CAP RES CTR 2

2 tags

see CRC 3 SCOTT WALTER MTG DOGE COMM TEST 6 25

see ginni coi

NO MERRI

see main for older

LARRY ARNN?

TARGET GORE, BBB, esa, pAris

crypto

---

SEE BERMAN NOT THE EPA

see greenwatch blog

see rule 23 BS

see 2ndary buffers

see ludwig sea change LCV BS attack

SEE ARABELLA

related to CFACT?

bak 3 22

badish format here

CRC and Richard Berman's Interstate Policy Alliance Consult for Bradley on Right-Wing "Infrastructure" Investments

---

an 6 25

Government watchdog Congressional Integrity Project (CIP) is slamming the new Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) subcommittee under U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). The group calls the subcommittee a “rogues" gallery of extremists, conspiracy theorists and C-team political operatives” promoting President Donald Trump’s clampdown on certain non-government organizations (NGOs).

The Guardian reports far-right firebrand Greene will launch hearings this week on “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild”, purporting to expose the use of federal funds by NGOs to advance “radical” agendas such as “open borders and the Green New Deal scam.”

But a (CIP) memo condemns the hearing as “political theater” and “weaponized government oversight.” The memo also describes the hearing as extreme hypocrisy considering the substantial federal funding Republican allies and rightwing groups receive.

“Their own networks have systematically benefited from government contracts, subsidies, and loans worth billions of dollars,” the memo states, according to the Guardian.

IFrame Content

Personalities contributing to the committee display this week on Capitol Hill include personalities such as Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates a hate group. Krikorian has made statements that Haiti’s problems today stem from the nation being one of the first in recent history to throw off the yoke of slavery and not be.” VID]

The memo adds that CIS received more than $700,000 in PPP loans and is now under investigation by the justice department for potentially lying to obtain at least one of them.

“That’s right, Republicans chose as their star witness on government waste someone who may have committed fraud to secure government money for his organization,” the memo claims.

Another participant is Power the Future founder and Executive Director Daniel Turner, who the CIP describes as a career political operative who worked for the Charles Koch Institute before founding Power the Future. Power the Future is a climate-denial organization that attacks environmental groups for receiving federal grants, says CIP. It added that Turner’s former employer, billionaire Charles Koch, has received more than $750 million in government subsidies, even as Greene claims to be rooting out government waste.

“Turner … represents everything wrong with this sham hearing,” CIP told the Guardian. “He’s a junior varsity Republican operative masquerading as an objective analyst while advancing the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry – the same interests that have systematically profited from the very government largesse he now pretends to oppose.”

Read the full Guardian report at this link.

REF

The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has assembled a “rogues’ gallery of extremists, conspiracy theorists and C-team political operatives” to promote Donald Trump’s crackdown on non-government organisations (NGOs), a congressional watchdog has claimed.

The House of Representatives’ Delivering on Government Efficiency (Doge) subcommittee, chaired by Greene, is due to hold a hearing on Wednesday entitled “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild”.

The subcommittee said in a press release that the hearing will “expose” the use of federal funds by NGOs to advance “radical” agendas such as “open borders and the Green New Deal scam”. It frames its work as an investigation of the alleged funneling of taxpayer dollars to politically motivated groups while “lining the pockets of their friends and allies”.

But a memo from the Congressional Integrity Project (CIP), obtained by the Guardian, condemns the hearing as “political theater”, “weaponized government oversight” and an exercise in hypocrisy, given the substantial federal funding received by Republican allies and rightwing groups.

While attacking civil society organisations for receiving federal grants, the memo says, “their own networks have systematically benefited from government contracts, subsidies, and loans worth billions of dollars”.

Wednesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill will feature witnesses Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies; Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future; and Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center.

The CIP describes Greene’s lineup as “rogues’ gallery of extremists, conspiracy theorists and C-team political operatives masquerading as government watchdogs”.

It notes that the Center for Immigration Studies has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and regularly circulates content from “white nationalist and antisemitic writers”.

Krikorian has made statements including that Haiti’s problems stem from not being “colonised long enough”.

The memo adds that CIS received more than $700,000 in PPP loans and is now under investigation by the justice department for potentially lying to obtain at least one of them. “That’s right, Republicans chose as their star witness on government waste someone who may have committed fraud to secure government money for his organization.”

The CIP describes Turner as a career political operative who worked for the Charles Koch Institute before founding Power the Future, a climate-denial organisation that attacks environmental groups for receiving federal grants. Yet Turner’s former employer, Charles Koch, has received more than $750m in government subsidies.

The memo states: “Turner, who calls ‘climate change the slippery slope to socialism’ and promotes conspiracy theories about climate science, represents everything wrong with this sham hearing.

“He’s a junior varsity Republican operative masquerading as an objective analyst while advancing the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry – the same interests that have systematically profited from the very government largesse he now pretends to oppose.”

Walter leads the Capital Research Center, “a secretive organization that won’t disclose its donors while attacking others for lacking transparency”, the CIP alleges.

“His organization’s fiscal arrangements appear designed to shield activities from public scrutiny, yet he positions himself as a watchdog exposing liberal ‘dark money’.”

In 2023, according to the memo, Walter helped funnel nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas’s group while his organisation had business before the supreme court, creating conflicts of interest.

Walter also has a history of making or defending offensive statements about race, gender and sexual orientation. He publicly defended a university professor accused of making racist statements, said average Americans have “disgust at homosexual practice” and in the 1990s mused that one good thing from the Monica Lewinsky scandal might be “that feminism will die, that sexual harassment laws will fizzle”.

The memo adds: “This hearing represents weaponized government oversight at its worst, with Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene assembling hate group leaders, conspiracy theorists, and dark money operatives to attack civil society organizations while the very people crying about government waste have pocketed billions in federal contracts and subsidies.”

---

desmog

Adam Payter 6KBW College Hill London, EC4R 2RP

An Israeli private investigator wanted by U.S. authorities for allegedly carrying out a hack-and-leak operation commissioned on behalf of ExxonMobil is fighting against his extradition to a Brooklyn, NY, detention center.

During a packed hearing last week at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court attended by DeSmog, lawyers for Amit Forlit used a legal strategy that one climate accountability advocate is referring to as “bizarre.”

The defense is arguing that Forlit, who is accused of being hired by the Washington D.C.-based public relations and lobbying firm DCI Group to illegally hack into the emails of environmental activists and others involved with climate change litigation against Exxon, shouldn’t be extradited on the grounds that the charges against him are politically motivated.

Last Wednesday was the first time Exxon and DCI were officially named in connection with the allegations – part of the defense’s claim that Forlit is “a form of collateral damage” in the legal pursuit of ExxonMobil.

To support his case, Forlit’s lawyers sought to present evidence from “expert” witness Scott Walter, president of a conservative U.S. think tank called the Capital Research Center (CRC) that for years publicly argued that the science of climate change is faulty and uncertain – including publishing a post last year disputing that “climate change” is “settled science.”

In his affidavit, Walter claimed that current efforts to hold ExxonMobil accountable in court for lying to the public about the dangers of climate change are at their core a political project connected to the U.S. Democratic Party.

Forlit is facing up to 45 years in prison for allegedly carrying out cyberattacks and hacking against groups and individuals involved with efforts to file lawsuits against ExxonMobil for misleading the public over the impact of burning fossil fuels on the earth’s climate, and spearheading public communications efforts to undermine the science.

Drawing on Walter’s affidavit, Forlit’s UK-based lawyer Rachel Scott stated in court, “we submit that these lawsuits are politically motivated.”

“It’s a bizarre strategy,” said Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the nonprofit Center of Climate Integrity, which has been involved with climate litigation. “Trying to claim that this guy is facing political persecution when, in fact, he was allegedly paid large sums of money to execute a massive hacking operation aimed at hundreds of employees at environmental nonprofit organizations and even those people’s spouses and kids.” Davies was one of the 128 individuals targeted by the hackers.

‘Opinion presented as fact’

On a grey January day, journalists packed into the London courtroom gallery where prosecutors representing the U.S. Department of Justice argued that Forlit should be extradited to New York. Upon his extradition, Forlit faces a federal indictment charging him “with three offences consisting of conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud,” according to prosecution documents. “The maximum sentences are five, 20, and 20 years’ imprisonment, respectively.” The indictment has not been made public.

Wearing casual trousers and a blue shirt, Forlit watched from the side of the courtroom as lawyers argued about the political implications of his case. Acting on behalf of U.S. authorities, lawyer Adam Payter, with the firm 6KBW, took aim at the affidavit from CRC’s Walter, calling it “opinion presented as fact” and arguing that it was “inadmissible” as evidence.

Payter presented written material from the CRC’s website claiming that “environmentalist groups” and others are attempting to “undermine Americans’ freedoms.” The lawyer pointed out that CRC has on multiple occasions professed skepticism about human-caused climate change and advocated against solutions to the crisis by publishing a newsletter titled “Green Watch,” which outlines these positions. Payter then informed the court that, according to publicly available filings, Walter’s group has previously received funding from ExxonMobil – a conflict of interest Walter did not disclose in his affidavit.

In a blow to Forlit’s defense, District Judge John McGarva ruled that Walter’s affidavit could not be admitted as evidence.

Contrary to the defense’s claims that the charges against Forlit are politically motivated, Forlit “has been sought to be prosecuted for straight-forward criminal allegations that he orchestrated the hacking of persons for money,” the prosecution argued in a legal document submitted to the court.

“That Forlit, as the alleged orchestrator of a hacking scheme designed to politicise Climate Change Litigation,” should claim that he cannot be extradited and prosecuted because this Climate Change Litigation is politicised, “may be thought ironic,” stated Payter in a written submission to the court.

While the judge dismissed Walter’s statement, he agreed to consider supplementary reports and other material provided by Walter. This supplementary material included a report by Christopher Horner a former senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), another group whose representatives have historically expressed climate skeptic viewpoints. According to publicly available data, CEI received at least $2.1 million in funding from ExxonMobil between 1997 and 2006. In 2018, when CEI published Horner’s report, five of CEI’s eleven board members had links to groups funded by present or historic players in the fossil fuel industry.

In court, Payter stated that he would like to add further context on CEI on the final day of the hearing scheduled next month.

Paid $16 million

The allegations against Forlit come from a Department of Justice investigation started in 2018. According to federal investigators, Forlit was the leader of several Israeli-based intelligence-gathering firms that specialized in “offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, including computer intrusions.”

In a court filing, Payter alleged that Forlit’s firms were paid $16 million between 2013 and 2018 by a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm, which, in turn, was acting on behalf of one of the world’s biggest oil companies, a company based in Irving, Texas, that wanted to undermine groups connected to climate litigation.

Scott, the lawyer representing Forlit, filed papers that named the names that Payter, the U.S.government’s lawyer, did not; she wrote that the hacking effort “is alleged to have been commissioned by DCI Group, a lobbying firm representing ExxonMobil…”

Some of the specific hacking initiatives were led by another Israeli private investigator named Aviram Azari, who oversaw hackers in India who in turn illegally accessed the electronic accounts of environmental campaigners. Azari was arrested in 2019, and sentencedto 80 months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to computer hacking, identity theft, and wire fraud. (Azari’s sentence incorporated lengthy time in pre-sentence custody, and on January 3, he was released from prison and briefly transferred to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after which he was sent to Israel.)

IFrame Content

Prosecutors contend that DCI provided the hacked documents to Exxon and selected media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal. Exxon has used the allegedly stolen materials – which include a proposed legal strategy against the company – in its defense against ongoing climate litigation in Hawaii.

Both ExxonMobil and DCI have previously stated that they were not involved in the hacking operation.

Forlit was arrested in April 2024 under an Interpol Red Notice at London’s Heathrow Airport as he was attempting to board a flight to Israel. He was released on bail, forced to surrender his passport and make a security payment of £200,000 ($257,370).

The allegations in this case suggest oil and gas producers are willing to go to extreme lengths to discredit their environmental opponents, explained Robert Brulle,visiting research professor of environment and society at Brown University.

“The climate change countermovement is a sophisticated effort, involving multiple organizations engaging in a wide variety of strategies to obstruct climate mitigation efforts and to maintain business as usual,” he wrote in an email to DeSmog. “Climate litigation represents a threat to the business model of fossil fuel corporations, and so opposition to it is a core part of their efforts.”

The hearing will continue in early February.

*Rebecca John is a research fellow at the Climate Investigations Center founded by Kert Davies, who is mentioned in this story.

ref crc study Three Tells of Junk Science -Capital Research Center

science is held in extremely high regard in the modern world—and rightly so. Science and its applications can claim a lengthy and growing list of accomplishments from vaccines against deadly diseases to landing men on the Moon to mapping the human genome to spitting the atom.

But with such great power and credibility also comes the very human temptation to manipulate science to serve less noble purposes. Politicians, members of the media, and even scientists themselves have often succumbed to this temptation out of ignorance, greed, or desire for power. Lord Acton’s axiom—“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”—certainly applies to science and the people who try to use it.

Many of the most egregious misuses of science are fairly identified as “junk science,” broadly defined as “science or scientific results of a fraudulent or misleading nature.”

Fortunately, some key words and phrases are red flags or tells of junk science.

“Settled”

Science deals in finding the best explanations of the world around us, not certainty. Thus, one key principle of science is that every scientific hypothesis (and theory) must be falsifiable. Meaning every scientific hypothesis is subject to unending testing that has the potential at any time to falsify or disprove the hypothesis. In other words, if something is not falsifiable (subject to continuous testing), it is not science.

Hence, anyone talking about “settled science” either doesn’t know what they’re talking about, misspoke, or is deliberately trying to deceive.

An NPR article illustrates this point by starting with the assumption that “climate change” is “settled science.” While “climate change” is an admittedly slippery term, “settled science” is an outright oxymoron. If it’s settled, it’s not science. If it’s science, it’s not settled.

Predictably, the NPR article follows its “settled science” claim with public opinion polling data and political rhetoric, not logical argument grounded in observational data. Yet the NPR author deserves credit for clearly stating his key assumption—flawed as it is.

“Consensus”

In science, observational data reign supreme. Science is an absolute dictatorship of data. If the data support a hypothesis, it survives to live another day. If the data do not support the hypothesis, the hypothesis is added to the ever-growing mountain of rejected hypotheses.

Science is not democratic. The scientists, other observers, and the general public don’t get a vote. Actual science doesn’t care about feelings, opinions, political policies, careers, or any number of other human concerns. To the extent that any of these usurp the data, the “science” ceases to be science.

For example, NASA’s “Global Climate Change” website repeats the often-cited deceptive claim that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing climate change. Instead of appealing to the data, NASA tried appealing to the “authority” of the 97 percent.

Ironically, on a different website, NASA emphasizes the primacy of “scientific evidence” over “opinion”—albeit in an article on the scientific consensus on global warming.

“Scientific Study”

Nearly every day the media breathlessly touts “new research” on a wide range of topics ranging from a drug to treat opioid addition to a promising cancer treatment to why humans don’t have tails. Driven by the relentless 24-hour news cycle, the media are always looking for something new, and quality and thoughtful analysis are often discarded as irrelevant inconveniences.

While scientific studies are essential to scientific research, a single study by itself is far from definitive, and not all scientific studies are created equal. The findings of a single study need to be tested and retested, no matter how promising they seem. In fact, the most promising findings probably need more rigorous testing to ensure that a bias toward a desired outcome did not influence the research.

In addition, the more a study or report is entangled with politics and government funding, the less scientific and less reliable its results will likely be. I have personally witnessed how a government report was vetted by the various offices in a federal department and offending passages were removed or rewritten so as to not cast a particular federal office in a bad light—usually not to correct any inaccuracy in the report, but to obscure inconvenient data and conclusions.

Similarly, does anyone seriously expect a report from the U.S. Department of Education to ever reach a conclusion not supported by the teachers unions? Or what is the probability that a climate scientist funded with a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will publish a result that directly challenges the official narrative on climate change?

A single study is never the final word on a subject because of both potential (even unintentional) bias and the scientific requirement for replicability.

The Scientific Method

Regrettably, many—especially members of the legacy media—have forgotten or chosen to ignore key principles of the scientific method. Consistently applying such basic principles would quickly expose many instances of junk or flawed science.

Tags: Department of Education, global warming, NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), science

Jon Rodeback

As managing editor and director of content, Jon is responsible for CRC’s print and online publications, including the monthly magazine Capital Research. Before joining CRC, he was the senior…

jon Rodeback

Managing Editor and Director of Content

As managing editor and director of content, Jon is responsible for CRC’s print and online publications, including the monthly magazine Capital Research. Before joining CRC, he was the senior managing editor at the American Enterprise Institute. He has an M.A. in military history from Norwich University and a B.A. in political science and Russian from Brigham Young University.

Authored Content

Green Watch

Three Tells of Junk Science

Article on June 26, 2024 by Jon Rodeback

Deception & Misdirection, Featured Items

States Banning or Restricting “Zuck Bucks”—UPDATED 4/10/2024

Article on April 10, 2024 by Sarah Lee, Jon Rodeback, Hayden Ludwig

Doing Good

Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross

Article on July 3, 2023 by Jon Rodeback

Commentary

Juneteenth 2022

Article on June 20, 2022 by Jon Rodeback

Philanthropy

Memorial Day 2022

Article on May 30, 2022 by Jon Rodeback

Commentary

A Devil’s Dictionary of the Left

Article on July 16, 2021 by Jon Rodeback

Commentary

Independence Day 2021 (observed)

Article on July 5, 2021 by Jon Rodeback

Commentary

The Totalitarian Undertow of Social Distancing

Article on April 19, 2021 by Jon Rodeback

Commentary

The Mayflower Compact

Article on November 26, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Organization Trends

The Left Recycles Protests and Tactics Against Latest Supreme Court Nominee

Article on October 12, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Featured Items

Happy Birthday, InfluenceWatch!

Article on September 1, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Foundation Watch

CRC Research on George Soros and the Open Society Foundations

Article on August 12, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Labor Watch

Questionable Circumstances: Maryland School District Commits to “Distance Learning” This Fall

Article on July 17, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Article

Fourth of July: Some Observations from Alexis de Tocqueville

Article on July 4, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Philanthropy

Memorial Day 2020

Article on May 25, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Green Watch

Russia’s Shadow War on U.S. Shale Energy

Article on April 27, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Foundation Watch

An Avoidable Tragedy

Article on February 26, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Foundation Watch

The Soros Nexus

Article on February 26, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Foundation Watch

George Soros’s Thinking

Article on February 26, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

Foundation Watch

“Spontaneous” Migrations

Article on February 26, 2020 by Jon Rodeback

+ See All Content byJon Rodeback

---

grover open ltr ~ BBB scanlon

---

1 24

Board of Trustees

SARAH HUMPHREYS ATKINS

President, JP Humphreys Foundation

ROBERT E. CHALLEY

Chairman of the Board, The Park Place Group

GORDON CUMMINGS

Philanthropic Advisor

HON. EDWIN MEESE III

Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

WILLIAM MEYERSOHN

Real Estate Consultant

ERIC O’KEEFE

Chairman, Citizens for Self-Governance

THOMAS S. WINTER

Editor-in-Chief, Human Events

MARION G. WELLS†

1926-2016

GIL COLLINS

Trustee emeritus. Trustee, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Massachusetts Mapping Project Linked to Terrorists

Mapping Project interactive map of Massachusett. Credit: Mapping Project.

---

by Ryan Mauro

OCTOBER 9, 2023

In December 2022, a coalition of 28 organizations asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement over its extensive links to terrorist groups. Of particular concern was the BDS movement’s links to a mysterious “Mapping Project” that published an apparent hit list of targets linked to the U.S. government, Israel, and the Jewish community.

An investigative report by the Zachor Legal Institute exposed the Mapping Project’s links to supporters of terrorists, the BDS movement and, in all likelihood, the government of Iran.

“Dismantling” and “Disrupting”

The Mapping Project’s content makes it clear that its anonymous creators’ intention is to inspire violent attacks on the listed sites. The project’s website states, “Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them. Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted.”

What the project means by “dismantling” and “disrupting” was clarified by a tweet it posted. The message called for the abolishment of the Boston Police Department and was accompanied by an image of a firebombed police car. The post is an unmistakable incitement to violence.

The project openly supports Palestinian terrorists, putting to rest any notion that the Mapping Project is merely a provocative academic exercise. “Glory to the martyrs! Free Palestine from the River to the Sea! Free All Political Prisoners!” the website proclaims in a statement expressing solidarity with Palestinian terrorists seeking the destruction of Israel.

The website’s language doesn’t depict the targets as mere political opponents, but as willing participants in U.S. and Israeli “imperialism”—and therefore, legitimate targets for violent “resistance.”

Crossover Appeal

The creators’ rhetoric is designed to appeal across various ideologies, adopting themes commonly associated with Islamist extremists, “alt-left” extremists like Antifa, and “alt-right” extremists like white supremacists. The success of this crossover messaging became evident when the leader of the neo-Nazi Goyim Defense League lavished praise on the project during an online stream.

The identities of the project’s creators remain murky. However, one name has been reportedly linked to the project: Calla Walsh, a member of BDS Boston, Democratic Socialists of America and, as of April 2022, Office Manager for Massachusetts Peace Action. An investigation by the Canary Mission found four tweets by Walsh that idolized the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group.

Walsh says she’s simply a promoter of the Mapping Project and denies having worked on it. However, Al-Jazeera reported that she “participated” in it and, in an apparent slip of the tongue, referred to the project as “we” in a tweet. She’s also implied that she knows the authors of the project who, she says, “have been working on it for years.”

Whatever Walsh’s role is, the project is not the creation of a single individual or even a single BDS chapter. The Zachor Legal Institute examined the site’s metadata and found that the map has over 2,300 sites internally listed. Only 500 of those can be seen on the publicly available version of the map.

The institute concludes:

It would require considerable funds to finance such an operation, far more than the standard anti-Israel groups initially suspected to be behind the project, whose yearly budgets do not generally exceed $1,000,000 annually. The skill and budget required to launch such a project are not found in average nongovernmental organizations or volunteer groups. Instead, the project was likely created by a state-backed element via a proxy group, private contractor, or civilian intelligence unit.

PFLP Connections

The common denominator among the groups that appear closest to the Mapping Project is support for the Iran-backed PFLP terrorist group.

The first PFLP connection comes through BDS Boston, whose Twitter account was the first to report the project’s debut. As mentioned, BDS Boston member Calla Walsh posts pro-PFLP material.

Later that same day, an anonymous group called the JISR Collective promoted the Mapping Project. JISR’s Twitter account has also expressed support of PFLP, as well as two other Iran-backed terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Samidoun Prisoner Solidarity Network, identified as a PFLP front in an expose by the Clarion Project, soon followed. Samidoun and the project appear to have an intimate relationship, as Samidoun published an interview with the project’s anonymous authors. Samidoun and the project also often retweet each other.

Shortly thereafter, PFLP itself praised the project, as did Iran’s state-run PressTV. It also received positive press coverage from Al-Mayadeen, a pro-Hezbollah news outlet.

This pattern of interaction provides the biggest clue about the likeliest source of the project’s resources: PFLP directly or PFLP proxies with sponsorship from Iran.

The Larger Problem

The Mapping Project is part of a larger problem, though. The BDS movement, while portraying itself as nonviolent activism for human rights, is intertwined with terrorist organizations backed by Iran who seek the genocidal elimination of Israel. BDS is not a nonviolent alternative to terrorism, but a weapon deployed by terrorists to augment their violent campaigns.

PFLP, Hamas, and the like are designated by the U.S. State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.

If the U.S. government is serious about preventing them from having safe harbor on American soil, then the Justice Department must investigate the BDS movement and, as able and necessary, prosecute BDS participants for their involvement with terrorist groups and their thinly veiled fronts.

Tags: and sanctions (BDS), Anti-Semitism, boycott, divestment, Israel, Mapping Project, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, terrorism

Ryan Mauro

Ryan Mauro is an investigative researcher for Capital Research Center. He is also an adjunct professor at Regent University and the former Director of Intelligence…

Ryan Mauro is an investigative researcher for Capital Research Center. He is also an adjunct professor at Regent University and the former Director of Intelligence for Clarion Project, a counter-extremism organization. Mauro is a frequent on-air analyst on issues related to national security and foreign policy.

+ MORE BY RYAN MAURO

ORGANIZATION TRENDS

Massachusetts Mapping Project Linked to Terrorists

Article on October 9, 2023 by Ryan Mauro

DECEPTION & MISDIRECTION

Antifa Money Launderers Fund Jihad Ally

Article on October 5, 2023 by Ryan Mauro

ORGANIZATION TRENDS

Turkey’s NGO Network in America

Article on September 6, 2023 by Ryan Mauro

---

RANDOM 10 23

COMMENTARY

Charles “Chuck” Feeney, R.I.P.

by SCOTT WALTER on OCTOBER 13, 2023

ORGANIZATION TRENDS

Paying for Hate on College Campuses

by SARAH LEE on OCTOBER 13, 2023

ORGANIZATION TRENDS

InfluenceWatch Friday

by JONATHAN HARSH on OCTOBER 13, 2023

ORGANIZATION TRENDS

An Organized Disruption

by KALI FONTANILLA on OCTOBER 12, 2023

PHILANTHROPY

Chronicle of Philanthropy Webinar Considers Issues Facing Nonprofits, Philanthropy

by MICHAEL E. HARTMANN on OCTOBER 12, 2023

PHILANTHROPY

Donor-Advised Funds And The Myth Of An Independent Sector

by JEFFREY CAIN on OCTOBER 11, 2023

PHILANTHROPY

A Conversation with the American Alliance for Equal Rights’ Edward Blum (Part 1 of 2)

by MICHAEL E. HARTMANN on OCTOBER 10, 2023

PHILANTHROPY

A Conversation with the American Alliance for Equal Rights’ Edward Blum (Part 2 of 2)

by MICHAEL E. HARTMANN on OCTOBER 10, 2023

ORGANIZATION TRENDS

Massachusetts Mapping Project Linked to Terrorists

by RYAN MAURO on OCTOBER 9, 2023

News and Controversies

CRC Among Several Conservative Nonprofits Funding Climate Science Disinformation Ads on Facebook

In October 2020, a report found that 51 Facebook ads questioning the credibility of climate science had been viewed over 8 million times in the first six months of 2020, despite the social media website's promise to prohibit ads debunked by third-party fact-checking organizations.^[5] Nine right-wing nonprofits, including Capital Research Center, Clear Energy Alliance, Competitive Enterprise Institute, CO2 Coalition, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Prager University, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Turning Point USA, and Washington Policy Center, collectively spent $42,000 funding these advertisements.^[5]

Criticism of Former Black Lives Matter Fiscal Sponsor Thousand Currents's "Domestic Terrorist" Board Member

In June 2020, a Capital Research Center piece by President Scott Walter criticized charity Thousand Currents for having Susan Rosenberg on its board.^[6] Walter shared this criticism on prominent conservative radio and television programs, characterizing Rosenberg as "a convicted domestic terrorist" and discussing the connection between Thousand Currents and Black Lives Matter.^[7][8]

Thousand Currents served as the fiscal sponsor of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Project from 2016-2020,^[9] when the Tides Foundation assumed the role.^[10]

Rosenberg was a member of Thousand Current's board as early as 2014 according to tax filings^[11] and was the board's Vice Chairman in 2020 according the charity website's Board of Directors page.^[12] The Board of Directors page is no longer available on the charity's website.^[13] CRC claims the page was deleted within hours of the publication of Walter's story.^[6]

Rosenberg was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization, which was responsible for a "string of violent and spectacular operations from 1979 to 1985: armed robberies that led to the murder of police officers and security guards, audacious prison breakouts and a bombing campaign that in addition to the U.S. Capitol targeted government buildings in Washington and New York."^[14] She was arrested in 1984 on several charges, including possession of unregistered explosives and firearms, and sentenced to 58 years in prison.^[14][15] Her sentence was commuted by Bill Clinton in 2001.^[14][15]

Fact-checker Snopes ruled that Rosenberg was an active member of a revolutionary left-wing organization which engaged in violent illegal activities but disputed her characterization as a "domestic terrorist", saying, "In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of 'terrorism', it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned— possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives— should be described as acts of 'domestic terrorism'".^[15]

"Climate Dollars" Section of CRC Website Disputes Robert Brulle Study and Related Media Coverage

Drexel University sociologist Robert J. Brulle studied the 2003-2010 funding of climate change denial groups, finding that 91 organizations had "an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support."^[16] In an interview, Brulle named the Koch Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Sierra Foundation as leading funders during the studied time period.^[17] Brulle's study claims "there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM [climate change counter-movement] funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies".^[16] Brulle said in an interview that climate denial funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund "started out very low, 3 percent in 2003, and by 2009, [accounted for] about one-quarter of the funding of the climate countermovement..."^[17]

Capital Research Center's "Climate Dollars" study criticizes Brulle's study and related media reporting. CRC used the Guardian article originally entitled, "Conservative groups spend $1bn a year to fight action on climate change"^[18] as an example of a news story mischaracterizing the findings of Brulle's study. CRC argues Brulle's study measured income rather than spending and did not determine how much of groups' spending went towards climate change denial in comparison to other political projects.^[19] CRC's study additionally compares the funding of climate skeptic groups to that of environmental advocacy groups, claiming that "In 2010, environmentalist groups’ income was $3.7 billion vs. $1.5 billion for skeptical groups. In 2014, environmentalists outpaced skeptical groups by $4.6 billion to $1.7 billion."^[20]

CRC Launches Copy of CMD's Sourcewatch

In December 2017, CRC launched Influence Watch, a version of Center for Media and Democracy’s Sourcewatch focused on the political left-wing.^[21]

Influence Watch received $125,000 in support from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, representing over a quarter of the project's budget. Influence Watch is a "signature project" of CRC's president Scott Walker, who worked for Rick Berman's astroturf attack group Berman & Co..^[21]

As described in Bradley's grant proposal, "The website will be constructed in partnership with Berman and Company (where Walter worked briefly as director of development), and CRC is collaborating with the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heartland Institute to make use of their data as it builds the new website’s profile list."^[21]

Dangerous Documentaries

CRC produces "Dangerous Documentaries", which include feature-length documentaries as well as shorter films and web-series.

"Architects of Woke", a 2019 series of short videos, "takes aim at far-left post-modernist and Marxist thinkers and activists responsible for the spread of identity politics from college campuses to society at large."^[22] The series investigates figures such as Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Stokely Carmichael, Howard Zinn, the Chapo Trap House podcast, and the 1619 Project.

Longer films include "The Jack Kemp Playbook", "America Under Siege: Antifa", "America Under Siege: Soviet Islam", and "America Under Siege: Civil War 2017".

In October 2019, Dangerous Documentaries released a feature-length documentary entitled "No Safe Spaces", which features Prager University founder Dennis Prager and libertarian comedian Adam Carolla, who visit "college campuses across the country, interviewing students and professors, comedians and commentators on the left and right, and those who have been impacted by the silencing of different voices on campus, analyzing the value of so-called safe-spaces."^[23] Other individuals featured in the documentary include Ben Shapiro, Tim Allen, Alan Dershowitz, Sharyl Attkisson, Van Jones, Dave Rubin, Candace Owens (formerly of Turning Point USA), Cornel West, Ann Coulter, and Jordan Peterson.^[24]

"Defund the Left" Campaign

As part of the conservative campaign to 'Defund the left', Capital Research Center produces a range of publications targeting foundations, unions, and left-wing activist groups. The organization's website includes news devoted to "Foundation Watch",^[25] "Green Watch", ^[26]"Labor Watch",^[27] and "Organization Trends".^[28]

CRC Hosts State Labor Reform Conference

Mary Bottari reports in "Bradley Foundation Bankrolls Attacks on Unions" as part of the Bradley Files investigation,

:{"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.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).[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 corporate bill mill, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).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.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.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.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.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."^[29]}:

Lobbying Efforts

CRC lobbied members of Congress against supporting measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions in 2003. Then-president 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, saying, "The Senate committee findings include exaggerations, misleading statements, out-of-context citations, and reliance on discredited sources."^[30]

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".^[31]

Ties to the Bradley Foundation

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation contributed at least $2.5 million to Capital Research Center from 1998-2015, including $63,000 from the Bradley Impact Fund from 2013-2015. (More funding information available below).

CRC and Richard Berman's Interstate Policy Alliance Consult for Bradley on Right-Wing "Infrastructure" Investments

As Mary Bottari reported in 2017 as part of the Bradley Files investigation, "In 2015, Bradley asked Berman’s (Interstate Policy Alliance) 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... 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."^[32]

Bradley's Barder Fund 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."^[32]

Opposition Research On CMD and the "Left"

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD)'s 2017 expose on the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation revealed that CMD has been a subject of CRC "opposition research."^[33]

From the CMD series:

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.“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).“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).

CRC Hires Former Bradley VP Michael Hartmann

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.^[34] 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.^[35]

An internal email from Hartmann to Bradley CEO Michael Grebe states that CRC President Scott Walter recruited Hartmann: "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."^[36]

Bradley Files
In 2017, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of SourceWatch, launched a series of articles on the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, exposing the inner-workings of one of America's largest right-wing foundations. 56,000 previously undisclosed documents laid bare the Bradley Foundation's highly politicized agenda. CMD detailed Bradley's efforts to map and measure right wing infrastructure nationwide, including by dismantling and defunding unions to impact state elections; bankrolling discredited spin doctor Richard Berman and his many front groups; and more. Find the series here at ExposedbyCMD.org.

Bradley Files

In 2017, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of SourceWatch, launched a series of articles on the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, exposing the inner-workings of one of America's largest right-wing foundations. 56,000 previously undisclosed documents laid bare the Bradley Foundation's highly politicized agenda. CMD detailed Bradley's efforts to map and measure right wing infrastructure nationwide, including by dismantling and defunding unions to impact state elections; bankrolling discredited spin doctor Richard Berman and his many front groups; and more.

Find the series here at ExposedbyCMD.org.

Ties to the Council for National Policy

As of September 2020, CRC's president Scott Walter is a member of the Council for National Policy.

Council for National Policy
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is a secretive, Christian Right organization of funders and activists founded in 1981 by activist Morton Blackwell, commentator Paul Weyrich, direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly and Left Behind author Tim LaHaye. Anne Nelson's book about CNP, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, describes how the organization connects "the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives.” CNP membership as of September 2020 is available here.

Council for National Policy

The Council for National Policy (CNP) is a secretive, Christian Right organization of funders and activists founded in 1981 by activist Morton Blackwell, commentator Paul Weyrich, direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly and Left Behind author Tim LaHaye. Anne Nelson's book about CNP, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, describes how the organization connects "the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives.”

CNP membership as of September 2020 is available here.

Ties to the Coal Industry

CRC has received large donations from pro-fossil fuel groups like Exxon and the Koch Family Foundations through its Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation.^[37] 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."^[38]

Koch Wiki
Charles Koch is the right-wing billionaire owner of Koch Industries. As one of the richest people in the world, he is a key funder of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on Charles Koch and his late brother David include: Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, Stand Together, Koch Family Foundations, Koch Universities, and I360.

Koch Wiki

Charles Koch is the right-wing billionaire owner of Koch Industries. As one of the richest people in the world, he is a key funder of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on Charles Koch and his late brother David include: Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, Stand Together, Koch Family Foundations, Koch Universities, and I360.

Ties to the Tobacco Industry

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.

Ties to Berman and Company

CMD's 2017 expose on the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation revealed that the foundation is helping fund CRC. From the CMD series^[33]:

...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.

CRC paid Berman and Company $132,700 in 2016 for "Web, Communications, and Social Media," according to its annual IRS filing.^[39]

Funding

The Capital Research Center is not required to disclose its funders but major foundation supporters can be found through its IRS filings. Here are some known contributors:

Bradley Impact Fund: $250,500 (2013-2021)
Charles Koch Foundation: $60,888 (2011-2017)
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation: $660,000 (1998-2008)
Diana Davis Spencer Foundation: $600,000 (2015-2021)
Donors Capital Fund: $682,500 (2002-2020)
DonorsTrust: $1,862,271 (2002-2021)
Edward A. & Catherine L. Lozick Foundation: $2,500 (2014)
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund: $91,300 (2018)
Greater Houston Community Foundation: $63,650 (2020)
Jaquelin Hume Foundation: $175,000 (1999-2004)
John William Pope Foundation: $380,000 (1994-2019)
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation: $3,312,500 (1998-2021)
National Philanthropic Trust: $29,000 (2019)
Rodney Fund: $86,000 (1999-2005)
Sarah Scaife Foundation: $3,130,000 (2012-2021)
Searle Freedom Trust: $580,000 (2006-2021)
Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation: $27,000 (2000-2006)
Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program: $26,000 (2016-2018)

Corporate sponsors

ExxonMobil

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. ^[40] According to Exxon's website, the oil company gave another $50,000 in 2007, for "public information and policy research." ^[41]

Core Financials

2021:^[42]

Total Revenue: $6,083,008
Total Expenses: $6,796,944
Net Assets: $10,027,202

Grants Distributed

National Center for Public Policy Research: $135,000

2020:^[43]

---

sw 2 22 all below

Funding

The Capital Research Center is not required to disclose its funders but major foundation supporters can be found through its IRS filings. Here are some known contributors:

Bradley Impact Fund: $120K $119,250 (2013-2018)
Charles:{Koch Foundation: $60,888 (2011-2017)}:
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation: $660,000 (1998-2008)
Donors Capital Fund: $332,500 (2002-2017)
DonorsTrust: $273,150 (2002-2018)
Edward A. & Catherine L. Lozick Foundation: $2,500 (2014)
Jaquelin Hume Foundation: $175,000 (1999-2004)
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation: $2,462,500 million (1998-2018)
Rodney Fund: $86,000 (1999-2005)
Sarah**Scaife**Foundation: $1,830,000 (2012-2018)
Searle Freedom Trust: $255,000 (2006-2018)
Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation: $27,000 (2000-2006)

Corporate sponsors

ExxonMobil

While CRC publications identify corporate funding of what they perceive as liberalnon-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. ^[40] According to Exxon's website, the oil company gave another $50,000 in 2007, for "public information and policy research." ^[41]

...

---

sw 9 22

news and Controversies

CRC Among Several Conservative Nonprofits Funding Climate Science Disinformation Ads on Facebook

In October 2020, a report found that 51 Facebook ads questioning the credibility of climate science had been viewed over 8 million times in the first six months of 2020, despite the social media website's promise to prohibit ads debunked by third-party fact-checking organizations.^[5] Nine right-wing nonprofits, includingCapital Research Center, Clear Energy Alliance, Competitive Enterprise Institute, CO2 Coalition, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Prager University, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Turning Point USA, and Washington Policy Center, collectively spent $42,000 funding these advertisements.^[5]

Criticism of Former Black Lives Matter Fiscal Sponsor Thousand Currents's "Domestic Terrorist" Board Member

Thousand Currents served as the fiscal sponsor of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Project from 2016-2020,^[9] when the Tides Foundation assumed the role.^[10]

"Climate Dollars" Section of CRC Website Disputes Robert Brulle Study and Related Media Coverage

CRC Launches Copy of CMD's Sourcewatch

In December 2017, CRC launched Influence Watch, a version of Center for Media and Democracy’s Sourcewatch focused on the political left-wing.^[21]

:{Influence Watch received $125,000 in support from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, representing over a quarter of the project's budget. Influence Watch is a "signature project" of CRC's president Scott Walker, who worked for Rick Berman's astroturf attack group Berman & Co:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:.:{.}:^[21]

---

1/22 off bS neo-con koch?

BETH BOTTCHER

Philanthropy Officer

KEN BRAUN

Senior Investigative Researcher

KATIE CAGLE

Digital Media Associate

HEATHER CORDASCO

SeniorPhilanthropy Officer

KRISTEN EASTLICK

Senior Vice President

LAURA ELLIOTT

Chief of Staff

KATE FLACK

DevelopmentManager

MICHAEL E. HARTMANN

Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Strategic Giving

CATHERINE HERAVI

Staff Accountant

CHRISTOPHER KRUKEWITT

Chief Financial & Operations Officer

SARAH LEE

Director of Communications and External Relations [lobby? grants?]

HAYDEN LUDWIG

Senior Investigative Researcher

MADELINE MATNEY

Development Associate [fundraiser?]

JON RODEBACK

Managing Editor and Director of Content

ROBERT STILSON

Research Specialist

PARKER THAYER

Research Assistant

DAN THOMPSON

Vice President of Philanthropy & Development

SCOTT WALTER

President

MICHAEL WATSON

Research Director

Fellows

DR. STEVEN J. ALLEN

Distinguished Senior Fellow [wog]

MICHAEL E. HARTMANN

Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Strategic Giving

MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER

Senior Fellow

Board of Trustees

ROBERT E. CHALLEY

Chairman of the Board, The Park Place Group

GORDON CUMMINGS

Philanthropic Advisor

MICHAEL FRANC

The Hoover Institution

HON. EDWIN MEESE III

Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

WILLIAM MEYERSOHN

Real Estate Consultant

ERIC O’KEEFE

Chairman, Citizens for Self-Governance

THOMAS S. WINTER

Editor-in-Chief, Human Events

MARION G. WELLS†

1926-2016

GIL COLLINS

Trustee emeritus. Trustee, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

National Advisory Board

DR. LARRY P. ARNN

President, Hillsdale College

DR. JOHN A. BADEN

Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE)

MIDGE DECTER

Author

CHRISTOPHER LONG

Trustee,Intercollegiate Studies Institute

ADAM MEYERSON

Former President, The Philanthropy Roundtable

KATE O’BEIRNE†

1949-2017

P.J. O’ROURKE

Author and Columnist

DR. WALTER WILLIAMS† keynote spker,

1936-2020 thos sowell, free to choose

As an economist, Walter Williams never got the credit he deserved. His book "Race and Economics" is a must-read introduction to the subject. Amazon has it ranked 5th in sales among civil rights books, 9 years after it was published.

Another book of his, on the effects of economics under the white supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa, was titled "South Africa's War Against Capitalism." He went to South Africa to study the situation directly. Many of the things he brought out have implications for racial discrimination in other places around the world.

ROBERT L. WOODSON, SR.

Founder & President, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise

Payment — Unlike many DC internships, CRC interns are compensated and are paid the DC minimum wage.

Full-Time Work — CRC interns are scheduled to work 37.5 hours each week. (We may be able to accommodate part-time schedules based on circumstances, but please indicate that in your application email.)

Meaningful Projects — CRC interns are assigned high-priority projects, and they are expected to excel in entrepreneurial endeavors.

Networking — Our coveted positions offer an enclave into the thriving world of the conservative movement.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/09/13/maga-group-grooms-members-of-congress-and-their-staff-for-america-first-movement/

CPI hit squad:

CPI has also launched a number of spin-offs to further right-wing causes, including the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), America First Legal, Center for Renewing America, American Cornerstone Institute, American Moment, and the State Freedom Caucus Network.

Staffers Coached in Conservative Oversight

From May 5–6, seven House Republican staffers and three Senate Republican staffers attended an Effective Oversight Training Retreat paid for by AAF and led by CPI, AAF, and the Heritage Foundation—all ostensibly nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organizations.

Attendees participated in six training sessions, according to an agenda obtained by CMD, including on “how to work with legal experts to leverage research and advance conservative priorities in the courts,” “working with outside groups involved in oversight,” and “how to conduct effect research into Presidential appointees and nominees” to “help congressional staff perform proper oversight.”

The latter session was led by AAF’s founder Tom Jones, who is credited with leading GOP opposition to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmationand for sinking the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin for vice chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, among others.

AAF runs the website bidennoms.com,which currently features opposition campaigns against Phillip Washington for administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); Gigi B. Sohn to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); Kalpana Kotagal to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); and Dilawar Syed for deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Kotagal appears to be a top target of AAF, prompting it to create the separate website kalpanakotagal.com, where she is labeled a “radical leftist” who is “poised to weaponize the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with an anti-American agenda.”

SCREENSHOT FROM WWW.KALPANAKOTAGAL.COM

Kotagal is actually an accomplished employment and civil rights plaintiffs’ litigator, perhaps best known for co-authoring the “Inclusion Rider,” a contract provision in Hollywood designed to increase diversity in casting and production staff.

In addition to staffers from CPI, AAF, and Heritage, others from the right-wing Capital Research Center, the Republican Study Committee, and Compass Legal also led training sessions. CPI launched Compass Legal to take “care of things like legal filings” and help nonprofits “to comply with federal tax law so they can keep their nonprofit status,” according to its 2021 Annual Report.

CLIMATE LAWSUITS

Democracy Dies in Dark-Moneyness: Soros Funding Behind Off-Books Congressional “Staff” to Investigate Political Opponents of Climate Agenda

Charles Rotter

It represents a test of principle for the Republican congressional minority, “Dark Money” scold Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, and any elected congressional Democrats who would like to demonstrate their rhetoric…

democracy Dies in Dark-Moneyness: Soros Funding Behind Off-Books Congressional “Staff” to Investigate Political Opponents of Climate Agenda

:{Charles Rotter:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;display:inline-block;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-rendering:auto;padding-right:5px"):}:

68 Comments

From Government Accountability & Oversight

WEBEDITOR

Following up on this story, andrelated complaints filed with congressional ethics watchdog offices, courtesy of **Capital Research Center’s** intrepid Hayden Ludwig we now see that the money behind privately financed congressional investigative staff is coming from none other than George Soros’s Open Society ventures.

Specifically, it appears that $300,000 went from Soros’ c4 (Open Society Policy Institute) to 1630 Fund for Co-Equal Action, with the grant tag, “to support work to enhance congressional effectiveness and oversight”.

Another $282,2000 went to the Hill-support operation courtesy of “eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund Voice in 2019 to ‘provide information and advice that helps members of Congress advance policies and conduct effective oversight.’”

As we now know, thanks to those two ethics complaints and yesterday’s common public right of access lawsuit for records filed against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, et al., that means providing off-books congressional investigators to augment professional staff, improperlyfor any Member or office which partakes, to pursue private party, political opponents.

Which is a donor-dangle to Members to violate not only House Rules but federal law, should they bite. Which House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Ro Khanna has confessed to doing. As all laid out in those complaints. One recipient of which, the House Inspector General, immediately waved off as not being his job. Even though it seems to fall pretty cleanly within his remit of investigating management of House resources.

Democracy dies in dark-moneyness, etc. Note that this money came via Arabella’s c4 umbrella group — a hard core political entity, not some arguably nonpartisan c3 “charity” or public education institution. For a slew of quotes and critiques of the 1630 Fund c4 by WaPo, Politico et al. see CRC’s compilation here. So, we now know that partisan financing of prosecutorial or quasi-judicial activities goes beyond just Soros prosecutors, above-board and legal, orMichael Bloomberg’s scheme planting privately hired activist prosecutors to pursue his agenda through state attorneys general officeswhich falls into a much grayer area. It extends to off-books congressional staff, who represent a facial violation (by Members who partake) of House Rules and federal law.

This operation — hiding in plain sight courtesy of a New York Times rollout piece so clumsily incurious that it never considered the propriety or even legality of what it nonetheless confesses is revolutionary, a “unique approach” now being tried in apparent response to the election of Donald Trump as President — is a pulse-check for the institution of journalism. But, even though it’s people we like, pushing idea we agree with? It represents a test of principle for the Republican congressional minority, “Dark Money” scold Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, and any elected congressional Democrats who would like to demonstrate their rhetoric about good governance is remotely sincere.

ref1

https://capitalresearch.org/article/new-ethics-complaint-soros-funded-arabella-front-helped-democrats-break-congressional-ethics-rules/

big news is developing on the Arabella front.

Last week, the watchdog group Government Accountability & Oversight filed ethics complaints alleging that House Democrats broke a prohibition on private financing of official congressional business, and an Arabella-run “pop-up” group is at the heart of the still-unfolding story.

House Rule 24 prohibits “outside private donations, funds, or in-kind goods or services” to cover the expenses of a congressional office in order to prevent private interests from gaining untoward influence over public affairs.

According to the complaints, however, the Arabella-run group Co-Equal provided in-kind donations to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in the form of donor-provided “consultants” and “progressive” litigators to help House Democrats with a year-long investigation into private parties whose political speech has “frustrated” the Left’s climate action agenda.

In other words, if the complaints are true, a nonprofit helped House Democrats break ethics rules to go after so-called climate deniers standing in the way of a Green New Deal revolution. Not good optics for the supposedly politically neutral Arabella Advisors.

Scheming in the Dark

Arabella Advisors is a for-profit consultancy based in Washington, DC. The company commands a set of four in-house nonprofits that collectively brought in $1.7**:{billion:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:** in 2020 alone—and $4.7 billion since 2006—from left-leaning foundations and donors.

Arabella’s nonprofits run hundreds of “pop-up” groups that are little more than websites masquerading as standalone, grassroots nonprofits. Sometimes they operate in twos: Co-Equal is fiscally sponsored by the 501(c)(3) Hopewell Fund, while its lobbying arm, Co-Equal Action, is run by Arabella’s 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Enter George Soros. A 2018 document reveals the leftist billionaire granted $300,000 to Co-Equal Action via Sixteen Thirty Fund to“support work to enhance congressional effectiveness and oversight”from his 501(c)(4) Open Society Policy Center—almost certainly referring to Co-Equal’s campaign to illegally fund House Democrats’ climate witch hunt.

Add another $282,000 from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund Voice in 2019 to “provide information and advice that helps members of Congress advance policies and conduct effective oversight.”

Tried and True?

This isn’t the first time liberal donors have tried to “help” Congress pursue their climate opponents. In 2019, Michael Bloomberg funded an effort to embed privately funded lawyers into the offices of state attorneys general (AGs) in nine states and the District of Columbia via the Bloomberg-funded State Energy Environmental Impact Center.

Bloomberg’s campaign effectively bypassing legislative budgets with “private mercenaries” engaged in “law enforcement for rent,” according to Chris Horner, a Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow.In Virginia, Republican lawmakersblocked the effort from reaching the Democratic AG in 2019.

Prosecuting Wrongthink

This time around Arabella’s goal appears to be to help the U.S. Justice Department prosecute climate “crimes,” according to the complaints.

As part of his “clean energy revolution,” Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail to “pursue [polluters] to the fullest extent permitted by law and . . . seek additional legislation to hold corporate executives personally responsible—including jail time when merited.”

Jailing dissenters is now “environmental justice,” to use lefty lingo.

Perhaps its Arabella’s liberal donors who should be most wary—the company isn’t so transparent nor trustworthy as it claims. Far from the boutique philanthropy advisors that doesn’t “engage in any kind of legislative activity,” the Arabella network is DC politics incarnate, according to outgoing CEO Sampriti Ganguli.

This is a developing story with more to follow.

Tags: Arabella Advisors, Co-Equal, Democracy Fund Voice, Democratic Party, environmental justice, George Soros, Green New Deal, Hopewell Fund, Open Society Policy Center, Pierre Omidyar, Sixteen Thirty Fund, skeptics

Hayden Ludwig is a Senior Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center. He is also a columnist at the Washington Free Beacon. Ludwig is a native of Orange County, California, and holds a Master’s of Public Policy from George Mason University.

AUTHORED CONTENT

DECEPTION & MISDIRECTION

New Ethics Complaint: Soros-Funded Arabella Front Helped Democrats Break Congressional Ethics Rules

Article on January 25, 2022 by Hayden Ludwig

GREEN WATCH

Forced Electrification: Environmentalists’ War on Consumers

Article on January 24, 2022 by Hayden Ludwig

GREEN WATCH

Forced Electrification: The Stealth War on Your Dishwasher

Article on January 24, 2022 by Hayden Ludwig

GREEN WATCH

:{Forced Electrification:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:: What’s Wrong with Natural Gas?

Article on January 24, 2022 by Hayden Ludwig

GREEN WATCH

Forced Electrification: “Net-Zero Carbon”

Article on January 24, 2022 by Hayden Ludwig

Senior Investigative Researcher

+ SEE ALL CONTENT BY HAYDEN LUDWIG

ref2

[no ital]

https://govoversight.org/records-lawsuit-filed-against-house-leadership-re-use-of-donor-provided-consultants-as-congressional-investigative-staff/

Records Lawsuit Filed Against House Leadership Re: Use of Donor-Provided Consultants as Congressional Investigative Staff

WEBEDITOR In The News, Private Funding of Government

Today, award-winning[new blk p that did not come?] independent journalist Rob Schilling filed a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the Clerk and Chief Administrator of the House of Representatives to exercise the public’s common law right of access to records. Specifically, Schilling’s suit seeks certain described emails, and any Skype and similar recordings and logs, pertaining to the use by two committee chairs of donor-provided consultants as professional staff to perform official business.

This follows the revelation that Congress also had joined in a practice, initiated by Democratic governors and attorneys general with the assistance of major donors after the election of Donald Trump as President, of using privately funded staff to perform official business to advance the “climate” agenda. Public records show budgets for tens of millions of dollars of in-kind gifts to governors in the form of non-employee climate “staff” and media consultants, and that progressive state attorneys general took in donor-hired and -provided prosecutors.

Now, it appears that the House Committee on Oversight & Reform is using donor-provided consultants as staff to guide what Environment Subcommittee Chairman Ro Khanna told activists to expect will be a “year-long” investigation of private parties, already expanded, for political speech that Rep. Khanna believes has frustrated attempts to legislate the agenda.

Scapegoating congressional failures is not a constitutionally permissible use of Congress’s investigative powers — with or without the financial assistance of activist donors. While the constitutionality of this “year-long” investigation is not yet at hand, Schilling was one of two parties filing two complaints with congressional ethics watchdogs over this work, the Inspector General of the House and the Office of Congressional Ethics.

As the complaints noted, the gray area exploited by some governors and AGs is not present here: House Rules and federal law prohibit private financing of the performance of official House business, in-kind or otherwise.

This new congressional investigation began with oil company executives in October but, according to past behavior and recent hints, seems likely to extend soon to others the “climate” industry views as having impeded its desires. A previous AGs’ campaign noted in today’s suit led to subpoenas to over 100 think tanks, scientists, and others also in the name of pursuing energy companies for purported climate-related sins. This blew up on the AGs when the targets challenged the obvious violation of private individuals’ First Amendment rights, thanks to the subpoena battle fought by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The AG leading that charge retreated. However, many of the same AG offices involved in that scheme then brought on attorneys privately hired and placed in their offices by a group created by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg, which offices then resumed the investigations. It has thus become clear that none of these abuses of power, in the name of enormous payouts and massive new governmental authority, were ever truly abandoned.

If anything, they have expanded. The complaint also notes the prospect that the Committee objective is to engineer criminal referrals to the U.S. Department of Justice, in aid of a Biden-Harris campaign promise to engage DoJ on behalf of the climate industry in its lawsuits against private industry. Indeed, the Oversight Chairmen told activists they were eyeing perjury charges against witnesses…a week before any testimony was taken or any questions posed.

Further, however, prompting Schilling’s requests was Committee leadership also letting slip that it had brought in consultants to help guide the campaign, describing them in a way strongly indicating — thanks both to the *New York Times* and the group itself — use of a group funded by Arabella Advisors, the “mothership” behind a Democratic “Dark money juggernaut.”

The suit notes that this expansion of donor-provided climate “staff” comes after previous revelations of a $50 million per year budget request for off-books climate staff for progressive governors by 2020. Then came Bloomberg’s millions to staff up AGs to, e.g., push climate prosecutions that — with ever-changing rationales but a constant demand for hundreds of billions of dollars to be politically distributed — appear to be little more than shakedowns.

Now the spawn of both disgraces prowls the halls of Congress, and in this case there is no room to excuse the behavior which on its face violates 31 U.S. Code § 1342, :{House Rules:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: and ethics requirements/prohibitions (House Rule XXIV and :{official:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: House :{interpretations:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: thereof).

Fortunately, the NYT launched the outside consultants’ effort, hiding it in plain sight with a promotional piece that, tellingly, made no inquiry into what skeptical voices — let alone House Rules or federal law — say about what the Times nonetheless admits (if with understatement) is a “unique approach”. That same article, and the consultants’ website admissions, now tie the hands of the Members of Congress who brought in outside parties on the basis, indeed the confession, that the House did not grant them the level of professional staff the “climate” movement feels it should have to use the power of government to pursue political opponents.

Those opponents have apparently frustrated the “climate” movement beyond the point of caring about rules, a matter which House Inspector General has already declined to examine, about which the Congressional Office on Ethics which has a complaint, and the House Committee on Administration. The latter’s Ranking Minority Member Rodney Davis has already stirred to action out of his own frustration with what he views as coverup by the House leadership.

For now, Schilling’s common law right of access suit seeks to exercise the public’s right to know about this metastasizing of off-books private staffing to Congress, again (as was the case with the AGs) for adjudicative/quasi-judicial matters against private, political opponents.

Plaintiff Robert Schilling hosts The Schilling Show radio program broadcast on Newsradio 1070 and 98.9 FM WINA in Central Virginia, and the founder and editor of a news, analysis, and commentary web site, SchillingShow.com, whose reporting and investigative journalism has been awarded multiple times by the Associated Press and the Virginia Association of Broadcasters, including two “Superior Awards for Best Investigative Reporting” from the Associated Press.

GAO Board Member Matthew D. Hardin filed suit for Schilling, following requests for the records made in November and December 2021, which all of the named defendants ignored.

aha:note that they publicize these dumb free procedural scams (evil b/c use abti-corrput means to help corps fry world] but the exoneration is never spoken of, or comes much later so has no pos effect.

ref3rule 24

https://govoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Complaint-to-House-Inspector-General.pdf

12 pp

January 13, 2022 Mr. Michael Ptasienski Inspector General United States House of Representatives 386 Ford Building Washington, DC 20515-9990 Via Email to: HouseIG@mail.house.gov

Dear Inspector General Ptasienski, We write pursuant to Res. 423, the House Administration Reform Resolution of 1992 amending the Rules of the House of Representatives. As noted by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) (https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF11024.pdf) (emphases added): The House IG is authorized to accept alleged violations of law or misconduct by House employees and to investigate … acceptance of gratuities, mismanagement and waste of funds, conflicts of interest, abuse of authority, theft or abuse of government property, computer crimes, purchase card fraud, improper use of House resources, and violations related to administration of the House. Should the IG receive information outside of its authority, it is to refer the information to other House entities (e.g., the House Ethics Committee), or noncongressional entities (e.g., the Department of Veterans Affairs), as appropriate.

The following information pertains to the use of privately financed or unpaid services and other in-kind support for the performance of official House business. It specifically suggests, in some detail, that outside parties are underwriting the provision of outside professional staff to, at minimum, the House Committee on Oversight & Reform, including specifically for a recently initiated “year-long” investigation that includes subpoenas issued to other private parties. This development, which on its face is in violation of House Rules (XXIV) and ethics requirements, represents the extension of a new but rapidly expanding practice of privately underwriting governmental staff, for “climate” policy and even investigating private parties viewed as impeding advancement of the climate policy agenda. This practice appears to have begun in 2018 when, public records reveal, certain governors’ staff prepared a budget for private underwriting of “climate” staff, off the books, on the express reason that “it can’t always be us staff” staffing elected officials. 1 These aides...

Conclusion

Statements including those made by House Oversight Committee leadership and certain

activists strongly suggest that these new hearings described herein are also privately staffed by

consultants provided to the Oversight Committee for this purpose by private donors. The website

of certain parties described by Chairman Khanna, and news coverage hailing the “unique”

provision by at least one of the sources for these consultants, further supports this conclusion.

As with the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ now-infamous Operation “Crossfire

Hurricane,”31 here the public has reason to be concerned that privately afforded consultants

played a role in engineering compelled testimony and subpoenas to private parties,[gun sellers?!] in what is

apparently the first of a “year-long” series of such endeavors targeting political opponents with

the partial staffing by outside, donor-provided consultants,possibly without properly contracting

with and disclosing the relationship as required by law or attestation that the volunteers serve

“without compensation from any source”, or, alternately, neither obtaining approval of nor

posting the required consultant agreements.

For the reasons set forth above we respectfully suggest your office investigate the

propriety or impropriety of the activities described above.

Government Accountability & Oversight32 Robert Schilling33

info@govoversight.org schilling@allhookedup.com

cc: Theodore E. Deutch, Chairman

House Committee on Ethics

1015 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Congresswoman Jackie Walorski, Ranking Minority Member

1015 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

House Committee on Administration

Zoe Lofgren, Chair

1309 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

2x?

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11921/%E2%80%9Cenergy-depth%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-reporters%E2%80%99-guide-its-founding-funding-and-flacks

no lnx grafix

"Energy In Depth" – A Reporters' Guide to Its Founding, Funding, and Flacks

Submitted by Lisa Graves onDecember 28, 2012

What is Energy In Depth, really? EID describes itself as "a research, education and public outreach campaign focused on getting the facts out" about hydraulic fracturing, widely known as "fracking." It's a website created by a trade group for the gas industry -- the "Independent Petroleum Association of America" (IPAA) -- and a public relations firm.

Exponentially Increasing Natural Gas Exports

In short, IPAA/EID is a PR operation for the industry's multi-billion dollar financial interests in "unconventional" drilling for what is popularly known as "natural gas." Although this expanded drilling is often described as essential to our "national security," the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch has shown that the industry is increasingly exporting gas to be sold in other countries. IPAA/EID's PR efforts pay special attention to the "Marcellus shale" gas that lies deep beneath the surface in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and neighboring states, which constitutes a lucrative market for multi-national firms and their domestic counter-parts to exploit.

IPAA/EID's "about" page says its "supporting members" are state associations of gas producers. It displays their logos, instead of the global corporations that launched it.

What the logos cloak -- in classic PR sleight of hand -- are the larger interests behind the IPAA/EID operation.

It has been described by some in the press as merely a "pro-drilling group" (in contrast with "anti-drilling" groups or citizens), but here's how IPAA described EID in a leaked internal memo from 2009, obtained by DeSmogBlog last year. IPAA privately told its allies that EID was its new "online resource center to combat new environmental regulations," created with funding from Shell, BP, Chevron, and more.

In other words, IPAA/EID is more accurately described as a front group launched by global gas companies in order to fight a public relations battle against new environmental protections on fracking.

Behind IPAA/EID: Some of the Biggest Corporations in the World

The leaked IPAA memo reveals that the EID campaign was created through the "financial commitments" of some of the biggest companies (with some of the worst environmental records) on the planet. To wit:

Shell, which is the second largest company in the world in terms of revenue, with income of almost a half a trillion dollars in 2011: $470 billion, just behind Exxon. Royal Dutch Shell is a Dutch company registered in London. In 2010, Shell bought "East Resources," which had gas holdings in Pennsylvania and nearby, for $4.7 billion. Shell's environmental record includes the largest fresh water spill of oil in the world (in 1999 in Argentina), a major oil spill near Alaska in 1988, and numerous spills in the Niger delta in Africa. (East Resources' founder, Terry Pegula, and his wife gave at least $300,000 to Tom Corbett's campaign for governor of Pennsylvania.)

BP, which is the sixth largest company in the world in terms of revenue, with revenue of $375 billion in 2011. BP is a British oil and gas company, which took over two US companies, Amoco and ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company) about a decade ago. Last month, BP and three of its employees were indicted on criminal charges, including manslaughter and obstruction of Congress, in connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and it also agreed to pay a $4 billion fine related to the disaster. (And, although many are unaware of it, BP's decisions also made the Exxon Valdez disaster worse.)

Chevron, which is a U.S. company that is the tenth largest in the world in terms of revenue, with income of $253 billion in 2011. Last year, Chevron obtained gas leases for over a million acres, plus hundreds of thousands of acres of development rights, from smaller companies like Chief Oil & Gas. Chevron and other companies have been sued for damaging our environment through the use of the MTBE gasoline additive that has contaminated water and soil. (Chief's CEO, Trevor Rees-Jones, has been active in politics, giving at least two million dollars to Karl Rove's Crossroads operations.)

The Corporations that Helped Launch EID

Another corporation whose funding helped launch IPAA/EID is XTO Energy, which became a subsidiary of ExxonMobil in 2010. XTO was a billion-dollar Fortune 500 company that became the largest producer of natural gas in the US after it acquired Hunt Petroleum for $4.2 billion in 2008. ExxonMobil is the largest company in the world, with revenue of $486 billion in 2011. (Exxon's environmental record includes the notorious Exxon Valdez disaster, and it has spent millions of dollars over the years funding groups that front industry propaganda, as documented by Greenpeace.)

Other corporations whose funding helped launch IPAA/EID include two Canadian gas companies, EnCana and Talisman, plus Occidental Petroleum (California's largest gas producer) and Marathon (now Marathon Oil Corporation, which also has major interests in gas).

Other IPAA/EID funders include Schlumberger, the world's largest petroleum field services company, which began long ago as a French firm but has been headquartered in Texas for many years. The IPAA memo also lists Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil field services companies, which helped pioneer "proprietary" fracking fluids and whose Energy Services Group is involved in supporting fracking activities. (Halliburton recently settled a criminal corruption case alleging bribery by its then-CEO, Dick Cheney, and a former subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), in connection with its natural gas operations in Nigeria.)

IPAA/EID was also launched with the financial support of the American Petroleum Institute (API), a non-profit trade group that represents many of these same interests. API had revenue of over $181 million in 2010 from "membership dues" from corporations and other sources, and it spent one-third of its income on the Edelman PR firm. According to its IRS Form "990," API gave nearly $200,000 to IPAA for "energy education" between 2008 and 2010.

Another IPAA/EID funder mentioned in the IPAA memo is Anadarko Petroleum Company, which has gas wells in Pennsylvania and Texas. Anadarko owned a 25% stake in the Deepwater Horizon, with BP, Halliburton, and others.

Military Counter-Insurgency Manual]

Anadarko made the news on fracking last year after its Public Affairs Manager, Matt Carmichael, promoted the use of military "psyops" in Pennsylvania communities to combat "an insurgency" of citizens concerned about fracking (as recorded by Sharon Wilson of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project). IPAA/EID's Chris Tucker tried to spin those comments by claiming they were meant as a joke, despite all evidence to the contrary. Carmichael is a former senior communications guy for KBR, which was a subsidiary of war contractor Halliburton.

None of these major for-profit companies or API -- the financial underwriters that launched IPAA/EID -- are listed on the campaign's website or in its description of its supporters.

IPAA/EID Targets the Park Foundation While Keeping Its Corporate Funders Secret

IPAA/EID has been on the attack against critics of the fracking that is so lucrative for its secretive financial backers.

Here's a recent example of its disinformation: the Capital Research Center (CRC) -- itself part of the CEO-fueled echo chamber -- quoted EID's flack Tom Shepstone this month implying that the Park Foundation spent more than $17 million helping to oppose fracking in just one year. Wrote CRC: "In 2009, the Park Foundation had net assets of $246 million and spent $23 million, which included $17.6 million in grants and contributions to green groups opposed to fracking, according to Shepstone," a Pennsylvanian whose official title is "Campaign Director" for EID's "Northeast Marcellus Initiative."

But, as reported earlier this year, the Park Foundation's public filings show that only a fraction of that amount was spent on grants for projects to educate the public about fracking. The total for 2009 was approximately $700,000, which is 1/25th of what Shepstone claimed. In contrast, the industry's biggest trade group, API, spends over a $180 million a year on its entire budget, including tens of millions of dollars on PR.

This is not the first time Shepstone has had trouble with numbers. In 2000, a court approved his federal bankruptcy after he and his wife racked up more than $725,000 in debt as compared with their assets -- described as a house on five acres (valued at $125,000), a new car loan for a Chevy S-10 Blazer, and $200 worth of clothes, although he attested that they made almost $90,000 annually a few years earlier -- with some personal debt including some debt related to his businesses, described as "Shepstone Management Corp." in Honesdale and "North Country Farm and Gardens Corp.," at 160 Roosevelt Highway in Waymart. They were also subject to an IRS tax lien for more than $20,000 in unpaid taxes attributed to "Tom Shepstake" and his wife in 1996, a claim that was later settled. Americans do, of course, have the right to declare bankruptcy when their financial calculations go awry and get a second chance, like Shepstone.

CRC used Shepstone's recent math on Park to buttress the absurd thesis that "Environmentalists often depict themselves as scrappy underdogs fighting the power of entrenched special interests. But the case of the Marcellus Shale -- and the untold energy resources that could be recovered safely by new drilling technology such as fracking -- pits 'the little guy' against powerful 'green' forces such as the Park Foundation and the Natural Resources Defense Council."

Park Foundation grants]

Like IPAA/EID,CRC keeps many of its big funders secret, although foundation filings show that its funders have included the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the family foundation of the CEO of the multi-billion dollar Koch Industries -- which in turn is led by Charles and his brother David Koch and is one of the richest privately held gas, oil, and chemical companies in the world. Koch Industries has reaped undisclosed profits from ventures benefiting from expanded fracking, such as from the lower cost of the natural gas used as a feeder to make its fertilizer by Koch Nitrogen, one of the Koch companies.

Only in the distorted worldview of CRC does an industry made up of some of the most profitable corporations in the history of the world -- ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Koch Industries, Halliburton, and more -- get portrayed as "the little guy" fighting for fracking against a putative Goliath in the form of the Park Foundation.

In contrast to Shepstone's dramatically inflated figures, "[s]ince 2008, the foundation has given at least $2.8 million to groups and publications fighting shale drilling," according to EnergyWire. That cumulative spending is less than a quarter of what Shepstone claimed the Park Foundation spent in one year alone.

But such efforts to discredit the growing grassroots movement of citizens concerned about fracking -- such as by insinuating that it's all about "buckets of money" from Park, according to Shepstone -- are particularly deceptive when made by operations like CRC and IPAA/EID, which don't disclose the identities of their major funders such as the for-profit businesses that paved the way for EID's campaign.

Uncloaking the Revenue Stream of IPAA's PR Machine

Because EID was created as an operation within the IPAA, it does not file its own IRS Form 990 tax form, and so its true revenues and expenses are hidden from public view.

What is known is that, in 2010, IPAA had revenue of more than $8 million ($8,714,606) and spent almost the same. This revenue and expense rate is relatively consistent with the two preceding years.

IPAA is described as a trade association organized under 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code. It shares space and staff with its "IPAA Educational Foundation" (IPAAEF), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, which means that in general contributions to the latter can be counted as a charitable tax deduction by its donors. IPAAEF has annual revenue of almost a half million dollars a year, and it reports paying a "management fee" to IPAA of a little more than $200,000 a year. IPAAEF describes its activities as including grants to fund students "as interns at petroleum companies." According to its Form 990, one of IPAAEF's main activities each year appears to be its "Wildcatters Ball," which cost $227,270 in 2010.IPAA also hosts an annual golf tournament that costs almost $200,000.

IPAA has assets worth over $8 million, as of the end of 2010. It invested about $6.5 million of this in publicly traded securities. It did not disclose the identities of these stocks or bonds and whether any of its investments are related to the gas industry. In 2010, it reported investment income of about $215,000.

IPAA at NASDAQIPAA was also listed in a publicly filed licensing agreement in 2002 between the FBR Family of Funds and the "IPAA Energy Index." According to that agreement, "the FBR/IPAA Energy Index Fund is a series of a registered open-end management investment company whose objective is to track the price and yield performance of publicly-traded common stocks of companies represented by the IPAA Energy Index. The Fund is a no-load mutual fund, and its assets are invested by FBR Fund Advisers, Inc." There is little public information about what happened under that agreement or whether or not IPAA has other relationships with investment funds or groups speculating on fracking. It has showcased presentations on capital investment in fracking featuring information from investment bankers like Goldman Sachs.

As a non-profit organization, IPAA's tax benefits under the federal tax code are predicated on it not being "organized for profit and no part of the net earnings of which [can] inure[] to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual." There is no public information indicating whether or not any of its employees invested in the FBR Fund or other energy funds, stocks or other investment vehicles, or whether it has any policy barring its employees from such investments or land speculation in fracking regions. It has no published conflict-of-interest policy on this issue, but there is no legal requirement that it adopt one (other than for conflicts involving payments from the non-profit entity to people related to principals in the organization).

In 2010, IPAA received $3.8 million from membership dues and most of the remainder of its $8 million budget from program fees for nearly two dozen conferences a year. IPAA's annual dues for gas companies are calculated on a sliding scale based on the "Barrel of Oil Equivalents" (BOE) and range from $4,000 to $60,000 per year depending on whether a company's BOE is under 750,000 or more than 50 million BOE. By reference, Anadarko Petroleum, a funder of IPAA/EID that is described as one of the world's largest oil and gas exploration firms, "had production of 206 million BOE" as of 2008.

Companies that pay these dues can deduct 65% of them as business expenses; 35% of the dues are considered lobbying expenses. In 2010, IPAA reports that it spent $1.3 million on lobbying and political expenditures. IPAA also has a related "527"-type organization involved in political campaigns, called the "IPAA Wildcatters Fund," which had $542,639 in receipts in the run up to the 2012 elections. IPAA also told the IRS in 2010 that it had "joined forces with the Business Industry Political Action Committee," whose slogan used to be "Electing Business to Congress" and is now "Powering Business Political Success."

Who Leads IPAA/EID and for How Much?

The portion of IPAA's annual revenues or expenses that fund its EID campaign is not disclosed.

What is known is that in 2010, IPAA paid its president, Barrett (Barry) Russell, more than one-half million dollars in total compensation ($511,000 and a promise of health insurance for him and his wife for life). Russell was elected president of the IPAA in 2000. He also has seat on the board of the Business Industry Political Action Committee and the National Energy Education Development Project. He's been IPAA's "chief legal and financial officer since 1988 and an officer of IPAA's educational foundation since its inception." He previously worked for the EPA, and he also worked for consulting firms, such as Booz, Allen and Hamilton, specializing in mergers and acquisitions.

IPAA paid another nearly one million dollars in total compensation for its next five highest paid employees combined (who each earn over $200,000 a year). This list includes Lee Fuller and Jeff Eshelman, who are specifically listed on the EID website as part of the EID team.

Fuller, a chemical engineer, is IPAA's Vice President of Government Relations, and he is listed on the website as EID's "Executive Director." He began working for IPAA in 1998 after working as a lobbyist for the gas industry for 12 years following an eight-year job staffing the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, where he handled rules on drilling fluids, wells, and Superfund sites. Eshelman is also a Vice President for IPAA and has served as its spokesman for a number of years.

Big Raises

In 2010, these and other IPAA executives got big raises, including a raise of more than $60,000 for the president. The salary increases for other IPAA executives that year ranged from $21,000 per year to $53,000 per year.

There is no information in IPAA's 2010 public tax filings about what the 13 other staffers listed on its EID campaign website are paid per year because only the top highest paid staffers are required to be disclosed (and also some of the EID team are recent hires). There also appears to be no publicly posted conflict-of-interest rule in this field that would require the disclosure of any fracking-related stock or real property holdings that would benefit from limiting restrictions on fracking by any IPAA/EID team member.

Shining a Spotlight on the IPAA/EID Marcellus Team

According to the leaked memo from IPAA, EID's reason for being is to serve as a "major initiative to respond to . . . attacks" on fracking and amplify "coordinated messages." Although IPAA/EID's reach is nationwide, one area where it appears to be particularly aggressive is Pennsylvania, through the blogging and outreach of Tom Shepstone.

Shepstone is described as the Campaign Leader of the EID Marcellus team. Before joining IPAA/EID, Shepstone worked primarily as a consultant writing reports for towns about land planning, at taxpayer expense. Even before he became the gas industry's campaigner in the region, he was apparently recommending industry-friendly land use rules, such as including a so-called "right to mine" in recommendations, expressly urging towns not to interfere with the development of natural gas, and not including recommendations for extra setback distances from property lines for industrial activities versus other structures. Shepstone was previously an IACP certified planner, which has conflict-of-interest rules, but he has said that he stopped paying dues and was not dropped by the American Planning Association.

In the period between his bankruptcy and his public association with IPAA/EID last year, Shepstone was often quoted in the press with the description "local businessman." He also wrote online comments praising right-wing diatribes. For example, he gave the highest review to the book, "The Red Decade: the Classic Work on Communism in America During the Thirties," which he said provided "[g]reat insights for those who recognize we are reliving the 1930s," and showed how those with a "liberal/leftist" mindset are prone to be "manipulated by totalitarian thugs."

Right-Wing Screed Endorsed by Shepstone

In another public review, Shepstone gave the highest marks to "The Liberal Mind: the Psychological Causes of Political Madness," which he said would help readers "completely understand how Obama thinks" and explains the president as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton "in their totality." He also claimed that reading this and Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" -- a favorite boogeyman of right-wing talk show hosts -- would help "predict" President Obama's actions. The "Liberal Mind" book endorsed by Shepstone actually claims repeatedly that embracing progressive values is a mental disorder that is "the product of psychopathology," which undermines "the ability of families to raise children to be self-reliant" and "threatens to destroy the West's greatest achievement: the American dream of civilized liberty."

Given Shepstone's warm embrace of such fringe views, it is not entirely surprising that the IPAA/EID Marcellus website for the campaign he leads takes pains to try to score right-wing points in claiming that "the shale 'revolution' in the United States is impacting our 'friends' in Russia and Iran." It is also unsurprising that some of Shepstone's writings for IPAA/EID refer derisively to his fellow citizens exercising their fundamental First Amendment rights. To take a few recent examples of the tenor of his remarks, he put down an advocate asking serious and legitimate questions about the consequences of fracking in the community as an "aging activist seeking relevance in a modern world" and he also derided a community protest of 150 citizens as "a pathetic failure."

But, beyond his apparent animosity toward progressives and other concerned Americans, it is Shepstone's claims that are particularly astonishing. Here's a sampling of his disinformation sound bites:

"Hydrofracking Improves Water Quality!" – When Shepstone made this claim at a public meeting, he was met with a spontaneous burst of laughter in disbelief, but he claimed it was true because more wells will be tested due to fracking than are currently monitored. In claiming fracking improves water quality, Shepstone conveniently ignores the millions of gallons of fresh water contaminated in the process of fracking each well, resulting in waste water whose "brine" is not even recommended for use on roads because of the risk of ground water contamination. He also ignores concerns that the water may become contaminated with dissolved radium due to the radioactive uranium rock in the region, requiring additional treatment, among other concerns that have been raised across the country about the potential for contamination of America's precious aquifers and the spoiling of Americans' wells.

"Natural gas produces water rather than depleting it" – Shepstone made this claim apparently based on the fact that burning methane gas or heating wet gas releases water vapor, and water is a heavier molecule than methane, but his claim ignores the fact that millions of gallons of fresh water are being pumped from aquifers and rivers to be spoiled with each fracking well, and the industry is banking on drilling thousands and thousands of such wells in the region.

"There is no evidence the development of this resource will damage the environment . . . but plenty of evidence the farm and the woods can be saved with it" – This Shepstone claim is predicated on the notion that rural land can require money for property taxes to maintain, which he says gas leasing revenue will aid, but his claim ignores the effect of industrialization on farms, parks, and rivers, which has been documented by Oscar-nominee Josh Fox and others. Shepstone's claim also ignores other documented environmental hazards from fracking, including the venting of unprocessed methane gas and other carcinogens associated with fracking (as documented in the video at the link).

"Hydraulic Fracturing Is An Open Book" – Shepstone pushed the idea that fracking fluid "is an open book" because some of the chemicals in it have been revealed, even as he sought to minimize concerns about what secret chemicals are in dozens of pounds of ingredients used in each well that companies keep secret under the claim that they are "proprietary," chemicals he says are basically harmless jellies. Because the blend of secret chemicals is proprietary and varies by manufacturer he cannot actually prove his assertion, but that's no deterrent. He also fails to mention that IPAA has lobbied to keep such chemicals secret by opposing the closing of the "Halliburton loophole," -- legislation that was mentioned in the IPAA's leaked memo discussing the need for its EID campaign. (Similarly, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has also pushed for so-called state "disclosure" rules sought by Exxon to keep certain chemicals used in fracking secret from the public, as reported by the New York Times.)

These are just some of Shepstone's many claims on behalf of IPAA/EID. Curiously, but on a much more minor note, he has also written online comments pushing pro-fracking claims sometimes citing as his location towns other than where he actually resides in Pennsylvania.

Shepstone is not the only writer/speaker for IPAA/EID in Pennsylvania; he's just its most visible one. And, his trade group's pro-fracking campaign has many components in its efforts to persuade the public and discredit critics of fracking. For example, IPAA/EID has disseminated attacks on Fox's Oscar-nominated documentary, "Gasland," and his latest film, "The Sky Is Pink." IPAA/EID is also currently promoting its "Truthland" video, complete with a stand-alone website that lists both the EID and IPAA logos as if they were separate entities.

The IPAA/EID Glass House

Still, there is no doubt that Shepstone and IPAA/EID seem obsessed with both Fox and the Park Foundation. Well before Shepstone's most recent spinning of the foundation's grant numbers in a way that inflates the amount of grants for projects on fracking by combining it with the amounts in support of environmental organizations and other groups,Shepstone was attacking Park and its directors in others ways.

At one point, he even made the baseless claim that the foundation was wrongly engaged in "significant political activity," which he defined as "funding opponents of hydro-fracking." Although both his math and his analysis of federal tax law are way out of whack, one of the flaws is his contention that supporting research and public education about the risks of fracking is somehow impermissibly "political," while he ignores the manifold activities by pro-fracking non-profit entities on his side attempting to prevent new laws -- which is one of the very objectives mentioned in the leaked IPAA memo. In his attacks on Park and its grantees (which operate under 501(c)(3) rules allowing for a small percentage of lobbying or which may have separate 501(c)(4) arms to allow for more lobbying and different rules for prospective donors), Shepstone is simply not a credible source for reporters or others on U.S. tax and lobbying laws.

Example of an academic close ties to industry

Moreover, in a feat of astounding hypocrisy, Shepstone attempts to discredit research he claims is supported by an organization that has no financial stake in the outcome of such research, while regularly echoing industry-friendly research and claims shaped by the very interests that have the most to gain from distorting information, the industry he really serves. Meanwhile, investigators have uncovered yet more instances of purportedly independent studies by academics connected to the for-profit fracking industry, as with reports that a University of Texas professor, Robert Chase -- whose studies claimed that "fracking was safe for groundwater" -- had allegedly "pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Texas natural gas developer."

Shepstone has even attempted to defend his own bias by asserting that he held the same views about fracking before he started working on behalf of the industry. Such views are not created in a vacuum, however, and were likely shaped by the natural gas industry's PR machine for which he now works.

In his effort to smear Park and those concerned with fracking, Shepstone sidesteps the proliferation of non-profit groups that peddle pro-fracking claims, as exposed by Dory Hippauf. Beyond IPAA/EID, these include API (which has launched front groups called "Energy Citizens" and "EnergyNation"), the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the Ohio Shale Coalition, America's Natural Gas Alliance, the Center for Liquified Natural Gas, energy Tomorrow, EnergyfromShale.org, energyNow!, EnergyAnswered, LNGfacts.org, SecureOurFuels.org, Oilindependents.org, the Consumer Energy Alliance, Vote4Energy.org, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), the Institute for Energy Research (IER), and others.

Back of the AEA and AFP Bus

Some of these groups work together on campaigns. AEA, for example, joined in a bus tour with David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) to influence voters about fracking under the jobs frame frequently spouted by Shepstone.Due to inadequate public disclosure requirements, however, it is difficult to know who helped fund that tour besides Koch through his financial support for AFP, which he helped found and helps lead. This is just one of many ways pro-fracking groups coordinate and amplify common messages. They have even had overlapping public relations staff, as with IPAA/EID's Chris Tucker, a former GOP congressional staffer who has been described as a Senior Vice President at Financial Dynamics, as the "managing director of FTI Consulting and as team lead for Energy In Depth." For a time, Tucker was publicly listed as handling communications for both IPAA/EID and IER, "using the same phone number for both," according to DeSmogBlog's research.

Of course, according to the leaked IPAA memo, one of the goals for EID was "coordinated messages."

But, Shepstone is relatively silent on such matters and on how his public messages help facilitate that goal.

Because entities like IPAA/EID, AEA, API, and AFP are not required to disclose their expenditures with the kind of detail that a grant-making foundation is, it is simply not possible to calculate the true amount of money these various non-profit groups are spending advancing the positions of the gas industry. Although their cumulative budgets amount to well over two hundred million dollars a year, the portion funded to support fracking or attack those concerned about fracking is unknown.

But it is clear that the Park Foundation is not a for-profit corporation that would benefit financially from the success of efforts to raise awareness about the risks of expanded fracking. Conversely, the multi-billion dollar corporations and/or some of the wealthy CEOs whose foundations fund organizations like IPAA/IED, CRC, and AFP do have a financial stake in advancing fracking with the least amount of regulation possible, regardless of what may be in the best interests of the public in protecting American families' health and their access to safe drinking water and clean air in the decades ahead.

After all, fracking is big business, as IPAA/EID's Shepstone regularly stresses.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/16/alec-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/

an “Academy” for state lawmakers on voter suppression strategies run by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in July featured a veritable who’s who of the right-wing leaders behind this year’s disinformation campaign about voter fraud and assaults on voting rights across the country, documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) show.

While the July 26-28 session was ostensibly led by the dark money group Honest Elections Project, it was organized, hosted, and bankrolled by ALEC, despite repeated claims by its CEO, Lisa Nelson, that the group does not work on voting issues.

Nelson provided the formal welcome at the conference’s opening session, ALEC staff organized turnout, and ALEC provided two nights of accommodations at the five-star Grand America Hotel, five meals, and a $450 travel reimbursement for attendees. ALEC’s annual meeting was held at the same hotel immediately after the Academy.

An invite published by CMD in July stated that “13 legislators from across the country” would be in attendance, but the materials acquired by CMD do not include an attendance list.

Rather than email materials to ALEC lawmakers that may be subject to open records laws, ALEC distributed hard copies of the agenda at registration along with a “zip drive containing a resources document and a one-pager on your state’s election policies,” according to an email from Sarah Wall, ALEC’s manager of legislative outreach and coalitions, obtained by CMD. Wall’s email also lists Michael Bowman, president of ALEC Action, as a key contact for the event.

Nelson tipped her hand about ALEC’s voter suppression subterfuge in May at a meeting of the far-right Council for National Policy. Video of the event obtained by CMD shows Nelson speaking frankly about ALEC’s work on voting and revealing its plans to outsource model policy on the controversial topic to avert the spotlight. “We don’t have model policy. We will be developing that at the Honest Elections Project [Academy], through them,” Nelson said.

Honest Elections Project, the group ALEC chose to carry the ball on its voting agenda, is a dark money operation formed in February 2020 to push for voting restrictions and spread baseless and dangerous claims about election fraud, laying the groundwork for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. It is a project of The 85 Fund, the new legal name for the Judicial Education Project, a group linked to Leonard Leo that played a central role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges.

Speakers at the Academy featured many of the key strategists and leaders on the Right spreading misinformation around voter fraud, promoting Trump’s lies around the 2020 election, and pushing sweeping new voting restrictions.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita gave the keynote address. A proponent of Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, Rokita recently testified in front of the U.S. Senate against strengthening the federal Voting Rights Act.

Rokita was one of only four state attorneys general to not sign a National Association of Attorneys General letter condemning the Jan. 6 violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA was a member of the “March to Save America” coalition that organized the Jan. 6 rally, and its policy arm, Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robocalls urging supporters to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”

Agenda Focused on Election Legislation

Most of the Academy sessions focused on legislation, giving legislators a chance to discuss bills to restrict voting that have already been introduced and passed in their states this year and hear from Republican-aligned leaders about what more they think needs to be done.

By the time ALEC held its voter suppression Academy in July, 18 states had already passed 30 laws this year making it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Honest Elections Project’s Executive Director Jason Snead, who worked with ALEC to organize the event, laid out “priorities for election integrity across the states” and polling results in a breakfast session and appeared on another panel on how to “shore up” legislative control over election processes with Jason Torchinsky and Lee Goodman.

The Honest Elections Project has aggressively promoted a radical legal theory called the “independent state legislatures doctrine,” which holds that state courts don’t have the authority to review state election laws and would empower heavily gerrymandered state legislatures to determine election outcomes.

Republican legislators have already introduced and passed bills in 2021 “interfering with nonpartisan local election administration and consolidating power to administer and determine elections results themselves,” the Voting Rights Lab reported.

Snead is a former senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation where he developed its Election Fraud Database, which the Brennan Center for Justice says “grossly exaggerated” the extent of voter fraud.

Torchinsky is general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trust and has been defending ALEC against CMD’s state complaints alleging that ALEC illegally gave sophisticated voter management campaign software linked to the Republican National Committee to its legislative members.

Goodman is an elections attorney and a former Republican chairman and commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2013 and 2018.

Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, and Ken Blackwell, executive director of the MAGA voter suppression center at America First Policy Institute led another legislative session on “securing absentee ballots.”

Anderson bragged to Heritage donors in April that policies, “severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes” and “preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters” were among recommendations Heritage gave Georgia for its massive voter suppression bill.

Blackwell’s Center for Election Integrityrecently published a “Top 25 Common-Sense State Election Integrity Reforms” fact sheet that includes these Heritage recommendations alongside other extreme voter suppression wish-list items, such as eliminating no-excuse absentee ballots and requiring an affidavit for absentee applications.

Blackwell also moderated a panel at the Academy with state legislators “discussing election challenges they’ve faced in their own states.”

Another panel over breakfast covered “things to consider with implementation of laws” related to election day voter registration, “election observer protections,” and organizing seniors to work the polls. Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Donald Palmer, a Trump appointee, and Cleta Mitchell, chair of the Conservative Partnership Institute’s Election Integrity Network, led the session.

Mitchell is a Big Lie fueler and Trump legal advisor who lost her job at Foley & Lardner following news that she participated in a January call in which Trump asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to make him the winner of the state’s electoral votes.

“On Dec. 30, Cleta Mitchell wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud,” The Washington Post Magazine reported. Meadows is now a colleague of Mitchell’s at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Three Republican secretaries of state, Tennessee’s Tre Hargett, Kentucky’s Michael Adams, and West Virginia’s Mac Warner, spoke on a panel about “what policies the states need to employ to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

“Easier to vote and harder to cheat” has been a favored talking point of Republicans in recent years.

All three are active in the Republican Secretaries of State Committee (RSSC), with Hargett serving as chair and Adams as vice chair. Republican secretaries of state produced a report on “Best Practices for Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat” for the Republican State Leadership Committee, obtained by CMD.

The RSSC holds monthly calls that Commissioner Palmer often attends. Secretary Warner and Palmer also participated in an “off-the-record” Election University session on June 21 as part of the U.S. House GOP’s “Faith in Elections Project,” as first reported by CMD.

ALEC Lawmakers Consider Litigation

ALEC’s Academy featured two panels on litigation. The first dealt with “anticipating challenges to the Voting Rights Act in Arizona,” legal challenges mounted by Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias, and redistricting fights, and was led by with Republican lawyers Torchinsky, Michael Thielen, and Brian Barnes.

Thielen is the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association and served on the national board of Lawyers for Trump in 2020. Barnes was involved in legal challenges to changes in voting procedures in North Carolina and Pennsylvania last fall.

Goodman and Utah’s former Solicitor General Tyler Green led the second panel on “operationalizing litigation challenges.” Noted in the description of the panel are “ways to challenge the scope of litigation attacks on new election integrity legislation (defense) as well as advance the ball on election integrity (offense).”

As of Oct. 3, “at least 43 voting cases have been filed in 12 states, and Georgia and Texas lead the way with ten new lawsuits each in 2021,” the Brennan Center reports.

Training Sessions on “the Left”

Two trainings focused on “the Left” filled out the remaining agenda at the ALEC Academy. Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow and manager of the Heritage Foundation’s “Election Reform Initiative,” and Ken Cuccinelli, former Trump staffer and chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, led a session focused on “the Left’s attack on our election system” through “state-level attacks on election integrity legislation” and HR 1, the sweeping voting rights and campaign reform bill pending in Congress....Spakovsky, who was appointed by Trump to his voter fraud myth from the Right for well over a decade.president of the Scott Walter gave the keynote for a “Mapping the Left Lunch.” Walter and CRC received funding from the Bradley Foundation... ;inspired by CMD’s SourceWatch, called “Influence Watch.” The site was “constructed in partnership with Berman and Company,” run by PR spin doctor Richard Berman, and in collaboration with ALEC.

https://www.influencewatch.org/about-us/

// discover the networks

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/capital-research-center-employee-favorite-source-for-white-nationalist-smear-campaign-against-ahmaud-arbery/

hite nationalists are championing a Capital Research Center employee who is at the forefront of an attempt to justify the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man killed by two white men while jogging earlier this year.

Ashley Rae Goldenberg, an investigative reporter at CRC, has gained newfound attention from the far-right by taking part in an effort to smear Arbery and downplay his death after the Georgia Bureau of Investigationarrested father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael on charges of murder and aggravated assault last week. Goldenberg has advanced the idea that Arbery’s killers were justified in shooting him dead in the street, even going so far as to suggest that the government’s arrest of the two men was part of “race war” she claims has been playing out in the United States “for decades.” How Goldenberg has reacted to Arbery’s death fits a pattern: far-right actors have long attempted to demonize black victims of violent crimes that have received national outrage.

The lethal actions of the McMichaels against Arbery have been described as vigilantism by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia and other civil rights groups. On the day that the GBI arrested the two white men—months after they admitted to Arbery’s killing—Goldenberg tweeted, “Vigilantism is good, actually.”

Capital Research Center, Goldenberg’s employer, is a decades-old Beltway operation research outfit that targets nonprofit organizations it perceives to be liberal or anti-conservative, actively discouraging contributions to those groups. (Full disclosure: People for the American Way, Right Wing Watch’s parent organization, has been among CRC’s targets.) The right-wing operation, which has dubbed itself “America’s investigative think tank,” is funded largely by conservative megadonors and dark-money groups, including the behemoth Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Its work, which includes a digital encyclopedia of liberal groups called Influence Watch and a handful of publications that take aim at liberal causes, is often cited in conservative media and the group is frequently present at major right-wing events such as the Conservative Political Action Conference. One CRC project, Dangerous Documentaries, contributed $500,000 to the production of “No Safe Spaces,” a film starring comedian Adam Carolla and right-wing commentator Dennis Prager about the supposed erosion of free speech on college campuses.

White nationalist activists and media personalities, including Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler, anti-Semitic podcaster Nicholas Fuentes, far-right YouTuber Vincent James Foxx, and disgraced former Daily Caller editor Scott Greer, have shared Goldenberg’s online remarks alongside their own similar commentary on Arbery’s death. While Goldenberg’s Twitter account is publicly listed, meaning its content can be viewed and shared by anyone, Goldenberg has voiced explicit approval of, or sympathy for, many of the figures now sharing her commentary about Arbery. On her publicly viewable “Communism Kills” Telegram channel, Goldenberg has shared and engaged with content from many of the same movement sources, including Fuentes, white nationalist organizer Patrick Casey, white nationalist organization VDARE, and far-right media personality....

819 ggl recs soros

George Soros

DECEPTION & MISDIRECTION

Soros in Romania: Part 7

by JACOB GRANDSTAFF on FEBRUARY 21, 2018

FOUNDATION WATCH

George Soros and His Incredible Growing Disinformation Foundation

When leftist billionaire George Soros moves money, it’s bound to make waves. His latest move—depositing a gargantuan $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations (OSF)—has left many wondering…

by HAYDEN LUDWIG on OCTOBER 17, 2017

DECEPTION & MISDIRECTION

The Price of Fleeing Middle America

New studies show that the gaps dividing Republicans and Democrats grew substantially under Barack Obama, and have only continued to expand under Donald Trump. But which side is fomenting…

by HAYDEN LUDWIG on OCTOBER 16, 2017

LABOR WATCH

The NFL Players Association Funds the Far-Left

The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), an AFL-CIO affiliate, has joined George Soros and a number of other ultra-wealthy, left-wing donors—including Planned Parenthood and the Kellogg…

by JACOB GRANDSTAFF on OCTOBER 9, 2017

FOUNDATION WATCH

The Soros Dynasty: Like Father, Like Son

Alexander Soros, son of billionaire donor George Soros, has so far maintained a low profile in the nonprofit world. But now he appears to be following in his father’s…

by JACOB GRANDSTAFF on SEPTEMBER 28, 2017

ORGANIZATION TRENDS

George Soros Names New President of Open Society Foundations

Billionaire investor and prominent left-wing funder George Soros named Patrick Gaspard, a former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and White House aide, as acting president of the Open Society…

by CHACE PAULSON on SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

UNCATEGORIZED

Matthew Vadum Featured in The Daily Caller

CRC Senior Vice President Matthew Vadum was cited in a piece by Richard Pollack in the Daily Caller. Left-wing billionaire George Soros claims to be a liberal fighting for…

by CRC STAFF on AUGUST 29, 2017

FOUNDATION WATCH

George Soros Undermines Ukrainian Sovereignty

The latest assault on the independence of Ukraine, a state long held in servitude to its Russian neighbor, comes from a pair of nonprofit organizations funded by George Soros.

by HAYDEN LUDWIG on AUGUST 25, 2017

FOUNDATION WATCH

Hungary Launches PR Campaign Against Soros

The Hungarian government has launched a massive public relations campaign against billionaire George Soros’ stance on immigration. The campaign is the latest attempt by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán…

by JACOB GRANDSTAFF on JULY 13, 2017

FOUNDATION WATCH

George Soros, John McCain, and Immigration

Senator John McCain’s Institute for International Leadership, formed from the remains of his failed 2008 presidential campaign, has accepted large donations from individuals and institutions infamously known for: Supporting the Clinton…

by JACOB GRANDSTAFF on JULY 10, 2017

1 2 3 4 … 15 Next

Stance on Climate Change

“Years from now, when Global Warming theory is on the ashheap of history with supposed science like white supremacy, Piltdown Man, canals on Mars, Keynesianism, and N-rays, taxpayers will probably still be stuck paying for insane subsidies and mandates for ancient technologies repackaged as waves of the future—wind, solar, biofuels, dippy birds, whatever—and the I-Love-Science-When-It-Supports-My-Prejudices 'Progressives' will probably still be pushing policies like the Obama War on Coal, although, by then, they may have moved on to, say, a War on Fire conducted by the administration of President Chelsea Clinton or perhaps President Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky-Kennedy, who will get elected on an 'anti-dynasty' platform.” [6]

“As regular visitors to this space know well, there is no basis for the claim, put forth by President Obama and other radical environmentalists, that “97 percent” of scientists believe in Global Warming theory. They repeat this imaginary statistic over and over because, when it comes to real science, they got nuthin’.”[7]

“Despite environmentalist claims of a 'consensus' on global warming, climate science is contentious.” [8]

Funding

The following is based on data the Conservative Transparency project collected from publicly-available 990 tax returns. Note that not all funding values have been verified by DeSmog. See the attached spreadsheet for additional information on Capital Research Center funding by year (.xlsx). [11]

Donor and Year	Total
Sarah ScaifeFoundation	$6,150,000
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation	$2,653,320
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation	$650,000
William H. Donner Foundation	$635,833
John M. Olin Foundation	$617,500
Philip M. McKenna Foundation	$526,000
Searle Freedom Trust	$445,000
Lillian S. Wells Foundation	$390,000
Donors Capital Fund	$332,500
Hickory Foundation	$301,000
Stuart Family Foundation	$257,000
Scaife Family Foundation	$255,000
The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation	$245,000
Exxon Mobil	$225,000
The Carthage Foundation	$225,000
Earhart Foundation	$222,000
Jaquelin Hume Foundation	$175,000
The Randolph Foundation	$173,000
The Rodney Fund	$150,000
Huizenga Foundation	$115,000
The Roe Foundation	$110,000
F.M. Kirby Foundation	$110,000
Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation	$95,888
Dodge Jones Foundatoin	$90,500
DonorsTrust	$88,650
Bradley Impact Fund	$73,000
Chase Foundation of Virginia	$61,100
Charlotte and Walter Kohler Charitable Trust	$60,000
The Weiler Foundation	$50,000
The Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation	$42,000
Dorothy D. and Joseph A. Moller Foundation	$35,000
Armstrong Foundation	$34,500
Aequus Institute	$32,000
JM Foundation	$30,000
Diana Davis Spencer Foundation	$29,000
Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation	$25,000
Arthur N. Rupe Foundation	$25,000
National Christian Charitable Foundation	$20,950
Neal and Jane Freeman Foundation	$20,000
Brady Education Foundation	$20,000
John William Pope Foundation	$20,000
Pierre F. and Enid Goodrich Foundation	$20,000
Charles and Ann Johnson Foundation	$15,000
True Foundation	$11,200
Windway Foundation	$10,500
Walton Family Foundation	$10,000
The Vernon K. Krieble Foundation	$9,500
Richard Seth Staley Educational Foundation	$7,500
Joyce and Donald Rumsfeld Foundation	$7,500
The Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation	$6,500
Tepper Family Foundation	$5,200
DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative	$5,000
Vernon K. Krieble Foundation	$4,500
Floyd Foundation	$2,750
Kickapoo Springs Foundation	$2,500
The Legett Foundation	$2,500
Schwab Charitable Fund	$2,000
The Challenge Foundation	$1,000
William E. Simon Foundation	$1,000
Wodecroft Foundation	$1,000
Lynn & Foster Friess Family Foundation	$1,000
John Templeton Foundation	$250
John P and Kathryn G Evans Foundation	$150
Grand Total	$15,942,291

Tobacco Industry Funding

SourceWatch found that while the Capital Research Centre was critical of non-profit groups opposing smoking, it was also received funding from the tobacco industry including $50,000 from Philip Morris in 1995.

A 1997 internal briefing sheet on possible questions about PM funding of CRC stated “we have supported this organization for about ten years. Our level of support has averaged about $30,000 a year.” [12], [13]

ExxonMobil Funding

According to Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets, CRC received $265,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.[9]

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. [10]

Koch Funding

According to the most recent data available from Greenpeace, the Capital Research Center has received at least $699,200 from Koch-related foundations between 1987 and 2015. [24]

*Original tax forms prior to 1997 are no longer available for verification. If you include these values, the grand total jumps to $724,200 in Koch funding from 1987 to 2015. [24]

Year	Charles Koch Foundation	Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation	Grand Total
*1987	$5,000		$5,000
*1988	$10,000		$10,000
*1993		$5,000	$5,000
*1996		$5,000	$5,000
1997		$5,000	$5,000
1998		$50,000	$50,000
2000		$75,000	$75,000
2001		$100,000	$100,000
2002		$100,000	$100,000
2003		$100,000	$100,000
2004		$100,000	$100,000
2005		$50,000	$50,000
2006		$25,000	$25,000
2007		$25,000	$25,000
2008		$10,000	$10,000
2010	$20,000		$20,000
2011	$10,000		$10,000
2014	$14,800		$14,800
2015	$14,400		$14,400
Grand Total	$74,200	$650,000	$724,200

990 Forms

[15 doc 990's]

Key People

The following people were listed on theCapital Research Center's website as of October, 2015. (Sourcewatch maintains records of past Board Members and notable previous staff): [14], [12]

Board of Trustees

Terrence Scanlon, Chairman — Washington, DC, President, Capital Research Center
Gil Collins, Greenbrae, CA — Trustee, Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Constance Larcher, Washington, DC — President and CEO, Washington Legal Foundation
Hon. Edwin Meese III, Washington, DC — Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow, The Heritage Foundation
William Meyersohn, Miami, FL — Real Estate Consultant
Marion G. Wells, Ft. Lauderdale, FL — Trustee, The Heritage Foundation and The Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Thomas S. Winter, Washington, DC — Editor-in-Chief, Human Events

National Advisory Board

:{Dr. Larry P. Arnn :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— President, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI
:{Dr. John A. Baden :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— Chairman,Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), Bozeman, MT
:{Linda Chavez :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity, Falls Church, VA
:{Midge Decter :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— Author, New York, NY
:{Christopher Long:(style="font-weight:700"):}: — President, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, DE
:{Adam Meyerson:(style="font-weight:700"):}:— President, The Philanthropy Roundtable, Washington, DC
:{Kate O’Beirne :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— Former President, National Review Institute, Washington, DC
:{P.J. O’Rourke :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— Author and Columnist, Peterborough, NH
:{Dr. Marvin Olasky :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— Editor-in-Chief, World, Asheville, NC
Sally Pipes — President & CEO, Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco, CA
Menlo Smith — CEO, Sunmark Capital Corporation, St. Louis, MO
:{Dr. Kenneth R. Weinstein :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— President & CEO, Hudson Institute, Washington, DC
:{Dr. Walter Williams :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— Professor of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
:{Robert L. Woodson, Sr. :(style="font-weight:700"):}:— Founder & President, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, Washington, DC

Staff

:{Terrence Scanlon:(style="font-weight:700"):}:— President
Scott Walter — Executive Vice President
Dan Thompson — Director of Development
Matthew Vadum — Senior Editor, Organization Trends and Foundation Watch
Steven J. Allen — Senior Editor, Labor Watch and Green Watch
Jana Marie Erwin — Development Associate
Christopher Krukewitt — Accountant
Tyler Stone — Office Manager

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.” [15]

Actions

May 8, 2017

CRC, represented by Steven J. Allen, is listed on anopen letter to President Donald J. Trump urging him “to withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty and to stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs.” [27]

DeSmog reported that the 40 groups represented in the letter, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), The Heartland Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, have received a combined total of millions of dollars from the Koch Brothers, ExxonMobil, and other industry groups. [28]

Analysis also showed that the groups accepted about $80 million through Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust, two groups that have been confirmed is a key financial source for key U.S-based climate change denial groups. [29]

February 22 - 25, 2017

The Capital Research Center was a Contributing Sponsor of the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), among a range of other conservative and pro-industry groups. [25]

According to CRC, their panels included “21st Century Labor Reform: A Better Way for Workers,” on February 23, “Revolt of the Deplorables: Inside Election 2016” on the 24, and “Is Political Correctness Killing U.S. Institutions?” on the 25. [26]

April 1, 2015

The Capital Research Centre staff wrote an article defending Willie Soon, claiming that “Leftist politicians and the media try to blacklist scientists who are skeptical about Global Warming,” and that the outing of Soon's significant fossil fuel funding by groups like Greenpeace has been a “Witch-Hunt.” [16]

Willie Soon was criticized when Greenpeace obtained documents regarding his funding thorugh the Freedom of Information Act, revealing that there wereat least 11 times that Soon failed to disclose fossil fuel fundingin papers he had published between 2008 and 2015. [17]

August, 2002

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.

“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. [18]

September, 2001

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.” [19]

1990s

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. [20]

CRC was later criticized, and it was revealed that Phillip Morris had provided $50,000 in funding to the Capital Research Center.[21]

CRC has also published reports on the “Anti-Smoking Movement,” to which select PM staff were given advance copies. [22]

Capital Research Center Contact & Location

As of June 2016, the Capital Research Center listed the following contact information on its website: [23]

Capital Research Center

1513 16th Street, NW

Washington, DC 20036

(202) 483-6900

(202) 483-6990 (fax)

Related Organizations

According to Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets, CRC is a former member of Alliance for America and is a past member of the Cooler Heads Coalition (CHC). [9]

Resources

7/18 txt screen grab:

Capital Research Center

ABOUT

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.

:{From the start, CRC has exposed how those organizations are “captured” by interest groups and used to undermine Americans’ freedoms.

}::{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.

}:We’re not afraid to take on the Washington Establishment—Republican, Democrat, or anyone else.:{

}::{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.

}::{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.

}::{

}::{:{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.}:

}:We are the Capital Research Center, :{“:{America’s investigative think tank}:.”

}:Thanks for visiting!

Media Contact

To arrange a media interview please call:

Christine Ravold, Communications Officer, cravold@capitalresearch.org or directly at (202) 464-8871
Capital Research Center’s main number at (202) 483-6900
Kristen Eastlick, Vice President of Programs and Communications, directly at (202) 464-2052
[video scott w]

Michael E. Hartmann

Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Strategic Giving

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: A Guide for Donors. Before joining Bradley in 1998, he was director of research at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

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.

AUTHORED CONTENT

BOOK PROFILE

Magazine Funding Skews Left. What Can Conservatives Do About It?

Article on July 9, 2018 by Michael E. Hartmann

BOOK PROFILE

Philanthropy Against Democracy

Article on June 11, 2018 by Michael E. Hartmann

COMMENTARY

Featured Commentary: Lessons in Conservative Philanthropy

Article on June 8, 2018 by Daniel P. Schmidt, Michael E. Hartmann

PHILANTHROPY

Humbling the Bumbling, Encumbering Numbering

Article on May 4, 2018 by Michael E. Hartmann

PHILANTHROPY

Ideas Cost More Than They Used To. How Will Policy Donors React?

Article on April 23, 2018 by Michael E. Hartmann

+ SEE ALL CONTENT BY MICHAEL E. HARTMANN

Martin Morse Wooster

Senior Fellow

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.

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.

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.

Read all Philanthropy Daily posts published by Martin Morse Wooster.

AUTHORED CONTENT

PHILANTHROPY

Voluntary Sector Played Lead Role in Disaster Recovery Last Year

Article on July 12, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster

PHILANTHROPY

Charter School Funders: Look Out for “Turnaround Consultants”

Article on July 3, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster

PHILANTHROPY

Funders Who Understand Regional Differences are Better Suited to Help

Article on June 21, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster

FOUNDATION WATCH

A Sweeter Future: Philanthropies Adrift in Philadelphia

Article on June 12, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster

FOUNDATION WATCH

A Sweeter Future:Deviating from Intent

Article on June 12, 2018 by Martin Morse Wooster

+ SEE ALL CONTENT BY MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER

bd:

Board of Trustees

MICHAEL FRANC

The Hoover Institution

HON. EDWIN MEESE III

Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

WILLIAM MEYERSOHN

Real Estate Consultant

ERIC O’KEEFE

Chairman, Citizens for Self-Governance

THOMAS S. WINTER

Editor-in-Chief, Human Events

GIL COLLINS

Trustee emeritus. Trustee, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

MARION G. WELLS†

1926-2016

adv bd

National Advisory Board

DR. LARRY P. ARNN

President,Hillsdale College

DR. JOHN A. BADEN

Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE)

LINDA CHAVEZ

Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity

MIDGE DECTER

Author

CHRISTOPHER LONG

Trustee, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

ADAM MEYERSON

President, The Philanthropy Roundtable

KATE O’BEIRNE†

1949-2017

P.J. O’ROURKE

Author and Columnist

DR. KENNETH R. WEINSTEIN

President & CEO, Hudson Institute

DR. WALTER WILLIAMS

Professor of Economics,George Mason University AA

ROBERT L. WOODSON, SR.

Founder & President, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise AA

google ad #1 result

Capital Research Center

https://capitalresearch.org/

:{:(style="text-align:left;border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{“This is one film that Hollywood would never produce.” ~ Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager No Safe Spaces, a… Podcast ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

About · ‎Organization Trends · ‎The Battle for the Bench · ‎Demand Justice, How?

Capital Research Center - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Research_Center

:{:(style="text-align:left;border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{:{Capital Research Center:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: (CRC) is an American conservative non-profit organization and watchdog group located in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1984 by ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

History · ‎Publications and policy ...

Capital Research Center - SourceWatch

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Capital_Research_Center

:{:(style="text-align:left;border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{The :{Capital Research Center:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: (CRC) is a right-wing "think tank" whose stated mission is to do "opposition research" exposing the funding sources behind ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Mission · ‎Ties to the Bradley ... · ‎CRC Hosts State Labor ... · ‎Funding

Capital Research Center - Home | Facebook

https://www.facebook.com › ... › Community Organization

:{:(style="text-align:left;border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{:{Capital Research Center:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, Washington, DC. 30K likes. We study unions, environmentalist groups, and a wide variety of nonprofit and activist organizations...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Capital Research Center - Media Bias/Fact Check

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/capital-research-center/

:{:(style="text-align:left;border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{Aug 28, 2017 - Notes: :{Capital Research Center:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: (CRC) is a non-profit, right wing “think tank” organization located in Washington, D.C. :{Capital Research Center:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

===https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Capital_Research_Center

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.

Mission

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]

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".

"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.

...

CRC Hires Former Bradley VP

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]

An internal email from Hartmann to Bradley CEO Michael Grebe states that CRC President Scott Walter recruited Hartmann,

"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]...

Dangerous Documentaries

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]

Documentaries include the "America Under Siege" which "investigates the growing influence of revolutionary Marxists and their allies in different sectors of American society."

“America Under Siege: Civil War 2017”

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."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.

“America Under Siege: Soviet Islam”

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.

CRC Hosts State Labor Reform Conference

Mary Bottari reports in "Bradley Foundation Bankrolls Attacks on Unions"as part of the Bradley Files investigation,

"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.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).[Grover] Norquistwas 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).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.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.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.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.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]

Ties to the Coal Industry

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]

...

Funding

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.

Grants

Bradley Impact Fund: $63,000 (2013-2015)
Charles Koch Foundation: $39,200 (2011 -2015)
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation: $660,000 (1998-2008)
Donors Capital Fund: $213,000 (2010-2015)
DonorsTrust: $27,500 (2010-2014)
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation: $2.5 million (1998-2015)^[3]

Corporate sponsors

ExxonMobil

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]

Core Finances

==https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Research_Center

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1513_16th_Street,_NW.JPG) The Capital Research Center offices located in Washington, D.C.	[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1513_16th_Street,_NW.JPG) The Capital Research Center offices located in Washington, D.C.
Formation	1984
Founder	Willa Johnson
Type	Nonprofit organization
Headquarters	Washington, D.C., United States
Services	Study of charity, philanthropy, voluntarism
Official language	English
Revenue (2015)	$2,561,903^[1]
Expenses (2015)	$2,030,597^[1]
Website	capitalresearch.org

**Capital Research Center** (**CRC**) is an 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]

History

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]

Journalist and author Marvin Olasky previously served as a senior fellow at CRC.^[7]

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]

DavidClarke, the former sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, is the chair of CRC's American Law and Culture program.^[10][11]

Publications and policy stances

CRC has been highly critical of animal rights activistsand the environmental movement. In 2006, it published The Green Wave: Environmentalism and Its Consequences, a book byDr. 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]

Movie production

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]

References

^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Research_Center#cite_ref-Ratings_1-1) "Capital Research Center" (PDF). Foundation Center. 28 August 2016. Retrieved 25 April 2017.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Vogel, Kenneth; Debenedetti, Gabriel (January 18, 2017). "Dems jockey for big money control". Politico. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Research_Center#cite_ref-politico_3-1) Vogel, Kenneth; Vinik, Danny (November 1, 2016). "Podesta paid $7,000 a month by top donor". Politico. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ CRC's "About" Page
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Barr, Stephen (July 2, 1997). "12 Foundations Push Conservative Agenda; $210 Million Given Over 3 Years". The Washington Post. p. A.21.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "CRC Staff Biographies". Capital Research Center.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Eig, Jonathan (3 July 1994). "Strains of compassion; Frustration over rising homelessness leads some cities to limit panhandling, reduce aid". The Dallas Morning News.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Vogel, Kenneth (3 April 2011). "Right seeks edge in 'oppo' wars". Politico. Archived from the original on 7 April 2011. Retrieved 31 May2011.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank". Mother Jones. May 2005.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Bice, Daniel (February 23, 2018). "Bice: Former Sheriff David Clarke files for divorce in Milwaukee County". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr". Premiere Speakers Bureau. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ 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.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ 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.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ 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.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Bond, Paul (May 24, 2017). "Adam Carolla Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for 'No Safe Spaces' Movie". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Acevedo, Yoselin (May 25, 2017). "Adam Carolla Crowdfunding for Anti–Safe Spaces Documentary — Watch". Indie Wire. Retrieved 25 March 2018.

External links

show

American think tanks

Categories:

CAP RES CTR 2

‘Opinion presented as fact’

Paid $16 million

Jon Rodeback

jon Rodeback

Managing Editor and Director of Content

Authored Content

Massachusetts Mapping Project Linked to Terrorists

Ryan Mauro

News and Controversies

CRC Among Several Conservative Nonprofits Funding Climate Science Disinformation Ads on Facebook

Criticism of Former Black Lives Matter Fiscal Sponsor Thousand Currents's "Domestic Terrorist" Board Member

"Climate Dollars" Section of CRC Website Disputes Robert Brulle Study and Related Media Coverage

CRC Launches Copy of CMD's Sourcewatch

Dangerous Documentaries

"Defund the Left" Campaign

CRC Hosts State Labor Reform Conference

Lobbying Efforts

Ties to the Bradley Foundation

CRC and Richard Berman's Interstate Policy Alliance Consult for Bradley on Right-Wing "Infrastructure" Investments

Opposition Research On CMD and the "Left"

CRC Hires Former Bradley VP Michael Hartmann

Ties to the Council for National Policy

Ties to the Coal Industry

Ties to the Tobacco Industry

Ties to Berman and Company

Funding

Corporate sponsors

ExxonMobil

Core Financials

Funding

Corporate sponsors

ExxonMobil

CRC Among Several Conservative Nonprofits Funding Climate Science Disinformation Ads on Facebook

Criticism of Former Black Lives Matter Fiscal Sponsor Thousand Currents's "Domestic Terrorist" Board Member

"Climate Dollars" Section of CRC Website Disputes Robert Brulle Study and Related Media Coverage

CRC Launches Copy of CMD's Sourcewatch

democracy Dies in Dark-Moneyness: Soros Funding Behind Off-Books Congressional “Staff” to Investigate Political Opponents of Climate Agenda

AUTHORED CONTENT

Senior Investigative Researcher

Stance on Climate Change

Funding

Tobacco Industry Funding

ExxonMobil Funding

Koch Funding

990 Forms

Key People

Board of Trustees

National Advisory Board

Staff

Actions

Capital Research Center Contact & Location

Related Organizations

Resources

Media Contact

Michael E. Hartmann

Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Strategic Giving

AUTHORED CONTENT

Martin Morse Wooster

Senior Fellow

AUTHORED CONTENT

Top stories

Mission

CRC Hires Former Bradley VP

Dangerous Documentaries

CRC Hosts State Labor Reform Conference

Ties to the Coal Industry

Funding

Grants

Corporate sponsors

ExxonMobil

Core Finances

History

Publications and policy stances

Movie production

References

External links