INCUBATORS 2
new 7/16 main crowded
see tag incbtr
see koch-ademia (also law school like NWern, GMU? liberty U? regent? GMU?
SEE CLAREMONSTERS HERITAGE
SEE PROJECT 21 DOH
this node might be more ppl than orgs
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rufo manhattan heritage, fellow
TYLER ONEIL
INCUBATOR: He graduated in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in history at Hillsdale College. He interned with the National Journalism Center and studied journalism at the Leadership Institute.
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DESMOG SNIP
The Institute for Humane Studies provides $600,000in scholarships each year.
According to SourceWatch, the IHS acts as “a libertarian talent scout, identifying, developing, and supporting the brightest young libertarians it can find who are intent on a leveraged scholarly, or intellectual, career path.” In addition to the funding it receives from the Koch Family Foundations, the Institute for Humane Studies also receives donations from conservative foundations such as the Carthage Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
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xian legal
incubator
jon berry cbg fedsoc liar mofo2025 pjt trmp
promo vid MLK change culture i shit younot
b lackstone Legal Fellowship is not a culmination . . . it is a beginning
Blackstone Legal Fellowship is a leadership training program that brings together exceptional Christian law students and prepares them for careers marked by integrity, excellence, and leadership. Since 2000, Alliance Defending Freedom has trained more than 2,600 law students from more than 230 law schools in 30 different countries.
The Fellowship begins with a summer-long leadership training program, which includes three weeks of seminars on topics such as legal philosophy, constitutional law, practicing with integrity and excellence within the legal profession, and career development and cultural engagement. Interns also spend the summer engaged in legal internships across the world, working with nonprofits, governmental entities, and boutique law firms, among others.
The summer program represents a beginning, not a culmination, as Interns emerge with a professional network, enduring friendships, and a foundation of knowledge that will serve them throughout their careers. Those selected to become “Fellows” at the end of the summer also receive ongoing training, resources, and support through an international community.
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10 24
NO LNX
alternet-
'I'm advocating Christian nationalism': Josh Hawley's ties to Project 2025 exposed
States attorneys general participate in their meeting with President Donald J. Trump on protecting consumers from social media abuse Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in the Cabinet Room of the White House.
Alexandria JacobsonandRaw Story October 21, 2024
Two staffers for Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) are credited as contributors to the controversial conservative “presidential transition” plan, Project 2025, according to a Raw Story review of the 922-page document.
John Ehrett, chief counsel for Hawley since April 2023, according to LinkedIn and Congressional research website LegiStorm, is cited as a contributor to the plan from conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, that calls for curtailing abortion access, increasing deportations, eliminating government agencies like the Department of Education and banning transgender athletes from sports as part of a plan for a conservative presidency.
The contributor credit states Ehrett’s affiliation with the “Office of Senator Josh Hawley.”
Screen grab from Project 2025 document that says "John Ehrett, Office of Senator Josh Hawley" (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLead...)
Two papers written by Vijay Menon, a legislative assistant for Hawley since March 2022, according to LinkedIn and LegiStorm, are cited in the Project 2025 document as well.
A 2019 paper co-authored by Menon advocates for the repeal of the Community Eligibility Provision in the National School Lunch Program, saying it “converts a federal assistance program meant to help families in need into an entitlement.” More than 71.2 million reimbursable school lunches were served in Missouri during the 2023-2024 school year, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
ALSO READ: How America will change if Trump wins
A 2018 report cited in the document is titled, “Understanding the Hidden $1.1 Trillion Welfare System and How to Reform It.” The Heritage Foundation said it came up with the 2016 figure from "Office of Management and Budget documents and other official government sources.”
Screen grab from Project 2025 document that shows a citation crediting Vijay Menon - highlighted by Raw Story (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLead...)
Ehrett and Menon did not respond to Raw Story’s questions, nor did communications staff for Hawley’s congressional office and campaign.
Another Republican Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told NBC Montana in August that he wasn’t aware that Chris Anderson, a national security adviser for his congressional office since May 2022, was credited as working on Project 2025. The contributor credit states his affiliation with the “Office of Senator Steve Daines.”
“In fact, the first I heard of that, I remember the press mentioned it. Look, there’s individuals here in Capitol Hill that work on lots of projects,” Daines told NBC Montana.
Anderson did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
“I literally have not seen it,” Daines said to NBC Montana about Project 2025. “I spoke to President Trump about it, and he hasn’t seen it. Look, it’s something he’s not supporting.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025, but his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), has close ties with the Heritage Foundation and its founder, Forbes reported. According to CNN, more than 140 former Trump administration officials were involved in its creation.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is directly quoted in the document saying, “The next conservative president must dismantle the administrative state and return power back to the states and the American people. This publication is a blueprint to do just that.”
Heritage Foundation ties
Hawley and several of his current and former congressional staff members have worked with the Heritage Foundation.
During the Heritage Foundation Leadership Summit in April 2023, Hawley credited the Heritage Foundation with helping “inspire my interest in conservative policy” during a summer internship in 2000. INCUBATOR
Hawley spoke at the Heritage Foundation another time in February of that year for a speech called, “China and Ukraine: A Time for Truth.”
Hawley has been particularly vocal about advocating for Christian nationalism, and such principles are found throughout the Project 2025 document.
“Some will say I’m calling America a Christian nation. And so I am. Some will say I’m advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do. My question is: Is there any other kind worth having?” Hawley said at the National Conservatism Conference in July, The New Republic reported.
For example, a Project 2025 chapter on the “Department of Labor and other related agencies” by Jonathan Berry emphasizes Christian principles and “service to God.”
“The Judeo-Christian tradition, stretching back to Genesis, has always recognized fruitful work as integral to human dignity, as service to God, neighbor, and family. And Americans have long been known for their work ethic," the document says. "While it is primarily the culture’s responsibility to affirm the dignity of work, our federal labor and employment agencies have an important role to play by protecting workers, setting boundaries for the healthy functioning of labor markets, and ultimately encouraging wages and conditions for jobs that can support a family."
Current Hawley legislative assistant, Menon, was a former research assistant in domestic policy studies for the Heritage Foundation, according to its website. His LinkedIn says he was a graduate fellow and research assistant between June 2017 and March 2019.
Layne Nichols, a legislative correspondent for Hawley since January, completed a congressional fellowship with the Heritage Foundation this year from April to June, according to his LinkedIn. Nichols did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Former Hawley staffers went on to work for the Heritage Foundation, including Alex Velez-Green, who worked with Hawley’s congressional office for at least four years, most recently as a national security adviser. He is now a senior policy adviser with the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation.
Eric Teetsel was Hawley’s chief of staff until September 2022 when he moved on to serve as vice president, government relations for the Heritage Foundation for two years.
The Heritage Foundation did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Hawley is running for reelection against Democrat Lucas Kunce. A September survey of voters by Emerson College Polling and The Hill showed Hawley polling with 51 percent of the vote and Kunce with 40 percent.
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rww 11 23
right Wing Watch reported in June 2022 that on the same day the Trump-enhanced right-wing Supreme Court majority overturned Roe v. Wade, a coalition of Christian nationalist, voter suppression, anti-LGBTQ-equality, Big Lie-promoting, and Trump-cheerleading groups had publicly launched a project that would “position the movement to take the reins of government” after a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election.
Since then, the right-wing coalition has expanded, and reporting by national media outlets has fleshed out some frightening specifics of the “Project 2025” plan to conduct an ideological purge of the civil service and turn the entire executive branch into an enforcement arm of the MAGA movement—and if former President Donald Trump is elected, a weapon for personal retribution against his enemies.
The Washington Post reported Nov. 5 that Trump and some former administration officials are scheming with Project 2025 to abandon a rule-of-law principle embraced for decades that the Justice Department’s law enforcement decisions should be free of political pressure from the president.
Russ Vought, a former Trump official who launched a MAGA movement think tank after Trump’s defeat, told the Post, “You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel’s Office that don’t view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president.”
Even worse, Jeffrey Clark, who tried in the final days of the Trump administration to throw the weight of the Justice Department behind Trump’s false claims about the stolen election, is leading efforts to set the stage for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens—a step that some far-right leaders had urged Trump to take in 2020 to stay in power.
Politico also reported this month on a complementary project called American Moment launched after Trump’s defeat to recruit and vet young ideological warriors who would be prepared to fill lower level administration jobs created by mass firings of civil service employees. American Moment would provide an army of foot soldiers to carry out the battle plans against the “deep state” ordered by the higher-ranking officials that Project 2025 is preparing to put in place. American Moment is officially part of the Project 2025 coalition. Vought is among the MAGA movement leaders helping train American Moment’s operatives, who have served internships with Sens. J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio.
American Moment was launched with more than $300,000 from the Conservative Partnership Institute, which as Politico noted “has become a sort of administration-in-exile for former Trump staffers.” CPI has been an institutional home to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell, who participated in the notorious call on which Trump badgered Georgia’s secretary of states to “find” him the votes he needed to win the state, and was later picked to head up CPI’s “election integrity” project, which has lobbied against federal voting rights legislation.
Recognizing the threat that Trump and his MAGA Republican allies across the country pose to our rights and freedoms, People For the American Way is encouraging supporters to take a pledge to vote against authoritarian MAGA candidates and for progressive candidates in local, state, and federal elections.
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KOCH TUCKER INCUBATOR batasch
http://redgreenandblue.org/2023/03/15/climate-disinformation-daily-caller/
Climate disinformation is what the Daily Caller DOES | Red, Green, and Blue
Red, Green, and Blue
Related · Daily Caller has a fact checker! (But is now run by Koch-trained career disinformer Michael Bastasch) · No, Marc Morano, nobody wants a ' ...
as internal text messages prove what most have long known about Fox News (that it’s a conservative propaganda machine posing as a news outlet), it’s important to remember that these days, Fox is hardly alone. While Murdoch’s Fox and Wall Street Journal are the unquestioned Big Leagues of right-wing disinformation, there’s a whole set of bush league outlets serving as training grounds.
By Climate Denier Roundup
The Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller is one of the primary examples of how Fox and the Koch-funded climate change counter-movement are intertwined.
Back when they were mostly Koch-funded, Koch-trained Michael Bastasch was regularly running climate disinformation featuring Koch-funded climate deniers. These days, their funding has diversified a bit thanks to Carlson’s feud with Kochs, though giving the Daily Caller money still appears to increase the odds of the outlet writing favorable content about you.
But Bastasch** returned last year as Managing Editor of the Daily Caller’s non-profit tax dodge foundation, after a stint at Fox News writing for election-lie-spreader Laura Ingraham.
Since his return, we’ve been watching closely to note any changes, and at this point can say it definitely appears that Bastasch is using his position to spread climate disinformation through multiple channels at the Caller, not just the “Big Tent” opinion vertical we noted last week.
In the past, most of the Caller’s climate disinfo would come from just one or two employees who appeared to be tasked with turning press releases from Koch cronies into “news” as their job on the “energy” beat (like Thomas Catenacci, who now works for, you guessed it, Fox News).
But these days, attacks on climate change science, policy, and experts have become a feature of coverage across the website and its various staffers.
It really stood out between 5 and 7 p.m. last Wednesday, when the Daily Caller published a triple-play of climate disinfo: defending a fossil-fuel loving white supremacist, cherry-picking climate change from a US National security assessment, and attacked environmentalists organizing on TikTok to #StopWillow.
The first was from “news and commentary writer” Brianna Lyman, who provided a short write-up framed as criticism of Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who “accused one of the witnesses of being racist.” Who, you might ask? Well, despite the fact that ‘who/what/where/why/when’ is a basic tenet of journalism, Lyman didn’t identify the person at the center of the House committee meeting, and in fact, described Bush as “criticizing the oil industry before turning her attention toward an unidentified witness.”
Which is an absolutely astonishing thing for a supposed journalist to write, because Congressional hearings are very easy to look up. Alex Epstein, one of the “so-called ‘energy experts’” called by Republicans, is who Rep. Bush called “a philosopher who has previously espoused white supremacist views,” before Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) interjected to try and censor her by calling for the comment to be removed from the Congressional record.
But naming Epstein would require doing actual reporting, and apparently all Lyman did was watch a video clip of the hearing (that she embedded in the story). If you’d like to see what real reporting of the hearing looks like, as opposed to someone running cover for a fellow traveler, Timothy Cama covered it for PoliticoPRO and named Alex Epstein right up front.
Roughly thirty-six minutes after Lyman’s article defending a racist was posted, the Daily ‘whoopsie we keep hiring racists‘ Caller published a piece on the US intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment. The headline of “reporter” Micaela Burrow’s coverage? “Intel Community Warns Fight Over Green Energy Tech Will Worsen Global Tensions.”
The 10-paragraph write-up quotes the assessment just twice to justify the story’s thrust that fighting climate change will somehow make the world more dangerous. That’s probably because the 40-page assessment only devotes 2 pages to climate, and then otherwise focuses on a bunch of things that the Daily Caller doesn’t spread disinfo about.
Finally, rounding out a very busy day for the Caller, “Associate Editor” Ailan Evans’ hit piece ran at 6:49, attacking the #StopWillow campaign on TikTok because one of the participating groups is funded by “a Swiss billionaire with a documented history of philanthropy and political donations, primarily to left-wing causes and candidates.” Though it’s dressed up as some sort of scandalous revelation, at no point does Evans attempt to explain how or why this is somehow bad.
But that’s the kind of training you get from the Daily Caller. Both Evans and current Fox Production Assistant Kendall Tietz were 2021 fellows of the Daily Caller’s American Journalism Institute, where they train the next generation of political hacks to pretend to be journalists.
So next time you hear about some bizarre disinformation, rank political propaganda, or shameless defense of racism on Fox News, remember that it’s not an accident, they’retrainedto be that awful. There’s a whole farm league of conservative propaganda shops like the Daily Caller — the frack-backed Daily Wire and Heritage‘s Daily Signal come to mind — and while they’d all oppose a Universal Basic Income as socialism, they’re proof that as long as would-be-journalists are willing to play ball for the highest bidder, they’ll never want for work.
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ref jun 2019
just the other day we talked about how Tucker Carlson questioned who the climate culprits are on his Koch-funded Daily Caller website. So we’re reluctant to go back to that well quite so soon, but a new post on the Caller’s website cannot go without comment.
The story is a clip and rehash of one of Carlson’s recent segments on his Fox News show, in which he attacks Koch Brothers and questions their undue influence over the Republican party. In the clip, Carlson hones in on criticisms that the Koch brothers are libertarian and that their philanthropic aims don’t reflect the wants and needs of everyday Republicans.
yes, you read that correctly. Tucker Carlson, whose Daily Callerwebsite received 84%of its funding from the Kochs in 2016 and close to a million dollars in 2017, railed against the Kochs’ influence. Keep in mind the website with over a thousand Koch stories, few if any of which are anything but bootlicking.
That said, in 2017 Koch money only made up 38% of the Caller’s funding. Its trajectory does seem to be moving away from Koch money as its primary means of support. Perhaps the website really is trying to break free from the Koch’s funding, or at least dilute its funder pool so it’s not quite so obvious that they exist as a propaganda tool for the Kochs’ interests. It launched a subscription program back in April, inviting readers to become a “Daily Caller Patriot” offering access to special content and removing ads. The invitation includes a clip of Carlson talking about his crusade against “big tech” for “censoring” “conservatives” over the little tinsy matter of propagating hate speech that is radicalizing white terrorists.
And that’s a big part of Carlson’s new rant against the Kochs: targeting their upcoming work with the Anti-Defamation League to combat online hate speech. Since we know full well that the Daily Caller has quite a history of “accidentally” propagating white nationalism, perhaps that’s why Carlson is stoking division between himself and his followers and his Koch funders. If they’re anti-hate speech, odds are they’ll follow the lead of all the advertisers who have pulled their support for Carlson’s Fox program.
So maybe this new change in heart in response to the Kochs pulling away from supporting the website, and Carlson is pulling the old “you can’t fire me because I quit.” Back in November of 2018, Washington Post columnist Radley Balko wrote that Koch officials told him that “the Kochs and their foundations more generally find the Daily Caller abhorrent, and feel the same way about Tucker Carlson. One added that he was particularly troubled by the way the site objectives women as clickbait.”
And while the Koch donors Balko spoke to made it clear they saw their investment in the Caller to be aimed at training new journalists with free-market ideology, the lead investigative journalist at the Caller, per Balko, “doesn't inspire confidence.” Balko, who had previously worked with the reporter, Richard Pollack, wrote that Pollack is “a Trump toady” who “doesn't understand libertarianism” and is “a crappy journalist” who “isn't particularly smart.” But Balko conceded that Pollack’s “most marketable skill seems to be the ability to fool people into believing he has marketable skills.”
The same could be said for Tucker Carlson, and maybe the Kochs have finally realized it. Because as a millionaire funded by billionaires, it’s hard to comprehend why else Carlson would turn on his former patrons.
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claremont inst:
incub kirk, ben shapiroand Mollie Hemingway, Lincoln Fellow 2014
Senior Editor, The Federalist
A longtime journalist, Mollie Hemingway writes about culture, policy, and the political horse race for one of the Right’s hottest new web magazines.
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friedman in HS After graduating from Princeton, Cruz attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995 with a Juris Doctor degree.[2][40] While at Harvard Law, he was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.[33] Referring to Cruz's time as a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said: "Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant."[41][42][43][44] At Harvard Law, Cruz was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.[45]
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an 1020
no lnx
We need to smash the GOP pipeline that produces sycophantic senators. Here's how to do it
David Nir and Daily Kos October 18, 2020
Thom Tillis is one of the worst of the worst. The Republican senator from North Carolina has always been a mindless zealot for the conservative cause, but while he's now fighting for his political life as he seeks reelection in a race that could decide control of the Senate, it's critical we remember that craven cowards like him don't just spring forth from nowhere.
Rather, they're cultivated and groomed by the dark architects of the GOP agenda—and the favorite petri dish for the Kochs and their ilk are our state legislatures. That's exactly where Tillis was incubated: For many years before he joined the Senate in 2015, he was a member of the North Carolina state House and was ultimately rewarded for his fealty by getting elevated to speaker.
While he ruled the roost, Tillis did every awful thing imaginable: He blocked Medicaid expansion. He endorsed "personhood" legislation, passed a law requiring women seeking abortions to undergo invasive ultrasounds, and argued states had the right to ban certain types of birth control. He pushed to open up North Carolina's coasts to offshore drilling, said climate change isn't real, and passed a law preventing the state from considering climate science on sea-level rise when making policy. And most notoriously, he enacted a massive voter suppression package that a federal court later struck down, saying it had sought to "target African Americans with almost surgical precision."
With a record like this, it's no wonder he was perfect fodder when Republicans were looking for a Senate candidate six years ago, and it's likewise no surprise that he's performed his duties as a willing Trump sycophant so ably.
But here's the worst part: Thom Tillis never faced a single Democratic opponent in each of his four elections to the legislature. He was unopposed in the general election every single time. And this isn't an isolated story. Far, far too many Republican lawmakers get off with little or no opposition year in and year out. It's why the GOP has been so successful in developing its farm system, producing an endless string of zealots eager to wreck democracy and bow down before Trump.
It's also precisely why we have to crush this pipeline—half of all members of the Senate got their start in state legislatures. The good news is that North Carolina Democrats have put up a fantastic array of candidates for both the state House and Senate this year, and it offers us a three-fer: We can stop the next generation of Thom Tillises, we can develop our own bench, and we can flip both legislative chambers in this crucial swing state right before redistricting starts.
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aha: there is no left incubator (some scattered organizer training? by unions? J-school? college in general? Pulitzer Ctr) but school bd trad 1st rung
diane ravitz // MI emergency magr: in tx one fail school gets district taken over --> charters?
https://www.c-span.org/video/?468918-1/slaying-goliath
broad gave yale 100m to tke over failed org;
refs takeover bk, outside dark$ local sch bd, 1st rung of pol ladder.
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...The importance of the Walgreen Foundation’s support raises a counterfactual: would these scholars have enjoyed prominent careers without that financial assistance? Like all counterfactuals, the conclusion must be speculative. Certainly, many of the scholars at the University of Chicago who received funding from the Walgreen Foundation (such as Posner and Becker) may well have had brilliant academic careers even if the Walgreen Foundation and the Graduate School of Business had never existed. However, this misses the point: the success of George Stigler’s Walgreen-funded project created a scholarly network and a financial infrastructure with which to promote their pro–free market ideas. Without Walgreen’s support, that may well have been more difficult.
CASE STUDY II: HENRY MANNE AND LAW AND ECONOMICS
The success of Stigler’s project can be understood within the context of a broader conservative philanthropic movement that built upon past victories. Before Stigler constructed an antistatist economics and business program at the University of Chicago, Keynesians (who supported muscular state interventions in the economy) tended to dominate economic thought in the United States. The most prominent economists and economics programs in America (e.g., Paul Samuelson, who served as an economic advisor to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and built MIT’s economics department into a powerhouse) predominantly belonged to the Keynesian tradition.11 Stigler’s antistatist economics program not only allowed for the transformation of economics programs throughout American higher education, but provided academic support for the conservative transformation of the law. Steven Teles’s (2008) book on the development of the conservative legal establishment, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law, strongly emphasizes the Chicago school’s importance in the creation of the field of “law and economics” in the 1970s. “Law and economics” is, essentially, the application of economic analysis—specifically economic analysis rooted in the Austrian school’s free market philosophy—to public policy and legal questions.12 Not every early attempt to institutionalize conservative legal and economics programs was as successful as Stigler’s. Henry Manne, whom Teles calls one the great organizational entrepreneurs of law and economics, attempted to build a dedicated conservative law program at the University of Rochester in the late 1960s by cultivating conservative alumni and foundation support.
...
CASE III: THE OLIN FOUNDATION AND THE BEACHHEAD THEORY
Although a dense network of conservative philanthropic foundations—including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation—became prominent funders of right-wing causes in the 1970s and early 1980s, the John M. Olin Foundation has received the most scholarly attention for the following three reasons: (1) it was one of the first conservative foundations to focus on giving in higher education to achieve its political aims, (2) its peer institutions considered it an innovative leader in right-wing philanthropic giving, and (3) it has actively supported studies that highlight its history and mission. Such studies include John J. Miller’s official history of the foundation, A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America, and Steven Teles’s more neutral The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, both of which received support from Olin Foundation grants. 17 Scholars and philanthropic officials have centered these points (particularly its reputation for innovation) in criticisms of the Olin Foundation’s politics (Sally Covington’s Moving a Public Policy Agenda, for example, devotes one of its major case studies to the foundation because of its reputation for innovation and impact).
Given the success of the Olin Foundation’s projects and of its broader vision of promarket social change rooted in college and university campuses, this reputation is well deserved.18 John M. Olin, whose Winchester Repeating Arms Company made a fortune during World War II manufacturing arms and ammunition for the US Army, was not the first right-wing billionaire to establish a dedicated philanthropic foundation in their name (Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and even the comparatively less wealthy Charles Walgreen preceded him). But Olin was concerned that “mission creep” had set in at the major establishment philanthropic organizations, leading them to betray their founders’ promarket ideals. He was determined to avoid the same fate, and to ensure his money was tied to meaningful institution-building and political change. The Olin Foundation was therefore designed to have a limited lifespan: Olin died in 1982, and the foundation folded in 2005 after having disbursed nearly $300 million to conservative causes.19
...
CASE IV: THE KOCHS AND GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
The Koch Family Foundations took a similar approach to Olin, except that unlike Olin, the Koch foundations funded “Gramscian” and “Fabian” strategies simultaneously. As of 2015, the Kochs had spent nearly $150 million funding academic programs at no fewer than 307 higher education institutions. In fact, they dedicated $50 million to a single flagship campus in the Koch system: George Mason University.34 How GMU became a Koch campus—or rather, how the Kochs became the major financial backers of several of the school’s promarket research centers, along with its economics department and law school—is worth exploring in detail. The Kochs’ approach to philanthropic giving is similar to Olin’s in important ways, among them the committed ideological vision, the importance of
...
CASE V: THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY
Institutions created by conservative philanthropy in higher education can have profound political, social, and cultural influence. The most influential of these institutions is the Federalist Society, founded as a group for conservative law students in 1982. The Federalist Society has given educational and social support to a generation of right-wing judges, attorneys, and legal scholars. The landmark cases settled by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court in the past decade—Citizens United v. FEC, Shelby County v. Holder, Janus v. AFSCME, and Trump v. Hawaii 46—would have been considerably more difficult for conservatives to win without the Federalist Society’s influence, not least because Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, the late Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas are all Federalist Society alumni. One opinion columnist has called the Federalist Society the “farm system for the [judiciary],” ensuring the ideological reliability of judicial appointees and preventing missteps like Richard Nixon’s appointment of Harry A. Blackmun (who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade) to the Supreme Court or George H.W. Bush’s appointment of David Souter (who was identified with the court’s liberal faction for most of his career).47 Although the media
...
CASE V: UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT GROUPS
Although the Federalist Society and conservative domination of the legal system represent conservative philanthropy’s most consequential achievements, other kinds of higher education philanthropy have contributed to right-wing political success. Conservative activists and philanthropists have underwritten right-wing undergraduate student activism that advocates free market ideology on college campuses. One of the earliest organized efforts was Young Americans for Freedom, founded by a group of some 90 young activists at conservative publisher William F. Buckley Jr.’s Connecticut estate in September 1960.55 (Young Americans for Freedom is not to be confused with Young America’s Foundation, discussed below. For clarity, I refer to both organizations by their full names...
notes: 54Maxine Joselow, “Is George Mason the New Trump U?” E&E News, July 17, 2018, https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060089361; “Tracking Deregulation in the Trump Era,” Brookings Institution, January 16, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trumpera/. 55 There are three scholarly treatments of Young Americans for Freedom by historians. These are Gregory L. Schneider’s Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (New York: New York University Press, 1999), John A. Andrew’s The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), and sociologist Rebecca E. Klatch’s A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). There are also a handful of accounts from conservative pundits involved in Young Americans for Freedom, notably William F. Buckley Jr.’s Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater (New York: Basic Books, 2008) and Wayne J. Thorburn’s (former executive director of Young Americans for Freedom) A Generation Awakes: Young Americans for Freedom and the Creation of the Conservative Movement (Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 2010). ]]
It should also be noted that Young America’s Foundation and Leadership Institute alumni have gone on to prominent positions in the American Right in the 2010s,including White House advisor and architect of the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policy Stephen Miller (Young America’s Foundation) and media provocateur James O’Keefe (Leadership Institute). 65
This poses another counterfactual: would a similar conservative leadership cadre have developed absent support from organizations like Young America’s Foundation and the Leadership Institute? Ultimately, it seems unlikely that conservative organizations operating independently on college campuses without any kind of overarching political and financial coordination would have developed such a wide-ranging and politically disciplined leadership class. For instance, the broad support that conservative philanthropy has provided to conservative firebrand Dinesh D’Souza, now a bestselling author, suggests that a vibrant conservative ecosystem, both on and off campus, is crucial for cultivating conservative leaders. The Olin Foundation and the Institute for Educational Affairs first supported D’Souza through his right-wing campus newspaper, Dartmouth Review, in the early 1980s. After graduating from Dartmouth, D’Souza secured a John M. Olin Fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute, where he helped popularize the phrase “political correctness” to decry early 1990s campus culture. It seems fair to say that D’Souza owes much of his success to Olin, which can likely be said for many lesser-known conservative thinkers and writers who have reliably promoted free enterprise and procapitalist views.66
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
A survey of the literature on conservative philanthropy in higher education yields the following key themes: The importance of dense networks to achieve immediate and long-term goals. Michael Joyce, a senior official at the Olin Foundation and later the head of the Bradley Foundation, called this the “wine collection” effect; I refer to it as the career pipeline. This pipeline is a way for foundations to invest in conservative figures when they are students or scholars, who mature and eventually contribute to rightwing politics off campus.67
This was the Olin Foundation’s stated goal when it supported writers and activists like Dinesh D’Souza. But it was also a goal of institution-building on college campuses. Multiple foundations funded overlapping efforts at colleges and universities across the United States to establish centers for right-wing thought, and those efforts operated cumulatively over time. The creation of a center of conservative economic thought at the University of Chicago allowed for future successes; even failed attempts like Manne’s entrepreneurship at Rochester and Emory reaped results under different circumstances at George Mason.
The establishment of conservative student groups, from the Federalist Society to undergraduate conservative newspapers, provided a pipeline of talent to these institutions and, in the case of the Federalist Society, eventually provided financial support. Identifying faculty organizational entrepreneurs and sympathetic administrators. From an operational standpoint, this was a critical component of the eventual establishment of conservative centers on campus. When any of the three ingredients (dense networks of donors, dedicated organizational entrepreneurs among faculty, and a sympathetic administration)were lacking—as at the University of Rochester in the 1960s and Emory University in the 1980s—the institution-building efforts failed.
When those three ingredients were present, as they were at Harvard in the late 1980s and George Mason University since the 1970s, the transformations could be profound.The Koch network at George Mason would never have been as successful as it has been without the collaboration of faculty and administrators. A corollary to this is the importance of overcoming institutional resistance. There has been tremendous resistance in the academy to right-wing philanthropy. Three of the right-wing efforts discussed in this review—at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, the University of Rochester in the 1960s, and Emory University in the 1980s—were unsuccessful because of faculty or administration resistance; the successes were possible when support from faculty and, above all, administration was forthcoming.
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https://theconversation.com/the-made-up-crisis-behind-the-state-takeover-of-houstons-public-schools-128346
school bd pipeline for ppl of color into politics, TX abbott
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intercept
all in all, Long admitted, it had been a tough year, in which some 376 anti-plastics bills were introduced, and the perception of the plastics industry has continued to “spiral down exponentially.” The Plastics Industry Association is taking its cratering image seriously, working to offset it with pro-plastics presentations for elementary and middle school students, a plastics ambassadors program and, so young people can “feel good about” working in the industry, Long said, a “future leaders in plastics” group.
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incubator:
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/paul-joseph-watson-i-hate-conspiracy-theories
Paul Joseph Watson, a right-wing YouTube creator and editor-at-large at the prolific conspiracy theory outlet Infowars, wants you to forget the last decade of his career and to now believe he doesn’t like conspiracy theories.
:{In }
:{ uploaded yesterday to }:Dennis Prager’s digital media outlet PragerU,:{ Watson joined conservative commentator Candace Owens on her podcast to discuss issues of social media moderation as interpreted through the right-wing lens that defines it as “censorship.” Watson was banned from Facebook earlier this year.}:
During the interview, Watson took issue with how the media has characterized the content he produces, often identifying him as a conspiracy theorist and sympathetic to the alt-right. Watson rejected being considered alt-right, since he said he does not believe in the pursuit of a white ethnostate, and similarly rejected being called a conspiracy theorist.
“I hate conspiracy theories. I think most of them are really dumb,” Watson said.
Owens chimed in that she doesn’t watch CNN because it’s a “conspiracy theorist network.”It’s worth noting that Owens got her start in right-wing media thanks in part to an in-studio appearance she made on Alex Jones’ Infowars show while she still operated under the moniker “Red Pill Black.”
Watson said, “I was a conspiracy theorist when I was a kid, like 15 years ago. That’s where I came from, so I know how those ideas—you take disparate bits of information and fuse them together to create a conspiracy. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some conspiracies. But I know how they’re created and I know mentally how people are lulled into believing them.”
After making his claim, Watson maintained his newfound anti-conspiracy theory position for about 10 minutes. Then, Watson and Owens theorized that tech companies were banning right-wing figures from their platforms because they are involved in a conspiracy to silence political dissidents and enforce homogeneous political thought.
Watson appeared in-studio on Infowars in March to talk about a new project he was working on to “generate the next generation of YouTubers, of young political commentators."
https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/infowars-paul-joseph-watson-launching-new-project-generate-next-generation-youtubers
[vid]
Tags: Candace OwensPaul Joseph Watsonconspiracy theoriessocial mediaPragerU
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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-white-house-hires-22-year-old-former-disney-channel-star
former Disney Channel star was just hired by the Trump administration after interning in the White House.
CNN reported Tuesday that Caroline Sunshine, best known for her work on the Disney Channel show “Shake It Up,” was hired to work in the White House press office as an assistant.
In a statement to CNN, White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters said that prior to interning at the White House, Sunshine “was involved with the American Enterprise Institute,” a right-wing think tank.
Though Sunshine appears to be the first entertainer hired by the Trump administration, CNN noted that she’s far from its first media figure. Her relatively low-profile hiring came after President Donald Trump hired CNBC host Larry Kudlow to lead the White House National Economic Council, as well as the hiring of Fox News analyst John Bolton as the next national security adviser.
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AN
One of President Donald Trump’s newest appointees is a registered agent of Saudi Arabia earning hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby on the kingdom’s behalf, according to U.S. Department of Justice records reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity.
Since January, the Saudi Arabian foreign ministry has paid longtime Republican lobbyist Richard Hohlt about $430,000 in exchange for “advice on legislative and public affairs strategies.”
Trump’s decision to appoint a registered foreign agent to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships clashes with the president’s vow to clean up Washington and limit the influence of special interests.
Trump singled out lobbyists for foreign governments for special criticism, saying they shouldn’t be permitted to contribute to political campaigns. Hohlt is himself a Trump donor, though his contributions came before he registered to represent Saudi Arabia.
“I will issue a lifetime ban against senior executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of a FOREIGN GOVERNMENT! #DrainTheSwamp,” he tweeted in October.
Key advisory body
The commission is essentially a part-time advisory body responsible for making final recommendations to the president of candidates for the prestigious White House fellowships, which President Lyndon B. Johnson created in 1964.
The candidates are usually accomplished professionals with sterling resumes. Fellows are typically given jobs in the White House and federal agencies. Past White House fellows include Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta.
Hohlt said he is one of 19 commissioners who met over a weekend this month to interview the fellowship candidates — the commission’s only formal duty annually.
Hohlt stresses he has never lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Saudi Arabia, which has aggressively courted Trump since he became president in January.
“That is not my role,” Hohlt said.
What role, then, does he play?
According to Hohlt’s disclosures with the Department of Justice, he registered to lobby for Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry in October and “provides them with advice on legislative and public affairs strategies.” He disclosed no direct contacts with government officials on the Saudis’ behalf as of April 30, the date covered by the latest Department of Justice report.
Hohlt said he was largely brought in to offer advice on overarching strategy and how the legislative process works.
He did directly contact some congressional offices in late May and June regarding an arms sale, he said, and those contacts will be disclosed in his next disclosure report, as required.
Hohlt added that he’s working for the Saudis without a formal contract. If the Saudis asked him to lobby for something the Trump administration opposed, “I’d say I’m not going to work on it,” Hohlt said.
For example, he said, the administration was in favor of the arms deal.
Trump strikes deals with Saudis
Trump’s first foreign trip as president came in May, when he visited Saudi Arabia.
While there, Trump touted the “tremendous” deals he said he struck with the Saudis, including an expanded arms agreement valued at $100 billion. During elaborate ceremonies, the Saudis heaped plaudits. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir praised Trump and praised his “vision,” “strength” and “decisiveness.”
Hohlt said he disclosed his Saudi lobbying job to Trump officials during the vetting process before his appointment.
White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said she had “nothing to add” in response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity about Trump’s appointment of Hohlt, including whether the Trump administration was aware Hohlt worked as a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry.
Love referred the question of whether the administration was aware of Hohlt’s representation of the Saudis to the White House fellows office, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Upon taking office, Trump issued an executive order on ethics that included, among other things, a lifetime ban on executive branch appointees engaging in work that would require registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other restrictions on lobbyists.
The law, known as FARA, is the same law that mandates disclosure of Hohlt’s work for Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s executive order doesn’t apply to part-time appointees such as Hohlt. Nonetheless, some government ethics experts still say the appointment presents a jarring contrast with the president’s statements.
And despite Trump’s order, he has issued ethics waivers to lobbyists who have taken full-time positions with the administration, including, for example, Michael Catanzaro, a former energy company lobbyist who is now a special assistant to the president and adviser on energy policy. The waiver allows Catanzaro to participate in matters on which he lobbied.
Trump donor
Hohlt is a Trump donor. He contributed $2,700, to Trump’s campaign in August and $5,000 to Trump’s transition in September, the maximum amounts permitted. Those contributions came before he registered to represent Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry in October.
Nonetheless, “Appointing someone who is registered under FARA as doing work for Saudi Arabia does seem odd at a time when he’s made a very big deal about not having people leave the government and then do work where they have to register under FARA,” said Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign reform organization.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in Saint Louis, said, “There is truth to the slogan that personnel is policy. And so he’s appointing this lobbyist for Saudi Arabia to a commission that then recommends people for important positions.”
Hohlt also lobbies for numerous corporate clients. This year, he’s been registered to lobby on behalf of oil giant Chevron, the Motion Picture Association of America and a division of tobacco giant Altria, among others.
Asked about any potential conflict of interest, Hohlt pointed to the extremely part-time nature of his fellowship commission appointment.
“I guess I’m an old-fashioned lobbyist,” Hohlt said. “I know how to separate lobbying and not lobbying.”
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Berman
STAFF:
Like FIRE looks like Berman promotes from within (but also has to keep shape-shifting, so one person will be in multiple front orgs). Some from incubators. In loose network that includes James O’Keefe (eg affirmative action bake sales). Big Three are National Journalism Center, Collegiate Network and Leadership Institute.
Longwell: jumps ship from koch to berman! Starts at kenyon Collegiate Network funded student newspaper
Martosko: ironically alcoholic, concealed carry; Facebook stalking, Daily Caller; dartmouth BA; Daily Mail UK online
Coggin: RW student newspaper folded after publishing the name of female student who had accused another student of rape (he was cleared? by?)
Tim Miller: seems to have worked up from intern state politics to national, 2 years at Berman, RNC opps res.
Bret Jacobsen oregon Commentator CN (“Free Minds, Free Markets, Free Booze.”) , Maverick Strategies, berman . Daniel Ivory opps res for Syngenta
Swearingen: House intern, ATR Grover Norquist, state level lobbyist, Berman ACC
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