FAIR Reponds

A couple of days ago I was listening to Mike Pintek interview Bob Dane, Communications Director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) - they were talking, of course, about immigration.

As I've written a few times before, FAIR has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "hate group."  Helpful as always, I emailed this info into the studio by way of the KDKA's "instant access" email and then blogged about this rather minor event here.

Well Bob Dane, Communications Director for FAIR, responded.  To me.  Via my email address.  I'm guessing he saw the blog post.

Good to know that such a local blog could pique the interest of such a large national non-profit organization - but I digress.

Dane sent me a copy of this document urging me to read it and, in an effort to undermine the SPLC's credibility, he told me that:

• the SPLC has no definition of "hate group"
• they use the term to describe any organization they don't like, and finally
• it's just a way for them to bolster their own fundraising.

After I corrected Dane's name (I misspelled it in my first blog post), Dane wrote me back and said:

If you closely and honestly examine FAIR’s agenda, you will see that many of our policies are designed to protect the “99%” from abuses by corporate America which desires to relentlessly flood the jobs market with unnecessary foreign labor. Immigration must serve our broad national interests – not political parties and not corporate welfare which occurs by way of availability to cheap and illegal workers that displace U.S. workers, corrode wages, increases income inequality and reduces the middle class overall.

He also asked me to correct my earlier "smear."  I wrote him back saying that there's nothing for me to correct.  Unless the SPLC didn't call FAIR a "hate group" or they've since rescinded the charge (neither of which is true) what I posted is accurate.

But it leads to a deeper question: Is the charge valid?  Does the SPLC have a valid point in calling FAIR a "hate group"?

Let me get the big stuff out of the way.  From the FAIR document:

FAIR condemns any individual or group that engages in hateful or violent behavior, and has done so publicly on many occasions. While FAIR has been consistently critical of many aspects of U.S. immigration policy and long-term failures to adequately enforce immigration laws. We have a longstanding abiding policy of never advocating discriminatory immigration policies. If the record proves anything at all, it is that FAIR draws a clear distinction between immigration policy and immigrants. Immigration is an important public policy that can and must be debated openly; immigrants are human beings who must always be treated with respect and dignity. (page 4-5)

The document then looks to discredit the SPLC on roughly the same points that Dane wrote to me about - adding a few pages on how they think the SPLC manipulates data.

I have to admit, though, that while it looks quite solid, little of it actually addresses the charge that the SPLC makes.  For example, let's assume that everything FAIR says about the SPLC's fundraising is accurate.  How would that invalidate the charge that they make about FAIR?  That it's a "hate group"?  It doesn't.  Same goes with any question on how FAIR deals with data.

So why does the SPLC call FAIR a "hate group"?  There's this reason (this is from 2007):

At the center of the Tanton web is the nonprofit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important organization fueling the backlash against immigration. Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico's secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, a senior FAIR official sought "advice" from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party.

None of which is actually addressed in the document FAIR sent me.

There are certainly some valid issues that need to be discussed over our nation's immigration policy and in doing so, good people in good conscience are going to disagree (doesn't mean that any of them are members of a hate group, however).  But there's enough here that I'd have to say that the SPLC's charge has enough validity to be taken seriously.

And as far as validity of the data, the FBI links to the SPLC on its "Hate Crimes" page (look for the link under "resources").  If it's good enough for the FBI...

Mike Pintek and FAIR

Mike Pintek's on KDKA right now, interviewing Bob Danes - a guy from Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

I wonder if Mike will be asking Danes about how the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated FAIR as a Hate Group.

UPDATE:  Apologies to Bob DANE, Communications Director for FAIR.  I got his name wrong above.  It's DANE and not DANES.

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.

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.