While I find it troubling from the outset that there is a funded group who is doing a GOP enemy list by
recruiting students to spy on their UCLA professors if they are "too liberal", one of the more troubling connections I ran across was in a related article that
upstate NY posted from Bill Berkowitz called
Spy Cams on Campus. Now what I find so troubling is that some of these same key movers who founded much of the Fright-Wing
TM infrastructure are also behind foundations that were founded by someone whose participation in that alumni group is highly disturbing when pondering what is down that rabbit hole.
Follow me below the fold to enter that rabbit hole.
From the linked article
Spy Cams on Campus:
Cheney's contribution to academic freedom came in the form of a scandalous report issued by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a Washington DC-based group she co-founded in 1995 -- with Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman -- as the National Alumni Forum. The publication slammed faculty on college campuses for being "the weak link in America's response to the attack" of September 11.
That is Lynne Cheney, Dick Cheney's wife, and our favorite turncoat, Joseph Lieberman, happily joined in a campus thought-control project.
Now check out this google-cache about the funding for that group. Those are some of the same foundations that created Heritage, CATO and numerous other Fright-WingTM "think-tanks" and lunatic-GOPer mills.
Think about that. The Olin and Bradley foundations (along with other Fright-WingTM funding sources) funded the co-founding of an "alumni association" by Lynne Cheney and Joe Lieberman. The 2000 Democratic Party Vice-Presidential candidate who was debating Dick Cheney, the husband of the co-founder of his Alumni group. The same Holy Joe who basically puckered up and kissed his ass in the 2000 VP debate, the same one who folded the tent in the Florida recount, and been Iraq cheerleader #1 as well as the go-to Democrat to slag off other Democrats on Fox News.
Holy Joe/Cheney project FUNDED by the Olin foundation, Bradley foundation and others on the far-wrong.
I wrote a lengthy diary a couple of years ago ("Creating the anti-Gay/far-right Movement") about the genesis of the Bradley, and Scaiffe foundations and how they are/were 2/3rds of the funding source that built the Fright-WingTM abomination we see today. The other third being the Coors fortune which is the funding behind the Castle Rock Foundation, which is also listed in the alumni group funding, and the Olin foundation (so almost all of them are there funding Holy Joe's campus thought police group.
Now Olin, Castle Rock and Bradley are heavy hitters in the Fright-WingTM funding constellation as all the above demonstrate. But lets go further down that rabbit hole and start pondering the dark questions.
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is one of the preeminent funding sources for the far-right movement, and funds the majority of "think-tanks" and propaganda mills of the radical right. But among the groups they fund (and many of which their were spearhead money for) are:
- American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
- American Spectator Educational Foundation
- Cato Institute
- Center for the Study of Popular Culture
- Family Research Council
- Federalist Society
- Free Congress Foundation (along with Scaife and Coors)
- Freedom House
- George Mason University
- George Mason University Foundation
- Heritage Foundation (again with Scaife and Coors)
- Hoover Institution
- Hudson Institute
- Independent Women's Forum
- Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation
- Institute on Religion and Democracy
- Institute on Religion and Public Life
- Landmark Legal Foundation
- Madison Center for Educational Affairs
- Manhattan Institute
- Mountain States Legal Foundation
- National Center for Policy Analysis
- New Citizenship Project
- Pacific Legal Foundation
- Philanthropy Roundtable
- Third Way Foundation which funds the Progressive Policy Institute
- Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation...
Whoa whoa whoa... hit pause. Back up one.
The Third Way Foundation, which funds the Progressive Policy Institute...?!?
WTF?!?
Let's look at where the party "centrists" like the the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) get their money from.
PPI is part of the Third Way Foundation whose chairman is Al From (of DLC fame), and describes itself as a "nonprofit corporation". Between 2000 and 2002, the Foundation received $225,000 from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, one of the key and top Fright-WingTM funding foundations which also funded Holy Joe's campus thought police.
The DLC and its closely associated Progressive Policy Institute are the recipient of grants from many Fortune 500 firms as well from such Fright-WingTM foundations as the Bradley Foundation.
Corporate contributors to the Progressive Policy Institute include AT&T Foundation, Eastman Kodak Charitable Trust, Prudential Foundation, Georgia-Pacific Foundation, Chevron, and Amoco Foundation.
The Third Way Foundation, which is an umbrella group for the New Democrats of the DLC, receives funding from the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Ameritech Foundation, and General Mills Foundation. According to a magazine report, the DLC counts on funding from Bank One, Citigroup (whose majority stock holder is the Saudi Royal Family), Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, Health Insurance Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Occidental Petroleum, and Raytheon.
The same crew who funded Holy Joe and Al From (the DLC head), are behind the rise of BushCo. and the Iraq war, which Holy Joe has been cheerleader #1.
So this begs the questions which turn dark very quickly.
Who pushed Joe onto the list for Gore to pick Lieberman in 2000...?
Did Gore know the depths of which he had the enemy in his own camp in the form of numerous key players, from Al From, to his own running mate?
Why are the known founders of the entire VRWC infrastructure funding our 2000 VP candidates campus Fright-WingTM thought police?
As martyc35 notes when I posted earlier observations on this, It's disturbing enough that some explanations need to be made. It's like finding out that Madelaine Albright had her fingers in the Carlyle Group. At first you can't believe it, but there it is, right out in front of everybody.
And now these key players and same snakes in the grass are tossing BushCo. a lifeline over the NSA wiretap issue as well. So tell me where does this rabbit hole lead?
Will we ever know?