Refuting Spakovsky Who's "Refuting" Mediamatters

This'll be kinda circular so bear with me for a while.

In today's Tribune-Review my good friends on the [board who decides these things] decided to give Hans A. Von Spakovsky some space in (as the headline puts it):

Refuting (not rebutting) Media Matters
But with the usual misplacement of some very pertinent information (a practice so prevalent on the Trib editorial page), he does neither.

Hans begins:

Media Matters, the self-styled “media watchdog” of the left, has accused the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review of using “deceptive numbers” to “attack” immigration reform. But the Trib is exactly right when it says that the Obama administration is not committed to border enforcement and cannot be trusted to implement a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

The criticisms voiced by Media Matters are way off base — particularly their claims about so-called “secret numbers” from The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Of course he leaves out how much money the owner of the paper's given to those two fine organizations. Here, let me help you with that:

•  The Center for Immigration Studies has recieved a total of $11,476,000 in foundation money over the years with 17% of it ($1,947,5000) coming from two foundations (Sarah Scaife and Carthage) controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife.  Indeed in the first decade of records found at the bridge project (1991,2001), Scaife's foundations gave about 66% of the total foundational support.  I think that's called "seed money" but I could be wrong.
• We all know about how much Scaife's sent to the Heritage Foundation.  A this point, Heritage has received $109,986,558 in foundation money with about 25% ($27,944,000) coming from three Scaife foundations (Allegheny, Carthage and Sarah Scaife).  In the first decade of Heritage numbers found at the Bridge Project (1985-1995), Scaife's foundations gave almost exactly half of the foundation money given to Heritage ($12,439,000 out of $25,138,677).  Again, seed money.

But that's old stuff.  While its omission invalidates anything that follows, still let's move on.  This is how the Media Matters posting Von Spakovsky found so offensive begins:

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review cited deceptive statistics from the Heritage Foundation to attack the immigration reform effort, falsely claiming that the Obama administration is not enforcing current laws and arguing that it would continue this practice under a comprehensive immigration reform law.

A December 15 editorial by the Tribune-Review cited a post by the Heritage Foundation to claim that "the deportation of illegal aliens, in fact, has sunk to its lowest level in 40 years" and that the Department of Homeland Security has accepted 81 percent of 580,000 applicants for provisional legal status under a program called the Deferred Act of Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The Tribune-Review argued that these numbers show that the Obama administration is not committed to border enforcement and therefore should not be trusted to roll out a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

But the Tribune-Review's analysis should be taken with a grain of salt since its Heritage Foundation numbers come from "secret numbers" obtained by the anti-immigrant nativist Center for Immigration Studies, which is known for fabricating information and pushing misleading studies.

Let's start with that "secret numbers" link since Von Spakovsky mentions it specifically.  It leads to this paragraph in this piece at the Washington Times:

Authorities deported fewer illegal immigrants in fiscal 2013 than at any time since President Obama took office, according to secret numbers obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies that suggest Mr. Obama’s nondeportation policies have hindered removals.

Just 364,700 illegal immigrants were removed in fiscal 2013, according to internal numbers from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement that CIS released Wednesday — down 11 percent from the nearly 410,000 who were deported in 2012.

And here's that report from CIS - and I'll ask, where do you think the Washington Times came up with the phrase "secret numbers"?  Here:

The report also presents previously unpublished statistics disclosing the startlingly large number of cases on ICE’s post-final-order docket of aliens who have been ordered removed, but who remain living here in defiance of immigration enforcement.

Now let's go back to how Hans pumped up the charge against Media Matters:

...particularly their claims about so-called “secret numbers” from The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)

He wants you to think that the charge of "secret numbers" came from Media Matters when it was actually from the Washington Times piece dutifully describing the very CIS "research" he's trying to defend.

Didn't he think someone would check?

Then there's Von Spakovsky's next charge:

Media Matters accused CIS of “fabricating information.”

But then he rebuts the charge by citing the very same Washington Times piece we've just been talking about.  The point being, he had to know about how they were the exact source of the "secret numbers" phrase and yet still decided not to tell you.

But let's look back at that "fabricating information" charge.  When and how did Media Matters say it?  What context?  It's in a sentence discrediting CIS in general - it's not about the specific charge Von Spakovsky attempts to rebut with the Washington Times piece.  The link at Media Matters leads to this PDF from the Center for New Community where we can read this description of CIS from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

CIS often manipulates data, relying on shaky statistics or faulty logic to come to the preordained conclusion that immigration is bad for this country.

That sentence is from this page at SPLC.  Here's an example of why the SPLC thinks CIS "fabricates information":

"Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name: Inside the Green Card Marriage Phenomenon" (November 2008). This report alleges widespread fraud among marriages between American citizens and foreigners, but then goes on to admit that "there is no way of knowing" just how prevalent marriage fraud is because there is no systematic data. CIS even concedes that most marriages "between Americans and foreign nationals are legitimate." Then, based on this non-data, CIS gets to what seems to be the real point of its study — "if small-time con artists and Third-World gold-diggers can obtain green cards with so little resistance, then surely terrorists can." Fraudulent marriage applications, CIS concludes, are "prevalent among international terrorists, including members of Al-Qaeda. [Bolding in original.]

So much unmentioned by Von Spakovsky...kinda makes you wonder who's fabricating what information for which purpose.

All Too Familiar

It is, by now, a familiar story. The Tribune-Review editorial board cites one or more think-tanks to support its position while simultaneously neglecting to point out the financial support given that think tank by their boss, Richard Mellon Scaife.

Today is no different:

The challenges that America‘s aging presents for Social Security‘s solvency must be resolved by confronting them head-on, not by relying on immigration-driven population growth.

A new Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org) report analyzes U.S. Census Bureau projections to explain why.

And then a few paragraphs later:

Plus, as Federation for American Immigration Reform (fairus.org) spokesman Ira Mehlman points out, immigrants tend to hold low-paying jobs and eventually will collect Social Security benefits — but their Social Security contributions won‘t offset those benefits‘ cost.

That's two think tanks.

We've written about the CIS as recently as last April.  Then we caught them in a pretty blatant misrepresentation of the truth.  Earlier we ran some of the numbers showing financial support Scaife's foundations have given to the CIS.  Let's update them now.

According to the Bridgeproject (formerly the Media Matters Transparency Project), the CIS has received $18,980,086 in foundation financial support (note: none of the amounts are adjusted for inflation) over the years.  During that time, Scaife's foundations have given $3,889,500 (or just a shade over 20%).  Bridgeproject also reports that the Federation for American Immigration Reform received a total of $9,658,000 in foundation support and during that time Scaife's foundations gave $1,822,500 (or a shade under 19%).

Now here's an interesting bit about CIS and FAIR from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Although it goes unmentioned on its website and its other materials, CIS was born in 1985 as a program of FAIR, which had been run by Tanton since he started it in 1979. Even then, Tanton understood that CIS would soon need to stand on its own in order to be seen as the "independent, non-partisan" organization that its mission statement claims today. In a letter to Cordelia Scaife May, a far-right philanthropist who supported many of Tanton's nativist endeavors, Tanton was candid.

"For credibility," he told the woman whose foundation would go on to support CIS for decades, "this will need to be independent of FAIR, though the Center for Immigration Studies, as we're calling it, is starting off as a project of FAIR."

Tanton had a clear vision of the complementary, if unheralded, relationship between FAIR and CIS. As he wrote in another 1985 letter, CIS' role would be to produce reports "for later passage to FAIR, the activist organization, to remedy." And indeed, to this day, FAIR frequently cites CIS to back up its lobbying.

And now the Braintrust is citing both.

How Easy Was This?

From today's Tribune-Review Op-Ed page:

Few takers and negligible economic benefits should lead Congress to end the EB-5 program, which essentially sells visas to foreign investors otherwise unable to legally enter the United States.

That's what David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org), concludes in his study of the program.

Ah...the CIS.

Remember them?  This is what the Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about the CIS:

To make its case seem as strong as possible, CIS often manipulates data, relying on shaky statistics or faulty logic to come to the preordained conclusion that immigration is bad for this country. But CIS studies have been regularly debunked by mainstream academics and think tanks including the Immigration Policy Center, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and America's Voice.

In this case, they simply misrepresent the facts (at best).

Yawn...They're Doing It Again

Who? The Editorial Board of the Tribune-Review.

What are they doing? Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust is, yet again, failing to disclose his financial ties to the think-tank they reference in an editorial. Take a look:

The Obama administration's lax immigration enforcement includes failure to reform immigration courts that illegal aliens routinely ignore.

Mark Metcalf, a former Miami immigration court judge, extensively details the problems in a new Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org) report, "Built to Fail: Deception and Disorder in America's Immigration Courts."

Media Matters lists about $1.4 million dollars in grants from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife between 1991 and 2007. This does not count the additional grants of $150,000 and $125,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008 and in 2009, respectively.

Of course no mention of the millions of dollars of Scaife Foundation money funneled to the CIS can be found in the editorial on Scaife's editorial page. That would be transparent but that's not how the right wing propaganda machine works.

Now take a closer look at the editorial. Or you can read the report first hand, if you like. Notice something? The Obama Administration is being criticized for (now wait for it) not cleaning up a mess left behind by the Bush Administration.

From the editorial:

He says deportation orders are rarely enforced -- in part because immigration judges lack authority to enforce their own orders -- even when those targeted ignore them or skip court. Among 1.9 million aliens freed to await trial from 1996 through 2009, 40 percent vanished.

Department of Justice statistics mask the grim truth, too. Justice contends 39 percent of aliens missed immigration court dates in 2005 and 2006; Mr. Metcalf says the real figure is 59 percent.

Look at the dates. Tell me again who was president from 2001 to 2009? This can't be Clinton's fault can it? I mean he was President from 1996 to 2001. Those were also the Lewinsky years. Brought to you, in part, by the Scaife funded Arkansas project. Thanks, Dick.

There's some more from Metcalf's report:

From 2002 through 2006 — in the shadow of 9/11 — 50 percent of all aliens free pending trial disappeared. Court numbers show 360,199 aliens out of 713,974 dodged court.

In the Shadow of 9/11 the Bush Administration allowed this to happen?

And it's Obama's fault for not cleaning it up in 2 years.

This is Scaife's braintrust at work.

Thanks again, Dick.

The Trib Doesn't Own A Mirror

And I mean that metaphorically, as you'll see in a bit.

Let's start here:

In a new Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org) report, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jerry Kammer documents how the century-old Carnegie Corporation of New York's "strident, polarizing, and partisan" immigration activism betrays the mission Mr. Carnegie set for it -- fostering democratic discussion of complex issues.

In the last 10 years, Carnegie grants of at least $57 million have funded "news stories," groups, think tanks and conferences that were anything but open-minded regarding any approach to immigration other than amnesty -- known inside the Beltway as "comprehensive immigration reform."

Carnegie even bankrolled smear campaigns that wrongly labeled the anti-amnesty Federation for American Immigration Reform and CIS as "hate groups."

Before we continue, did you know that Ronald Reagan signed into law legislation allowing amnesty for illegal aliens?

He did. The section begins with this:

SEC. 245A. "8 USC 1255a" (a) TEMPORARY RESIDENT STATUS. -- The Attorney General shall adjust the status of an alien to that of an alien lawfully admitted for temporary residence if the alien meets the following requirements...

What Ronald Reagan signed into law was legislation that said if an illegal alien meets certain requirements that illegal alien becomes an alien "lawfully admitted for temporary residence." In a word: AMNESTY.

Just sayin'

Let's get back to Kammer's criticisms.

Here's the piece he wrote for the Center for Immigration Studies. His opening beef:

On October 14, 2010, a story on many public radio stations around the country told of a new report that recent immigrants and their children had doubled their presence in the U.S. electorate between 1996 and 2008, totaling 10 percent of registered voters.

The story also included a warning. “Candidates — especially those in close elections — would do well to take heed,” said Elizabeth Wynne Johnson of Capitol News Connection, the news service that produced the story.

Johnson’s comment set up another. Walter Ewing of the Immigration Policy Center, which issued the report, added that the new voters “are not going to take very kindly to political rhetoric that demonizes immigrants because that’s going to be either themselves or their parents.”

The story provided a measure not only of the growing power of voters directly connected to the immigrant experience, but also of the pervasive role in the politics of immigration played by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Carnegie grants were instrumental at every level of the story.

Krammer points out that Carnegie funds BOTH the think tank that issued the report and the news outlet that reported on it - and that that's a bad thing.

How familiar does that sound? I mean just yesterday the Richard Mellon Scaife-owned Tribune-Review interviewed the director of the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives, itself the beneficiary of millions of dollars of Scaife money. And just last November, the Trib did a piece on Paul Kengor, beneficiary of Scaife support via the Scaife-funded Allegheny Institute for Public Policy and the Scaife-funded Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

And I have yet to mention the Scaife-funded Heritage Foundation and how his paper routinely references reports from that conservative think-tank. Here's one from September.

o I need to point out how much money Scaife has funeled to FAIR and CIS? (Oh, it's $4.295 million to FAIR and $1.4225 million to CIS.) So Scaife's funded both the organizations being criticized by the organizations funded by the Carnegie Corporation and he owns the newspaper publishing the column defending those organizations.

That should be enough for a good blog post. But wait! There's more!!

Guess what the Trib also published this morning? This piece from Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch.

Let's get the preliminaries out of the way. According to mediamatters, two Scaife Foundations (Carthage and Sarah Scaife) have given a total of $8.74 million to Judicial Watch since 1997.

Here's what Fitton had in today's Trib:

In the third release from the Federal Bureau of Investigation file of the late Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy, who died in August 2009 from brain cancer, Judicial Watch obtained new information pursuant to its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit originally filed on June 9, 2010 (Judicial Watch v. FBI).

The documents include a Dec. 28, 1961, FBI document describing a tour of several Latin American countries taken by Kennedy, then-assistant district attorney of Suffolk County. This document as it was originally made public was almost completely redacted. After an initial challenge by Judicial Watch, a version with fewer redactions was released.

The interesting part is if you go to Judicial Watch's website, you'll find this:

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained previously redacted material from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file of the late Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, who died in August 2009 from brain cancer. Judicial Watch obtained the records pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit originally filed on June 9, 2010 (Judicial Watch v. FBI (Case No. 10-963)).

The documents include a December 28, 1961, FBI memo describing a tour of several Latin American countries taken by then-Assistant District Attorney of Suffolk County Kennedy. This document as it was originally made public was almost completely redacted. After an initial challenge by Judicial Watch, a version with fewer redactions was released. Judicial Watch continued to argue that the blackouts were baseless and, after six more months, the FBI relented.

For your reading pleasure, O wise and gentle reader, I bolded and italicized the language common to both the column in the Trib and the Press Release found at Judicial Watch. It shows, in effect, the Scaife-owned Trib published a press release from Scaife-funded Judicial Watch.

The AP news story about this even made it onto the pages of the Trib a few days ago:

An FBI file contends that a young Edward M. Kennedy arranged to rent a brothel for a night while visiting Chile in 1961, a year before he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

The previously edited State Department memo, dated Dec. 28, 1961, was released by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based organization that said it obtained it through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

According to the memo, the Massachusetts Democrat, younger brother of then-President John F. Kennedy, made arrangements to rent the brothel "for an entire night" in Santiago earlier in 1961.

"Kennedy allegedly invited one of the Embassy chauffeurs to participate in the night's activities," according to the memo.

One State Department official described Kennedy as "pompous and a spoiled brat," according to the memo. Kennedy was making a fact-finding trip to several Latin American countries.

The AP includes one important caveat missing from both the Judicial Watch press release and the column found in the Trib:

The documents from Judicial Watch provide no indication of the source of the allegations or whether the FBI believed the allegations were true.

Interesting, no?

That the braintrust doesn't see itself in the criticisms of the Carnegie Corporation just simply boggles the mind. Or maybe they do and they don't count on anyone checking their work.

You're welcome.