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Subscribe to RSSIn 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.
‘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 of the 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.
Brendan McDermid / Reuters file
David Koch is shown in New York on Dec. 10. In 2010, nearly half of the revenue for David Koch's Americans for Prosperity Foundation came from Donors Trust, in the form of $7.6 million in grants.
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.
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.
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. The Center has received funding from the Tides Foundation in the past.
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.)
Soros’ Open Society Foundations is a donor to the Center for Public Integrity.
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.
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 96 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.”
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.”
The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories go to publicintegrity.org
Leave a Comment:
That sounds illegal. If its not, it should be.
A charity shouldn't be funding political groups and "think tanks". Those are not groups who need charity. I hope the IRS goes after them.
Kind of like public funding for NPR isn't it?
And NBC and the other major networks pushing their liberal agenda.
What's good of the goose is slso good for the gander.
So libtards kiss my you know what.
aworldofhurt - you are an A$$. You know it's different! ALEC and other organizations are funded to create BUSINESS environments that generally hurt consumers and lower income people (look at the environmental and private prison issues before state legislatures). All of this is under the guise of "smaller government". Guess what - if you're NOT making $200K a year, and it sounds like you're not, then most of their policies hurt you as well.
More Justice
Sorry, but if the left wing was investigated like the left wing investigates the right wing, you will find that the left does just as much if not more.
There is plenty of merit in the saying, "it takes one, to know one". Usually, the one pointing the finger has either done the same thing in the past, or is currently doing the same thing and only pointing the finger to keep the eyes off their shady dealings.
I've followed the money on both sides and I'm confident I have this correct.
This guy's post is exactly what we are up against. Stupidity. Keep the masses uneducated and you get people like this supporting those who could give a rats a#@ about him, only that he blindy carries their water.
that's under handed BS, but most everyone her will not be surprised. Just look at all the under handed stuff the right wing has done over the last 5 decades.
Using the disguise of Charity to funnel tax deductible money to influence government for the benefit of a few over an entire society is just another low for the party of NO
Yet the right wing quickly turns their eyes away because the agenda is more important then country, society and humanity.
Not to worry though, the far right wing is going to burn because the amount of under handed manipulative stuff coming out is snowballing down the mountain.
What's the best the right wing can come up with, birth certificate, and blatant obstructionism
NPR is a news organization and not a political organization. There is a big difference.
Still, the Koch brothers, despite the IRS tricks have learned they can't buy an election.
It's funny that you see reports of the Koch's giving money to political causes, but where is all the liberal versions on Buffet and the other liberals?
Fair and Balanced....lol.... The media is nothing but propaganda machines these days.
"Public charity" should be defined as non-profit, or not for profit. If it promotes profit, it isn't charity, period. This is not just a denial of "freedom of speech" for the rest of us who cannot fund think tanks and television stations and radio networks, since there are limited FCC licenses for radio and TV, this is also a promotion of anti-charity, using charity as a front.
Charity is also the pouring out of the Holy Spirit: anti-Christ using Christ as a cover.
Umm paws. they are in the article. Looks for Soros. Read the whole thing, then make your stupid comment.
Eriic: They did indeed buy elections: state house elections in many states, and gerrymandering in many states. Just not in Federal elections, because more people pay attention to Federal elections. But they did buy the House of Representatives, including in regions that are not Republican.
FrisbyDog, please explain to me how free markets hurt consumers. As to the ethics of this, as long as the Koch Bros. were up front as to the types of charities the donor monies were supporting, there is nothing wrong what-so-ever with what they did. One the other hand if they said the money was for something other than how its being doled out, then there's a problem. Do I believe the left does exactly the same thing, not yes but hell yes.
Maybe that's because the liberals don't try to hide behind "charity organizations." That and the fact that you wouldn't read such reports if they were tattooed on your eyeballs.
I hope the IRS goes after them.
>>>>>>>>>>>
@ MOREJustice: That you don't want cuz the IRS has been very lenient on the left. Careful what you ask for.
DBAkron, the article states that George Soros contributes tens of millions of dollars to many causes, all of which you can read about because he believes in those causes. The Koch brothers, and others of their ilk, have legally- constructed methods to hide both their donations and the recepients while calling these funds "charities". If they belileve in their causes, why wouldn't they want their donations and causes publicized instead of hiding them in layers of questionable legalese?
Why is the republican response always "but, but, they did it too!".
Are you saying you are in support of money given to charity being funneled into political think tanks, just as long as the party you oppose of may have done it too?
I think that's the difference between Liberals and Pubbies.
I don't care if Democrats are doing it, I think it's abhorrent. If this were an article about a democrat doing it, i'd be just as pissed off.
But i guess the Republican response for everything truly is "well, they did it too, so i'm ok with it".
Very Sheep-Like way of thinking Republicans.
Religion has taught you well.
So when I donate $100 to Hilliary Clinton's campaign, or Elizabeth Warren -- it's clear I cannot deduct it on my taxes. But Koch donates to a charity that in turn donates to political groups, and he has a big fat write-off on his taxes. As for comparing his contribution to public funding of NPR...apples and oranges, but nice try.
Sounds like money-laundering to and probably a violation of the RICO act as well. Maybe it's time WE THE PEOPLE....did something about it, hmmm?
Think tanks are not charities. They are paid-for-profit industries. Fine them. Tax them. Fine Kochs. Tax them. And then do it again and again and again. Throw in some prison time for good measure. Once folks figure out that these are the real crooks in the world, and the price must be paid for their crookedness, maybe the little light will come on that we won't put up with it.
This is full-blown deceit. Fine them. Tax them. Jail them.
Rich people using their wealth to gain power, wow, shocker there. Has been happening for thousands of years and will keep happening for thousands. We think we have things such as freedom but in the end our freedom is directly proportional to our bank accounts. Communism just skipped the capital part and measured people in terms of the power that capital would buy them in a free market society. Power and capital are the same, they give people the ability to make things happen.
What an egregious typo not only did they get the T in the wrong place, but included the letter H which is not even in the word stink.
Why are these groups tax exempt? The rich pay these organization to do business, and they aren't treated as a business? I thought charities helped those in need. These groups only help those in greed.
Kudos to NBCNews.com for this story. America needs this kind of investigative journalism....it's all but disappeared. And if the press can continue to peel back the layers of deceit and corruption that have grown over the past 13 years, maybe it will start to disappear and we can get some civil discourse back into this country.
These Koch brothers are dirty and they seem willing to be the face of this shameful period of American history that will go down in the annals as the second gilded age.
MNPat
Follow the money sites also show George Soros funneling money into other organizations he set up that serve as a funnel to quite another number of the more severely left leaning organizations he wants to support, but does not want a direct association showing him supporting them. This is no different than what the Koch Brothers are doing.
Replace "think tank" with "propaganda machine" in the article and it makes more sense.
DB Akron, George Soros gives millions to many organizations, but the difference is that his donations are not hidden and are not tax-deductible contributions given to one fund to funnel money to a political organization. His foundation does give to many organizations, but it's not anonymous so it'd be inaccurate to claim he "does not want a direct association showing him supporting them". That'd be like claiming United Way collected donations then passed them on to several charities because the donors didn't want a direct association with the charities. If you have any verifiable source documenting Soros' Foundation secretly funding a political organization please offer a link.
MNPat
The united way does direct funds to specific charities upon donor request. I worked for a company that "requested" donations to the United Way. Your donation was made to the United way, but they would forward it to specific members in the United way at one time.
Geez that's too easy.
http://sorosfiles.com/soros/2012/01/so-called-ethics-group-exposed-as-soros-front.html
And that is just one!
Fascism or socialism? If given a choice I'll chose the latter. Fascism only gives back to itself to feed its psychopathic nature while socialism gives back to the people that feeds the hungry and nurses the sick.
It appears even NBC is falling victim to fascist cash.
Socialism cannot give anything to anyone without first taking from someone else.
What happened to trading? Is that socialism?
DB Akron,
I wasted my time viewing your right wing anti-Soros propaganda site. I searched for "tax deductible" then "secret donation" and found nothing. George Soros is pretty clear on his politics and his donations. Koch brothers - not at all.
Ummm...not sure what your point is here, but the right does not support free markets, and never has. When you see a right-winger say "no government interference in a free market", what he actually means is "no government regulation that prevents a monopoly from dictating prices to consumers."
Consumers like competition. Businesses do not like competition; they would much rather own the consumer rather than allowing the consumer to just walk away when he or she wants. So what do think being "pro-business" REALLY means?
Come on, this isn't rocket science. This is just a few minutes of thinking things through.
And you can bet that someone is going to be telling us how generous conservatives are, because of all this money they are giving to "charity."
It's possible to abstract anything to the point where it no longer makes any sense.
Like this, for example: Wow..a news organization reporting news.
Yea, rich people use their power to gain power and wealth. And how these people are hiding behind a 'charity', this is what the article is about.
Would you then be kind enough to share this information with us? Let us have an example of your investigation.
And how is that different from anything else? It was socialism, for example, that gave us the Internet and the WWW. (Specifically, the government investment in the Internet, CERN which gave us HTML and the Free Software Foundation and the free software movement that gave us the software most of the Internet now runs.)
Socialism is what gives us open entreprenuership. Entreprenuers are not born rich, often they are from poor or working class families and it the socialist institutions that give them a strong safety net that gives them the courage to take risks and helps them fall on their feet, to try again, if they fail.
Create a society in which the only way to create a company is to borrow the funding from your parents or your rich uncle, and you will lose all the benefits that a really smart poor kid can offer you. Yes, you will have Bill Gates. You will not have Steve Jobs. That's half the PC industry, right there.
2 words: Media Matters. This is a tax exempt organization that pushes a liberal agenda...where's the outrage from the left? That's right....non-existent. Y'all are hypocrites!
Yes, both liberal and conservative groups spend money to influence campaigns and politics, and we could argue over the semantics of it all and whether it is fraud or money laundering. There are a couple differences with what the Koch brothers are doing though.
One difference is usually such a radical tactic is not used by a group that donates the majority of a political party's Presidential candidate funding, Koch brothers donated 61% of the Romney campaign's funding, 12% more and it would have matched the entire Obama campaign. 79% of Obama campaign's funding was from donations less than $1500, which is very telling about who is interested in which party.
The second difference is that the majority of liberal funding in the last election was used to bring awareness to state-level issues. I do not know what the Romney campaign did with all the funding they received from the Koch brothers, but we saw the Obama campaign funding in action with states like Ohio who were fighting hard against the types of voting laws that were unconstitutionally imposed on Florida voters. Yes liberal organizations do donate to media companies, but the liberal organizations donating to Presidential candidates don't create false media companies to spread propaganda. The part that really irks me and reminds me of Russia in the days of Stalin or North Korea right now, is that the Koch brothers are funding the creation and operation of fake media companies that report opinions and rumors as if they are facts if they benefit the conservative agenda. This is the definition of propaganda and it makes me sick to my stomach, there are laws against this: "Federal law specifically mandates that any advertisement appearing in the format of a news item must state that the item is in fact a paid advertisement." A perfect example of this would be when shortly before the election dozens of conservative media websites said that they had "discovered the existence of a preppers and gun list and an Obama administration plan to send the National Guard to every home on the list and confiscate your supplies and weapons the day after the election IF Obama wins." It was based on "leaked information" by a National Guard member known only as "Soldier X" who promised to deliver the documents and reveal his identity. In case anyone is keeping score, the documents were never delivered, his identity was never revealed, and the National Guard never went to your doors after the election to confiscate your food and weapons. I would like to see charges pressed against any groups, liberal or conservative, that fund the creation of fake media companies that function on the agenda of reporting lies as facts to further the divide between our political parties.
Gotta love the old republican comeback ..Well democrats are just as bad as republicans ...no.. no their not
and the liberal media crap ..if it wasn't for a liberal media what kind of news would you get from a conservative media
oh wait we know what kind ...and they've never been right about anything anyway ...but just look at the echo chamber ...parroting their nonsense out here on a daily basis like the misled and lied to sheeple that they are ...
what a hoot...
All I have to say to you is Media Matters for America, Riverboy21. They are the ones who put out the outright lying ad about Joe Soptic and his wife.
Non-profit tax exempt orginazation that MSNBC and the Huffington Post both use as a source for half of their stories. Totally funded by George Soros ( Who by the way just HAPPENED to buy $500 million dollars worth of stock in Brazil's oil company - PetroBraz a week before the Pres. Obama announced that the USA would guarantee $2 Billion dollars in loans for Brazil to develop oil wells in deeper water than the Deepwater Horizon rig that caused the Gulf oil spill. )They developed them using oil rigs that were forced out of the Gulf by the Moritorium that Obama placed on drilling permits on the Gulf - The one that he kept in place even after a judge ordered him to start releasing permits again since there was no reason for the moritorium; since Obama's Energy Department released a falsified report that they rewrote saying that scientists that said nothing of the sort recommended that drilling be stopped.
You obviously didn't read my post Gary, it wasn't about donations it was about using the money donated to create dozens of fake news agencies that did not report facts like the Koch brothers have done. If you want to start linking MSNBC or Huffington Post stories that contain flat out lies, I will check back tomorrow and read through them all and reply with two from conservative websites for every one you post.
Fascism with it's greed that takes from everything and returns nothing in equal terms.
Everything is derived from sources. The problem with fascism is it takes and takes and only gives when the reward is greater than the investment. A win at all costs and power at any price mentality is The GOP mentality. Trickle down is a proved failure as circular flow is curtailed and source derived positive outcome only benefits those who hoard the commodity within the circular flow.
Wikipedia English - The Free Encyclopedia
Circular flow of income
In economics, the terms circular flow of income or circular flow refer to a simple economic model which describes the reciprocal circulation of income between producers and consumers. In the circular flow model, the inter-dependent entities of producer and consumer are referred to as "firms" and "households" respectively and provide each other with factors in order to facilitate the flow of income. Firms provide consumers with goods and services in exchange for consumer expenditure and "factors of production" from households. More complete and realistic circular flow models are more complex. They would explicitly include the roles of government and financial markets, along with imports and exports.
The 98% are not the takers ..follow the money.
There's a lot of whining, "I'm taxed to death" but anybody who can flush millions of dollars down a septic tank, I mean, "think tank" is not worried about making the mortgage or feeding the family. Obviously they are liars and have too much money in their hands. Why don't they do something worth-while with all that money? They could help the homeless instead of paying for right-wing media babble. They say that the government is too ineffective to help those who need it, but what do they do? Nothing. Hell, these "job creators" won't hire anyone to do anything, no matter how little you ask for in a wage and no matter how much experience in that job you have. They are just money loving monsters who will never be remembered except as a disease.
"That you don't want cuz the IRS has been very lenient on the left. Careful what you ask for"
@Job Seeker
Over 30 years ago, I had a part time minimum wage job that I was fired from. I was disgusted with the whole system and didn't file a tax return.
I went on 50+ job interviews, getting nowhere (I'm paralyzed so the private sector didn't want me). When I finally got a job (with the Air Force), a full time job; the IRS went after me for that earlier year, so I filed a 1040. Even after the late fee, they had to pay money to me for the tax refund. If they left it alone, they still would have the entire amount in their coffers; but since the IRS forced me to take that refund, I accepted it. If the IRS is "very lenient" on me, it's because if I error, it's an error in their favor.
It's the Koch brothers, they can and will do what ever they want irregardless of whether anyone likes it or not.
These are two of the most powerful men on the planet. They answer to no one.
Do a Google search and see for yourself.
Unfortunately they are part of the Tea Sack Republicant Party of NO.
Well they couldn't buy the last election. I wonder what their "think tank" thinks about that.
They bought state houses, and House of Representative seats which were gerrymandered by those state houses. I am all for third parties, and a real representative government, but it won't happen as long as there is gerrymandering, Electoral College, Senate that is much more skewed in population representation than it was in 1789, and filibuster rules.
We also won't have representation as long as the "stamp act" (put back into law, but not covering paper this time, only broadcasts) only licenses a few radio and TV stations, and all of these are owned by conservatives. The very least we can do is to keep the internet free and open.
Elizabeth, gerrymandering is not a one-way street. Look at Illinois as an example of the left gerrymandering to ensure no republican will be elected in certain districts.
And, this type of issue is also a two-way street where both sides are involved in this type of funding.
Well Murdoch is creating a Latin propaganda channel to sway them, while others push for more district rezoning that will give them an advantage.
They think about how they can make their rich buddies wealthier at the expense of everyone else.
Book'emDanno, the point of gerrymandering is to put all of the other party's voters into districts that massively (like 90%) support them, so that you can win (but barely win, like 51%) other districts. The problem of that stategy is now the population moving too much to predict future elections. When a factory closes, many of the workers will move (for another job) and someone else (of unknown party) moves in. When that happens, a perfect gerrymander for one party can change into a gerrymander for the opposition.
These traitors should be rotting in prison for crimes against humanity!
Moneygrubbing pieces of @!$%#!
Nice. They use 'charity' to spread their propaganda tax free.
Charity to promote anti-charity.
Elizabeth: sounds a lot like George Orwell doesn't it?
We are up against right-wing corporate greed with deep pockets who are turning are democracy into a joke. The corporatists are winning this battle, people. Wake up. All "isms" are imperfect and can get out of control. Capitalism is no different. The free market guys are all about greed and to hell with the common good. Both political parties are owned by the corporations. Right wingers better start thinking critically and really see what is happening to our democracy.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because
it is a merger of state and corporate power” Benito Moussilini
One of my favorite quotes! Mussolini knew what he was talking about. Benito invented Fascism. Corporatists should remember how Mussolini was killed and what he had stuffed in his mouth while hanging upside down.
The disciples of the degenerate fascist Ayn Rand and her garbage, cult "philosophy" of the destruction of collective government are threatening this country anew. The only purpose of government, as far as they are concerned is war for profit. Sound familiar? The radical American right made billions off the war in Iraq and see billions more in a conflict with Syria or Iran. There philosophy is simple. Kill Social Security and Medicare (when Paul Ryan tells you he wants to "fix it", he's lying through his ass) Kill all government social programs, turn American workers into wage slaves and the American military into a private army of commercial conquest. And do it all anonymously, shirking the personal responsibility they like to demand from the rest of us.
The thing that built this country will ultimately destroy it: predatory, laissez faire capitalism. The kind of capitalism practiced by Mitt Romney and his buddies.
Please note. As much as Alisa Rosenbaum (Rand) deplored government social programs, she was happy to have them. When she developed lung cancer (she was a chain smoker) she quickly signed up for both Medicare and Social Security. The very programs her disciple Paul Ryan is so anxious to destroy. May she rest in peace. (I guess.)
Ayn Rand was a total fake, and it is those fantasies that have created the disaster of 2008.
Ayn Rand was an omnivore.
Some lawmaker in Idaho introduced a bill to make an Ayn Rand book required reading in all High Schools.
One @!$%#ing twisted Country we live in.
There is and has been for years in this country a battle between a socialist left and a fascist right and most of us in the middle are left swinging in the wind. I have always been left of center as I believe that government should protect it's human citizens over the corporations. I believe we need an EPA or these huge corporations will pollute the hell out of our environment. ( See Love Canal, Hooker Chemical) I believe that every citizen should have the right to vote, that we should have a strong, non private, non profit generating Social Security and Medicare and that private, profit generating health insurance is financially gutting this country, and that we, like the rest of the civilized world need public, single payer health insurance. I believe that as a society gets larger and more complex it's government must get larger and more complex or...what you end up with is the libertarian paradise of Somalia. And speaking of Libertarianism, I hold many libertarian beliefs but as an overarching political philosophy, it belongs in the 1850's.
The right wing in this country believes none of this. They will disagree with everything I have said and call me a communist but that's the battle right there. If you don't believe the bull@!$%# of Ayn Rand, if your not a card carrying, radical right wing tea party republikan then they have nothing but "he's a socialist, a communist!" to throw at you. Right now the ultra right in this country is fighting to take over and then destroy the Federal government and this entire story is about the industrialists, corporations and fascist billionaires that are paying for that fight.
Blue, this country was not founded on principles that we should take from one to give to another. As a matter of fact, the reason this country was formed was to avoid taking from people without proper representation (I'm not claiming we have representation today). Conservatives want to preserve the roll of the federal government as being that set forth in the constitution. There should be no federal EPA. This is a matter of a tort caused by the company and they should be made to make those whole whom were harmed. There should be no federal department of education. This country was founded on a limited federal government with state and local government being the primary place where laws are developed and implemened.
Bluelake, this article is actually about the lengths the fascist billionaires will go to in order to profit from their attempts to take over the government and to keep those attempts secret. Tax deductible, anonymous donations to think tanks = middle class taxpayers funding corporatists' purchase of politicians and propaganda.
Bluelake if you think that single payer health insurance is the way to go, you sure as hell haven't ever had to use the VA- which is the closest we have to it. My brother blew out his knee while in the army and has had to have 10+ surgeries since then, including one that the VA refused to do for a partial knee replacement. After his knee replacement he started having problems with the knee again - He fought the VA 3 years to get them to do something and their answer was they couldn't see anything wrong. Finally he got the doctors to agree to do a scope to at least LOOK and when he went to the VA for the surgery (And he has to travel 200+ miles each way for EVERY visit) the head of the orthopedic department went on a power trip and said that since he hadn't looked at the knee they would not do a scope and besides "they didn't do surgery for pain."
Luckily since he had the other doctor's approval, if he could find a civilian doctor willing to do something, the VA had to cover it. The civilian doctor found at least 3 pieces of scar tissue the size of his thumb that the VA doctors could not see, attached to the metal of his partial knee replacement. And you think turning over your health to a bunch of government bureaucrats is a GOOD idea? Keep smoking whatever you are on buddy... And hope that you don't get what you want.
"this country was not founded on principles that we should take from one to give to another"
Book'emDanno, that has always been my point. If anyone wants more money, they should work for that money instead of being on the government's tax cut dole. Even though I'm paralyzed, I work for my money. I took responsibility for my own life, but I never took any blood money tax cut. I have seen my handicapped friends die off like flies so a bunch of lazy conservatives could have some extra money without working for it. Tax cutters are garbage.
Democracy is threatened by these looters.
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essense, is FASCISM - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 29, 1938 in his message to congress. We need to overturn Citizen United immediately.
Teraphin01 you are absolutely right! We can't and shouldn't prevent people from having opposing opinions, but this is beyond the pale. How can anyone sane and intelligent believe that Citizens United is good for our country, democracy or our principles!
You two, and all of the other Newsvine posters should have gotten involved in the Popular Amendment Movement at www.faircampaignreform.us during the last two plus years (August 2010) to help pass the Election and Campaign Finance Reform constitutional amendment. It would have banned all corporations, unions, non-profits (including all of these "tax-exempt" foundations), PAC's, SuperPAC's, etc. from having any influence over federal elections and politics and would have banned their lobbyists from Congress. It IS well past time for the IRS to remove the tax-exempt status from ANY 501 (c) 3/4/or any other such tax-exempt category organization who gets involved in politics in any way, shape or form, including churches.
anti-trust: good point. However, it is important to publicize when there is a movement: everybody was telling Congress to pass an act (at least) against Citizen's United, but they have not bothered. There has been a major outcry on this subject, but the outcry must become much more major.
Unfortunately, all those statehouses that have been gerrymandered and bought by those conservatives won't pass a Constitutional Amendment against themselves, which requires state legislatures to ratify.
anti-trust, the issue with Citizens United, or more correctly, one of the reasons that the court ruled the way that it did, is that news outlets/media in the U.S. ARE corporations. Think about that statement you just made, NBC News, PBS, unions, etc. cannot have any impact or influence over Federal elections. Which means only the political parties themselves can advertise or have anything to do or say with politics. Even fact-checking news services would be prevented, so the candidates can lie and lie without anyone other than the other party/candidate disputing their statements.
I think a conservative "think tank" is an oxymoron. What they are for is unfettered capitalism and what they are against is a social safety net. We have had capitalism since recorded time. The Koch brothers did not invent it. We already know the strengths and the weaknesses of that economic system. In terms of the social safety net we have had welfare in this country since the King of England ran it. We have a medical system where the profit motive at universities, insurance, hospitals and subsequently health care professionals are taking far too much of the GDP. I don't remember a republican think tank having an original thought since William F. Buckley did the thinking for them.
Greed - One of the seven deadly sins (wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony).
Greed - One of the three legs of the GOP 'stool'.
Hardly one the pillars of virtue & morality (humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance, and diligence).
And St. Paul says, the wages of sin are death. And money is the root of all evil.
Americans call money "filthy lucre." There isn't a kind word to describe this degree of greed, because it kills.
An oil company dumped fracking waste into the Mahoning river northwest of Youngstown, Ohio, several times. Excuse me? He said he didn't know it was wrong (impossible for him not to know). He is in a hearing right now, trying to renew his license to dispose of waste! And this guy did it for greed. We are talking about poisons, radioactivity, etc.; and we are talking about poisoning the water table for not only Youngstown, but Akron which pipes in water from lakes in that area, and this entire region, and downstream, eventually the Ohio river and beyond. The amount of poison will kill for generations. My husband is already dying of cancer; our family knows firsthand what this kind of death is about, and it is all caused by greed.
Money? Read the article, Soros' foundation 2.2 billion dollars (with a b), the left-leaning Tides Foundation had 142 million dollars in assets vs. the conservative Donors' Trust with 42 million dollars in assets. That's more than double!!! Follow the money trail, big money likes left-leaning causes. Big money is also very much about keeping their money and making more of it. I wonder how those two correlate?
Anilof, I read in the article that Donors' Trust contributed $86 million in 2011 to conservative think tanks, including Koch Foundation's Americans for Prosperity. (Wouldn't that be Koch using tax deducted funds to pay his own foundation? Isn't that illegal?) In the same year Tides Foundation gave $91 million to various charitable causes, most of them non-political. Also, checking wealth, Kochs are worth in excess of $100 billion (with a b), most of it earned by their father, a founder of the John Birch Society. Soros is worth half that amount, and created his own wealth.
Envy is one of the seven deadly sins as Dave pointed out above. And it is ugly.
Sloth - as in slothful thinking is rampant today, and is evident on this board. Lazy thinking does not allow one to recognize their own hypocrisy. If you blindly follow the talking points of either party, you are guilty of slothful thinking.
And, PARTY DRONES are boring.
mpa,
Which is more slothful, trolls or PARTY DRONES?
Have you anything to comment about the article, or did you slothfully dismiss it and just take your insults down to the discussion section?
Okay, Pat -
How about I don't worry about how the Kochs or Soros spend their money. How about I am not offended that Romney has money in off-shore accounts, nor that Kerry has money in the Caimon Islands.
How about they are two sides to the same coin? How about if you can not think in anything but party slogans, you are a cause for not only derision, but sympathy?
Better?
"Koch think tanks" - sounds like they think with the little head. Right on Teraphino1, legislate the end of the Citizens United effect asap.
"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.”"
Want to know why "foundation money" drifts left? Because they see firsthand the disaster from 30 years of right-wing policy.
End of story.
Plutocrats. They own our government. The US economy will never heal as long as we allow the access to the power that their money provides. In an economic sense they are the Stalin and Hitler of capitalism. They would rather destroy our democracy to fatten their wallets. The people be damned.
How would you like to be an employee of a Koch-owned company during an election cycle, knowing you have NO CHANCE for a performance bonus because all the profits are donated to the owners political cause?
Worse yet: the Koch brothers tell their employees that if Democrats win in their towns, they will be fired.
Just more Koch-corruption from the Plutocrats of our society. Some day it will be too late and we'll have allowed them to take so much control over our government and markets under the veil of free-markets, freedom, and conservative ideology that we will lose what is left of our freedom, our personal rights, and our democracy. This is how evil works.
David: It is already too late. The time left will be used to significantly increase global warming and reduce the amount of available drinking water and water to grow food!
The buying of America. It is wrong and both sides do it. We the people need to have a revolution!
I think that you need millions of dollars to help you think the way I think. If you think about it, all you need to do is broadcast my way of thinking to the lemmings who migrate toward my way of thinking, and if you get those lemmings thinking like me, then you will continue to receive more money, which I think you will like, don't you think? Forget the IRS, I think they are too dumb to think this scam is a "think tank coverup".
Hey, Al Capone was brought down by failure to pay income taxes. The trouble is, the IRS is going after the wrong people.
Terry -
Your talking about NBC?
Terry, ask the average citizen in Chicago or Detroit who is going to save them and they will say Obama. Why, because that is basically what their local and national news stories are telling them.
A fair and balance article on Soros passing money to liberal think tanks?
Does that make it right? What an ignorant comment. People like you get exactly what they deserve.
JobSeeker, George Soros is included in this article, as he gives tens of millions of dollars to causes he believes in, and never uses fake charities to pass money through anonymously to fund political propaganda. If you can find any example of Soros doing this, please cite a verifiable source.
JobSeeker is a cult follower, indoctrinated by that other scum Rupert Murdoch.
If they are proud of their beliefs and positions, why do they want to remain anonymous?
Frankly, I think these people are dangerous. And I think the Koch brothers in particular are two of the worst humans on the planet. Their old man, Fred, was a true right wing freak and a co-founder of the John Birch flake society. (They admired McCarthy who once said BOTH Truman and Eisenhower were Commies or at least "sympathizers".)
When they finally realized the Libertarian party (which they heavily supported) was going nowhere, they decided to buy the Republican party, starting at the state level, for their own purposes. And they've done just that. Why start from the ground up when you can just buy a national organization.
Paul Ryan is their biggest lap dog in Congress, and his views come straight from them. They have been major funders of tea party events and speakers. I am fully convinced that America is already on a down hill slide toward plutocracy similar to the one we had here 125 years ago. Beware. Every political pendulum swings back when so many discover they have been duped. And it usually isn't pretty.
Very, very well said, Yank.
I Highly recommend watching "The Billionaires Tea Party." Excellent documentary.
The GOP-TEABAGGERS and the the KOCH brothers will burn in HELL!
Kitty: I am wondering if it wouldn't be just if they had to stand in hell and burn money with a match for eternity?
Sandy, love it! One bill at a time...
Conservative Think Tank has become a contradiction in terms. It wasn't always thus. But as time goes by and reality departs further and further away from conservative orthodoxy, instead of reforming their worldview, they decided instead to bend reality. Willful ignorance, the denial of science and a reliance on superstition have replaced the application of reason and a reliance on cold hard fact.
So instead of Think Tanks, a better term might be one borrowed from Orwell... "Memory Holes".
Yep, Orwell's vision is a few years late in arriving, but we're watching it unfold before our very eyes...
When you read an article like that you are left with no doubt that the very wealthy are determined to use their money (propaganda spending) to control the thinking and voting of the people and the resulting government at every level ... and to doubt that it is really for their own benifit and satisfaction ... i.e., the feeding of their insatiable "more" (never enough) appetite, ... would be ridiculously naive.
"Think tanks" is a polite term for a propaganda machine. The include 1 grain of truth in a huge pile of lies and people believe it, even at the expense of all remaining truth.
Think tanks are the tool of rich elitists, the people Peter17 falls to his knees and prays to everyday.
People must stop falling for the same old "Left" or "Right", "Conservative" or "Liberal" traps! It does not matter which side you are on. What it boils down to is that the wealthy in this country use their money to dictate how this country is ran. Now that is something we all should be getting angry over.
Murdoch & the Koch Bros created the middle class "divide and conquer" strategy and fund it with great success. The willfully blind ones dance for them, more worried about what the rich pay in taxes than their own rates, because they've been fooled into believing the rich create jobs. Demand of supply and demand creates jobs, nothing else.
Voltaire
Atarimark -
Bingo! And then a Pavlovian "response" that addresses your point not at all, but proves it!
Hilarious, no?
I guess this would be another major reason Republicans oppose tax reform. The wealthy need their "charities" for tax purposes, and they wouldn't want to give money that actually helps the poor, the sick, the uneducated, or the struggling. They want to give their "charitable" contributions to causes that get them richer.
Obama could call for zero taxes and they would oppose if the idea originated with him. Nationalists put party ahead of country, at all costs.
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On the other hand eliminating charities would allow all religious zealots to preach vote republican they are pro-life, even if all they want to do is to stick a needle in your arm after you vacate the birth canal.
You notice how Peter17 never rears his ugly head with news articles like this one, he knows it's wrong, but since it's his party doing it he keeps his mouth shut. Putting party ahead of all else is not patriotism, never has been. People like him masquerading as patriots are ruining the country.