RSN: John Feffer | The Bolton Administration Has Already Begun

CLICK ON LINK!

20 May 18

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

DEAR RSN READERS - I am a senior citizen living on a modest fixed income. But my interest in the world out there is far from modest. I have gratitude and admiration for all those journalists and other staff members who keep RSN alive and vibrant for its readership. I am a modestly sustaining member, automatically charged a small sum every month. I have recently doubled this sustaining donation in addition to 6 other higher, modest donations I've given so far. Think of this. If 20% of us donated $10 or even $5 as monthly sustaining members, and if additional readers donated higher amounts according to their means, we would be a community, supporting this publication that has few equals, if any. That is the burgeoning effect of accumulation, much the way a pod of dolphins carries a distressed sailor to the shore. And you know, giving what you can easily afford will make you feel good, a reader who does his or her part in supporting this exceptional news source and commentary. / Sincerely / Ina, RSN Reader-Supporter

Sure, I'll make a donation!

RSN: John Feffer | The Bolton Administration Has Already Begun

Matt Taibbi | Trump Is a Dangerous Idiot. So Why Is the Media Pushing Him Toward War?

Matt Taibbi | Trump Is a Dangerous Idiot. So Why Is the Media Pushing Him Toward War?

The Incredible Hoax of Reaganomics, Leaking Pipelines, Women have small brains? Republicans have small penises?

Bold Nebraska

 

"The new pipelines are failing even worse than the oldest pipelines," said Carl Weimer, director of the Pipeline Safety Trust.

"There's some suggestions that we're trying to put so many new miles of pipeline in the ground so fast that people aren't doing construction … the way they ought to." ‪#‎NOKXL‬

SNL: As US rushes to build gas lines, failure rate of new pipes has spiked

New pipelines are failing at a rate on par with gas transmission lines installed before the 1940s.

SNL.COM

Bold Nebraska 

Great write-up on the ‪#‎RenewableEnergy‬ Forum in Norfolk last night organized by Nebraska Farmers Union, which featured a presentation by farmer, Pipeline Fighter and "Harvest the Hope" concert host Art Tanderup — who has installed ‪#‎solar‬ on his land that crosses the Keystone XL pipeline route that powers 85% of his farm. ‪#‎BuildOurEnergy‬ ‪#‎NOKXL‬

Forum speakers tout benefits of renewable energy

NORFOLK — The Nebraska Farmers Union organized a forum Thursday evening at Northeast Community College's Lifelong Learning Center, where presenters discussed renewable energy's impact on the economy, climate change and

COLUMBUSTELEGRAM.COM|BY BY CHRISTINA LIEFFRING / CLIEFFRING@COLUMBUSTELEG

TAKE THE TIME AND READ DAVID STOCKMAN

Republicans are still pushing Reaganomics -- but they have added much more Austerity to the package to really hurt the Middle Class and Poor..

The Incredible Hoax of Reaganomics- David Stockman 1/3 | Nomadic Politics

The first of a three-part investigation on the myths behind Reaganomics. Part 1 deals with the architect of the economic policy, David Stockman and his...

NOMADICPOLITICS.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY ED D. GOFF

It has been scientifically proven that Republican men who worry about women's brain size have small penises! : )

Why would anyone say something this stupid?

AUSTIN, Texas — American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray- who is an educational advisor to Republican governor candidate Greg Abbott, told an audience at the University of Texas this week that there is no “evidence” showing that any woman has ever been a “significant original thinker.” He then said the reason for this was the smaller size of the female brain.

“When you compare the size of a man’s brain with that of a woman, there’s no comparison,” explained Murray. “It’s not that I have anything against women. They’re nice enough, but it’s just a physical fact that their brains have developed to the same degree that men’s brains have developed.”

“I’m not a doctor,” he added, “but it may have something to do with their need to develop breasts. The human body can’t do everything.”

Texas Republican Claims Women Have Smaller Brains

He argued that equal pay laws would hurt women because, “You don’t pay the same at the pump for regular and supreme,” he said.

RELIGIONLO.COM

Citizens UnTied

Liberal Cartoons @LiberalCartoons

Liberal Progressive Democrats

EXACTLY.

~S~

Via God

We are Liberal Progressive Democrats

RSN: Texas Gun Nuts Policing the Police - With a Black Panthers Tactic, How the Iraq War Financed a Beltway Real Estate Boom, Suicides Spread Through a Brazilian Tribe

The World is watching American Racism clearly revealed and how it's addressed.
HINT: You don't address and correct a problem by pepper spraying or arrested protesters.

As the Neo-Con War Mongers goosestep this nation to war around the Globe at the expense of our nation, short-changing every issue from EDUCATION to the ENVIRONMENT to ENFORCEMENT to INFRASTRUCTURE as our roads and bridges crumble.....

The US can't afford to feed its hungry with FOOD STAMPS, but it can support a MILITARY DICTATORSHIP in Pakistan that created the monsters that killed school children?

Good article below about the NEOCONS who profited from US INVASIONS and WAR.

NOTE: The same names continue to appear: PODESTA, RADEMAKER, FOX NEWS, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, DANIELLE PLETKA....

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

---

Texas Gun Nuts Policing the Police - With a Black Panthers Tactic

Brandy Zadrozny, The Daily Beast
Zadrozny writes: "On any given night in Arlington, Texas, a group of open-carry activists turned self-appointed cop-watchers can be found walking by the side of the road, in safety-yellow reflector vests with cameras pointed at police."
READ MORE

In Second Officer's Service, Cops Salute de Blasio
Sebastien Malo, Reuters
Malo writes: "New York City police officers saluted as Mayor Bill de Blasio and his police commissioner entered a Brooklyn funeral home on Saturday for the wake of a policeman killed in an ambush last month that deepened a rift between the mayor and the NYPD."
READ MORE

How the Iraq War Financed a Beltway Real Estate Boom
Ken Silverstein, The Intercept
Silverstein writes: "When it comes to those who profited directly from the last thirteen years of war, Exhibit A perhaps is Rademaker, a man for whom the Iraq war became a giant piggybank."
READ MORE

Anti-Brutality Activists Aim to 'Evict' St. Louis Police From Headquarters
Massoud Hayoun, Al Jazeera America
Hayoun writes: "Scores of protesters at the helm of the ongoing nationwide movement against police violence stormed the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Wednesday, aiming to 'evict' officers they accused of 'perpetrating police brutality on our citizenry.'"
READ MORE

Cincinnati Reveals Harrowing Road - and Limits - in Reforming the Police
Naureen Khan, Al Jazeera America
Khan writes: "As a recent spate of high-profile police killings of unarmed African-American men in New York City, Cleveland, Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere have prompted nationwide soul searching about race and policing, many have turned to Cincinnati as an example of a city that navigated those treacherous crosscurrents more than a decade ago and came out on the other side."
READ MORE

With 21 States Raising Minimum Wage, 2015 Is a Tipping Point
Mark Trumbull, The Christian Science Monitor
Trumbull writes: "Workers in 21 states will see the minimum wage rise in 2015, which means that, for the first time, more than half of US states will be above the federal minimum."
READ MORE

Suicides Spread Through a Brazilian Tribe
Charles Lyons, The New York Times
Lyons writes: "Indigenous peoples suffer the greatest suicide risk among cultural or ethnic groups worldwide. Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men ages 25 to 29 have a suicide rate four times higher than the general population in that same age group in Australia, according to the country's Department of Health."
READ MORE

 

 

 

RSN: The Piketty Panic

Always insightful!

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

---

FOCUS: Paul Krugman | The Piketty Panic

Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty's thesis."
READ MORE

Public pension-funding is a bombing waiting to explode!
Great article - worth reading, as well as the previous articles....

Pension-Fund Looters Get Tax Breaks, Too

By Matt Taibbi

POSTED: October 4, 4:10 PM ET

Rhode Island State Treasurer Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, has declared war on public pensions

A few weeks ago, I wrote a feature on pension reform in states like Rhode Island for Rolling Stone. Since the piece was sharply critical of alternative investments like hedge funds, I expected a heated response, and got one right away. In fact, a series of raving/chest-thumping emails from one Manhattan Institute hedge fund billionaire appeared in my email inbox about four and a half seconds after the piece went live on the Rolling Stone website.

 

This colorful personage calmed down eventually, though, and I figured a more sophisticated, for-public-consumption response would come from those quarters later on.

It finally showed up this week in GoLocalProv, when Aaron Henn, an "opinion-leading urban affairs analyst" who appears in striking tie-and-folded-arms pose in his column photo, wrote a piece in defense of the Rhode Island Treasurer profiled in the piece called "Matt Taibbi's Deceptive Hatchet Job on Gina Raimondo."

 

Henn discloses up top that he's written in the past for the Manhattan Institute (again, a think-tank created by hedge funds to further industry objectives), so there's that. I'm not going to go through his article line-by-line, because this dispute is surely already becoming tiresome to many, but there are one or two points in it worth responding to.

For one, Henn complained that I didn't mention in my article that Raimondo is a Democrat. Through this omission, he says, I was trying to "obscure the severity of America's municipal pension crisis by portraying reform efforts as driven by right-wing ideology."

Well, it is right-wing ideology, for sure. Ayn Rand herself would have loved the idea of unilaterally imposing cuts to the "unsustainable" benefits of parasitic workers. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been advanced by Democratic Party politicians. That's something I have no problem admitting.

Anyone who covers the finance sector knows Democrats over the years have been in bed with Wall Street every bit as much as Republicans. In some ways, the finance industry is actually closer, especially on a cultural level, to the Democrats (many prominent financiers, former Goldman chief Bob Rubin being a great example, are social liberals).

This dates back to the Nineties, when two of the signature deregulatory moves that led to the financial crisis – the final repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act deregulating derivatives – were pushed by the Clinton administration and its ballyhooed Rubin/Summers economic advisory team, famously lauded on the cover of Time as the "Committee to Save the World." (Even back then, politicians were casting Wall-Street friendly reforms as technocratic decisions designed to save regular people from financial ruin.)

 

More recently, I've written many times about the failure of Democratic Party politicians like Barack Obama to do anything about the outrageous carried interest tax break, under which hedge fund billionaires like the ones manning the board of the Manhattan Institute and making millions managing the pensions of states like Rhode Island pay a maximum personal tax rate of 15 percent.

In fact, not only have Democrats not done anything about that outrage, there have been many prominent ones – like for instance Cory Booker and Bill Clinton, two politicians who both benefitted from finance-sector largesse in their respective careers – who stood up and defiantly took bullets for the industry when Obama offered highly muted criticisms of Mitt Romney's finance-sector past last summer.

 

In a way, I should probably thank Henn, because had he not written his piece, I wouldn't have remembered this key point. Not only are states like Rhode Island paying millions in fees to outrageously expensive money managers, but those millions will be taxed at a rate far below what the teachers and police and sanitation workers who are being forced to swallow cuts in those states pay on their dwindling incomes. This is thanks in large part to a tax loophole preserved for years by cowardly Wall Street-supplicating politicians hailing, as Henn correctly notes, from both parties, Republican and Democrat.

There's another section of Henn's piece that coincides with another industry-friendly online criticism of the Rolling Stone piece, an article written by Andrew Biggs for the American Enterprise Institute. I've actually also seen the following argument in a few letters sent to me from pro-industry types in just the last few days, so it feels like a collectively-agreed-upon talking point of very recent vintage. And it's really, really weird stuff.

 

Both writers essentially say that the central thesis of the RS piece – that hedge funds are pushing reform because it's in their own financial self-interest – is "illogical" or a "non-sequitur," despite the undeniable fact of the hundreds of millions in fees paid out to money managers who have gone to great lengths to keep the details of their compensation secret.

Henn's argument went like this:

I agree with Taibbi that having pensions invest in hedge funds is a dubious practice, though I could quibble with his method of using simply fees paid as reason why it's bad. But that misses the much bigger issue, which is that cutting pension liabilities actually reduces, not increases, the justification for investing in hedge funds.
Taibbi rightly shows how governments systematically underfunded pensions for years and then attempted to deal with the resulting deficits through high risk investment strategies like hedge funds. But if you reduce the liability, you reduce the incentive to gamble with the funds. So it's absolutely anti-sensical to suggest anyone acting at the behest of peddlers of such risky plans would take action to reduce the very liability that gives any sort of a fig leaf to investing in them. His central thesis is a complete non-sequitur.

You can get a contact high just from staring at those paragraphs for too long. I think Henn here is saying the following:

States are turning to hedge funds because they have an unfunded liability problem and need to address it by earning higher returns. But if those high returns go on to actually reduce the liability, this will therefore reduce the justification for hiring hedge funds in the first place.

Therefore, nobody acting at the behest of hedge funds would actually hire a hedge fund.

Right? Or something like that. Incidentally, I didn't point to fees "simply" as the only argument against hedge funds. I also noted that they are underperforming blind bets on the market at two or three hundred times the cost, that many of the funds being chosen to manage union money have anti-union histories, and a few other things. In any case, Biggs, from the American Enterprise Institute, echoed Henn:

What strikes me is [the Rolling Stone article's] basic illogic. Taibbi's thesis is apparently a) the high fees charged by hedge funds are ripping off public pensions; and b) think tanks and other groups are pushing to shut down DB pensions.
I'm not sure whether either of these claims is true, but the problem is that – as Taibbi goes to lengths to argue – these shadowy groups are themselves supported by current or former hedge fund managers. In other words, the very people Taibbi claims are profiting the most from the public pension gravy train – and profiting they are, as public plans are the largest single investors in hedge funds and private equity in the country – are the ones trying to stop it. My spider-sense tells me the story might be a little more complicated than Taibbi lets on.

Biggs leaves out the fact that pension-reform advocates are not trying to "stop" pensions, they're mainly trying to convert them from a defined-benefit model to a defined-contribution model. The gravy train they're trying to "stop" is for workers, not money managers, who will actually earn more under reform, as states move more toward alternative investments. In no way is the financial services sector campaigning for an end to its pension gravy train. This is a pretty big thing to forget in this particular argument. It's actually the whole argument, isn't it? Readers, if I'm missing something, please let me know.

Related

• Looting the Pension Funds: How Wall Street Robs Public Workers
• The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
  

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/pension-fund-looters-get-tax-breaks-too-20131004#ixzz2gwmksHsp
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
 

Following like sheep....

The illogical rhetoric repeated by sheep with little thought is astounding and is easily explained when people vote against their own best interests.
 
As information filters out about some of the carefully concealed funding sources of the propaganda, lies and misinformation, maybe some should re-think their beliefs, although it's doubtful they will.

News outlets unearth more Donors Trust recipients

Series of recent reports aim to reveal beneficiaries of conservative charity's dollars

By Paul Abowdemail

6:00 am, February 26, 2013

Virginia-based charity Donors Trust has promised anonymity to donors who seek to fund “sensitive or controversial” issues.

A Center for Public Integrity report last week lifted that veil — at least partially — revealing dozens of conservative foundations that together in recent years have given tens of millions of dollars to Donors Trust .

Donors Trust, in turn, has funded a nationwide network of free-market think tanks, media outlets and university programs to the tune of nearly $400 million since 2002.

Recently, much of that funding has gone toward state-based policy efforts. For example, Donors Trust provided 95 percent of the funding for a conservative media clearinghouse called the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which runs a network of state-based blogs.

While many of the charity’s 193 donors remain anonymous, a variety of media reports have shown where Donors Trust money ends up:

Climate change-denial

In late February, The Guardian reported that 46 percent of Donors Trust grants in 2010 went to groups opposing climate science. Between 2002 and 2010, the group gave $118 million to about 100 such groups.

A detailed 2012 report published on DeSmog Blog ties Donors Trust to a vast climate science denial machine through its generous support for the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that mobilized support for the tobacco industry before shifting its focus to climate change.

An October episode of PBS Frontline said Donors Trust has become “the number one supporter” of climate denial groups like Heartland and the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity after industry giants such as ExxonMobil curtailed funding to Heartland following public protest.

Islamic radicalism

Donors Trust made its largest grant in 2007 to a New York-based group called Clarion Fund. The $17 million donation went toward the production of a documentary called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”

Seven weeks before the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president, Clarion distributed millions of copies of the movie, which stirred fear about Islamic radicalism, by inserting DVDs as ads in daily newspapers nationwide.

Reports later suggested that Chicago businessman Barry Seid may have passed the $17 million through Donors Trust to Clarion. Seid and Donors Trust director Whitney Ball co-chair another foundation called Chicago Freedom Trust.

Academic coups?

In 2010, a free-market professor of economics whose research is funded through Donors Trust laid out his “Free State” plan for libertarians to migrate to and take over the state of New Hampshire.

In 2009, Donors Trust passed about $600,000 in donations to Shimer College while conservative Chicago businessmen, including Seid, attempted unsuccessfully to take control of the small liberal arts school.

'Fair representation'

A Donors Trust subsidiary called the Project for Fair Representation has led legal challenges to affirmative action programs and, more recently, to the Voting Rights Act, according to reports by Reuters and The New York Times.

The project sought out and tapped the majority-white Shelby County, Ala., as plaintiffs in a challenge to Section 5 of the Act, which gives the U.S. Department of Justice power to approve or reject changes to electoral laws in 16 states, mostly in the south. The case will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

More stories about

Politics, Political corruption, Center for Public Integrity, Investigative journalism, Foundation

 

 

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/26/12236/news-outlets-unearth-more-donors-trust-recipients?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=watchdog&utm_medium=publici-email

Donors use charity to push free-market policies in states

Nonprofit group lets donors fly 'totally under the radar'

By Paul Abowdemail

5:00 am, February 14, 2013

 

In 2009, a network of online media outlets began popping up in state capitals across the nation, each covering the news from a clearly conservative point of view. What wasn’t so clear was how they were funded.
“The source is 100 percent anonymous,” said Michael Moroney, a spokesman for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, the think tank that created the outlets.
In fact, 95 percent of Franklin’s revenue in 2011 came from a charity called Donors Trust, according to Internal Revenue Service records.
Conservative foundations and individuals use Donors Trust to pass money to a vast network of think tanks and media outlets that push free-market ideology in the states — $86 million in 2011 alone. The arrangement obscures the identity of the donors wishing to keep their charitable giving private, especially “gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues,” according to the group’s website.
The $6.3 million donation to the Franklin Center was the second-largest gift made in 2011 by the group, a tax-exempt “public charity” that takes tax-deductible donations from donors “dedicated to the ideals of limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,” according to its website.

Donors Trust includes 193 contributors, the majority of whom are individuals. “A lot of donors are flying totally under the radar,” says president and CEO Whitney Ball.

Donor-advised fund

Since its founding in 1999, Donors Trust and its affiliated organization, Donors Capital Fund, have distributed nearly $400 million, becoming major vehicles for tax-exempt giving from wealthy conservatives such as billionaire industrialist Charles Koch.

Koch is among an exclusive pool of donors who have used Donors Trust as a “pass-through,” says Marcus Owens, the former director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division, now in private legal practice. “It obscures the source of the money. It becomes a grant from Donors Trust, not a grant from the Koch brothers.”

Ball helped found Donors Trust in 1999 as a “donor-advised” fund. Donors can open an account and protect their identity from the public and even the recipient of their grants.

In addition, donor-advised funds offer contributors an extra level of control over where their money ends up, which seeks to remedy what Ball sees as the tendency for foundation money to “drift left.”

This was a chief concern of Daniel Searle, the late philanthropist and pharmaceutical executive who was one of Donors Trust’s early board members.

In 1998, with help from Donors Trust co-founder and board chairman Kim Dennis, Searle established an endowment called the Searle Freedom Trust, now worth $114 million, which has in turn given generously to Donors Trust.

 

Following the Donors Trust money trail

Popup text

Money Flowing In: Foundations

Donors Trust has injected nearly $400 million into free-market causes, thanks in large part to contributions by dozens of private foundations run by wealthy executives or their families. These foundations have often sought anonymity by passing their grants through Donors Trust, but a Center for Public Integrity review of IRS records reveals some of the largest backers of Donors Trust in recent years.

Money Flowing Out: Think Tanks

Donors Trust has given grants to three national organizations that coordinate free-market policy and media efforts in the states: the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. In addition to these umbrella organizations, Donors Trust has directly funded at least 51 state-based think tanks in nearly every state since 2007.

GREAT GRAPHIC WORTH REVIEWING:
GRAPHIC

 

‘Great guys’

The Searle Freedom Trust is one of dozens of conservative foundations that have given tens of millions of dollars to Donors Trust from 2001 to 2011. Among the group’s donors is the Knowledge and Progress Fund, a Wichita, Kan.-based foundation run by Charles Koch.

The foundation gave almost $8 million to Donors Trust between 2005 and 2011.

Where those funds ended up is a mystery, though some Donors Trust recipients, including the Mercatus Center and the Institute for Humane Studies based at George Mason University in Virginia, have also received major funding from foundations set up by Charles Koch and brother David.
Nearly half of the revenue for David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Foundation came from Donors Trust in 2010, in the form of $7.6 million in grants.

Representatives for the Koch foundations did not return calls for comment.

Before Donors Trust, Ball was the director of development for the libertarian Cato Institute, which Charles Koch was instrumental in founding.

“We think they’re great guys,” she says of the Kochs, “but if they weren’t around, we’d still be successful.”

At a private Koch fundraising meeting in the summer of 2010, Donors Trust hosted cocktails and dessert for what Ball called a “target-rich environment” of wealthy donors.

Several wealthy conservatives who have attended Koch fundraising parties have Donors Trust accounts, including Amway co-founder and longtime booster of conservative causes Richard DeVos; hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer; and Philip Anschutz, owner of the conservative Examiner newspapers.

Dozens of other major conservative philanthropies have Donors Trust accounts, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Coors family’s Castle Rock Foundation, according to IRS records.

One Donors Trust grant to Mackinac Center was earmarked for “statehouse reporting” efforts. Mackinac put the money toward a media machine of blogs and research studies making the case for the state’s new “right-to-work” law.

Money in the states

For a decade, Donors Trust has bolstered the efforts of D.C.-based conservative think tanks, including Cato, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute — whose president, Arthur C. Brooks, is on the Donors Trust board.

In recent years, it has taken a strong interest in the states, funding state-level think tanks and three national umbrella organizations that coordinate their activities: the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network (SPN), and the Franklin Center.

“Gridlock” at the federal level of government means donors see “a better opportunity to make a difference in the states,” says Ball, who sits on the board of the State Policy Network.

SPN has become a major recipient of Donors Trust money — receiving $10 million in the past five years.

In 2011, the nearly $2 million in grants from Donors Trust made up about 40 percent of SPN’s revenue for the year, according to tax records obtained by the Center.

In the past five years, Donors Trust money has gone to at least 51 state-level think tanks affiliated with SPN, located in nearly every state. Last year, SPN used the money to incubate think tanks in Arkansas, Rhode Island and Florida, where it hosted its yearly gathering in November.

Donors Trust grants, 2002-2011

Grants (in millions)

 

Donors Trust grants have risen sharply since 2002.
Source: Internal Revenue Service

One workshop touted privatization of state and local government services. Another featured anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist. A third focused on how “property rights and markets provide the best way to protect the environment.”

SPN also sponsors the American Legislative Exchange Council, another D.C.-based clearinghouse for state-level policymaking that gets support directly from Donors Trust.

A laboratory for corporate-friendly laws in the states, ALEC hosts closed-door meetings where corporate lobbyists and state legislators meet to hammer out free-market legislation.

Ten state-level think tanks got a total of $200,000 from Donors Trust to attend ALEC meetings in 2011 including the Michigan-based Mackinac Center and the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, which introduced a raft of anti-union model bills at ALEC’s spring 2012 conference.

The Mackinac Center has gotten $2.4 million from Donors Trust since 2008, according to the Bridge Project, a liberal think tank.

One Donors Trust grant to Mackinac Center was earmarked for “statehouse reporting” efforts. Mackinac put the money toward a media machine of blogs and research studies making the case for the state’s new “right-to-work” law.

The Mackinac Center works closely with other Donors Trust recipients, including the Franklin Center, which counts Mackinac’s “media” outlets in Michigan as affiliates.

The Franklin Center, Mackinac and another major recipient of Donors Trust cash, Americans for Prosperity, co-hosted a day-long training for “citizen watchdogs” featuring speakers on “school choice” and “union reform” from the Mackinac Center and Republican state Rep. Tom McMillin, who is also an ALEC member.

Against the tide

The California-based Tides Foundation, which Ball calls the “ideological opposite” of Donors Trust, also operates donor-advised funds.

In 2011, Tides raised $91 million and made $96 million in grants, including $26 million to overseas recipients.

Tides gives grants to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and liberal groups like the Center for American Progress and the National Resources Defense Council.

Since 2010, the foundation has received $10 million from George Soros’ Foundation to Promote an Open Society, which has assets of $2.2 billion. Tides has assets of $142 million, and the Donors Trust funds have combined assets of $62 million.

The Center for Public Integrity has received funding from Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Tides Foundation.

Soros’ foundation listed the specific recipient of its grants to Tides, including its largest gift, a $1 million grant for school nutrition programs. The largest foundations contributing to Donors Trust do not identify the ultimate recipient of their funds, records show.

Though its donors remain anonymous, the Franklin Center touts “transparency, accountability, and fiscal responsibility as its watchwords.”

Donor-advised funds offer private foundations created by wealthy individuals several tax advantages and a degree of anonymity, but there are also advantages for recipients.

The Franklin Center, for example, maintains a tax-exemption as a “publicly supported” entity.

If the organization were perennially accepting 95 percent of its funding from a handful of wealthy donors “it would not count as public support” and could jeopardize its tax status, Owens said.

Though its donors remain anonymous, the Franklin Center touts “transparency, accountability, and fiscal responsibility as its watchwords.”

Franklin has numerous ties to the Koch-connected Americans for Prosperity like board member Rudie Martinson, a former assistant state director for AFP’s North Dakota’s chapter, and Franklin’s vice president of strategic initiatives, Erik Telford, who was director of membership and online strategy at AFP for four years.

One of Franklin’s state-based blogs, New Jersey Watchdog, also received $50,000 from AFP in 2011, according to IRS records.

In 2011 alone, Donors Trust helped the Franklin Center expand by funding state-based reporting projects in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.

Recurring themes on the Franklin Center blogs include “union bosses,” “Marxian” senators and the perils of renewable energy.

Franklin has noted that its journalists’ work had landed on major networks from Fox to MSNBC. The details of several stories offered by the Franklin-funded outlets have been called into question, however.

One report from a New Mexico affiliate housed at a free-market think tank also funded by Donors Trust garnered national attention when it reported that millions of dollars in federal stimulus money had been allocated to non-existent congressional districts.

The government database on stimulus spending had indeed listed non-existent districts as receiving funds, but the Associated Press reported that the problem was due to data errors and that “’phantom congressional districts’ are being used as a phantom issue to suggest that stimulus money has been misspent.”

When asked to comment on the criticism, Franklin Center spokesman Moroney said: “Franklin Center adheres to the highest degree of journalistic integrity and we stand by our Watchdog.org reporting 100 percent. In this case, the Associated Press had it wrong.”

More stories about

Finance, Taxation in the United States, United States, Fundraising, Center for American Progress, George Soros, Foundation, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Nonprofit organization, Donor advised fund, Private foundation, Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/14/12181/donors-use-charity-push-free-market-policies-states

The Zombies...Beyond all reason

Another universe....with no comprehension of our form of government....no comprehension of our history......a recent conversation with a 'Tea Bagger' revealed no comprehension of the definition of 'Republic' amidst labeling 'universal health care' as 'communism.'

That's the cost of poor public education. That was their goal. Poor public education creates 'malleable masses' - the Zombies.

It creates those who deceive themselves to believe Rubio is a 'Rising Star.'

Sad!

[A study of history would reveal that each time 'Republicans' have controlled the economy, they have plunged the nation into Depression. Your thoughts?]

Rubio and the Zombies

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 14, 2013

The State of the Union address was not, I’m sorry to say, very interesting. True, the president offered many good ideas. But we already know that almost none of those ideas will make it past a hostile House of Representatives.

 

On the other hand, the G.O.P. reply, delivered by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, was both interesting and revelatory. And I mean that in the worst way. For Mr. Rubio is a rising star, to such an extent that Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him “The Republican Savior.” What we learned Tuesday, however, was that zombie economic ideas have eaten his brain.

 

In case you’re wondering, a zombie idea is a proposition that has been thoroughly refuted by analysis and evidence, and should be dead — but won’t stay dead because it serves a political purpose, appeals to prejudices, or both. The classic zombie idea in U.S. political discourse is the notion that tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves, but there are many more. And, as I said, when it comes to economics it appears that Mr. Rubio’s mind is zombie-infested.

 

Start with the big question: How did we get into the mess we’re in?

 

The financial crisis of 2008 and its painful aftermath, which we’re still dealing with, were a huge slap in the face for free-market fundamentalists. Circa 2005, the usual suspects — conservative publications, analysts at right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, and so on — insisted that deregulated financial markets were doing just fine, and dismissed warnings about a housing bubble as liberal whining. Then the nonexistent bubble burst, and the financial system proved dangerously fragile; only huge government bailouts prevented a total collapse.

 

Instead of learning from this experience, however, many on the right have chosen to rewrite history.

 

Back then, they thought things were great, and their only complaint was that the government was getting in the way of even more mortgage lending; now they claim that government policies, somehow dictated by liberals even though the G.O.P. controlled both Congress and the White House, were promoting excessive borrowing and causing all the problems.

 

Every piece of this revisionist history has been refuted in detail. No, the government didn’t force banks to lend to Those People; no, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn’t cause the housing bubble (they were doing relatively little lending during the peak bubble years); no, government-sponsored lenders weren’t responsible for the surge in risky mortgages (private mortgage issuers accounted for the vast majority of the riskiest loans).

 

But the zombie keeps shambling on — and here’s Mr. Rubio Tuesday night: “This idea — that our problems were caused by a government that was too small — it’s just not true. In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies.” Yep, it’s the full zombie.

 

What about responding to the crisis? Four years ago, right-wing economic analysts insisted that deficit spending would destroy jobs, because government borrowing would divert funds that would otherwise have gone into business investment, and also insisted that this borrowing would send interest rates soaring. The right thing, they claimed, was to balance the budget, even in a depressed economy.

 

Now, this argument was obviously fallacious from the beginning. As people like me tried to point out, the whole reason our economy was depressed was that businesses weren’t willing to invest as much as consumers were trying to save. So government borrowing would not, in fact, drive up interest rates — and trying to balance the budget would simply deepen the depression.

 

Sure enough, interest rates, far from soaring, are at historic lows — and countries that slashed spending have also seen sharp job losses. You rarely get this clear a test of competing economic ideas, and the right’s ideas failed.

 

But the zombie still shambles on. And here’s Mr. Rubio: “Every dollar our government borrows is money that isn’t being invested to create jobs. And the uncertainty created by the debt is one reason why many businesses aren’t hiring.” Zombies 2, Reality 0.

 

In fairness to Mr. Rubio, what he’s saying isn’t any different from what everyone else in his party is saying. But that, of course, is what’s so scary.

      

For here we are, more than five years into the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, and one of our two great political parties has seen its economic doctrine crash and burn twice: first in the run-up to crisis, then again in the aftermath. Yet that party has learned nothing; it apparently believes that all will be well if it just keeps repeating the old slogans, but louder.

 

It’s a disturbing picture, and one that bodes ill for our nation’s future.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 15, 2013, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Rubio And The Zombies.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/opinion/krugman-rubio-and-the-zombies.html?hp&_r=1&

 

 

Wealthy Polluters, Propaganda and Your Future

Americans receive such poor science education, they are unable to discern the anti-science propaganda disseminated by Dirty Energy and those with a 'vested' interest to continue causing Global Warming and Global Pollution.

Sadly, studies have determined that most folks stop learning when they leave school.

Please consider the source of funding when you read the 'news' and misinformation.
This is why media consolidation was crucial to 'them.'

Billionaires Secretly Fund Rightist Climate Crisis Deniers

By Countercurrents.org

15 February, 2013
Countercurrents.org

A group of billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate crisis reality. The money from the rightists goes to rightist organizations, a normal alliance.

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, guardian.co.uk, reported [1] on February 14, 2013:

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC.

Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organization assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.

"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."

Ball won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organizations working to discredit climate science or block climate action.

Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, they found common ground.

"Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not," she went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a lot of differences on things like defense, immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."

By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican Party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.

The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking action on climate change.

Graphic: climate denial funding

Those same groups are now mobilizing against Obama's efforts to act on climate change in his second term. A top recipient of the secret funds on Wednesday put out a point-by-point critique of the climate content in the president's state of the union address.

And it was all done with a guarantee of complete anonymity for the donors who wished to remain hidden.

"The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing," said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.

"These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them," Davies said.

The trusts were established for the express purpose of managing donations to a host of conservative causes.

Such vehicles, called donor-advised funds, are not uncommon in America. They offer a number of advantages to wealthy donors. They are convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are lawful.

 

 

 

 

In other words, American taxpayers are subsidized propaganda abd misinformation.

That opposition hardened over the years, especially from the mid-2000s where the Greenpeace record shows a sharp spike in funds to the anti-climate cause.

In effect, the Donors Trust was bankrolling a movement, said Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who has extensively researched the networks of ultra-conservative donors.

"This is what I call the counter-movement, a large-scale effort that is an organized effort and that is part and parcel of the conservative movement in the United States" Brulle said. "We don't know where a lot of the money is coming from, but we do know that Donors Trust is just one example of the dark money flowing into this effort."

In his view, Brulle said: "Donors Trust is just the tip of a very big iceberg."

The rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In 2002, the two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers donated to climate skeptic groups that year.

By 2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channeling just under $30m to a host of conservative organizations opposing climate action or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.

The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it came to blocking action on the climate crisis, the obscure charity in the suburbs was outspending the Koch brothers by a factor of six to one.

"There is plenty of money coming from elsewhere," said John Mashey, a retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate contrarians. "Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You can not ignore the Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things, but they are not the only ones."

It is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favorite projects using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.

But the records suggest many other wealthy conservatives opened up their wallets to the anti-climate cause – an impression Ball wishes to stick.

She argued the media had overblown the Kochs support for conservative causes like climate contrarianism over the years. "It's so funny that on the right we think George Soros funds everything, and on the left you guys think it is the evil Koch brothers who are behind everything. It's just not true. If the Koch brothers didn't exist we would still have a very healthy organization," Ball said.

[Typical response for those who refuse to fact-check. The 'support' is not even comparable.]

On the issue Suzanne Goldenberg’s report [2] provide a more detail account:

The secretive funding channel known as the Donors Trust patronized a host of conservative causes.

But climate was at the top of the list. By 2010, Donors Trust had distributed $118m to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

Recipients included some of the best-known thinktanks on the right. The American Enterprise Institute, which is closely connected to the Republican Party establishment and has a large staff of scholars, received more than $17m in untraceable donations over the years, the record show.

But relatively obscure organizations did not go overlooked. The Heartland Institute, virtually unknown outside the small world of climate politics, received $13.5m from the Donors Trust.
Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group seen as the strike force of the conservative oil billionaire Koch Brothers, received $11m since 2002.

Levi Russell, spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, declined to comment on the importance of that support to the organization. "We're very grateful for each of the millions of activists and donors that make what we do possible," he said in an email.

The secretive funding network also funded individuals, such as Jo Kwong, an official at the Philanthropy Roundtable who was awarded $200,000 in 2010. And there was strong interest in funding media projects.

Some of the groups on the Donors Trust list would have struggled to exist without being bankrolled by anonymous donors.

The support helped the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (Cfact) expand from $600,000 to $3m annual operation. In 2010, Cfact received nearly half of its budget from those anonymous donors, the records show.

The group's most visible product is the website, Climate Depot, a contrarian news source run by Marc Morano. Climate Depot sees itself as the rapid reaction force of the anti-climate cause. On the morning after Obama's state of the union address, Morano put out a point by point rebuttal to the section on climate change.

The gregarious Morano is a former aide to the Republican senator Jim Inhofe notorious for declaring climate change the greatest hoax on mankind.

According to Cfact's tax filings, Morano, listed as communications director, was the most highly paid member of the organization.

However, Craig Rucker, the group's executive director, insisted the funding was not critical to their work. "It is not crucial in the least. Climate Depot's continued operation is not linked to funding from any particular source," he said.

Source:

[1] “Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks”,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network

[2] guardian.co.uk, Feb 14, 2013, “How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups”, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/donors-trust-funding-climate-denial-networks

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc150213A.htm