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More stories by Bill Berkowitz

PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'

Neil Bush of Saudi Arabia

Newt Gingrich's back door to the White House

American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against Iran

After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative

Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'

Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouse

Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihad

Tom Tancredo's mission

Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of Churches

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
July 5, 2006

Charles Colson fights ruling against his religious based prison program

In strong language, District Court judge ordered prison rehab ministry shut down

After serving time in prison for Watergate-related crimes, Charles W. Colson embraced Christianity, founded Prison Fellowship Ministries (website) in 1976, and has since become a high profile, well-respected and oft-quoted Christian conservative leader. Over the past several years, Colson's InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI - website) has partnered with prison authorities in several states, including Texas, Minnesota, Kansas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri, to provide prisoners with a Christ-centered rehabilitation program.

In June, however, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pratt, chief judge of the US District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, handed Colson's operation a setback. Judge Pratt ruled in favor of a suit filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State (Americans United) which claimed that IFI's operation at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility violated the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution.

Judge Pratt ordered an "end" to the program within 60 days, and also ordered InnerChange to reimburse more than $1.5 million to the state of Iowa.

"For all practical purposes, the state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates," wrote Pratt. "There are no adequate safeguards present, nor could there be, to ensure that state funds are not being directly spent to indoctrinate Iowa inmates."

Pratt also pointed out that "The level of religious indoctrination supported by state funds and other state support in this case in comparison to other programs treated in the case law ... is extraordinary."

In late June, Prison Fellowship Ministries, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative and the State of Iowa notified the courts that they would appeal Judge Pratt's ruling. "It is our belief that the InnerChange Freedom Initiative is constitutional and well within the framework of the safeguards of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution," Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley said in a released statement. The appeal was made to the U.S. District Court in Iowa and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a story posted June 14 at the American Enterprise Institute's The American Enterprise Online, Joseph Knippenberg, a professor of politics and associate provost for student achievement at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, pointed out that while he generally "support[s]" the faith-based initiative, as well as "religious efforts to put the penitence back in penitentiaries," he basically agreed with Judge Pratt's ruling: "In this particular case ... the state and Prison Fellowship self-consciously tested the outer bounds of current church-state jurisprudence, they went too far."

According to Knippenberg, Judge Pratt found that:

  • While Iowa prison officials were primarily interested in a low-cost program that promised to reduce recidivism among inmates, they "gerrymandered" the Request for Proposals that led to the contract with InnerChange, which was the sole bidder.
  • The nature of the InnerChange program is such that it is impossible to clearly distinguish and separate its religious and secular elements. There is one clearly secular class--"Computer Training." Other classes that have secular analogues in therapeutic rehabilitative programs, like "Anger Management," are taught from an essentially Christian point of view.
  • While the InnerChange staff attempted to distinguish between their secular and religious work, and bill the state accordingly, their efforts fell short. Where so much of the program is devoted to inculcating a Christian worldview, it is difficult, if not impossible, to precisely delineate what portion of a staffer's time, or what fraction of a piece of equipment's value is devoted to secular, as opposed to religious, purposes.
  • In addition to formal coursework, the program imposes numerous religious requirements, including attendance at regular Friday night revival meetings and at Sunday morning worship services.
  • There is no comparable secular or religious program elsewhere in the Iowa prison system. Inmates who want a long-term comprehensive rehabilitation program have no other choices.
  • The living conditions and privileges afforded InnerChange participants are sufficiently superior to those afforded the general prison population as to be incentives to join the program. In effect, inmates are rewarded for their participation in a religious program.

In a series of published commentaries defending the InnerChange program, Mark Earley called the suit by Americans United, and similar suits initiated by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, attacks that go beyond merely opposition to President Bush's faith-based initiative: "It's a religious battle being waged by groups whose religion really is no religion. Our nation's prisons are merely the newest theater of operations in the campaign to scrub every influence of religion from American public life."

Earley's op-ed pieces cited "Confronting Confinement," a recent report issued by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, which found according to Earley, that "the key to reducing recidivism, enhancing security within the prisons, and protecting the public is comprehensive rehabilitative programming."

In a conversation a while back with Dr. Terry Kupers, a longtime prison reform advocate and the author of "Prison Madness: the Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About it," a comprehensive and highly readable study of the growing mental health crisis in America's prisons, he suggested that most studies show that a fair amount of resources directed toward comprehensive rehabilitation programs will generally prove to be worthwhile.

While "Confronting Confinement" encourages "invest[ment] in programs that are proven to reduce violence and to change behavior over the long term," it says nothing about the efficacy of faith-based prison programs.

For Earley, however, "comprehensive rehabilitative programs" clearly means a program saturated with Christianity. He appears to believe that only faith-based programs can be effective in reducing recidivism rates among prisoners. He is quoted by Christian Newswire as arguing that the effort to remove faith-based programs from prisons "fosters a ‘lock 'em up and throw away the key' approach to fighting crime. It assumes that by warehousing criminals and providing no services to help them change, society will be safer when they get out. Nothing could be further from the truth."

In early July, Earley and Al Quie, the former governor of Minnesota and chairman of the IFI Board of Directors, responded to what they charged were "some erroneous statements in its June 15 editorial on the InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) program at Minnesota's Lino Lakes prison," published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

While acknowledging that IFI's program is "faith-based," Earley and Quie maintained that the program is not coercive and has "help[ed] the state to reduce recidivism, enhance security (through improved inmate accountability), and lower correctional costs."

Earley and Quie capped their argument by citing "An independent study by the University of Pennsylvania [that] showed that graduates of the InnerChange Freedom Initiative in Texas were far less likely to return to prison within two years than inmates who did not participate in IFI (8 percent compared to 20 percent)."

But the study cited by Earley and Quie -- and frequently referred to in Earley's commentaries -- was thoroughly debunked in an August 2003 piece called "Faith-Based Fudging: How a Bush-promoted Christian prison program fakes success by massaging data," written by Mark A.R. Kleiman, a Professor of Policy Studies at the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, and published by Slate online magazine.

"You don't have to believe in faith-healing to think that an intensive 16-month program, with post-release follow-up, run by deeply caring people might be the occasion for some inmates to turn their lives around. The report seemed to present liberal secularists with an unpleasant choice: Would you rather have people "saved" by Colson, or would you rather have them commit more crimes and go back to prison?

"But when you look carefully at the Penn study, it's clear that the program didn't work. The InnerChange participants did somewhat worse than the controls: They were slightly more likely to be rearrested and noticeably more likely (24 percent versus 20 percent) to be reimprisoned. If faith is, as Paul told the Hebrews, the evidence of things not seen, then InnerChange is an opportunity to cultivate faith; we certainly haven't seen any results.

"So, how did the Penn study get perverted into evidence that InnerChange worked? Through one of the oldest tricks in the book, one almost guaranteed to make a success of any program: counting the winners and ignoring the losers. The technical term for this in statistics is ‘selection bias'; program managers know it as ‘creaming.' Harvard public policy professor Anne Piehl, who reviewed the study before it was published, calls this instance of it ‘cooking the books.'"

Joseph Knippenberg maintained that the Iowa ruling could have long term ramifications for other current and future faith-based prison programs: "I'm not convinced that the outcome in this particular case is likely to be different in any other courtroom. This is surely significant in the long run for many of the InnerChange prison units in other states ...for other religious pre-release programs in other states, and for the Bush administration's effort to bring such programs into the federal prison system.

"At the very least, and even before any further decisions are handed down, additional lawsuits will be filed. Indeed, perhaps anticipating this very outcome, the Freedom From religion Foundation has filed a suit challenging the Federal Bureau of Prisons' faith-based "Life Connection Program", currently piloted at five federal prisons and, until recently, scheduled for expansion."

Despite the Iowa ruling, it's not all gloom and doom for Colson's prison enterprises. In the June issue of Americans United's Church & State magazine, Jeremy Leaming reported that Colson's group was the main candidate for a new Justice Department initiative seeking to establish a "single-faith" prison rehabilitation program.

The initiative's stated purpose was to "facilitate personal transformation for the participating inmates through their own spirituality or faith...." and "match inmates with personal mentors and a faith-based community, community organization or support group at their release destination to promote successful reintegration."

Leaming reported that Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex Luchenitser "argued that the program was troubling because it seemed designed to benefit a specific charity - Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. The solicitation listed 10 requirements, all of which mirror the features of Colson's Inner-Change prison program."

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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
March 16, 2007

PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'

Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism'

On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.

In a story written just before Anderson's northern California appearance, Truckee Today's Karen Sloan described PERC as an organization that "contends that private property rights encourage good stewardship of natural resources." The story, headlined "'Enviroprenuer' scholar to speak at Resort at Squaw Creek," pointed out that "PERC scholars argue that government subsidies often degrade the environment, that market incentives can spur individuals to conserve and protect the environment and that polluters should be liable for the harm they cause others."

On its website, PERC -- a non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1980 -- calls itself "the nation's oldest and largest institute dedicated to original research that brings market principles to resolving environmental problems." PERC maintains that it "pioneered the approach known as free market environmentalism."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
March 10, 2007

Neil Bush of Saudi Arabia

During recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy'

In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."

Neil Mallon Bush, the son of President George H. W. Bush and the brother of President George W. Bush, attended the forum to renew old family friendships and to drum up a little business for his educational software company. "The Jeddah Economic Forum has been very productive," Bush told Arab News. "I have been to this conference four times since 2002. I have seen it develop from the very beginning. There was less participation in the past, now there is more international participation."

These days, Neil Bush is the chairman and CEO of Ignite Learning, a company devoted to developing technology-assisted curriculum. Ignite calls it COW: "Curriculum on Wheels." In an interview with Arab News' Siraj Wahab, Bush talked enthusiastically about his company's mission: "We are building a model in the United States for developing curriculum that is engaging to grade-school kids, and our model is to deploy this engaging content through a device. So it is easy for any teacher to use our device through projectors and speakers. The curriculum is loaded on the device. We use animation and video and those kinds of things to light up learning in classrooms for kids. It helps teachers connect with their kids. We are planning to develop an Arabic version of that model."

A video on Ignite!'s website makes clear the enervating, rote approach to learning taken by the Bush family. While this may not be an advance in actual education, it does serve to enrich Neil Bush and commodify teachers. In concept it is much like Channel One, whereby Chris Whittle enriched himself forcing millions of primary school students to watch repackaged TV News sandwiched between corporate advertising.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
March 2, 2007

Newt Gingrich's back door to the White House

American Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances

Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.

These days, Gingrich, who is simultaneously a "Senior Fellow" at the American Enterprise Institute and a "Distinguished Visiting Fellow" at the Hoover Institution, is making like your favorite uncle, fronting a YouTube video contest offering "prizes" to whoever creates the best two-minute video on why taxes suck. Although the prizes may not be particularly attractive to the typical YouTuber, nevertheless Gingrich recently launched the "Winning the Future, Goose that laid the Golden Egg, You Tube Contest." According to Newt.org, participants are to "Create a 120 second video explaining why tax increases will hurt the American economy, leading to less revenue for the government, not more. Or in other words, explain why we shouldn't cook the goose that laid the golden eggs (the American economy) by raising taxes."

Although he hasn't formerly announced his candidacy -- and he probably won't anytime soon -- Gingrich definitely has his eyes on the White House. He's just still figuring out how he will get there. Over the past several months Gingrich has been ubiquitous on the media and political scenes.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 25, 2007

American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against Iran

Despite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran

After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.

Long before the Bush Administration began escalating its rhetoric and upping the ante about the supposed "threat" posed to the US by Iran, well-paid inside-the-beltway think tankers were agitating for some kind of action against that country. Some have argued for ratcheting up sanctions and freezing bank accounts, others have advocated increasing financial aid to opposition groups, and still others have argued that a military strike at Iran's nuclear facilities is absolutely essential. For all, the desired end result is regime change in Iran.

If President Bush plunges the U.S. into some kind of military conflict with Iran, you can thank the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a key player in the current debate over Iran.

President Bush acknowledged as much when he recently appeared at the AEI for a much-publicized speech on his War on Terror, which focused on the front in Afghanistan.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 18, 2007

After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative

Unmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups

With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The other item that didn't get any State of the Union play is a project that was once envisioned to be the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda: his faith-based initiative. As Joseph Bottum, editor of the conservative publication First Things -- "The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life" -- pointed out, Bush "didn't mention faith-based initiatives, which...[he] once claimed would be his great legacy."

The president's faith-based initiative is facing several tough court battles.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 10, 2007

Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'

On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California

He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."

In a 10-page addendum to his new book ""Words that Work -- It's Not What You Say Its What People Hear," Luntz, formerly a top political pollster for the Republican Party, may have written so critically of the party's recent efforts that he has become persona non grata. Luntz used to be one of the party's go-to-guys for political guidance and strategy, a counselor to such GOP stalwarts as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York City Major Rudy Giuliani and Trent Lott.

"The Republican Party that lost those historic elections was a tired, cranky shell of the articulate reformist, forward-thinking movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change," Luntz wrote. According to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, Luntz went on to say that the Republicans of 2006 "were an ethical morass, more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting the people they served. The 1994 Republicans came to 'revolutionize' Washington. Washington won."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 4, 2007

Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouse

Fueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director

As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Flash forward some 30-plus years and an Internet entrepreneur believes that it is time for a new conservative movement. He too has seen an entity on the left he admires enough to want to emulate: MoveOn.org.

"The left has been brilliant at leveraging technology," said Rod Martin, founder of TheVanguard.org, "and so have we to a point: our bloggers and news sites are amazing, and the RNC's get-out-the-vote software is unparalleled. But no one on our side has even begun to create anything like MoveOn. And after 2006, if we want to survive, much less build a long-term conservative majority, we better start, and fast."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 29, 2007

Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihad

Founder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives

Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."

During a mid-December conference call Connerly allowed that he had scheduled visits to Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah during the upcoming months to get a handle on how many campaigns he might launch.

"Twenty-three states have systems for putting laws directly before voters in the form of ballot initiatives," the Chronicle pointed out. "Three down and 20 to go," Connerly boasted. "We don't need to do them all, but if we do a significant number, we will have demonstrated that race preferences are antithetical to the popular will of the American people."

"The people of California, Washington and Michigan have shown that institutions that implement these [affirmative action] programs are living on borrowed time," Connerly said.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 25, 2007

Tom Tancredo's mission

The Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics

These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.

Now, Tancredo, who has represented the state's Sixth District since 1999, has joined the long list of candidates contending for the GOP's 2008 presidential nomination. In mid-January Tancredo announced the formation of an exploratory committee -- Tom Tancredo for a Secure America -- the first step to formally declaring his candidacy. While his announcement didn't cause quite the stir as the announcement by Illinois Democratic Senator Barak Obama that he too was forming an exploratory committee, nevertheless Tancredo's move did not go completely unnoticed.

While voters' concerns over the war in Iraq and the GOP's "culture of corruption" predominated in the 2006 midterms, Tancredo will be doing his best to make immigration an issue for the presidential campaign of 2008.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 18, 2007

Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of Churches

New report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations

If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.

For those who remember a similar IRD-led attack on the World Council of Churches two decades ago the IRD's latest blast appears to be -- to borrow a phrase from New York Yankee great Yogi Berra -- "déjà vu all over again."

The IRD excoriated the World Council of Churches (WCC) for allegedly being tools of the anti-American left over its support of the Nelson Mandela-led African National Congress in South Africa, and its opposition to President Ronald Reagan's contra wars in Central America; wars that destabilized governments and were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. And now it is doing a similar job on the NCC.

"The institute, a Washington-based think tank, is allied with conservative groups on issues such as same-sex marriage. From its founding in 1981, its primary effort has been to challenge what it calls the 'leftist' political positions of mainline Protestant denominations, such as the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)," the Washington Post recently reported.

Author and longtime right wing watcher Frederick Clarkson recently described the IRD as an "inside the beltway, neoconservative agency [that] has waged a war of attrition against the historic mainline protestant churches in the U.S."

Read the full report >

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