Justin's Political Corner
Journal Communication’s right-wing talker Charlie Sykes (WTMJ Radio 620), delights in stirring controversy. But last week he went too far. In a segment discussing whether food stamp recipients should be allowed to buy unhealthy food, Sykes played a clip of an incredibly offensive video that is a favorite of neo-Nazi websites.
Dwelling on a popular Sykes topic the “growing gigantic culture of dependent people” or “moocher culture,” Sykes slips in a long clip (at 29.20) where the voice of an African American woman can be heard listing all the fast food joints — liquor stores — where one can allegedly use an electronic benefits (EBT) card. Sykes did not explain the clip or where it originated. The full song portrays women as having kids in order to receive food stamps to fund a party lifestyle. (For the record, you can’t buy booze with food stamps.)
The clip is part of a video “It’s Free, Swipe Yo EBT” made by a young woman named LaToya “Chapter” Hicks, but the production credits go to Christopher Jackson. He is reportedly the same Christopher Jackson who wrote an incredibly offensive piece about teaching black children, another fave of the “we heart Hitler” crowd. The Jackson essay is featured on the white nationalist site WhiteReference.org and Chapter’s video on the Nazi site Stormfront.org.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party promptly put out a release denouncing the clip as racist and offensive. The party contacted reporters at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and also wrote to the broadcast side of the Journal Communications firm (which owns the paper and the radio station) asking VP Steve Wexler to look into it. While the newspaper recently put the inopportune Tweets by the Democratic Party spokesman on the front page of its paper prompting disciplinary action, it could not be bothered to write a word about the controversy over the weekend. Sykes defended the use of the video in a blog post Sunday night on “Right Wisconsin.”
“Pshaw,” says Sykes — she’s black, it’s art, just because neo-Nazis love it doesn’t mean it’s a problem. In fact, Sykes so loves the video “about welfare programs run amok” that he says he uses it all the time and has previously posted it as an “anthem” for his nation of moochers theme. The Journal Sentinel covered the issue briefly online Monday, but only because Sykes wrote about it.
Sykes might think that he and Stormfront have a uniquely discerning eye for art, but by any measure the video is highly offensive. It shouldn’t be used by any news source and Journal Communications should make it clear to Mr. Moocher that he shouldn’t be using it either.
Journal Communications has given Sykes a lot of rope lately. He is the center of their new experiment called “Right Wisconsin” a subscriber-based, paid content news site for right-wingers which Sykes touted in January as a means ofhelping to get more Republicans elected. One of the sponsors and “partners” is the phony issue-ad group Wisconsin Club for Growth, which has spent millions in the state defending Governor Scott Walker and GOP candidates. The site features long-time GOP operatives like Brian Fraley, now at the MacIver Institute, and “reporting” by Media Trackers, a Breitbart-style attack dog operation. Both the MacIver Institute and Media Trackers are funded by the Bradley Foundation.
h/t: PRwatch.org
(via Is Your Team’s Owner a Major League Asshole? | Mother Jones)
In early February, a US Patent and Trademark Office court in Washington, DC, confirmed what baseball fans had suspected for more than a century: The New York Yankees are evil. After an internet startup, Evil Empire Inc., had attempted to trademark the phrase “Baseball’s Evil Empire,” the Yankees filed an injunction, and the panel of judges agreed. As the court put it, “The record shows that there is only one Evil Empire in baseball and it is the New York Yankees.” If only it were true. The ranks of Major League Baseball owners include some of the richest men—and they are almost exclusively white males—in the country, as likely to open their wallets for a super-PAC as they are a top-shelf free agent. Viewed in the context of the competition, with its anti-discrimination settlements and SEC investigations, the Yankees are, like their Opening Day roster, fairly pedestrian.
So where does your team’s ownership rank? We took a stab at it, analyzing each franchise by its level of political activity (based on campaign donations and office-seeking) and relative degree of evil—copyrighted or not. Read below the matrix for the full breakdown.
At the end of last year, I reported on the mysterious $11 million dollars that flowed into California to defeat ballot propositions 30 and 32. The flow of money was traced as it passed through several non-profit organizations, ultimately going all the way back to a known dark money conduit known as Americans for Job Security. Here’s a refresher:
AJS Spending in 2010-2012 cycle
- The $11 million drop into California notwithstanding, AJS also dropped $15 million into the national elections. All of their media buys went through Crossroads Media, and nearly all of the funds were spent in opposition to Barack Obama.
- In Arizona, Americans for Responsible Leadership dropped $1.1 million to oppose an open primary system in Arizona and an increase in their sales taxes. Because of differences in state campaign finance laws, it appears that ARL will not be compelled to disclose their donors. But based upon similarities, it’s not a far leap to assume the money flow was similar to the one in California.
- In late 2011, AJS ran anti-union ads in New Hampshire tying to the Republican primary debate held there.
- AJS dropped $689,000 in Wisconsin to oppose Eric Hovde, the less conservative candidate running for the open Senate seat Tammy Baldwin eventually won.
Because the trail seemed to go cold with the Americans for Job Security reveal, there didn’t seem to be much point in pursuing it. But according to Raw Story, California officials haven’t given up on digging through to the actual source.
The California Fair Political Practices Commission has issued roughly a dozen new subpoenas in the investigation of $11 million that was laundered through a network of dark money groups and funneled into the state during the last election, according to unnamed sources who spoke to The Huffington Post.
It’s not yet clear where the original $11 million came from, but investigators have so far traced it back to a group called Americans for Job Security (AJS), run by Stephen DeMaura, a blogger for Red State and the former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party. AJS told the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) it would not engage in political spending, but its application to accept tax deductible contributions has yet to be accepted.
Investigators said AJS gave $11 million to the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), which was run in 2010 by Sean Noble, a former Republican congressional staffer whomPolitico called a “top” operative for the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. The CPPR was instrumental during that year’s midterm elections in dolling out more than $44 million to groups that attacked Democrats and health care reform,according to The Center for Responsive Politics. Noble eventually moved on to work for another Koch-linked group, Americans for Limited Government.
I have no idea who they have subpoenaed, but I expect they will be able to dig it back to the usual GOP culprits. As soon as I saw that Sean Noble was in the mix, it was pretty obvious. Noble bills himself as the co-founder of DC London, a Republican campaign management firm. Past clients include Senator Jeff Flake. Noble’s real claim to fame, however, is that he was Senator John Shadegg’s chief of staff, and more importantly, worked side by side with Phil Kerpen at Americans for Prosperity and appears to be associated with Kerpen’s new venture, American Commitment, a new addition to the Koch stable of right-wing “activist” organizations.
This is one to watch. I would love for California to actually hold the Koch machine responsible for once instead of just shaking the change out of the slot.
Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who spent as much as $150 million on independent expenditures to bolster Republicans in the 2012 election, has informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that his Las Vegas Sands Corporation “likely violated a federal law against bribing foreign officials.”
“[T]here were likely violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions” of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company said in its annual regulatory report published on Friday. Late last year, Adelson reportedly held meetings with at least one House GOP leader to discuss “possible changes to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” arguing that he had been the target of federal investigations under the Act as retribution for his strong support for Republican candidates.
Two foundations that have been described as “the dark money ATM of the right” have spent more than $1 million combined funding a non-profit organization whose primary function is distributing libertarian education materials featuring Fox Business host John Stossel.
Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, the affiliated funding groups, were until recently obscure entities. But over the past month a series of reports havedetailed how those organizations have paid out more than $400 million to over 1,000 conservative groups since their 1999 founding. Those reports have described how the two organizations have allowed wealthy individuals to discreetly underwrite trending conservative causes likeclimate change denial.
The groups have also been the primary funders behind an effort to flood American classrooms with packaged libertarian lessons branded with John Stossel’s mustachioed face. In 2011, Donors Trust gave $540,000 to the Philadelphia-based Center for Independent Thought (CIT), with the funds earmarked for the distribution of “Stossel in the Classroom” teaching materials, according to IRS filings obtained by Mother Jones.
“Stossel in the Classroom” began in 1999 when Stossel was still with ABC News. It was seeded with financial support from the libertarian Palmer R. Chitester Fund and grew slowly until CIT took over the program in the mid-2000s.
CIT was a natural home for “Stossel in the Classroom.” Founded with Koch money as the Libertarian Review Foundation in the 1970s, real estate developer Howard Rich took control of the organization in 1990 and gave it its current name. Rich is part of the libertarian donor elite, founded Americans for Limited Government, and sits on the board at Cato, the Club for Growth, and the Friedman Center for Educational Choice. (Rich’s wife, Andrea, runs CIT, but does not draw a salary.)
At the same time the group took over “Stossel,” new right-wing funding began flowing into its coffers. While Donors Trust was its main sponsor in 2011, it has also received money from Donors Capital Fund ($500,000 from 2007 to 2010) and foundations linked to the Koch brothers.
The purpose of groups like Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund is to allow wealthy benefactors to support conservative causes anonymously. The Tides Foundation is a liberal analogue, donating millions of dollars to left-leaning groups (including Media Matters). According to Mother Jones, whose non-profit arm has also received Tides funding, “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.”
The Center for Public Integrity produced this graphic detailing the flow of money in recent years from Koch-backed and other right-wing foundations through Donors Trust to a variety of conservative groups:
CIT’s funders — whoever they are — will find nothing in their program’s activities to make them question their investment in helping produce the next generation of libertarians.
The new caretakers built a slick new website, archived more videos spanning Stossel’s career, instituted a professional organization of requests and distribution, and began producing specially designed economics DVDs and teaching guides.
The program now offers hundreds of free clips from Stossel’s shows and specials that claim to seriously address a range of academic subjects, including Art (“Why does Hollywood Hate Capitalism?”), Biology (“Debunking Food Myths”), and History (“The Real Story of Thanksgiving,” which explains “how the Pilgrims were hurt by sharing”).
“Stossel in the Classroom” also produces libertarian economics courses. The small team of economists that writes materials such as “Making Economics Come Alive with John Stossel” has multiple close ties to the Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education at Florida State University.
The videos on the site are stacked with pundits echoing Stossel’s radical laissez-faire views. A typical lesson pairs videos of Fox Business pundits tearing into a regulatory effort — a video on the 2011 health care law features serial liar Betsy McCaughey and industrial-fan entrepreneur Bob Luddy — with teacher’s guides that ask if government regulation is necessary.
h/t: MMFA
WASHINGTON — A former congressional candidate is taking the Internal Revenue Service to court for its failure to enforce its laws governing political activity by nonprofits organized under the social welfare section of the tax code.
Dr. David Gill, the 2012 Democratic candidate in Illinois’ 13th district, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are suing the IRS for allowing the “dark money” nonprofit American Action Network to spend $2.6 million against Gill while enjoying tax exemption and donor anonymity.
Gill and CREW have alleged that the IRS improperly interpreted tax law when it promulgated regulations for social welfare nonprofits, stating that they must be “primarily” focused on social welfare. In contrast, the federal statute states that these nonprofits must be “exclusively” focused on social welfare.
This interpretation has been highly controversial ever since the 2010 Citizen United decision allowed corporations — including nonprofit corporations — and unions to spend freely on elections. Since then, social welfare nonprofits have become a huge force in federal elections, with spending exceeding $300 million in the 2012 campaign.
“It is offensive that the IRS turns a blind eye to reality and allows partisan political groups to seek refuge in a provision of the IRS code that is meant to govern organizations such as volunteer firefighter companies and homeowner organizations,” Dr. Gill said.
The IRS told HuffPost that they do not have a comment and typically don’t comment on pending litigation.
Dr. Gill said he believes that his razor-thin defeat on Nov. 6, 2012, was due to misinformation about his support for Medicare spread by American Action Network’s ads. One ad stated that Gill’s support for single-payer health care meant that he wanted to eliminate Medicare.
“As I went around the district, I was told that people who were going to vote for me changed their minds to save Medicare,” Gill said.
Gill lost by just 1,002 votes to Republican Rodney Davis. The Davis and Gill campaigns combined to spend $2.7 million on the entire election, just $100,000 more than the spending by American Action Network. The only group spending more than American Action Network on the race was the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which spent nearly $2.9 million on the race.
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
