Four Sis
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">this is a tag: see bak node</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">chip b chart</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.organizedwealth.us/funding/organized-wealth-web.html">http://www.organizedwealth.us/funding/organized-wealth-web.html</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“four sisters” (the Olin, Bradley, Smith Richardson and </font></b></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Sarah Scaife foundations</b>).</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see foundations</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>this is a tag to refer to the early and perennial funders of RWI</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">could also include coors and others: </font><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The four are the usual suspects of the Right's political ATM: Richard Scaife's family foundations, Adolph Coors' Castle Rock Foundation, The John M. Olin Foundation, and the Linde and Harry Bradley Foundation.</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"> </span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">note, these are often family foundations, in theory charity, but evil b/c tax shelters (~ inheritance tax, thus mod) used to make themselves richer and to promote RW agenda (which supports their delusion their riches are earned/deserved)</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">---</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Olin</b> (chemical, dupont, gunpwder, Winchester, electronics?,</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b> Bradley</b> (Rockwell, military contractor; Jane Mayer writes that the Bradley Foundation has “paid for some six hundred graduate and postgraduate fellowships, right-wing think tanks, conservative journals, activists fighting Communism abroad, and its own publishing house, Encounter Books.”),</div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">omg from olin:</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In 1979, Michael Joyce entered the world of large-scale philanthropy with assistance from his mentor Irving Kristol, </b>when he assumed the reins of the John M. Olin Foundation from the retiring president, William Simon. At Olin, one of Joyce’s first projects was to organize support for the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200602270759.asp" target="blank">launching of the Federalist Society.</a> <span class="print-footnote">[11]</span><b> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);">Joyce’s work in creating and fostering the development of the Federalist Society is instructive and foreshadows the role that he has played in current efforts by neoconservatives to restructure American higher education. </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);">The Federalist Society, with Joyce’s ongoing support, not only fostered the development of ultra-conservative legal scholars and politicians such as Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Samuel Alito, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Kenneth Starr (all of whom are members) but organized them into a powerful force for reshaping American jurisprudence in support of a larger neoconservative agenda.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Also significant in this regard is <a href="http://www.institutefordemocracy.org/pub3.html" target="blank">a report by Jerome Shestack,</a> <span class="print-footnote">[12]</span> former president of the American Bar Association, that the Federalist Society is being increasingly being used as a platform from which to launch ideological attacks on the mainstream legal community.</span> <b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Through the device of the Federalist Society publication, <i>ABA Watch,</i> the society has launched a vicious attack on the ABA. In a special edition of the <i>Watch,</i> U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), co-chair of the society, announced that he would no longer invite the ABA to participate on a pro forma basis in the Senate judicial confirmation process</span>.</b> Employing rhetoric eerily parallel to that being used in the current attacks on the academy, Justice Clarence Thomas openly denounced the ABA, declaring “I am doubtful that the ABA can ever reform itself.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <a href="http://www.goacta.org/whats_new/IDTestimony1-10-06.pdf" target="blank">her testimony</a> <span class="print-footnote">[13]</span> before Pennsylvania's Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education, which convened in Philadelphia, <b>Anne Neal, </b>president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, expressed a similar sentiment as to the ability of the academy to reform itself. “Faced with growing legislative pressure on this issue, the higher education establishment issued the American Council on Education statement, figured it would pretend to have a quick conversion, endorse intellectual diversity, get those yahoo legislators off their backs and go back to business as usual. DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS CHARADE.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);">In 1985, Michael Joyce left the Olin Foundation to assume the presidency of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);"> in Milwaukee. During this time, he not only built the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);"> <b>Bradley Foundation into the largest and most influential right-wing foundation in the country, </b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);"><b>he also forged a formidable alliance among a small group of the nation’s largest, far right-wing foundations so that their resources could be more strategically deployed in support of the developing neoconservative agenda</b>. Included in this alliance are the<b> Koch Foundation</b> (either directly or through its subsidiary the Claude Lambe Foundation), the<b> Castle Rock Foundation (Coors) and the Sarah Scaife Foundations </b>(either directly or through its subsidiaries the Carthage Foundation and the Alleghany Foundation) which, together with Olin and Bradley, have collectively financed the rise of the neoconservative movement in this country and have done so with an impressive display tactical precision.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It is a telling marker of the ideological cohesiveness and extremism of this core group of philanthropies that three of the five founding members, Joseph Coors, David Koch and Harry Bradley, were </b><a href="http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/reports/tort/Section1.html" target="blank"><b>members and financial supporters</b></a><b> </b><span class="print-footnote"><b>[14]</b></span><b> of the<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> John Birch Society</span>. The Scaife foundations, headed by Richard Mellon Scaife, </b><a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=1385" target="_blank"><b>are also involved,</b></a><b> </b><span class="print-footnote"><b>[15]</b></span><b> albeit in less direct ways.</b></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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<b>The "Four Sisters"..</b>.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Creating "Conventional Wisdom"
Now, after 30 years of effort, this core <b>FSFG</b> has built a comprehensive ideological infrastructure. There are now over 500 organizations, with the Heritage Foundation at the hub, all funded by this core group. David Callahan's 1999 study, $1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s, found that just the top 20 of the organizations spent over $1 billion on this ideological effort in the 1990s.
The right-wing movement's messages are orchestrated and amplified to sound like a mass "movement" consisting of many "voices." Using "messaging"--communication techniques from the fields of marketing, public relations, and corporate image-management--the movement appeals to people's deeper feelings and values. Messages are repeated until they become "conventional wisdom." Examples include lines like "Social Security is going broke" and "public schools are failing." Both statements are questionable, yet both have been firmly embedded in the "public mind" by purposeful repetition through multiple channels. This orchestration has been referred to as a "Mighty Wurlitzer, " a CIA term that refers to propaganda that is repeated over and over again in numerous places until the public believes what it's hearing must be true.
As a study by the <b>People for the American Way</b>, has put it: "The result of this comprehensive and yet largely invisible funding strategy is an extraordinary amplification of the far right's views on a range of issues. The various funding recipients do not march in ideological lock-step, but they do promote many of the same issues to their respective audiences. They have thus been able to keep alive in the public debate a variety of policy ideas long ago discredited or discarded by the mainstream. That, in turn, has been of enormous value in the right's ongoing effort to reshape American society. The success of the right-wing efforts are seen at every level of government, as a vast armada of foundation-funded right-wing organizations has both fed and capitalized on the current swing to the right in Congress and in the state legislatures."
The Money Comes With Strings
The FSFG money comes with ideological strings attached. Their think tanks are not independent; their organizations must espouse their ideology. "Cato, for example," as Gregg Easterbrook pointed out in an article in the Atlantic in 1986, "flatly states that it will not release any study that calls for a government program. The institute's president, Edward Crane, says that he receives one or two commissioned reports each year that are 'inconsistent,' and he does not publish them. The analyst Jonathan Stein lost his job at [the Center For Strategic & International Studies] CSIS several months after he published a book highly critical of Star Wars, the study of which is worth millions to think tanks that toe the line. (CSIS denies there was any connection.) "
The core group that controls this movement is now attacking even Republicans who would previously have been considered "conservatives" for inadequate ideological purity. Members of the moderate wing of the Republican Party are derided by the radical right as nothing more than RINO's -- Republicans In Name Only. The FSFG is funding efforts to drive these moderates out of office and out of the party.(2)
<b>
The Movement is Coordinated</b>
Currently the core of the "conservative movement" meets weekly with representatives of the FSFG. As Eric Alterman has revealed:
Their weekly agenda was hammered out every <b>Wednesday at a meeting chaired by Grover Norquist,</b> a rightwing Leninist who believes in an ever-shifting tactical alliance.… Among those who attend the invitation-only meetings are spokespeople and representatives of NRA, the Christian Coalition, the Heritage Foundation; corporate lobbyists, the top people from the Republican party and the Congressional Republican leadership, and chief White House aides. Trusted rightwing journalists and editors also attend, though the meetings are off the record.
While the ostensible purpose of the meeting is to share information and coordinate strategy, they also give Norquist the opportunity to act as an ideological enforcer. When one member of the Bush administration worried to a New York Times reporter that the administration's plan to repeal the estate tax would cripple charitable giving, he was publicly warned by Norquist that this was "the first betrayal of Bush", and was gone not long afterward. When a conservative pundit named Laura Ingraham criticised a fellow conservative in the House of Representatives for overzealousness, she was immediately informed by Norquist to decide "whether to be with us or against us". She was no longer welcome at the meetings.
David Brock, in his book Blinded By the Right, described from inside this "movement" how different parts of the right-wing web and their funders interacted during the attempt to remove President Clinton from office. Brock writes that funding was supplied by Richard Mellon Scaife, Federalist Society (funded by Scaife) lawyers and judges working behind the scenes assisting Special Prosecutor Ken Starr and supplying information to (Scaife-funded) American Spectator magazine.
A Case Study
Often it is possible to discern how the timing of a "Mighty Wurlitzer" chorus relates to a planned conservative policy initiative. A recent example is the flurry of articles that hit the press starting in late November, originating from the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform and the Tax Foundation, which claimed that the <b>poor do not pay enough income taxes. </b>The Wall Street Journal even referred to the poor as "lucky duckies." The paper did not mention that poor people do pay Social Security taxes. The publicity appears to have been timed to the release of the president's latest tax-cutting program.(3)
The Effect on Society
The core right-wing web of organizations funded by the FSFG has increasingly been able to set the public agenda, shifting national and local politics consistently to the right and away from the mainstream public interest. As a result, right-wing ideological premises and arguments dominate public-issue debate, with big money using this communications infrastructure to drown out other voices, virtually creating a one-dollar-one-vote society. "As one investigative journalist stated years ago in a pioneering investigation of the conservative philanthropy of Richard Scaife," wrote Sally Covington in a 1997 study, "layer upon layer of seminars, studies, conferences, and interviews [can] do much to push along if not create, the issues, which then become the national agenda of debate.... By multiplying the authorities to whom the media are prepared to give a friendly hearing, [conservative donations] have helped to create an illusion of diversity where none exists. The result could be an increasing number of one-sided debates in which the challengers are far outnumbered, if indeed they are heard from at all."
<b>The Right's Attack on Academia</b>
So how does all this relate to the attack on academic freedom which Foner and Gilmore complained about?
It turns out that many of the most important attacks are part of a campaign organized by conservative foundations, as a study by <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">report by the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) found. In a section entitled, "Targeting the Academy"</span> the report discusses right-wing attacks on academia, including<b>"political correctness" </b>campaigns, efforts to use alumni contributions to advance a conservative agenda, efforts to <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">take over or de-fund the National Endowment for the Humanities and to de-fund the National Endowment for the Arts.</span> These attacks follow the pattern outlined in the Powell memo -- attack the patriotism of liberals and attempt to convince trustees of colleges and universities to remove them, replacing them with ideological "conservatives."(4)
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The FSFG supports organizations like <b>Accuracy in Academia, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the National Association of Scholars, the Madison Center for Educational Affairs (their "Collegiate Network" links over 70 student newspapers</b>), the Institute for Educational Affairs and others. </span>These organizations work to transform academia toward the right's ideological agenda.</font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font 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rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“four sisters:</b></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><b>the Olin,</b></div><div><b> Bradley,</b></div><div><b> Smith Richardson and </b></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Sarah Scaife foundations</b></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">buying a movement pdf</span><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">A growing number of other conservative think tanks and advocacy groups depend </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">on foundation largesse for both their existence and maintenance. While the Heritage </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Foundation and Free Congress Foundation (founded with seed money from Coors) and </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">the Cato Institute (founded with Koch family money) are some of the more visible </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">examples, there are a number of others, among them the Ethics and Public Policy Center </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">(EPPC), founded by Ernest Lefever, whose mission is to “reinforce the Judeo-Christian </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">moral tradition in public debate over domestic and foreign policy.”33</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"> Over 60 percent of </font>its 1993 income came from the <b>“four sisters” (the Olin, Bradley, Smith Richardson and </b></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Sarah Scaife foundations</b>).34 </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The Institute on Religion and Democracy, supporter of the </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“Contract with America” and known for its attacks on the National Council of Churches, </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">received 89 percent of its support in its first two years from six conservative </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">foundations.35 Hundreds of thousands of dollars in seed money and a commitment for </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">future support from the Koch family foundations made possible the Institute for Justice, a </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">property-rights and pro-voucher law firm.36 In 1992 alone,<b> Koch </b>foundations’ </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">contributions totaled $700,000,37 fully 70 percent of the Institute’s 1993 budget.38 </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Continuing Koch support for the Cato Institute is also substantial. Cato president Edward </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Crane asserts that the Kochs “are very large contributors...[but] it would not be a </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">devastating blow if they stopped supporting us.” Nevertheless, $1.75 million of Cato’s </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">$3.2 million 1990 budget -- or over 50 percent -- came from the Kochs.39</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Follow the money</b>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And that's what seems to unite these seemingly disparate groups -- money. Every black conservative group I've mentioned – without exception – receives a significant portion of their funding (in some cases all of their funding) from at least three of four ultra-conservative foundations (the Lincoln Institute gets its share funneled indirectly through the conservative Hoover Institution). </span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
The four are the usual suspects of the Right's political ATM: Richard Scaife's family foundations, Adolph Coors' Castle Rock Foundation, The John M. Olin Foundation, and the Linde and Harry Bradley Foundation.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> What's striking about these groups' underwriting of "minority organizations" is that some of them have at times displayed what many would consider a frankly racist agenda.</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Scaife has gained notoriety as one of the great funders of the "New Conservative" movement</b>. While he is best known for his anti-Clinton activities, including paying for the American Spectator's "Arkansas Project," he has plenty of unsavory grantees; the Charlotte Observer reported that he provided funding for Children Requiring A Caring Community, a scary fringe group that pays poor women to be surgically sterilized or to undergo long-term birth control. </span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to People For The American Way (PFAW), William Coors gave a speech In 1984 in which he reportedly told a largely African American audience that "one of the best things they [slave traders] did for you is to drag your ancestors over here in chains." Later in the speech, he asserted that weakness in the Zimbabwe economy was due to black Africans' "lack of intellectual capacity."</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The speech drew controversy and a boycott by African American and Hispanic groups. In response, Coors pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to African American and Hispanic organizations. Apparently, black conservative groups run by white Republicans count.</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation </b>is a particularly interesting case. According to PFAW, Bradley, whose recipients list "reads like a Who's Who of the U.S. Right," is a major funding source for the Center for Individual Rights, which brought the Hopwood v. Texas case that ended affirmative action at the University of Texas law school. Bradley played a major role in financing Pete Wilson and Ward Connerly's Prop 209, and, through the Pacific Legal Foundation, Bradley "provided pro bono representation to ...Wilson in his challenge to five state statutes dealing with affirmative action ..." Clint Bolick, vice president of the Institute for Justice, another recipient of Bradley money, "played a pivotal role in attacks on Lani Guinier, President Clinton's nominee to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Bolick's Wall Street Journal opinion piece headlined 'Clinton's Quota Queen' dredged up the worst racist and sexist stereotypes and helped throw the Guinier nomination on the defensive."</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b style="">Even more striking is that Bradley grants supported Charles Murray and the late Harvard psychologist Richard Hernstein while they wrote The Bell Curve:</b> Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. According to PFAW, "the book was widely seen as a piece of profoundly racist and classist pseudo-science, and was denounced by the American Psychological Association. It had relied heavily on studies financed by the Pioneer Fund, a neo-Nazi organization that promoted eugenicist research. Immediately after its publication, Bradley raised Murray's annual grant to $163,000."</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The boards of these foundations aren't exactly "multicultural," if you know what I mean. But they have a message to get out: they're coming after affirmative action, the minimum wage, social welfare programs, pre- and after-school programs and, indeed, multiculturalism itself. And when that's the message, it's good to have it delivered by an African-American. </span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So there you have it, the leading lights of the black conservative movement. If you believe that the most pressing problems facing the African-American community today are the minimum wage, too many regulations on energy companies and too many people trying to get kids to quit smoking, then maybe you should join the black conservative movement yourself. You don't have to be black, or even know anyone who is. And heck, if you are black and you leave the house early enough, they may even put you on TV to "rebut" the NAACP.</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Joshua Holland is a student at the University of Southern California and Editor-in-Chief of the Trojan Horse, USC's "fiercely Progressive voice of reason."</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div>