They Must Know, Right??

From today's op-ed page of the Tribune-Review:

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.

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.

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.

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 

That's $1.22 million right there.  That's not even counting the $225,000 from the Scaife controlled Carthage Foundation - or the hundreds of thousands of dollars Sarah Scaife Foundation's given since 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.

Forbes.com on R. M. Scaife

A week or so ago, Forbes.com posted this article titled:

Billionaires Channel Millions to Think Tanks

So you can pretty much guess what the post is about.  Laurie Bennett, author of the piece, begins thusly:

Just as big money is transforming politics, it’s also helping to reshape American think tanks.

Members of the Forbes 400 have poured millions of dollars into research organizations that fit their social, political and/or business concerns.

The conservative Heritage Foundation has received funding from libertarian Charles G. Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, as well as from Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and heir to the Mellon banking fortune.

Ah, there it is.  Nice to see it mainstreamed at Forbes.com.  In looking in all the political directions of this story (which is fair) she does a "they all do it" approach to the think tank funders; right, left and middle.

The Trib Takes On Forecast The Facts

The anti-science Braintrust attempts to defend anti-science meteorologists today.  Unfortunately (for them) they stumble into their own contradiction.  But we'll get to that in a sec.

First they play the Soros card:

An effort backed by extreme-left billionaire George Soros to restore the deservedly dwindling credibility of "science" distorted to serve anti-growth politics is targeting TV meteorologists who don't buy the global-warming orthodoxy.

The deceptively named Forecast the Facts campaign's website says it's "led by 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters and the Citizen Engagement Lab ... ." But it doesn't say that Mr. Soros' Open Society Foundations gave Citizen Engagement Lab a two-year, $300,000 grant in 2010.

Curious how a coterie that routinely bypasses any mention of how their own billionaire boss routinely funds some of the  biggest climate science deniers (Heritage Foundation - $23 million+ of Scaife money) seems to be offended when someone else's billionaire boss grants money to science defenders.  How surprising is that?

The Trib Calls The Kettle Biased

From the editorial page of today's Tribune-Review:

Federal Communications Commission documents confirm that the supposedly independent agency is anything but neutral on so-called "net neutrality."

The damning paper trail -- obtained by Judicial Watch via the Freedom of Information Act -- begins after March 2009, when President Obama's "Democrat appointees solidified their 3-2 control of the agency," The Washington Times reports.

It shows coordination with the far-left group Free Press, which opposes faster Internet service for those willing to pay for it.

Free Press, partially funded by far-left billionaire George Soros, was founded by a Marxist journal's editor and a contributor to the leftist "flagship" The Nation, and advocates expanding government control.

Can you guess where this is going? Can you?

Scaife's braintrust is looking to undermine the credibility of Free Press by pointing out that it's "partially funded by far-left billionaire George Soros," but, of course, they conveniently fail to mention the money (more than $8 million, as it turns out) poured into Judicial Watch by far-right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Tribune-Review and boss of bosses at the editorial page there.
You can stop giggling now.

And they get "net neutrality" wrong as well. Here's how PC Magazine defines it:

A level playing field for Internet transport. It refers to the absence of restrictions or priorities placed on the type of content carried over the Internet by the carriers and ISPs that run the major backbones. It states that all traffic be treated equally; that packets are delivered on a first-come, first-served basis regardless from where they originated or to where they are destined.

Only in the echo chamber of the right wing media could this be called "government regulating online content" as the braintrust dutifully does later in the editorial.

And what of this "damning paper trail"? You can see the Scaife-funded Judicial Watch page here. Media matters describes what the Scaife-funded Judicial Watch found:

The evidence Judicial Watch uses to justify their allegation comes from emails between FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and media reform organization Free Press. The e-mails detail communications between Copps and Free Press regarding the placement of an op-ed in favor of net neutrality regulations (which would guarantee that internet service providers can't favor their own content over others) , as well as arrangements for a meeting between Copps and a representative of Free Press.

And they go on to say that:

None of this is unusual. Government officials regularly meet and speak before outside groups, like the conservative Heritage Foundation and the progressive Center For American Progress.

We can talk about the tens of millions Scaife's given to the Heritage Foundation (which also opposes neutrality on the net, by the way) but I think we all know that story.

Only in the wingnut press could "neutrality" become a guv'ment intrusion on our liberties. And by "our" they mean "big business."

Of course.

Oh. My. God.

David Horowitz is such a liar.

First, who's David Horowitz?

Take a look at this from today's Trib:

Write a book about leftist billionaire George Soros? Been there, done that for David Horowitz. But he's revisiting the topic in a form whose time he thinks has come again -- a pamphlet.

The onetime radical who became a conservative firebrand and founded the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Students for Academic Freedom wrote "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party" (Thomas Nelson) with Richard Poe. A best-seller in 2006, the book drew renewed attention this fall when Glenn Beck featured it on TV.

Now, Horowitz is at work on the pamphlet "George Soros: Puppet Master of the Obama Regime," soon to be available through FrontPage Magazine's website (frontpagemag.com).

We'll get to it in a minute, but remember these four words:

David Horowitz Freedom Center

And this is what he said in a recent interview with Richard Mellon Scaife's Trib:

First, there is no George Soros of the right. There just is not. What Soros has done is he's put together a radical coalition of billionaires, communists of the ACORN variety -- ACORN is part of this coalition -- and has inserted it into a brain center of the Democratic Party, the Center for American Progress, and he's understood that politics is not what happens every two years, which is what Republicans think; politics is trench warfare that goes on every day, every week, and then, at the end, when the election cycle comes around, all the people who've been recruited by the left through this trench warfare will then vote for the Democratic Party.

No George Soros of the right?

Let's look at who funds the David Horowitz Freedom Center, then. According to Mediamatters:

• The Allegheny Foundation gave a cool $1 million to the David Horowitz Freedom Center between 2000 and 2009.
• The Carthage Foundation gave a neat $625,000 to the David Horowitz Freedom Center between 1993 and 2003
• The Sarah Scaife Foundation gave a hefty $5.55 million to the David Horowitz Freedom Center between 1989 and 2009 (including $25,000 in "start up funds" in '89)

By my count, that's $7.175 million all from foundations controlled by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

I normally don't include the Scaife Family Foundation in my blog postings about the Trib circle jerk, as Richard Mellon Scaife reportedly hasn't controlled that foundation since 2001. With that caveat, it should be noted that:

• The Scaife Family Foundation gave a cute $1.15 million to the David Horowitz Freedom Center between 1993 and 2001 (the year Richard Mellon Scaife gave up control of the foundation - there have been no grants since)

If you include those grants, then we're up to $8.325 million.

And not one of those eight million plus dollars made it into Horowitz' rant about how there is "no Soros of the right."

Horowitz said Soros talked about how Soros formed a coalition of billionaires and communists and inserted it into the Center for American Progress. Change a few details and you have Scaife's funding of the "brain center" of the Republican party, the Heritage Foundation.

Setting aside the rightwing paranoia about George Soros, to declare that there's "No Soros of the right" is simply a lie.