MEDIA TRANSPARENCY

Sign-up for our newsletter

Register

Only registered visitors are allowed to email content or post comments

SEARCHING

About the Data

Find out where the grant data comes from, and what years and philanthropies are included.

How to Search

Information, tips and tricks for making your search more successful

Search

Grants – search grants based on their stated purpose
Recipients – search all grants to a particular recipient
Funders – search for organizations or individuals that are funding grants
People – search for people who benefit from grant funds
Website – search the website for specific text
Advanced search – specifiy multiple criteria
All-in-one search – search the website and the database at the same time for specific text

Mobile version

Using MT on a Palm, BlackBerry, or Windows CE device? Try our pda version of this website.

ISSUES

The following is a list of the topics that conservative philanthropy considers important. Each issue page explains the topic and provides links to original Media Transparency reports, database research, and related stories from around the web.

Faith-based watch

Much of the energy and money, indeed the genesis of the faith-based movement is rooted in Conservative Philanthropy. This page provides links to original Media Transparency research and links to stories about the initiative around the Internet. These stories and grants demonstrate that George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative is little more than a religious patronage system.

Also see: Charitable Choice, predecessor to the faith-based initiative.

Social Security Privatization

Privatizing Social Security has been on the radar of Conservative Philanthropy since at least 1986, according to our grant list for "Social Security." Though President Bush reduced support for the initiative with his bamboozlepalooza tour in 2005, in 2006 he is now claiming he wants to get on with privatization after the mid-term elections.

Neoconservatism

According to SourceWatch.org: A neo-conservative (abbreviated as neo-con or neocon) is part of a U.S. based political movement rooted in liberal Cold War anticommunism and a backlash to the social liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These liberals drifted toward conservatism: thus they are new (neo) conservatives. They favor an aggressive unilateral U.S. foreign policy. They generally believe that elites protect democracy from mob rule. Sometimes the spelling is "neoconservative."

Top Neoconservative institutions include the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution and the Hudson Institute, to name just a very few. See Eric Alterman's article, Neoconning the Media, for a more complete list.

Public School Privatization and Commercialization

The conservative movement, being thoroughly anti-union, has at its heart a desire to rid the United States of the two remaining unionized sectors of the national economy: Public Education (teachers unions), and Public Employees. In service of these goals, the movement has moved aggressively against both public schools and public school teachers.

Real-world politics nor facts have any sway in the conservative's attacks on public schools. Recent reports by the federal government (2006) that charter and private school students do academically worse than students at regular public schools, plus rejection of voucher schemes by voters in Michigan and California have left privatization proponents unfazed, while voucher programs continue to grow in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida.

Tort Reform

From Cursor board member Dave Johnson's The Attack on Trial Lawyers:

This Commonweal Institute Report, The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law, shows that, in addition to the expected corporate-front organizations like the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) and Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA), the "tort reform" movement is ideologically associated with a network of organizations, such as the Washington Legal Foundation, the Cato Institute and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which are part of what they themselves call the "conservative movement." This web of "movement" organizations receives general operating support, project grants, and strategic guidance from a core group of ideological far-right-wing foundations that has been working for nearly thirty years to alter public attitudes and move the national agenda to the right.

Also see Mr. Johnson's report for Media Transparency, Lowering the Bar: The conservative movement's well-funded attacks on trial lawyers.

Law and Economics Movement

Read about the hyper-rational, people-denying legal movement to place the value of wealth maximization above all others. View all grants for "Law and Economics," and read Jedediah Purdy's The Chicago Acid Bath: The Impoverished Logic of "Law and Economics", the best overview of the subject. Also see which state and federal judges are treated to outings at posh retreats where they are educated about Law and Economics, and see the grants that make those trips possible.

Court Watch

Follow the affects of the conservative philanthropies funding through the state and federal courts.

Arkansas Project

See how tax exempt money was used to almost bring down an opposition president.