While lesser minions execute their party's Project Vote/ACORN-style vote-fraud playbook, congressional Democrats will spout race-baiting talking points drawn from the same corrupt wellspring and funded by leftist billionaire George Soros.And you'll note the numerous name-drops: Project Vote/ACORN, George Soros, Center for Social Incusion, National Welfare Rights Organization, Open Society Institute, Tides Foundation/Tides Center, and the Tides Network. With all those proper nouns, there's hardly any room for, you know, facts.
Maya Wiley, founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion, suggested at a May 8 training session that House Democratic Caucus members "raise racial disparities" to counter "conservative messages" that are "racially coded," The American Spectator and The Examiner of Washington report. Her background is as disturbing as her message.
The Capital Research Center notes Ms. Wiley's father was George Wiley, late founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization -- ACORN's violent, now-defunct predecessor.
Mr. Soros' Open Society Institute -- where she once served as U.S. programs director -- was one of her Center for Social Inclusion's earliest donors and has given it $75,000.
Her center also has received $850,000 since 2005 from the Soros-linked Tides Foundation/Tides Center, whose grant-making is supervised by the Tides Network -- whose board she chairs.
Republicans must expose Wiley and others pulling Democrats' strings for what they really are -- radicals bent on imposing twisted "social justice" on all as they stoop to new lows to do so.
Be that as it may, let's take a closer look at the story. The initial reporting, from the Washington Examiner is here.
First we should note that "reporting" might not be an accurate in this setting as Joel Gehrke is on the staff of the Washington Examiner as a "Commentary Staff Writer." I googled him and perhaps a product of the rightwing Hillsdale College and the right wing National Journalism Center, writing commentary for the right wing Washington Examiner can do both "reporting" and "commentary."
Perhaps.
But let's look again at what the Braintrust wrote - they kinda blunder in hooking the American Spectator in with Gehrke's commentary reporting. Take a look. AS is only reporting that Gehrke reported Wiley's presentation. Not any original reporting on their part.
It's when you take a look at the Capital Research Center that you'll find an old friend, Roger Vadum.
Here's what he wrote a few days ago for the CRC:
Ms. Wiley’s group gets its money from anti-American philanthropists such as Mr. Soros. The Soros-funded Tides Foundation has given $879,800 to the group since 2005. Mr. Soros’ Open Society Institute has donated at least $75,000 to the group since 2002.That's $954,800.
And in from 2002 to the 2007 alone the Capital Research Center has received from the Richard Mellon Scaife controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation:
- $100,000 in 2002
- $185,000 in 2003
- $200,000 in 2004
- $235,000 in 2005
- $250,000 in 2006
- $250,000 in 2007
Huh. Funny how Scaife's support of the right wing think tanks his paper quotes never ever gets mentioned even in editorials criticizing other think tanks for their left wing support.
Yet another lesson in how the right wing noise machine works.
1 comment:
Let me say first, in my opinion. Democrats/liberals have a variety of faults as well, including but not limited to the Obama administration's war on whistle blowers, the Obama administration's and Democrats like Cory Booker's and Harold Ford's entirely too cozy relationship with Wall Street and the Obama administration's drone/assassination of American citizens programs. But the funny thing is that Obama is rarely criticized from either the right, the supposed mainstream media (which is rather difficult to identify as really left or right) or the left for these things, for complicated reasons. Without Glenn Greenwald, I wouldn't know about them myself.
Doesn't make the left's criticism of conservatives any less valid. I mean, we can debate how much welfare should cover, how much we want people to work. But that debate needs to be balanced with facts (such as Keynesian programs really did improve conditions in the depression, including the ultimate Keynesian program, World War II) and with perspective (we want to help and we want people who receive the help to agree to try to better their lives, but we do not want to be paternalistic).
All that said, wealthy conservatives in America have a) supported the Tea Party and other institutions that deny science in many areas (creationism, climate change) and b) promoted inflammatory accusations against Barack Obama, such as that he is a communist who will round up Republicans, or that his health plan will include death panels or force you to get a government bureaucrat's approval for any procedure (as opposed to now when, as often as not, procedures require a health insurance company bureaucrat's approval).
So as I said, we can debate issues like the record of National Welfare Rights Organization and/or the legitimacy of its goals. Except that I would like to see an agreement on certain basic facts, like the sorts of agreements Milton Friedman and Walter Heller had, before that debate starts. Agreement, for example, that racism exists, and that while it may have, in limited fashion, occasionally hurt white people, it has for two hundred years been an over riding factor in the lives of black Americans, especially poor ones. But I know such agreements, whether in private or public debate, are not possible now.
Mind you, I think politics would work much better if the media would slow down and cover issues in more than just sound bites. I'm not sure the PBS News Hour is an adequate example of truly balanced and fair reporting, but it is a heck of a lot closer than network or cable news. Anyway, then we might have a more informed electorate who could evaluate issues not on how much they are frightened by them, but rather by other considerations.
So yeah, I think elected Democrats are not calling attention to some things Obama is doing because to do, in part, might anger wealthy donors, but that doesn't let the right wing media off the hook for its own sins. To mention "racially coded" in an opinion piece that charges Democrats with trying to impose "twisted "social justice" on all" is a new level of cognitive dissonance. But I guess we have heard before the conservative argument for taking away the vote from the urban poor.
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