Justin's Political Corner
Mainstream media outlets should be aware of damaging economic attacks leveled by anti-immigrant groups in an attempt to derail comprehensive immigration reform. In reality, research indicates that comprehensive immigration reform would improve the U.S. economy, create jobs and boost American wages. Moreover, new findings show that immigrants are less likely to rely on public benefits than native-born Americans.
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Some social conservatives are ready to disown Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts if he votes in favor of same-sex marriage.
The conservatives were angered by Roberts’s surprise backing of President Obama’s healthcare law last year, and they don’t want to see a similar surprise in the two marriage cases the court considered this week.
“I certainly think his credentials were tarnished with the ObamaCare decision,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “Does he care about his standing with conservatives? I don’t know.”
Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a former president of the Family Research Council, said Roberts shouldn’t be considered a conservative if he sides with the proponents of same-sex marriage after casting the deciding vote on healthcare.If Roberts breaks with conservatives “on another major issue … then I think the whole understanding of the current makeup of the Supreme Court would be in question,” Bauer said.
He said the court would have to be seen as having a liberal majority, at least on hot-button political and social issues.
Conservatives don’t necessarily think Roberts owes them a debt because of healthcare, but they’re still not convinced the ruling was a one-off event, Bauer said.
Roberts did not indicate during oral arguments this week that he’s leaning toward supporting same-sex marriage in either case. But he also didn’t look likely to support the healthcare law when those arguments wrapped up last year.
If conservatives are ready to ditch Roberts, they are already finished with Ted Olson, the attorney who argued against California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage this week.
Olson — a conservative legal superstar — argued marriage equality for gays is a conservative position and said the Constitutional ensures a right for same-sex couples to marry.
Perkins and Bauer both reject those ideas.
“Any Republican that argues, from a Republican standpoint, this is the proper conservative or Republican position is smoking medical marijuana or something,” Bauer said.
If Olson truly believes same-sex marriage is a constitutional imperative, Bauer said that “raises serious questions about whether he is the conservative litigator people think he was.”
Perkins has also soured on Olson, who represented George W. Bush in the case that decided the 2000 presidential election and went on to be the Bush administration’s top litigator.
“Well, he was,” Perkins said when a reporter described Olson as a conservative litigator.
The Proposition 8 fight was one of two gay marriage cases heard by the High Court this week. The second case challenged the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents same-sex couples from getting some federal benefits granted to married couples.
Olson might have burned his bridges with social conservatives, but he isn’t alone before the Supreme Court.
he libertarian Cato Institute filed a brief urging the court to back marriage equality, and there is a significant libertarian argument against the Defense of Marriage Act — the federal law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, which had historically been up to the states to decide.
The conservative divide over same-sex marriage grew wider when Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) announced his support for marriage equality.
Some GOP strategists said this week that the marriage debate will eventually disappear, because young Republicans don’t oppose same-sex marriage and don’t see why it’s an issue.
The social conservatives who dominate early Republican primaries, though, aren’t about to change their minds
.The question, he said, is whether Roberts will be able to narrow the scope of a ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, even if he is in the minority.
Could Dumbya-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts tick off conservatives (especially the SoCons) even further over DOMA and Prop 8? Remember that Roberts is NOWHERE close to being a “liberal ‘activist judge,’” as he is seen as generally right/corporatist-leaning. Also, many of the wingnuts are already mad at him for preserving PPACA.
Working out of an nondescript brick rowhouse in suburban Virginia, a little-known organization named Donors Trust, staffed by five employees, has steered hundreds of millions of dollars to the most influential think tanks, foundations, and advocacy groups in the conservative movement. Over the past decade, it has funded the right’s assault on labor unions, climate scientists, public schools, economic regulations, and the very premise of activist government. Yet unlike its nearest counterpart on the progressive side, the Tides Foundation, a bogeyman of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, Donors Trust has mostly avoided any real scrutiny. It is the dark-money ATM of the right.
Founded in 1999, Donors Trust (and an affiliated group, Donors Capital Fund) has raised north of $500 million and doled out $400 million to more than 1,000 conservative and libertarian groups, according to Whitney Ball, the group’s CEO. Donors Trust allows wealthy contributors who want to donate millions to the most important causes on the right to do so anonymously, essentially scrubbing the identity of those underwriting conservative and libertarian organizations. Wisconsin’s 2011 assault on collective bargaining rights? Donors Trust helped fund that. ALEC, the conservative bill mill? Donors Trust supports it. The climate deniers at the Heartland Institute? They get Donors Trust money, too.
Donors Trust is not the source of the money it hands out. Some 200 right-of-center funders who’ve given at least $10,000 fill the group’s coffers. Charities bankrolled by Charles and David Koch, the DeVoses, and the Bradleys, among other conservative benefactors, have given to Donors Trust. And other recipients of Donors Trust money include the Heritage Foundation, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the NRA’s Freedom Action Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, chaired (PDF) by none other than David Koch.
In a recent interview, Ball, who calls herself a libertarian, went to great lengths to stress that she’s no Koch brothers stooge, and that Donors Trust is not yet another appendage of the almighty “Kochtopus.” She insists, “We were not created by them at all.”
Donors Trust is a so-called “donor-advised fund,” a breed apart from a family foundation like, say, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which helped build the conservative movement over decades with donations totaling tens of millions of dollars. The people who donate to Donors Trust don’t get final say over how their money is spent. But they get to recommend where their cash goes, and in exchange for giving up some control, they get a bigger tax write-off than they would with a family foundation. (And those who wish it get anonymity.)
Ball says she travels all over the country courting wealthy conservatives and libertarians, and attends Koch donor retreats and Cato “shareholder” meetings. The crux of her pitch is this: Rich folks can give to Donors Trust and rest easy knowing that their millions will continue bankrolling the conservative movement long into the future, even after their death.
Donors Trust grew out of the fear among right-leaning donors that their family foundations might end up in the hands of those who would fund centrist or, even worse, left-of-center causes. At the behest of the late Bruce Jacobs, a Seattle-area businessman and “paleocon” who didn’t want to underwrite a local community foundation, Ball and a conservative strategist named Kimberly Dennis created Donors Trust.
Donors Trust is the only honey-pot of its kind for right-leaning donors. But on the left, there’s theTides Foundation, which gives out tens of millions of dollars each year to thousands of left-leaning groups in the US and overseas (including Mother Jones’ nonprofit arm, the Foundation for National Progress). Tides is a target of conspiracy theorists such as TV and radio host Glenn Beck, who hasfeatured Tides on his infamous connect-the-dots chalkboard. But Donors Trust’s strategic intent is far narrower and more coherent than Tides’. The groups funded by Donors Trust more or less pursue the same agenda—eliminate regulations, kneecap unions, shrink government, and transfer more power to the private sector.
Donors Trust keeps its contributors secret. Funders can ask Donor Trust to publicly identify their donations, but very few do, Ball says. The reasons for preferring anonymity are many. Some donors want to avoid attention; others don’t want their mailboxes and inboxes filling up with unwanted solicitations for more money.
Tax records, however, reveal some of the sugar-daddies of the conservative and libertarian movement who funnel big money through Donors Trust. The Knowledge and Progress Fund, a charity bankrolled by Charles Koch, gave $2 million in 2010. The DeVos family charity, another pillar of conservative politics, contributed $1 million in 2009 and $1.5 million in 2010. And yet another long-time bankroller of conservative politics, the Bradley family, donated $650,000 through their charity between 2001 and 2010.
h/t: Mother Jones
