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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz Pacific Legal Foundation is on the wrong side of historyPartially funded by conservative foundations, the legal advocacy group is at the hub of fighting for the re-segregation of AmericaIn early December several hundred pro-affirmative action demonstrators carrying signs reading "Fight for Equality" gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court to stand in witness to an historic occasion. For the first time since the ground breaking 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, when the Supreme Court ruled against separate but equal in America's public schools, the justices were hearing a case that could test that landmark ruling. According to the Associated Press, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases testing when race may be used as a basis for assigning students to public schools. "The school policies in contention...are designed to keep schools from segregating along the same lines as neighborhoods," the AP reported. In Seattle, Washington, "only high school students are affected," while the Louisville, Kentucky "plan applies system-wide." The Seattle Times pointed out that in attendance at the proceedings were the widow of Thurgood Marshall -- "the first African-American Supreme Court justice who, as a young lawyer, argued and won the landmark school-integration case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., "who co-authored a brief supporting the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., school districts' use of race in assigning students to schools," and John Heyburn II, the U.S. district judge "who ruled in the Louisville case, showed up to see what the court thought of his ruling." In its brief to the court, the Seattle school district pointed out that "The plan has prevented the re-segregation that inevitably would result from the community's segregated housing patterns and that most likely would produce many schools that might be perceived as 'failing."' (For more on the arguments see ScotusBlog.) The Bush administration is siding with "parents who are suing the school districts, much as it intervened on behalf of college and graduate students who challenged affirmative action policies before the Supreme Court in 2003," AP reported. The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF - website), a Sacramento, California-based anti-affirmative action legal organization is aiding the Seattle parents hoping to have that city's school integration plan scuttled, and is part of the team fighting Louisville's school district. The foundation submitted legal briefs to the Supreme Court supporting challenges to the integration plans. "The impact of the decisions in these two cases is going to transcend Louisville and Seattle because there are many school districts around the country, according to studies, that continue to use race in one degree or another in the assigning of kids to schools," said Harold Johnson, a Pacific Legal Foundation attorney. "There isn't the academic support for these social engineering policies. They may make some people feel good, but we don't see the evidence that they are raising achievement levels." Founded in 1973, in recent years, the PLF has been at the hub of battles against affirmative action. A PLF press release stated: "On March 5, 1973 government regulators found a foe; mainstream Americans found a friend; freedom in America found new meaning. On that day, Pacific Legal Foundation was established turning the voices that wouldn't be heard into the voices that couldn't be silenced. Since then, PLF has filled the void and has proven itself as a potent representative in the courts for Americans who have grown weary of overregulation by big government, over-indulgence by the courts, and excessive interference in the American way of life." In October of this year, as a way of honoring the accomplishments of Ward Connerly and marking the 10-year anniversary of Proposition 209 -- the California initiative prohibiting racial preferences in public education -- the PLF sued the Berkeley school district, "alleging its school assignment policy violates" the proposition. Paul Beard, the lead lawyer for the case, called Connerly, a wealthy African American businessman who has spearheaded anti-affirmative action initiatives around the country, "the spokesperson for racial equality, in our viewpoint." "In 2001, PLF represented Connerly's American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and provided pro-bono counsel to then California Governor Pete Wilson in a successful effort to expand the scope of Prop. 209," Diversity News' Jennifer Millman recently reported. According to ExxonSecrets.org, PLF received initial financial support from initial financial support came from members of the California Chamber of Commerce and J. Simon Fluor of the Fluor Corporation's oil, nuclear and mineral dollars. Since 1998, PLF has received more than $100,000 from ExxonMobil. Between 1985 and 2005, the PLF received more than $5 million in grants from right wing foundations. Unlike most mainstream press reports on the Supreme Court hearing, which were satisfied to identify the Pacific Legal Foundation as a conservative legal group and leave it at that, Jennifer Millman took a closer look at the organization's funding stream. She found that amongst the organizations consistent and largest benefactors were five influential and aggressive right wing foundations: the Scaife Family Foundations, the Castle Rock (Coors) Foundation, the now-defunct John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The following are excerpts from Millman's report: The Scaife Family Foundations -- Sarah Scaife, Carthage and Allegheny -- are funded by industrial tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife, who inherited $200 million from his mother in the 1960s. He was a presidential appointment of the U.S. Advisory Commission for Public Diplomacy during the Reagan and first Bush administrations. Scaife gave former U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese $1.9 million to start PLF. Between 1985 and 2005, Scaife gave more than $4.5 million to PLF. He is the primary supporter of the Heritage Foundation, of which he is a trustee and Meese a former staff member. Scaife funds Connerly's ACRI, [Linda] Chavez's CEO [Center for Economic Opportunity - Equal Opportunity Foundation], and the Center for Individual Rights, which together comprise the triumvirate leading the campaign to end affirmative action. Other major grant recipients include the National Association of Scholars, co-author of Prop. 209 -- which banned affirmative action in California -- and the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research. UCCR Vice Chair Abigail Thernstrom, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, is on the board of the Equal Opportunity Foundation, which directs funding for CEO. Coors Brewing Company's support for anti-gay groups led to a 10-year boycott led by AFL-CIO in 1977. Pressured to reform, Coors began funding Black and Latino groups through the Adolph Coors Foundation and became one of the first companies to offer domestic-partner benefits to employees in 1995. In 1993, the Coors family created the Castle Rock Foundation to separate the Coors name from its conservative agenda. The Castle Rock and Adolph Coors Foundations have the same board of directors, the same staff and the same address. Coors co-owner Joseph Coors founded and financed the conservative Heritage Foundation, which later received most of its support from Richard Mellon Scaife. Coors was a Heritage trustee until March 2003. Ambassador Holland Coors, President Reagan's appointment to the National Year of the Americas, has been on the board since 1998. Major grant recipients include the Heritage Foundation, the National Association of Scholars and the Institute for Justice, which was founded by anti-affirmative-action leader Clint Bolick, a disciple of ultraconservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Castle Rock gave PLF $340,000 between 1985 and 2005. The New York-based John M. Olin Foundation grew out of a family-owned chemical and munitions manufacturing business. The foundation, which dissolved in 2005, was charged with spending all assets within a generation of Olin's death, lest its mission be altered. Grant recipients included CEO, the Heritage Foundation, the National Association of Scholars and the Manhattan Institute. Specifically, Olin funded the research of CEO founder Linda Chavez and former Secretary of Education William Bennett. When former Olin Foundation President [the late] Michael Joyce left to run the Bradley Foundation, William Simon, who was secretary of the treasury [under] Nixon and Ford, took over. Joyce had worked under Simon at a neoconservative think-tank prior to joining Olin, and it was Simon who asked him to take the helm at Bradley. Olin gave PLF $669,000 between 1985 and 2005. The Allen-Bradley Company, a manufacturer of electronic and radio equipment, was one of the last major Milwaukee-based companies to racially integrate, which it did only under legal pressure. In 1968, the company had 7,000 employees, only 32 of whom were black and 14 Latino. When the Allen-Bradley company was sold in 1985, the name of the foundation was changed to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation to separate the company name from its conservative cause. Bradley is the principal supporter of [Ward] Connerly's ACRI [American Civil Rights Institute]. ACRI co-chair Thomas Rhodes is on the Bradley board of directors... The foundation gives to the Institute for Justice, where founder Clint Bolick drafted a federal bill to eliminate affirmative action. Other major grant recipients include the Heritage Foundation, the National Association of Scholars and the American Enterprise Institute...Bradley gave PLF $327,000 between 1985 and 2005. Recently, the PLF was asked by the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative Committee, the campaign organization that sponsored Proposal 2 -- the Michigan anti-affirmative action initiative that was successful in November's election -- to defend the measure against legal challenges. Looking ahead to any potential legal battle over Proposal 2, Alan W. Foutz, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, said, "We think that most of the arguments to be hurled at it already have been thoroughly vetted and rejected by the courts." Fighting to re-segregate America is not the only battlefront for the PLF, Scott Silver, the executive director of Wild Wilderness, pointed out in an email exchange. The organization "is the anchor of the wise-use property rights movement. They are a well funded legal hit shop that routinely litigates on a broad range of anti-social, anti-democratic and anti-environmental issues. "Unlike conservative think tanks supported by the usual suspects -- Scaife, Coors, Bradley, ExxonMobil -- PLF delivers much more than merely white-papers and op-eds written with the hope of slowing shifting public opinion, perception and policy," Silver added. "PLF earns its retainer by delivering law suits against such things as Equal Rights, Endangered Species and Clean Air." "Anti-environmental from the start," ExxonSecrets.org points out, "PLF's early actions supported the use of DDT, the use of herbicides in national forests, and the use of public range land without requiring an environmental impact review." The organization "also supported at least six pro-nuclear power cases before the early eighties while accepting funding from Pacific General Electric (PGE), a utility which has gained a great deal through the development of nuclear power in the Pacific Northwest. "In the nineteen-eighties PLF won several cases that are considered landmarks by those working on property rights issues today: Nollan v the California Coastal Commission and First Church, both Supreme Court victories which provide precedence for the takings litigation pursued today...In October 2003, PLF Vice President M. David Stirling had an Op-Ed published in which he defended President Bush's environmental record and condemned former President Clinton for endorsing the Kyoto Protocol." "When PLF wins a legal battle, the harm occurs almost immediately and may be felt for decades," Scott Silver noted. "In the case of species extinction and global warming, the harm may last forever." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz 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.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring 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."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican 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.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite 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.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned 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.
Bill Berkowitz 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."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled 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.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder 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."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe 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.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew 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.
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