div>5 External links</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>From Reagan to Bush</div><div>For over twenty years there has been repeated attempts in the United States – initiated by the Heritage Foundation - to ‘defund the left’. The first two full frontal attacks - in 1981 and 1995 - that were aimed at stripping public funding from non-profit groups, were rebuffed by Congress. Subsequently conservative groups have developed a broader range of long-term strategies.</div><div>
</div><div>Following the defeat of Reagan era proposals, a handful of conservative foundations funded the establishment of the Capital Research Center, founded by former Heritage Foundation and Reagan administration staffer Willa Johnson.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CRC’s role has been to criticise mainstream foundations deemed to be too 'liberal' and attack non-government organisations critical of the groups corporate sponsors. (An insight into CRC’s view of the political spectrum was contained in a 1995 list it prepared, obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which tagged the American Enterprise Institute as in the political “center”).</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>While the 'defund the left' campaign strategy was developed by the Heritage Foundation or the Reagan and subsequent Republican administrations, it has permeated through the ranks of the conservative movement. In 1991 Ron Arnold, one of the founders of the Wise Use Movement, told the New York Times “we want to destroy the environmentalists by taking away their money and their members”. In 1995 Grover Norquist, a leading conservative activist, bluntly stated that "we will hunt liberal groups down one by one and extinguish their funding sources”.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>By mid-February 2001, the conservative movement was emboldened by its electoral success. The President of the Capital Research Center, Terrence Scanlon, appearing on a panel titled "De-funding the Left" at the 28th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) rallied conservative activists. "For the first time since 1952, we have a Republican Congress, House and Senate, we have a Republican President, so the agency heads will be hopefully mostly conservatives. So for the very first time we have an opportunity to go after these groups and take away their federal money. Let's do it," Scanlon said.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>To starve non-profit groups of funding though, requires a multi-layered strategy. Some groups are heavily reliant on foundations, some get government grants, others rely overwhelmingly on contributions from individuals. Nearly all are registered with taxation authorities as incorporated tax-exempt non-profit groups.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Amid the de-regulatory, anti-Washington euphoria of the Republicans winning control of the House of Representative in 1994, Gingrich sought to target non-profit advocacy groups. Gingrich used the term ‘iron triangles’ to describe Congressional liberals responding to calls from activist groups, especially in the social welfare sector, to establish government programs and include funding for non profit groups for services and other projects. In the conservatives assessment this freed up funds raised from other sources to allow them to increase the lobbying of government for policy change or more government programs.</div><div>
</div><div>The electoral success of the Republicans also had the effect of de-mobilising many in the local grass-roots ant-environmental groups comprising the Wise Use Movement, at least in terms of the focus on the federal government. The Executive Director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise Ron Arnold, one of the ‘wise use’ movements most prominent leaders, re-invented himself as a critic of ‘liberal’ foundations and gained a foothold with the national conservative network as a regular contributor to Capital Research Center publications. (See Ron Arnold and Teresa Heinz Kerry).</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Testifying before a U.S House of Representatives committee in February 2000, Arnold invoked Gingrich’s ‘iron triangle’ analogy to portray the environmental movement as doing the bidding of foundations. “The foundations direct their funds to the second leg of the triangle, environmental groups with insider access to the third leg, executive branch agencies. This powerful ‘iron triangle’ unfairly influences federal policy to devastate local economies and private property,” he said. [1]</div><div>
</div><div>Arnold’s strategy is to portray acceptance of foundation funding by environmental groups as evidence that they lack local grass roots support and that they are simply the puppets of wealthy, distant interests. Not only does portraying foundations as all-powerful play to the populist ‘wise use’ networks but Arnold seeks to use it to support the case for greater regulation of both non-profits and foundations.</div><div>
</div><div>While attempts to block groups accessing federal funds have largely been rebuffed, conservative foundations and corporations have funded a range of projects in an attempt to ‘chill’ foundations from funding advocacy groups. Some are designed to fuel adverse media coverage of foundations while others provide information for lobbying of foundations.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The attack on non-profit advocacy continues, with ongoing attempts to amend legislation governing non-profit information disclosure and lobbying. However, where early unsuccessful attempts targeted all non-profits, a narrower more opportunistic approach is being adopted to whittle provisions away sector-by-sector.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Nor are conservative foundations, activists and corporations content to focus solely on extinguishing funding sources for advocacy groups. For years Ron Arnold and others have been using the rhetoric of 'Eco-terrorism' to smear groups engaged in peaceful protests. The consequences of such accusations, no matter how ill-founded, can be devastating for individuals and damaging for the environmental movement generally.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, accusations equating civil disobedience with terrorism have become more potent and gathered momentum. Arnold has stepped up his efforts while the American Legislative Exchange Council has developed model legislation to criminalise civil disobedience protests by environmental and animal rights groups altogether. (See The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act).</div><div>
</div><div>Conservative think tanks, governments, corporations and public relations companies have embraced a crackdown on public interest groups as a way of silencing critical groups permanently.</div><div>
</div><div>The main strands to the conservative movement's attack on public interest groups are:</div><div>
</div><div>Intimidating foundations - one strand in the Defund the left campaign</div><div>Intimidating public interest groups - seeking to curtail the space for advocacy</div><div>Criminalising civil disobedience - preventing publicity</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The campaign countering non-profits goes global</div><div>The ripple effects of the U.S. campaign to 'defund the left' have been felt around the world. A U.S. mining company succeeded in having USAID funding for an Indonesian community group pulled. [2] A Fulbright scholarship to the U.S., helped the Senior Fellow at the Australian Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Gary Johns develop a good working relationship with the American Enterprise Institute and escalate their emphasis on curtailing the activities of public interest groups.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The IPA themselves have targeted public interest groups in Malaysia and those working on issues in Indonesia. In mid-June 2004 the conservative Australian government released a consultancy report by the IPA's Gary Johns and John Roskam proposing the first steps to reduce the access that non-government organisations have to government decision making. [3]</div><div>
</div><div>In May 2002 Canadian PR consultant Ross S. Irvine, who approvingly cites Johns views in his articles, was a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand. In his presentation Irvine identified "charitable organization legislation", now before parliament, as one of the key focal points to consider in New Zealand.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In August 2004, the New Zealand Greens Green MP Sue Bradford warned that the proposed charities legislation "poses a real threat to one of the cornerstones of our democracy - the ability of people to come together and advocate for all manner of social, economic and environmental causes. Freedom of speech would be clouded because organisations that speak out on political issues would risk being deregistered by the Charities Commission." [4]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In early September 2004, the Director General of the New Zealand Health Ministry, Karen Poutasi, sent a draft instruction to health and disability NGOs revealing that it was proposed that "the Ministry does not fund lobbying activity and such activity will not be included in any contracts". The instruction, however, did not propose that organisations would be excluded from government funding if funds raised from other sources were used for lobbying. See Intimidating democracy/New Zealand Health Ministry memo to NGOs for the full text.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Conclusion</div><div>The campaign to intimidate foundations from supporting public interest groups and preventing non-profit groups from effectively articulating their concerns is little more than an attempt to prevent democracy from working. Their strategy in large part relies on 'chilling' their targets without necessarily having any outright wins. 'Chilling' public interest advocacy works most effectively where the victims are, or feel, isolated. In the absence of exposing attacks as part of a broader strategy against all public interest groups, those targeted respond the best that they can in the circumstances. Some assertively defend their rights while others tone down their advocacy.</div><div>
</div><div>Intimidation strategies are least effective where public interest groups are well prepared in advance of attacks and where they can quickly access support and advice on the most effective responses. Making such attacks visible allows those targeted to interpret them as being aimed at not just them but at all public interest groups. The visibility of the attack strategy can also lead to the development of effective counter-strategies.</div><div>
</div><div>For example, while legal threats against activists in the 1980's and early 1990 were invisible, each individual or group was left to fend for themselves. After they were publicised, documented and analysed, protective strategies soon emerged. The term SLAPPs was coined - the acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation - and legislative proposals to render them ineffective soon emerged and, in some states, passed into law. Elsewhere, the risk of adverse publicity - as in the infamous McDonald's libel case in the UK - was enough to persuade many corporations and others that resorting to legal action was a high risk strategy.[anti-SLAPP?]</div><div>
</div><div>While conservative groups talk of 'transparency', 'accountability' and guarding taxpayers dollars, what they are really mean is 'do what I say not what I do'.</div><div>
</div><div>What they don't want is scrutiny of their own lack of accountability, their lobbying, or lack of transparency on who funds them to do what. Nor do they want their largely invisible corporate funders to lose their ability to deduct contributions against corporate tax.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Related SourceWatch articles</div><div>Foundations and Funders</div><div>War on NGOs</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>External links</div><div>Christopher Carey, "GOP tells firms: don't aid liberals; donations by May, Anheuser-Busch catch eye or Armey's army", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 25, 1995.</div><div>Philip Morris, "Core Objectives", Bates No. 2044333554-2044333581, 1994.</div><div>Danielle Knight, "US AID accused iof cutting funding to Indonesian Conservationists", Inter-Press Service, May 15, 2000.</div><div>Gary Johns and John Roskam, "The Protocol: Managing Relations with NGOs", Institute of Public Affairs, April 2004.</div><div>Sarah Maddison, Richard Denniss and Clive Hamilton, "Silencing Dissent: Non-government organisations and Australian democracy", Discussion Paper No. 65, The Australia Institute, 2004.</div><div>New Zealand Green Party, "Scrap the Charities Bill, say Greens", Media Release, August 18, 2004.</div><div>Sue Bradford, "Health Ministry memo a further attack on community sector", Media Release, September 30, 2004.</div><div>Glenn Milne, "Uncharitable clampdown", The Australian, April 18, 2005.</div><div>Wendy Frew, "Perils of protest in the new age", Sydney Morning Herald, October 1, 2005.</div><div>Michael Marx, "Thinking Like a Network Series: Preparing for the Backlash to Marketplace Campaigns", Business Ethics Network Newsletter, May 2005.</div><div>Sarah Maddison and Richard Denniss, "Democratic constraint and embrace: implications for progressive non-government advocacy organisations in Australia", Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 40, No. 3, 2005.</div><div>Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Intimidating_democracy"</div><div>Categories: Activism | Democracy</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>foundation watch</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Recent contributors to Foundation Watch include:</div><div>
</div><div>When is a foundation not a foundation? When it gives away other foundations’ money. [1]</div><div>
</div><div>Ron Arnold, the Executive Director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise</div><div>Neil Hrab from the Competitive Enterprise Institute</div><div>Martin Morse Wooster</div><div>John Carlisle, the editor of Foundation Watch</div><div>Robert Lerner partner in Lerner and Nagai Quantitative Consulting</div><div>Althea K. Nagai partner in Lerner and Nagai Quantitative Consulting</div><div>Robert Huberty CRC's Executive Vice-President and Director of Research</div><div>Robert Huberty is the Executive Vice President and Director of Research with the conservative think tank, the Capital Research Center (CRC).</div><div>
</div><div>"Before joining CRC in 1993, he served in several positions at The Heritage Foundation, which he joined in 1980 as editor of Mandate for Leadership, the well-known volume of public policy advice that was widely used by the Reagan Administration. Subsequently, he was Director of the Resource Bank (1983-91), where he acted as the Heritage liaison to conservative public policy organizations, and Director of Academic Programs (1991-93). Earlier, Robert was a research assistant to former President Richard Nixon, assisting on President Nixon's Memoirs (1978). He is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine, from which he received B.A. and M.A. degrees in American history," his biographical note states.</div><div>
</div><div>External links</div><div>Capital Research Center, "Meet the Experts", undated, accessed May 2004.</div><div>Robert Huberty and David Riggs, "NGO Accountability: what the U.S. can teach the U.N.: applying U.S. nonprofit disclosure laws to international NGOs", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, July 2003.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>David RiggsDirector of CRC's Greenwatch</div><div>David Riggs is the Executive Director of Green Watch, a project of the conservative think-tank, the Capital Research Center.</div><div>
</div><div>"David Riggs joined CRC in June, 2002. He is director of the CRC Green Watch project, www.green-watch.org, and the CRC Education Watch project, www.educationwatch.org. An expert on environmental issues, organizations and public policy, David is also adjunct faculty at George Mason University and formerly worked as Director of Land and Natural Resource Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, his biographical note states.</div><div>
</div><div>External links</div><div>Capital Research Center, "Meet the Experts", undated, accessed May 2004.</div><div>Robert Huberty and David Riggs, "NGO Accountability: what the U.S. can teach the U.N.: applying U.S. nonprofit disclosure laws to international NGOs", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, July 2003.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Gretchen Randall partner in Chicago PR company Winningreen</div><div>Tom Randall partner in Chicago PR company Winningreen</div><div>Winningreen LLC is a public relations firm. According to its website it "is a campaign communications company founded on the principle that conservative positions can win, even on issues thought to be the property of the other side. We do this by selling voters on your positions so elected officials can be confident they have the backing of their constituents."[1] It is an "environmental and energy policy communications firm, Winningreen LLC, based in Chicago Illinois." [1]</div><div>
</div><div>On its spartan website it describes itself as "a consulting firm dedicated to the development and promotion of sound environmental public policy, based on sound science, respect for the American people and constitutional principles."</div><div>
</div><div>Contents</div><div>&nbsp;[hide]&nbsp;</div><div>1 Clients</div><div>2 Personnel</div><div>3 Contact details</div><div>4 Related SourceWatch resources</div><div>5 References</div><div>Clients</div><div>According the website its clients "are legislators, appointed officials in agencies which deal with the environment, their aides and few other selected individuals. We do not accept businesses, organizations or other special interests as clients."</div><div>
</div><div>"Our policy development is based on a network of nearly fifty organizations and over 100 experts covering all aspects of the environment as well as related regulatory affairs," it states.</div><div>
</div><div>For clients Winningreen releases "issue briefs" with background information and quotes that can be attributed to the officials and politicians they work for. Some briefs have been supporting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, dismissing calls for increased water releases into the Klamath River and warning consumers against hybrid petrol/electric cars such as the Toyota Prius.</div><div>
</div><div>Personnel</div><div>Gretchen Randall</div><div>Tom Randall</div><div>Contact details</div><div>3712 N. Broadway - PMB 279</div><div>Chicago, IL 60613</div><div>Phone: 773-477-8633</div><div>Web: http://www.winningreen.com</div><div>Related SourceWatch resources</div><div>Public relations firms</div><div>References</div><div>? About page, Winningreen, accessed February 2008.</div><div>Categories:</div><div>Environment</div><div>Public relations firms</div><div>United States</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Ivan G. Osorio, Editorial Director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute;</div><div>Patrick Reilly, who edited Foundation Watch until approximately 2000.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Recent editions</div><div>Patrick Reilly, "Not a grassroots campaign: foundations, government bankroll anti-tobacco crusade", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, August 1998. (“Substantial research assistance was provided by Koch Foundation fellow Karen Jones, a junior classics major at the University of Dallas and Brendan Scanlon, a junior history major at Boston College”).</div><div>Patrick Reilly, Smoking out the gun industry: foundations repeat anti-tobacco tactics in assault on guns, Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, August 1999. (“Substantial research assistance was provided by Koch Foundation fellow Karen Jones, a junior classics major at the University of Dallas and Brendan Scanlon, a junior history major at Boston College”).</div><div>Patrick Reilly, "The Tides Foundation and Center: unusual philanthropies funnel money to activist groups", Foundation Watch, January 1998.</div><div>Ron Arnold, “Tides Foundation’s Activist Network exerts ‘undue influence’”, Foundation Watch, April 2000.</div><div>Robert Lerner and Althea K. Nagai, “Explorations in non-profits: Part 1: Trends and disparities”, Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, June 2002.</div><div>Robert Lerner and Althea K. Nagai, “Explorations in non-profits: Part 2: Environmentalists gain ground: education and human service nonprofits remain dominant in ‘90s”, Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, July 2002.</div><div>Martin Morse Wooster, "Nation’s leading foundations violate donor intent: foundations funding America’s left have conservative origins", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, October 2002.</div><div>Neil Hrab, "George Soros: a bridge to radicalism: Soros funds a leftwing network addressing media, legal and social issues", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, February 2003.</div><div>John K. Carlisle, "Feminist movement exploits sports to advance agneds: ‘gender equity’ groups and think tanks target professional and collegiate athletics’", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, June 2003.</div><div>Robert Huberty and David Riggs, "NGO Accountability: what the U.S. can teach the U.N.: applying U.S. nonprofit disclosure laws to international NGOs", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, July 2003.</div><div>Neil Hrab, "A look at the Macarthur Foundation", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, August 2003.</div><div>Neil Hrab, "The Macarthur Foundation on foreign policy and defense: funding the left’s counterattack on Bush Administration policies", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, September 2003.</div><div>Martin Morse Wooster, "The Ford Foundation: it keeps a low profile, but funds government entitlements, racial preferences, legal activists", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, October 2003.</div><div>Ivan G. Osorio, "The international green agenda: U.S. foundations support environmental activists on the world stage", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, November 2003.</div><div>Gretchen Randall and Tom Randall, “Tides Foundation: liberal crossroads of money and ideas”, Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, December 2003.</div><div>John Carlisle, George Soros: his plan to defeat George Bush: part 1: philanthropist gives millions to America Coming Together (ACT), Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, February 2004.</div><div>John Carlisle, George Soros and MoveOn.org: his plan to defeat George Bush: part 2: his money and the internet are new tools for advocacy politics, Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, March 2004.</div><div>Ron Arnold “The Heinz foundations and the Kerry campaign: one has money, the other needs money”, Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, April 2004.</div><div>Ron Arnold, “The Pew Charitable Trusts: global warming power nexus”, Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, May 2004.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>References</div><div>? About page, Capital Research Center, accessed October 2007.</div><div>Category: Publications</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>~ ipcc pro inhofe 2007</div><div>
</div><div>http://citizenreviewonline.org/feb_2007/11/global_warming.html</div><div>
</div><div>---</div><div>
</div><div>ten sec response fast facts</div><div>
</div><div>After Five Years of Ecoterrorism, FBI Has Made No Arrests</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Date: June 20, 2001</div><div>
</div><div>BACKGROUND: On June 18 the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) claimed credit for the vandalizing of the biotechnology laboratory at the University of Idaho on June 10. This is the latest of dozens of terrorist acts, including arson of homes, laboratories, businesses and resorts committed by ELF and its sister organization, the Animal liberation Front (ALF), over the last five years. There have been no arrests.</div><div>
</div><div>TEN SECOND RESPONSE: After five years and dozens of acts of terrorism, it is inconceivable that the FBI has yet to arrest the first member of either the Earth Liberation Front or the Animal Liberation front - even though these groups take full credit for their crimes.</div><div>
</div><div>THIRTY SECOND RESPONSE: It is completely unacceptable that organized terrorism has gone on unchecked for five years. A bill by Representative George Nethercutt (R-WA) calling for mandatory sentences in ecoterrorism cases, including the death penalty should lives be lost, sends a message against these criminals. A Congressional investigation is in order to determine what the FBI has been doing - or not doing - to bring these criminals to justice. The Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front cannot be allowed to go on terrorizing Americans.</div><div>
</div><div>DISCUSSION: There should be broad-based support, both among the public and on Capitol Hill to take strong bipartisan action against the criminal actions of these groups. They represent the extreme fringe of the environmental movement and the vast majority of those who call themselves environmentalists do not support their actions.</div><div>
</div><div>Support for strong action should have a broad geographical base as well. Ecoterrorists have destroyed businesses in Oregon, agriculture labs and testing facilities in Idaho and Wisconsin, an agriculture lab on the campus of Michigan State University and homes in Indiana, New Jersey and New York.</div><div>
</div><div>You can visit ELF's web site at: http://www.earthliberationfront.com/main.shtml</div><div>
</div><div>ALF's web site is: http://www.hedweb.com/alffaq.htm</div><div>
</div><div>A brief story on Rep. Nethercutt's bill is at http://asp.washtimes.com/printarticle.asp?action=print&ArticleID=20010620-25</div><div>190590</div><div>A more extensive story on ELF activities can be found at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A66899-May23.html</div><div>
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</div><div>by Tom Randall, Director of Environmental & Regulatory Affairs, The National Center for Public Policy Research</div><div>
</div><div>Contact the author at: 773-857-5086 or TRandall@nationalcenter.org&nbsp;</div><div>The National Center for Public Policy Research, Chicago office</div><div>3712 North Broadway - PMB 279</div><div>Chicago, IL 60613</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
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</div><div>Desmog:</div><div>
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</div><div>Capital Research Center (CRC)</div><div>&nbsp;Background</div><div>The Capital Research Center (CRC) was founded in 1984 to "study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism." [1]</div><div>
</div><div>CRC claims it "exposes liberal bias" in government and nonprofit organizations by monitoring groups that it describes as "promote[ing] the growth of the welfare state."</div><div>
</div><div>As part of the conservative campaign to 'Defund the left' the Capital Research Center produces a range of publications targeting foundations, unions and activist groups that it views as supporting liberal causes.</div><div>
</div><div>Its key monthly publications include:</div><div>Organization Trends that reports on and analyzes the activities of advocacy organizations;</div><div>Labor Watch that scrutinizes union contributions and activism;</div><div>Foundation Watch that "examines the grantmaking of private foundations"; and</div><div>Compassion & Culture, discontinued in 2009, which highlighted the "work of small, locally based charities that help the needy."</div><div>It also publishes Patterns in Corporate Philanthropy, which documents corporate donations to non-profit groups. CRC also host two other projects:</div><div>
</div><div>Green Watch, which it describes as a project dedicated to "monitoring the leadership, activities and funding of the liberal environmentalist movement" [2]</div><div>Searchlight.</div><div>Stance on Climate Change</div><div>"Despite environmentalist claims of a 'consensus' on global warming, climate science is contentious." [3]</div><div>&nbsp;Funding</div><div>According to Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets, CRC has received $265,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. [4]</div><div>
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</div><div>ExxonMobil announced that the Capital Research Center would be one of nine groups it would stop funding in 2008 that had been associated with global warming skepticism. Exxon had made a similar promise in 2007, but most of the organizations continued to receive funding. [5]</div><div>
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</div><div>Media Transparency breaks down CRC's funding as follows: [6]</div><div>
</div><div>Armstrong Foundation, The — $22,000</div><div>Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation — $25,000</div><div>Brady Education Foundation — $26,500</div><div>Carthage Foundation — $225,000</div><div>Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation — $15,000</div><div>Charlotte and Walter Kohler Charitable Trust — $60,000</div><div>Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation — $650,000</div><div>Earhart Foundation — $194,500</div><div>Exxon Mobil — $225,000</div><div>F.M. Kirby Foundation — $110,000</div><div>Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation — $6,500</div><div>Hickory Foundation — $86,000</div><div>JM Foundation — $30,000</div><div>Jaquelin Hume Foundation — $175,000</div><div>John M. Olin Foundation — $567,500&nbsp;</div><div>John Templeton Foundation — $250&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div>Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation — $1,598,320</div><div>Philip M. McKenna Foundation — $394,000</div><div>Randolph Foundation — $173,000</div><div>Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation — $5,000</div><div>Rodney Fund — $97,000</div><div>Roe Foundation&nbsp; — $95,000</div><div>Ruth and Lovett Peters Foundation — $175,500</div><div>Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation — $200,000&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>Sarah Scaife Foundation — $4,675,000</div><div>Scaife Family Foundation — $255,000&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation — $42,000</div><div>Walton Family Foundation — $7,000</div><div>William E. Simon Foundation — $1,000</div><div>William H. Donner Foundation — $398,333</div><div>According to one source, CRC appears to have received $50,000 from the Tobacco Company Phillip Morris.</div><div>
</div><div>Key People</div><div>The following information is taken from the Capital Research Foundation SourceWatch entry. [7]. Also, see an archive of the CRC website.</div><div>
</div><div>Board of Directors</div><div>According to the Capital Research Center website, accessed June 2011, the board of directors are:</div><div>
</div><div>Terrence Scanlon — President/Chairman since 1994, and a former Vice President at the Heritage Foundation.</div><div>Gilbert Collins — Director, and also on the board of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, and the Independent Institute in Oakland , CA.</div><div>Beverley Danielson — Director, and formerly of the Institute of World Politics.</div><div>Edwin Meese III — Director.</div><div>Marion G. Wells — Vice President, and Trustee with the Heritage Foundation.</div><div>Thomas S. Winter — Former Editor-in-Chief of Human Events Washington, DC.</div><div>William Meyersohn — Florida Real Estate Professional.</div><div>Former board members:</div><div>
</div><div>Daniel J. Popeo — Treasurer.</div><div>Constance Larcher — Secretary.</div><div>Dean Webster — Director.</div><div>Pamela Witherspoon — Officer.</div><div>Barbara Kenney</div><div>The December edition of CRC's Foundation Watch newsletter stated that Barbara Kenney joined the board in late 2003. However, it did not mention who had left.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Staff</div><div>Robert Huberty — Executive Vice President and Director of Research, formerly of the Heritage Foundation.</div><div>Christopher Krukewitt — Accountant.</div><div>Matthew Vadum — Senior Editor, of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch and has written extensively about ACORN.</div><div>Gordon Cummings — Director, Development. formerly Development Coordinator at the Cato Institute.</div><div>J. Marie Erwin — Development Associate.</div><div>Matt Patterson — Senior Editor of Labor Watch and Green Watch.</div><div>Douglas Walker — Office Manager.</div><div>Former Staff</div><div>John Carlisle — Former Editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch.</div><div>David Riggs — Former Executive Director of Green Watch.</div><div>Christopher Morris — Former Editor of Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy.</div><div>According to Sourcewatch, the membership of the Capital Research Center's National Advisory Board was listed on its website in 2001. However, it does not disclose the current membership of the board.</div><div>
</div><div>Tom Holt, appears to have been a past CRC "visiting fellow." Holt has advocated legal reforms that would make it more difficult to sue corporations on the premise that "the consumer movement has imposed significant costs on industry—costs ultimately passed on to consumers—and has violated individual freedoms in a futile effort to protect us from our own actions and judgment." [8]</div><div>&nbsp;Actions</div><div>August, 2002</div><div>
</div><div>Terrence Scanlon of CRC was a signatory to a letter to President Bush, applauding his decision not to attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.</div><div>
</div><div>"Environmentally and socially irresponsible corporations and their operatives are lobbying the Administration to snub the Summit and halt any progress toward addressing environmental accountability and global climate change," said Friends of the Earth President, Dr. Brent Blackwelder. [9]</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>September, 2001</div><div>
</div><div>In the press release launching the Greenwatch site in the fall of 2001, Rep. Butch Otter (R-ID), called the groups included in the Greenwatch database "extremists," and declared the purpose of the database was to "monitor and keep the extremists in check." [10]</div><div>
</div><div>1990s</div><div>
</div><div>The Capital Research Center published studies criticizing charities such as the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society for their anti-tobacco lobbying efforts. [11]</div><div>
</div><div>CRC was later criticized, and it was revealed that Phillip Morris had provided $50,000 in funding to the Capital Research Center. [12]</div><div>
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</div><div>CRC has also published reports on the "Anti-Smoking Movement," to which select PM staff were given advance copies.</div><div>
</div><div>Related Organizations</div><div>CRC is a former member of Alliance for America and is a past member of the Cooler Heads Coalition (CHC).</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Resources</div><div>"About CRC," Archived December 13, 2010.</div><div>Neil Hrab. "'Direct Action': The Tactics of Radical Activism: Part I" (PDF), Organization Trends (Capital Research Center), February, 2004. Archived February 5, 2007.</div><div>Bonner Cohen. "The Green Counter-Establishment: How It Holds Power" (PDF), Organization Trends (Capital Research Center). Archived November 27, 2008.</div><div>ExxonSecrets Factsheet: Capital Research Center and Greenwatch, CRC.</div><div>"Exxon Announces Cutoff for Warming Skeptics – Again," Integrity in Science, June 2, 2008.</div><div>"Capital Research Center," Media Transparency. Accessed March 28, 2012.</div><div>"Capital Research Center," SourceWatch Profile.</div><div>"SLAPP Happy: Corporations That Sue to Shut You Up," PRWatch, Second Quarter 1997, Volume 4, No. 2.</div><div>"Corporate-funded Lobbyists Aimed to Sabotage Johannesburg Summit" (Press Release,) allAfrica.com, August 19, 2002. Archived April 29, 2003.</div><div>Betsy Z. Russel. "Green extremist site launched," Spokesman Review, September 14, 2001.</div><div>"Charities' Anti-Tobacco Lobbying Is Criticized," Tobacco Documents Online.</div><div>White J, Bero LA (February 2004). "Public health under attack: the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST) and the tobacco industry". Am J Public Health, 94 (2): 240–50. doi:10.2105/AJPH.94.2.240. PMID 14759933. PMC 1448234.</div><div>"The Capital Research Center: A Rising Star in the Crowded Universe of Right-Wing Think Tanks," CultureWatch Online, Issue No. 36, October 1996. Archived October 15, 2000.</div><div>"Capital Research Center," Wikipedia Entry.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
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